The Rise of AI: The End Of The Glory Days of WordPress Plugins or a New Exciting Dawn?
With Special Guest Chris Badgett, Joint Founder & CEO of LifterLMS
Is AI the end of the glory days of WordPress plugins or a new, exciting dawn? Discover how AI is reshaping the future of WordPress tools today.
In this video, we explore the evolving landscape of WordPress plugins in the era of artificial intelligence. Are we witnessing the decline of traditional plugin development, or is AI ushering in a new era of innovation and efficiency? Join us as we explore the implications of AI on plugin functionality, user experience, and future trends.
#1 – Can you give some background on how you got into the world of Web design and development, and also how you got into WordPress?
#2 – What do you see as the biggest challenges that LifterLMS faces in 2025?
#3 – How do you see AI affecting the premium WordPress plugin market in the next 18 months?
#4 – What advice would you give somebody trying to launch a premium plugin successfully in 2025?
#5— Are there any AI tools or services you have been using remotely or regularly that you would like to share with the WP-Tonic tribe?
#6—If you had your time machine (H. G. Wells) and could travel back to the beginning of your career, what advice would you give?
This Week’s Sponsors
Kinta: Kinta
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:17.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic show. In this episode, we’ve got a friend of the show coming back. We’ve got Chris Badget with us, the joint founder and CEO of Lifter LMS. In this show, we’ll discuss everything related to Premier Plugins. All the glory days of the WordPress Premier Plugin are over with the dragon of AI. I don’t particularly think it is, but we’re going to have a discussion just about building a successful business in the Premier Plugin area. This is episode 969. Chris, would you like to give the tribe a quick 10- to 15-second intro, and then, when we delve into the main part of the show, we can explore your background further?
[00:01:44.540] – Chris Badgett
Sure. I’m Chris Badget, co-founder of Lifter LMS, a leading learning management system for WordPress, and host of the LMS Cast podcast for course creators and WordPress professionals.
[00:01:56.940] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. I’ve got my ever-patient Co-host, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:02:06.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Annen. I run a company called Manana Nomas. We focus largely on learning and membership sites. I also work closely with the talented team at WP Tonic and LifterLMS.
[00:02:17.460] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Additionally, I would like to point out that we’ve a great resource available, which is free. It’s essentially a compilation of special offers from the major plugin sponsors of the show, along with a list of the best WordPress plugins and services for WordPress professionals. It will save you a load of time. The plugins have been thoroughly tested by the WP Tonic team and their services. It’s everything I’ve used or some of my team has used. So we endorse it all. You can find these resources by visiting WP-Tonic.com/deals. Wp-tonic.com/deals. What more could you ask from my WordPress professionals? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get on that page. So Chris, maybe you can give us a bit more about how you got into the world of web design and development, and then specifically, the next step on the journey into the world of WordPress.
[00:03:44.120] – Chris Badgett
I got in in 2008. I needed to build a website for myself as part of a personal project. So I learned how to use WordPress by watching YouTube videos in 2008. I launched my first blog. I started building sites for clients. Ultimately, I built an agency. While I was doing that, I started experimenting with creating and selling online courses in the gardening niche, among other things. And then my agency got bigger. I started getting more e-learning type clients. I merged my agency with another agency, and we grew that to about 17 people. During that time, we decided to build a learning management system for WordPress that combined e-commerce, membership, engagement, and all the necessary LMS features. So Lifter LMS was born in 2014, and here we are 11 years later.
[00:04:44.140] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. So, before you got into web design and development as a joint agency owner, what was your background? What was your career?
[00:04:57.580] – Chris Badgett
I was a climbing bum. I was I’m a dog sled busher in Alaska. I studied Anthropology in school. I’ve never taken a business class or a technology class, and I’ve spent a lot of time hiking, adventuring, and homesteading, among other things.
[00:05:14.780] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. Outdoors.
[00:05:17.320] – Chris Badgett
Yeah.
[00:05:18.060] – Jonathan Denwood
What attracted you to the outdoors then as a young person then?
[00:05:23.280] – Chris Badgett
I honestly don’t know. I think it’s just inside of me. My grandfather, who was born in the mountains of Western Virginia, Southwest Virginia always said, You can take a man out of the mountains, but you can’t take the mountains out of a man. And I think I was just born with the mountains inside of me.
[00:05:40.700] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:05:44.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, it’s interesting how you gloss over the story a little bit about founding Lifter and stuff like that. But from my personal experience, I’ve been with Lifter now 10 of those 11 years. That’s hard to think about. For For me, I started WordPress like a hobby that morphed into an agency. And I was doing a lot of marketing sites and a couple of e-commerce things, but mostly those small brochure type things. But Professionally, I was an e-learning manager for large corporations, and so I was used to seeing people spending a quarter million dollars or more on an eLearning platform for corporate use. And it was in in my mind, I think it was, I don’t know if it’s a definition of imposter syndrome or what, but I was like, oh, well, I guess I’ll stick with these small little project sites because I’m a WordPress guy. And I know that corporately, I have to keep depending on these overpriced large custom platforms. So I just wanted to follow up because you opened up a whole new world to me in 2015. Now I can make enterprise-level learning sites. And of course, it’s morphed over the last decade a a little bit and gotten more competitive.
[00:07:01.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
But how did you approach the idea of, let’s create an LMS, let’s make a dent in the marketplace, and let’s blow the lid off this thing?
[00:07:12.320] – Chris Badgett
Well, I approached it because Back in the late 2007, 2008, 2009, this was when I was living in Alaska, and I lived a lot of the time in a tent on a glacier with no cell phone signal. But I got interested in topics like leadership because I led a team of 30 people up there. I got interested in marketing and started falling in love with internet marketing. I started hearing about people on the internet who were creating online courses and creating time, income, and location, freedom in their lives. I got obsessed with that idea. I did it in the organic gardening and permaculture niche. Over time, when I started teaching WordPress for free on YouTube, I started getting clients from that. Because I was in this online course, e-commerce space, started getting more and more clients like that. I was sitting with one of my original cofounders of Lifter. His name was Joshua, and he just asked the question. He’s like, because agency can be hard building sites. And we were doing some high-end sites. Some of our sites, our clients were paying over $100,000 a year, and it was just ongoing custom development, custom design, custom features, all kinds of stuff.
[00:08:42.600] – Chris Badgett
So we’re working with these high-end clients, and we were in the… A lot of them at the time were using a marketing automation tool called Infusionsoft. We were at the intersection of the early days of creators, internet marketing, and information products like courses. And I love this industry. I just fell in love with it. And my co founder turned to me and was like, If we were going to build a product, what would it be? I was like, We should definitely build a LMS, and we can call it Lifter LMS, which was in honor to our other co founder, Thomas, who was a Lifter. And we actually had a WordPress theme at the time called Lifter. So I called it Lifter LMS. And then we started building it. Our agency clients were basically footing the bill. We were installing the early versions of Lifter on their site. And when they had feature request, we added them not just to their site, but to the actual product. And then it evolved from there. So the customers of the agency literally pulled the product out of us.
[00:09:54.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
Nice. Well, and if I jump to our next question, it’s like, that was the beginning. What do you see is the biggest challenge that Lifter LMS would face heading into 2025?
[00:10:08.540] – Chris Badgett
I would probably say the biggest macro challenge is, Sort of like how ChatGPT and other AI tools are affecting the search engine game. I would say the artificial intelligence is also affecting the how we learn stuff game. If we think about the end user, the learner, you can use a conversation with ChatGPT to learn a skill or a topic. So courses now need to get even better, more engaging. The human element needs to be even more important. Your unique take on whatever the skill or the experience or the transformation that you’re creating needs to be more unique. There’s also just a ton of opportunity in this new world of artificial intelligence as well. I’m not worried about it at all from a staying in business standpoint. We just have to capitalize and adapt to change as it comes with AI. That’s the biggest challenge. I would also say we started in the early days of the creator economy. That’s famous now, but it wasn’t famous back 2010. And Lifter has always had creators like individual subject matter experts at the heart of our business. But a lot of other types of use cases for LMS emerge.
[00:11:45.380] – Chris Badgett
And no matter how much we do marketing to one use case or the other, all these different characters show up and need learning management systems. So keeping that our platform flexible without being overwhelming is important. And also there’s literally like 500 LMSs or more out there. So differentiation, positioning, all these things become very important. But to me, I’m not scared of that. I just think that’s a validation that the E learning industry is massive and there’s a ton of demand. It’s just about what’s your slice of the pie?
[00:12:23.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, yeah. And I would imagine there’s a little bit of confidence of you’ve already put in skin in the game. You’ve made it past the decade. You’re mentioned in one of three main brands in the space. But if you were like 501st to the game, you would have a much different challenge.
[00:12:42.520] – Chris Badgett
Yeah, I mean, if we look at the WordPress LMS niche, not the broader LMS, it would be more difficult today, but I don’t think that that is a reason not to enter the space. And the reason for that is when I entered in 2014, I thought I was late to the party. There were already membership plugins, and there were themes that were doing LMS stuff. I thought I was late And I think if we look back on this time 10 years from now, it’s still early in the sense that online education isn’t going away. The market is changing. It’s just different dynamics. So when I got in, the reason why WordPress worked for me is I’m not a developer or a designer, but because WordPress can be a no code website building tool, I was able to build a business and make sites. So I was riding the trend of WordPress making website building accessible without being a developer. The dynamic today is different. There’s so many no code tools, and now all these vibe coding stuff and everything else. But there is an angle. You just have to find what it is for your niche.
[00:14:08.520] – Chris Badgett
And in the eLearning, there’s tons of angles to come in on, whether it’s related to things like learning communities, tutoring, group learning, the needs of a school versus a creator. You could double down on a really specific use case There’s so many different approaches you could take. And then 10 years from now, that innovative entrepreneur will say, Man, I thought I was late, but I was actually early, and I made some smart positioning those.
[00:14:43.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I can see that. Jonathan, over to you.
[00:14:47.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, thanks, Kurt. So Chris, how do you see AI affecting the premier plugin market in the next year, 18 months? I’ve got some thoughts on it that I’d like to share with you, but I first would like to get your initial thoughts about how you see AI affecting WordPress and the WordPress premier plugin market.
[00:15:15.020] – Chris Badgett
I think it’s a beautiful thing, and there’s so many different layers to it. Just in terms of running a business or writing code or developing design or doing marketing and sales, AI is an accelerator to the people that know how to use it, and that’s fantastic. So I love that saying that your job isn’t going to be replaced by AI. You might be replaced by somebody who knows how to use AI. So the very important thing is to experiment. I spend at least four hours a week just playing with AI tools, just like I played with WordPress in the early days. But more broadly, I think it’s a wonderful opportunity, particularly in WordPress, because of the open-source nature of our software and also the ecosystem of smart, creative, innovative people that are around the WordPress project. In terms of competing with a closed-wall SaaS solution, there’s never been a better time with artificial intelligence and the open-source nature WordPress and premium plugins for founders, agency owners to just innovate on top of this stack so that you’re not just… Back in the day, I had to hire developers to help me build software. And we still need developers.
[00:16:51.020] – Chris Badgett
The need for developers is not going to go away. But if you have developers and also artificial intelligence able to help creators and founders build amazing software, there’s never been a better time in history to be alive for that. And also, just like I said early on, when I got into WordPress, I was able to do a lot of things and build a business without being a developer or designer. What you can do now with AI and WordPress is even more exciting. So there’s also a lot of opportunity for the DIY creator who’s not an engineer engineer.
[00:17:31.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I agree with a lot of things you said there, Chris. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, which I know is going to be a surprise, Chris. But this is how I rationalize it, because I look at the history of WordPress as a to give a signpost about what might happen in the next year, 18 months, or the next couple of years, because apart, if you If you look any further, it’s practically probably impossible. But I think people look at the competitors to WordPress, and they tend to look at Wix, and they tend to look at Squarespace. But I don’t think they were the real competitors. The real competitors is the industry or sector-based website CRM marketing solution that were the core of SaaS. If you look at any industry or sector, business sector, there is a host of SaaS-based CRM website solutions that compete with WordPress, and compete, which is a very similar situation that you faced in the learning management. Obviously, you have some WordPress competitors, but the bulk of your competitors, the Lifter LMS, are SaaS-based. In the entrepreneur sector or in the more educational corporate sector. And the beauty of SASS was that it always tried to market itself, and there was some element of truth to it, that it was just so much easier.
[00:19:37.520] – Jonathan Denwood
You didn’t have to find a hosting provider, and you didn’t have to find other plugins that would work with the core plugin that attracted you to WordPress. And some WordPress entrepreneurs tried to overcome that by building what I call the Worst of All Worlds. They built a WordPress press-based walled garden. So you had the worst of both worlds. You still had to get hosting. You still probably would have to get some other plugins. But you supposedly had the ease of one overall solution. But I think with AI, the cost… You need a platform like WordPress and some core plugins that attract you. But the barrier to cost of really customizing that to your real needs in the next couple of years, I think will go down in some ways, but you’ll be able to do a lot more. In some ways, the cost will go up because if you look at economics, When a set price goes down, more people can have things done, and they want more things done. But if that happens, why would you want to be restricted into a SaaS solution, where you’re really looking for a baseline, but you got the ability to customize it?
[00:21:27.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Is this making any sense, Chris?
[00:21:29.620] – Chris Badgett
I I agree with you, and you hit the key word there, which is customizability. That’s the main differentiation point of WordPress as a solution. When I ask people, Why did you choose Lifter LMS? They say, Oh, well, it was the most customizable. I hear customized all the time. I also hear affordability all the time. I also hear a lot which we all have, which is subscription fatigue. Nobody wants to sign up for another $30 a month solution, right? We already have too many subscriptions, which is what the SaaS business model is built on. Now, WordPress, we typically sell annual subscriptions, which if you look at it on the whole, is much more affordable. And it doesn’t come with the sting of limited customizability while also being locked into a monthly subscription. I think that’s very compelling. Affordability and customizability and the ability to build something truly unique and combine tools from an entire ecosystem, not just one company and their feature set, is pretty compelling for the right persona. But that’s not everybody. Some people just want to have a… If we look at YouTube, A lot of YouTubers just want to have a really simple Patreon account and a monetize their channel.
[00:23:07.400] – Chris Badgett
But there’s a segment of them that want something more robust, like courses or a membership site, and they want that customizability, and they come to WordPress. There’s different types of people out there. With AI making it easier to create content, to modify code, and do design, that AI fits into the customizability aspect. A lot of the AI tooling I see in SaaS solutions, there’s a limit to how far it can go because it can only do this one little thing around this one little feature, and it’s all like open AI behind the scenes anyways. So you’re still limited and locked into that walled garden decision that they’re making and the parameters and the restrictions that they’re putting in place.
[00:24:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, because obviously, I’ve consulted and seen clients that have either had totally bestoke custom solutions built and found that they are semi-entrapped to the vendor, or they’ve gone to the SaaS model, and they hit a wall where there some key functionality that they would love that would increase the bottom line, would increase the success of their business. And it just isn’t available, but they have invested a lot of time and money in that SaaS solution. Would you agree with those two outlines?
[00:24:50.000] – Chris Badgett
I would agree with that. But if I put my innovation hat on, I’m a firm believer that information wants to be free, and code is just information. If you look at SaaS in the website space, like in WordPress, where do you still have to pay a monthly fee? It’s hosting. It’s like storing your website. If I was going to innovate on top of that, when I believe we’re going to see this in WordPress, is we will get to a point where hosting is free, and the hosting companies will figure out how to monetize, further out the value chain with… For example, if you have a premium OpenAI account, you can do fancy or bigger things with AI, and hosts can monetize on top of that. But everything in terms of information, it’s always moving towards free. That’s why music you can mostly get for free, movies you can get for free or very cheap, books, content. Education even is moving towards That’s why I’m a big fan of the freemium model. But to be freemium, you really have to figure out how you’re going to monetize. The way to think about that is it’s called moving the free line.
[00:26:14.440] – Chris Badgett
It’s a thought experiment. If you move the free line, what’s left that’s a value of premium value? Ai is rapidly disrupting that, and we all need to think about that regardless of what business we’re in. Even ChatGPT, launch free. But how do they monetize? They monetize if you want to do bigger, fancier stuff with it or speed. It’s faster when you pay. So these are all levers of monetizing freemium.
[00:26:47.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Thanks for that. I think we go for our middle break. Got a couple messages from our sponsors. Much appreciated. And we’ll continue this great discussion with a true WordPress entrepreneur, Chris Badger. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to point out, if you want to support the show and get another great resource. Why don’t you think about subscribing to the WP Tonic YouTube channel? Got over 10,000 subscribers now, and I think it’s up to 12, it might be. I think it’s up to 12 now. So please go over there and think about subscribing to the YouTube channel. Got a fantastic library of interviews with entrepreneurs, WordPress entrepreneurs like Chris, and a load of other resources. So over to you, Kurt.
[00:27:49.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
Nice. Thanks, Jonathan. So I’m trying to think a way to ask the question that meets where the road is, as a Gen X kid, I remember growing up and you would constantly hear, do as I say, not as I do. And in today’s mindset, that’s not a great example of leadership. Leadership is, watch what I do. People are always watching. Chris, I’ve been watching you for years. You took me to Word Camp. I’ve been to Word Camps without you. I’ve seen you on lives. I’ve seen you with your mastermind group that you associate with. You don’t run Lifter or your personal brand in a way that duplicates what I see among the masses. So that said, what advice would you give somebody that’s trying to launch a premium plugin successfully, like in 2025? What do you think you do that’s different, that creates success rather than your peers in the space?
[00:28:58.560] – Chris Badgett
Well, as an example, my in the software space, I’m in a niche called a bootstrapped lifestyle business, which means I don’t take money so that somebody else can make decisions in terms of their capital. You hear in Silicon Valley, a company will raise seed money, $100 million to do some technology play. That’s It’s not the sandbox that I play in, and that’s a very intentional decision. The other thing is there’s a lot of stuff here we could get into, but there’s a lot of burnout in entrepreneurship and online entrepreneurship. I’ve been there, and sometimes you got to put the pedal down, especially in the beginning. But at the end of the day, I’d rather have a business that I love and a lifestyle that I love have more money and be completely burnt out and not have control of my company, that thing. So that’s something. The other thing is just offer construction. So I mentioned earlier how my agency clients were literally pulling this product out of us. So I’m basically fishing in a river of demand. I’m not trying to invent demand. I’m not trying to sell a widget to an ideal person.
[00:30:31.790] – Chris Badgett
I mean, I do that in marketing, but I already know they want it because people like them have pulled it out of me. So it’s really easy to get caught in what’s called the build trap, where you just start building stuff and you don’t have that feedback loop open. I mean, you saw it at Lifter LMS, Kurt, where people are like, I need to be able to deliver training to groups. I need to be able to sell groups. I heard it over and over and over again. And then we finally built it. And of course, it’s a success. Success is inevitable when you’re building real solutions for real people. My advice there is always to put your customer at the center of your business, not your product. So if you don’t know who your customer is or they’re not already paying you to do stuff, you’re somewhat behind the curve of having an active feedback loop open that’s going to make success a lot more likely. Now, you do have to innovate the whole faster horses thing that Henry Ford said, If I build them what they want, I would have made faster horses. But that’s what entrepreneurs do.
[00:31:43.720] – Chris Badgett
We’re visionaries. We think about the future. We think about the world we want to live in. We think about the problems or injustices that we want to solve in the world. And that’s where great innovation and ideas come from. So playing that space, it’s it’s really important to have some empty time in your day or in your life to think about those things. So that’s one of the things I do when I’m exercising or hiking or whatever. I might be walking with somebody and they’re thinking about, Oh, wow, the leaves are so pretty. And this is just my crazy entrepreneur brain. And I’m thinking about the disruption that’s happening in university systems and the rising cost of education and all this stuff. I can’t turn it off. It just goes constantly. So if you have that, it’s all about harnessing that, but not just to make money or build a business, but to really help a particular type of person with a very particular type of problem in the world.
[00:32:50.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
How important do you think a spirit of personal generosity or let’s extend that, let’s say, community community is to someone that wants to launch a product in 2025 in WordPress?
[00:33:05.120] – Chris Badgett
I think particularly in a world of AI, community and the human connection is never more important. In the same way, it felt like in 2008 when, oh, my gosh, we had this crazy, powerful thing called the Internet and automation, but we still have to get together in a couple of ways. One, entrepreneurs are typically isolated and lonely, and that’s even more exacerbated in the online business world where you work from home or the coffee shop and your team is all over the world or whatever. I heard this framework once which I really love, called plus minus equal. So hanging out with people that are further along your path is a good idea. So I joined something called SAS Academy, and there are some software entrepreneurs in there doing, I don’t know how many millions a month or whatever. And I’m just a little WordPress plugin guy. And so that’s a plus. You mentioned some of the mastermind crew I hang out with at conferences. We’re all running similar type of businesses in the same ecosystem. So we learn from each other and that thing. And then minus is given back. I mentor some people who are not as far as long.
[00:34:31.120] – Chris Badgett
And if I see somebody asking for help on Twitter, even if they only have one follower, but I’m the guy with the answer, I’ll engage with that. And of course, just highlighting When you’re building a business and you actively engage with your users or your customers or your clients, and they can feel it that you care. So a lot of times when I ask people, why did you And this is how you compete in the world of AI. Why did you buy a Lifter LMS? And they’ll say, Oh, well, I felt like I could trust you. But that’s because I engage with them. I gave them a lot of valuable things for free, software, content, ideas, conversations. So that human connection has never been more important, and it will only become more important in the world of AI when things get more and more depersonalized. Lms?
[00:35:31.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
If we go back in our time machine, you and I, you personally answered an email question of mine before I became a customer.
[00:35:41.340] – Chris Badgett
Okay.
[00:35:42.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
And that personal email, if we think about that, I mean, that’s responsible for hundreds of installations of Lifter LMS.
[00:35:49.200] – Chris Badgett
Yeah, exactly.
[00:35:50.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Because there were other options. I mean, I was looking at Bridge and LearnUpon and SaaS platforms and all kinds of stuff. But now here we are a decade later and the work that we’ve done myself as an agency and working with WP Tonic and of course, Lifter. Hundreds of installations have come from that personal response email.
[00:36:08.880] – Chris Badgett
Yeah. And I mean, today, I responded to a few people in our pre Bill’s email. I went to our Facebook group and added some comments on something where somebody was asking for help. In my opinion, as a founder, that should be a daily practice to, in some way, talk to people, whether they’re further along at the same level or just coming up.
[00:36:38.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
Nice. Nice. Jonathan, back to you.
[00:36:40.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I want to talk about, obviously, Lifter LMS, because it decided to base its business model on the 3D model. Your main competitor in the WordPress space has I’ve never adopted that model. It’s always been a paid premium plugin. I think you would agree that you have benefited by offering a high-value free solution in the WordPress direcTory. But you have these two main… There’s Lifter LMS that we love, and then you got LearnDash, but they’re The business models have always been very different, but the directory has its strengths and its weaknesses, doesn’t it? Obviously, with AI, there’s going to be a flood. You’ve already seen it, the amount of plugins that are trying to get into the WordPress free directory. I only see that expanding, but that’s great in some ways, but that could be damaging it around security, quality of code. How would you advise somebody? Would you advise them to still look at the 3D model, offer a free plugin? Would you still advise them, or do you think it just really depends on each sector and the plugin and the space that you’re trying to compete in?
[00:38:35.240] – Chris Badgett
Well, first I’ll say I just believe in free open-source software, so I was going to do it anyways. But if we talk strategically, yes, I think freemium is the way to go. I think the best marketing is a good product. So free is a distribution strategy more than it is a pricing strategy. And that goes for courses, software. Even as an agency, if you do a free valuable 15 minute call with a prospect, you’re adding some free value in advance of the sale. But yes, I would advise free. I’m a big believer in product-led growth. I’m not a fan of free products that have a got you in it. Like, Oh, got you. Or it’s only one week and it’s free. So if you’re going to build a free product, make sure it can stand alone. In the Lifter LMS ecosystem, 70 % of our users only use the free product. But do you know what we have, which is industry leading? A 30% free to paid conversion rate, which is astronomically high. So not only do a a lot of our users use our stuff for free, it makes sense for a huge chunk to upgrade to premium.
[00:40:07.220] – Chris Badgett
The other business decision I would consider making is to, with your customer at the center of your focus, think about building a platform, not just a utility. So Lifter is a learning management system platform. You can create an entire web application that has e-commerce, e-learning, gamification, membership, and all this stuff in one platform. So it’s very sticky. The people who it works for in their schools or their businesses or their training needs work out, they’re not going anywhere. So if you’re at the beginning stages, creating a platform is a much better strategy than creating a utility that could just be swapped out. An example being, let’s say a popular plugin, like a form plugin. Those are great, but they’re not necessarily platforms. And yes, the form plugins are huge because they have almost every website on the Internet needs a form. So they get it. It works out because of the scale. But then if you look at something like GiveWP, that’s a donation platform. And really, all it is is a form for donations, but it’s a platform. So you see how I’m making shift from, I’m going to make a form plug in, and it happens to do donations to, I’m going to build a donation platform.
[00:41:38.820] – Chris Badgett
And Give has been very successful with that positioning and differentiation in the space.
[00:41:44.760] – Jonathan Denwood
I think one of the strengths of Lifter LMS is you’ve got the 3D core plugin, and then you’ve got this library of paid add-on plugins. But where I think you excelled is you offer value in the free product and you got the add-ons, but you avoided a total wall garden in the same breath. Has that always been the attention? Because do you understand what I mean by a WordPress wall garden scenario? I think at Lifter, you’ve managed to avoid that. Has that a conscious decision? Or did it just work out that way?
[00:42:36.240] – Chris Badgett
It’s yes and no. Some of it just happened to work out that way. But there are a lot of conscious decision. And again, this is all driven by customer conversations.
[00:42:47.420] – Jonathan Denwood
I just wanted to interrupt. Do you agree what I’ve laid out about this wall garden? And can you explain it to the listener what you think I mean?
[00:43:00.540] – Chris Badgett
Well, correct me if I’m wrong, what you mean by a walled garden is it’s just a software that’s like it’s just this way and that’s it. And if you stop paying, the lights go out. But tell me more about what you mean by a walled garden?
[00:43:16.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, they try and do everything. They try and keep you in the plugin, and they add more. Now, they do add the form functionality, or they do add the marketing Or they try and produce a page builder. There’s one particular one, I’m not going to say it because I don’t want to be cruel, but they add all these layers to keep you, charge you more, keep you in that plugin. And it doesn’t work very well with some of the other core WordPress plugins. They just want to keep you in that particular silo in that world. And in some ways, You do that in Lifter, but in some ways you don’t do it, definitely, in my opinion.
[00:44:05.420] – Chris Badgett
Well, this is where you’re getting to the intentional decision part. And this is a way to think about product strategy, where instead of putting two forces against each other, how do you serve both? So the example with Lifter is, yes, we are an all-in-one solution, which you could argue as a walled garden in the sense that we have e-commerce, we have memberships, you don’t need a separate membership plugin, you don’t need a separate gamification plugin or certification or quiz plugin. It’s all in one. But what we also do is play nicely in our ecosystem. So when a company puts their blinders in and it’s like my way or the highway, that’s not the way to do it. So we also develop relationships and integrations with our ecosystem. So there’s great gamification tools like Gamie Press that work with Lifter LMS. Lifter LMS has its own awesome e-commerce engine with Stripe and PayPal and more, but it also integrates with Woocommerce, and we built that integration. So instead of like, Taking either side of the debate, we just do both. When I think about what fits into the all-in-one bucket, I just think of my customers and what they definitely need.
[00:45:41.100] – Chris Badgett
That’s how we prioritize how far we go with being an all-in-one solution without becoming a walled garden. And by the way, if even a competing product, like a membership plugin, builds an integration, we’re going to help promote it. Like, Paid Memberships Pro as an example, has a great Lifter LMS integration. What was that other one? The name is escaping me. There’s gamey press, and then there’s MyCred, which also does stuff that Lifter does. But hey, we’re happy to help promote that, too. So it’s a transcend and include approach to product philosophy. But if you just get so focused on it’s my ecosystem, we do it For example, you mentioned a page builder. Lifter LMS has a page builder. It’s called Aircraft. And it’s not as fancy as an Elementor or an Edge. But the way I think about it when you’re building a platform in WordPress, specifically, if a user is just like, you know what? I really only want to do business with your company. We’ve got a satisfactory solution for them to build the entire platform that they want. All they’re going to need to do is get domain name and hosting, and they’re good to go.
[00:47:03.960] – Chris Badgett
But what we also do is if somebody wants to have 100 plugins on their site and do Lifter LMS, it’s going to play nice with what else they do and integrate there. So it’s like taking care of both approaches at the same time. That’s how I think about it.
[00:47:23.590] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you’ve been very successful at that. And I think I wanted to bring that up because I think it’s one of the keys of being successful in the WordPress space myself, because I think some of the players that gone the wall garden route, as I say, have sold or At some stage, it’s bidding them. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:47:50.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I feel like I’m going to drive us back a little bit in the conversation, Chris. You had said earlier that you time block your day and play with different AI tools and stuff like to know what’s going on. That said, what are the AI tools or services that you feel you’ve come to use as regular tools? If you wanted to share with any of our listeners or viewers, what are your go-to What are your go-to tools in the AI space that you go to currently?
[00:48:19.460] – Chris Badgett
Well, like everybody, I’m a ChatGPT pro user. I probably use that the most. We use Help Scout for customer support, and it has a generate with AI option. It’s pretty good. I mean, you always need to check it before you send it. I found a copywriting tool that I really love just a couple of weeks ago called ojoy. Com. Ai, which is fantastic. I’m doing image generation in all kinds of places like Canva or ChatGPT. I use AI. I have a low… I mean, I don’t have a low information diet in the sense that I study and learn all the time. I’m a lifelong learner, so I listen to a lot of podcasts and YouTube videos and stuff like that just to stay current and learn. But I’m very low information diet when it comes to news. So I’ll use something like Grok to just feed me news, either global or sector specific that I’m interested in, get it real quick. I’m in and out in two minutes. Those are those are some of my top tools. And also recently at Lifter LMS, again, putting our customer at the center of the business, I saw a lot of low quality information on YouTube on how to create an online course with ChatGPT.
[00:49:49.940] – Chris Badgett
And I realized, oh, I should teach people how to really do it without just taking all these shortcuts and skipping steps and not doing instructional design and not knowing who their audience is and all this stuff. So I created a course on how to create a course with ChatGPT for free and put that on our website, put the full thing on YouTube And in that course, I created a real course about pricing strategy for courses and membership sites. Using AI, I did that, and I showed… So even in my example, I’m creating a real course is live on our website. But I took it a step further and went a bonus round and used a tool called HeyGen, I think. Ai. And I created a digital twin version of myself And I have that digital version of myself actually teach the lessons in the videos. And I’m a huge fan of that. It’s not perfect. I think we’re about 85 % there. You can tell if you know what you’re looking at. I guarantee some people can’t tell, but it’s pretty close. So we’re only months away.
[00:51:08.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s actually not me talking to you, actually, Chris.
[00:51:12.460] – Chris Badgett
And I’m a podcaster. I have over 500 episodes on my podcast, and I’m fascinated with this idea that you could do interviews with AI representing you or whatever. But that world is going to show up very I’m also a big fan of Notebook LM for deeper projects where you can put in a bunch of sources. And I’m also a big fan of using deep research because not Everything is a quick one and done engagement. You might have a big project you’re working on and stuff like that. But those are some of my favorite AI tools.
[00:51:56.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
Nice. Jonathan?
[00:51:58.700] – Jonathan Denwood
I know. It’s a question. For the podcast part of the show. Do you have to leave us at the hour or can you stay on for some bonus content, Chris?
[00:52:10.310] – Chris Badgett
I can stay on.
[00:52:11.480] – Jonathan Denwood
So we’ll do the final question, and then Kurt’s got to leave us, but I’ll wrap up the show, and then we go into some bonus content. So if you had your own time machine, like HT Wells, or your own TARDIS, like Doctor Who, and you could go back to your beginning of your web design development, WordPress career. Is there one thing, one little tip you’d like to give yourself, Chris?
[00:52:39.120] – Chris Badgett
Yeah. So this comes from learning theory. We have these learning styles, right? So some people like to read, some people like to watch videos, some people like to listen, auditory, some people like to just do stuff with their hands or their body or whatever. That’s called kinesthetic. And when it comes to consuming content or creating content, we all have our preferences. I guarantee, like Kurt and Jonathan, are probably more on the video side and the audio side like I am. That’s why we’re podcasters. That’s why we make tons of videos and content. The reality is most of us are fairly well-rounded, and I’m a decent writer, but I’m not the fastest writer. So as a marketer, if I could go back in time, I would have invested more in written content in the early days because I naturally move towards YouTube or video or even podcast. Even my podcast is a video interview that goes on YouTube. So I think I would have had a lot more basically SEO traction. And you just never want to forget that there are people out there that do not have your content consumption style. So for example, like on the Lifter LMS documentation, documentation is typically text and screenshots.
[00:54:11.990] – Chris Badgett
And certain type of people, they love that. That’s all they want. They never want to press play on anything. But I know there’s a ton of people that are like, oh, man, this wall of text, can you just show me how to do it? So in our documentation, we’ve done a specific effort to make sure we have the text, the video, and the images, and the step by step for the doers. So it’s all there. And what I find with software entrepreneurs, specifically, stereotypically, most of them are readers, and they like to read and they like to write. But don’t forget about the video people. And if you’re a video person like me, don’t forget about the readers and try to spend just as much time on both on all the mediums you can.
[00:55:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic, Chris. So Chris, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:55:07.260] – Chris Badgett
You can find me at lifterlms. Com. We have a free version of the software, which is awesome. And if you like podcasts, check me out over at lmscast.
[00:55:18.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. Lifter LMS is a sponsor of the WP Tonic Show for a number of years. We really appreciate that. And it’s a great product. So, Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to, Kurt.
[00:55:34.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
To make the connection, personally, I would say probably LinkedIn. I’m the only Kurt von Ahnen on LinkedIn, so when you find me, you know you got me. And then business is Mahna Nomas.
[00:55:44.220] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s Fantastic. We’re going to wrap up the podcast part of the show. We’re going to go into bonus content, which you’ll be able to watch the podcast and the bonus on the WP Tonic YouTube channel. So go over there. And if you really want to support the show, maybe you could go over to Spotify or iTunes and leave a review, good, bad, or indifferent. I read all those reviews myself, and it really does help the show and promote it to new people. The show has been growing its audience lately. I really appreciate that. So if you could do that, that would be great. We will be back next week with another great WordPress entrepreneur, If you do part of the WordPress community or SaaS in the world of online business. We’ll see you next week, folks. Bye. Three, two, one. So bonus content, Chris. So you remarked about it. So I think a lot of people in the plugin, in the SaaS, in the agency space, relying on online lead generation are scratching their head. I think everybody’s seen a decline in clicks, some a decline in actual visitors to the website. I think the pure information type websites that rely on sponsorship or advertising on their website are being punished the worst.
[00:57:28.640] – Jonathan Denwood
But I think everybody and what Google is doing and how people are using large learning models. Everything seems in flux. Have you got any thoughts how you think this is going to pan out in the next year, 18 months?
[00:57:55.020] – Chris Badgett
I do. I just interviewed Lindsay Hulsey from Pathfinder SEO about this topic, and I definitely recommend getting her on your show if possible. She’s a SEO ads AI expert, and we had a deep discussion here. But some of the highlights in terms of, yes, even the liftrelems. Com website is getting less traffic from Google search, but we’re also getting more and more traffic from things like ChatGPT and stuff like that. And just a pro tip for you out there, watching or listening, ChatGPT, as an example, is hallucinating a lot and creating URLs to your website that don’t exist. So it’s a good time to update your 404 page to link to your most popular resources. The big idea that I got from Lindsay is if you think about SEO and keyword research and keyword selection, the way people would type into a Google search box would have a phrase in it or a short question. But what’s happening now with the AI tools is it’s a chat that goes on and on. People are putting in more information. They’re going back and forth. They’re getting much more niche and specific. So if you’ve been in marketing for a long you’ve probably heard of the concept of the long tail.
[00:59:34.080] – Chris Badgett
So this is where you find niches or keyword phrases, and you go out. You don’t just create this main content that always talks about the same things. You go out the long tail. But AI is actually increasing the length of the tail. So the more specific content you can create around some of your key areas and use case driven and really custom, the better. The other thing is all the traditional SEO stuff still matters, like backlinks still matter. Having a strong author page and even your social media profiles, really putting out there who you are, what you do, what your credentials are, why you’re qualified. All this is really important for getting picked up by the large language models. So SEO is by no means dead. But I think the biggest opportunity is to just create more and more long tail content at higher volumes, which is actually easier today with AI tools to help you make the content, not to write it for you, but to assist in augmenting you and your research and stuff like that. So there’s a couple of tips there.
[01:01:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think I would agree with that. Obviously, I didn’t discuss it in the podcast of the show. Obviously, At WordCamp 2024, we had Matt Mareweg and the whole thing with WP Engine, and I got my own feelings about private equity, And I got my own feelings about what Matt decided to do. But do you think… Because I think especially around the directory and the things that happened and the things he decided to do, maybe in my opinion, slightly in hast, has had consequences. But do you see things changing, or do you think fundamentally, he’s control of everything, it will just continue?
[01:02:10.860] – Chris Badgett
I can’t predict the future. I do think that WordPress has grown in such a way that it’s much bigger than one person, even a powerful person in the space. I have a lot of faith in the continued success of the project. I think there’s a small, a relatively small number of people that get into the politics of it all. And I say small number of people, it’s not that small, but I’m talking about 43 % of the websites on the Internet. Most people have no idea they’re just using WordPress and they just want to run their business or build their site. But I’m optimistic about the future. I don’t think I think whenever there is conflict, there can be something better that comes out of it. I can’t predict exactly what it’s going to be. I do like that fair initiative, which creates the distributed distribution of the WordPress repository. I think that’s a great example of an innovation that’s come out of conflict that’s in the best interest of all, if that can be figured out. But I think a lot of people are just really busy running their businesses, building their sites, building software, and this train is just going to move on.
[01:03:42.060] – Chris Badgett
It’s not going to be the same. It was five years ago, just like it constantly changes. But I can’t predict the future, but I’m not concerned about the future.
[01:03:54.440] – Jonathan Denwood
So much you can do about it, is there? Yeah, I mean- So much you can do about it.
[01:04:01.180] – Chris Badgett
It’s like this is a saying we had in Sled Dogs, where you just run your own race. Don’t pay attention to the other dog teams and stuff around you. You got to stay focused on taking care of your dogs and doing your own thing. So it’s not that I have my head in the sand, but I do just run my race. And I’m committed to online education and free open source software and just helping make online education something that changes lives all over the world. That’s what 99 % of my focus is on.
[01:04:42.580] – Jonathan Denwood
I want to put this to you, and it just doesn’t affect Lifter LMS. It probably affects all the learning management solutions in the WordPress space to some degree or not. There’s seems, specifically on Lifter, you seem to have… It’s a great product, and the community side is fantastic, in my opinion. But the growth, one growth area is the creator area where they want to add community educational elements and be able to have another way of revenue. And WordPress doesn’t seem, when you’re on YouTube, if you’re on TikTok, you’re on Instagram, WordPress doesn’t It’s Patreon, and Patreon, if you just want a basic solution, but it’s had its own problems about canceling some creators, it’s charging system. Because with the 2. 9, I think they’re charging from 15 to 17 %. And then you could just do it through YouTube. They’ve got now their own membership. I wouldn’t encourage that. I think you need to own it. But WordPress doesn’t seem to be promoted and on the radar, really, to some extent. I don’t know if you would agree with that. And Then, specifically for Lifter, on the other side, which is the more educational, the more corporate side of it, which is still dominated by things like Scorm, and how to produce content in a priority platform like Scorn, and a lot of the professionals in that market might not look at WordPress.
[01:07:01.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Are these thoughts have been on your mind, and have you came to any conclusion about how you could get more traction in the EV market?
[01:07:13.780] – Chris Badgett
Yeah, that stuff on my mind all the time.
[01:07:16.420] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll pull you by.
[01:07:18.600] – Chris Badgett
It comes down to timing and use case. And it always feels like you’re late or running behind, no matter. I felt that way in 2008, 2015, ’20, ’24, ’25. But like I mentioned at the beginning of Lifter, the creator was our beachhead market. And there’s this idea of expand and expand Okay, we got the creator. Now, let’s help the certification and compliance people. And we’ve done that.
[01:07:54.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Can I just… There’s a lot of people in that creator YouTube, TikTok, especially on YouTube, that are regularly saying, Because of AI, you don’t even need a website. You don’t need your own. There’s no point. I really disagree with that, but obviously, I would, wouldn’t I? Because I’m running a boutique hosting solution in the eLearning space, aren’t I? So I would feel that way, but I feel that way because I honestly don’t agree. Would you agree that There’s a lot of those individuals that even question why a creator even needs a website?
[01:08:39.740] – Chris Badgett
Yeah. I’ve heard this argument before, like email is dead or Facebook is dead. But no, there’s always a place for a website. You mentioned earlier in the interview about the competitors to WordPress, and I heard a guy named Robert at a word camp say, The biggest competitor of WordPress is actually social media in terms of content, where people go to get content, social media versus websites. So the market landscape is always changing. And you can’t force people to think like, Oh, I should definitely use a website and own my platform. But I think there will always be people that figure I did that out. I do have concern around younger generations and their value of a website. It seems like younger generations, in many ways value social media, like a TikTok following or YouTube channel more than their actual website. And maybe that’s because that’s where all their traffic is. That’s where their eyeballs are, is easier for them to create there. Maybe they’re writing less. And if WordPress is built around blogging initially and the written word, that’s a tail or a headwind. So the landscape is changing, but I think there’ll always be a need for a website.
[01:10:18.360] – Chris Badgett
What I find is that businesses, whether it’s an educational business or a creator, over time, as time evolves in their body of work gets bigger, and perhaps they’ve been burned by having a social media account canceled or being on some software that shut down or on too many different softwares that don’t play nicely together. Eventually, people wake up to the value of having their own platform and website that they control. And I don’t think that’s going away. I find that many people who use Lifter LMS as an example tend to be a bit more advanced in their careers. So they’re a little bit more mature in terms of their career path. And with that maturity comes the awareness that I want to build an asset that I own, control, and can customize. So, getting people to that point is just what happens naturally, but it could also happen more easily with some education. And in terms of a community, Lifter LMS offers a social learning add-on and a coaching add-on. However, if you already have a large community on your Patreon or Facebook group, it might make sense to keep your community there.
[01:11:51.720] – Chris Badgett
So, it’s a pick-and-choose. But then we see people who have a community around something like a sensitive, let’s say, their LMS is a sensitive medical health condition. I’ve seen people like that. They don’t want their content on social media at all. They want a private, safe place on their website that they own and control. So, it all comes down to use cases and the individual needs of the people. However, there will always be a niche for websites, and they’ll continue to change and evolve over time. In the same way that websites were once considered outdated, you could probably say that they are now dead because mobile apps are here now. However, websites didn’t die, and mobile apps are still thriving. So they coexist.
[01:12:44.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. So I think that’s very observant. I do a lot on YouTube. I do a lot in podcasting. I do a bit on LinkedIn. I still do a little bit, I get on Twitter. I won’t call it X. The one area I’ve really cut back on is Facebook, because I do post some things to my family, but I haven’t done so recently. I’ve become very concerned with Facebook because a lot of the content on it, I might relook at, especially on Instagram. However, a lot of it, I’m not even sure it’s human, as a lot of the videos to me look like they’ve been made using AI. Many of the images appear to have been created in. I’m not even sure that many of the accounts aren’t just being run by AI bots, essentially. And in some way, but I might be unique, it puts me off Facebook because I can only see it getting worse. You’ve seen a lot of AI-generated videos on YouTube. I like the really creative storyline of little films. Some of it’s very artistic, but I’m not keen. If I notice that it seems to have been entirely generated by AI, I tend to block the channel.
[01:14:19.480] – Jonathan Denwood
I really want to see people and their opinions. Do you think I’m unusual?
[01:14:26.220] – Chris Badgett
No, I think you’re detecting something that’s just going to get even more extreme. And what we were talking about earlier in the episode about the power of human connection. And this is why having your own website is important. And even if you just use a tool like Zoom, in addition to your website, to meet with your students or clients, you’re creating that human element that’s definitely not AI, and it’s built into your platform. But yeah, I’m the same way with you. I think in the same way, people will pay more for handcrafted clothes versus fast fashion or art. You could get a poster at the poster. Com, or you could get a handmade painting if you’re looking for something truly custom and unique in the world. However, I believe that human connection is a valuable asset, and it plays a significant role in learning, as well as in other areas such as e-commerce or thought leadership, particularly when creating content. Therefore, making avenues for human connection will become increasingly valuable over time. But I mean, sometimes I know when I’m watching AI content or listening to it, and I’m like, it’s pretty good. But then sometimes I’m like, yeah, I could have just asked ChatGPT that question.
[01:16:04.910] – Chris Badgett
But if you’re going to create with AI, I think it’s really important to weave in some real, non-doctored human stuff into your content.
[01:16:19.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, if I were in the Hamptons, I’d be WordPress. There’s no chance of that. Thanks so much, Chris. I think we’ve wrapped it up now. We’ve covered a wide range of topics. I know you need to get back to business. But thanks for coming on the show and supporting the WP tonic and me. It’s always much appreciated, Chris. We’re going to end it now, folks. We will return next week with another engaging discussion. We’ll see you soon. Bye.
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