Struggling with membership tech decisions when starting out? Discover the 5 choices that make or break your platform. Click to build smarter from day one.

Have you ever faced tough decisions when choosing membership tech solutions for your organization? In this show, we dive deep into the critical factors to consider, from integrating platforms to budgeting. We share real-world examples and strategies to help you navigate the complexities of membership technology. Join us as we unravel the challenges and offer insights that can make a difference in your decision-making.

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The Show’s Main Transcript Notes

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[00:00:17.060] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 167. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about your toughest membership tech decisions when starting out. I’ve got my great co-host with me, Kurt Van Heynen. Hey Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

[00:00:37.840] – Kurt von Ahnen

Sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt, Kurt Van Heynen. I own an agency called Mañana No Más. We do a lot of work directly with WP Tonic and, uh, and that wonderful team there.

[00:00:48.090] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, thanks.

[00:00:48.970] – Kurt von Ahnen

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[00:01:22.420] – Jonathan Denwood

So you know, when you’re starting out, or you’re thinking of changing platforms, um, it’s a big decision. Um, so on my little list I’ve got, will your membership website be self-hosted or an online platform? And we went last week through the biggest choices you got. The biggest players out there.

[00:01:51.510] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah.

[00:01:51.850] – Jonathan Denwood

So basically it’s kind of WordPress, or it’s SaaS, really, isn’t it? Really, isn’t it? That’s, that’s what your decision is, really.

[00:02:05.710] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. You know, some people could look at maybe, you know, like an HTML-based website, you know, self-hosted using Moodle or something. But they’re just— I mean, if you think WordPress is complicated, well, then you certainly don’t want to go down that lane.

[00:02:20.900] – Jonathan Denwood

No, well, that, that’s kind of an agency, a specialized e-learning agency that’s providing a kind of custom solution, isn’t it? Or it’s a university doing it themselves that thinks they’ve got a tech department, or school, or somebody that’s got a tech department and they fancy doing it, don’t they? Yeah.

[00:02:46.950] – Kurt von Ahnen

And, you know, I think the topic that you sent over, especially with the leading questions, Jonathan, I thought it was really on point, especially today, you know, because we did that interview with the other show talking about, you know, Facebook and Meta advertising and stuff. And there are a lot of things to consider when you’re launching your membership site. And so this is— I think today’s talk is going to be really foundational in some of the things that maybe people jump the shark on. You know, they were in a hurry to get a website up, they made a couple of quick decisions, and now they’re, they’re rethinking or thinking how do they reset, you know, their foundation. I thought our guest was very intuitive today when she said that, um, her decisions, her impatience in building her original website long term, probably cost her $80,000.

[00:03:38.110] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, that, that was, that was a bit shocking to hear, but, um, but I say that, I think that’s a regular story actually. Um, so basically, if you like WordPress and you, and you know the interface, it’s still, um, powers about 40% of the internet. Of websites. It’s got an enormous community. It’s got a lot of functionality. Some of the membership and learning management plugins are well tested. LifterLMS, we love. Um, you have other membership plugins if you don’t need everything that a learning management system has, but in my opinion, there’s a lot of crossover between them. So I just think it’s best to go with a learning management system. I really love Lifter, or you could look at LearnDash, or two, or there are some smaller players out there that are more focused on creators. Um, you could look at Fluent Community if you wanted that community element, and you can run courses there, or you can run it with LifterLMS. You can look at BuddyBoss. There’s a lot of choice in the WordPress space, and a lot of these solutions are well-mature, have a lot of work done on them, and they’re great solutions. What, what’s your, what would you contribute to that?

[00:05:24.700] – Kurt von Ahnen

My opinion’s a little, a little more specific than yours on that one, Jonathan. And at the risk of sounding like a commercial, I mean, just this week, LifterLMS released another feature. And so it’s one of those seasoned, well-established platforms, but is still developing and still adding features and still, you know, bringing modernization to the platform. So Lifter by far is the standout for me. If I’m just playing in the community and I just want like a course to share an idea or a concept, I think that the Fluent Community course element is viable. I just wouldn’t use it if I were actively trying to build a course marketplace for a business.

[00:06:08.210] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Now you got the alternative, which is SaaS. Software as a service, you know, and there’s a lot of choice aimed at different parts of the market, aimed at more the beginner. There’s a lot, there’s a lot of offerings. You’ve got Kajabi, you’ve got Podia, you’ve got Learnable, Teachable. If you want community, you’ve got Mighty Networks, you’ve got Circle. Um, you got other people, GoHighLevel has a membership element to it. I don’t think much of that myself. You know, Squarespace has a membership, um, part of their offering. It’s rather basic. I, if you’re not gonna look at WordPress, I really wouldn’t look at Squarespace. I think you’d be better off looking at something like Teachable, Learnable. Kajabi, Podio, myself. What do you reckon, Kurt?

[00:07:13.870] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, for me, the SaaS platforms really do alienate me. I’ve used them, and there is a SaaS platform I use basically as the backbone of Mañana No Más. And so I’m not a person that, like, I got to be really careful. Like, sometimes I say things and I don’t want to seem like this hypocrite, right? Kind of like when we talk about AI. But there are some SaaS tools that I think are reliable, that suit a function, and I use them. But if I’m looking to build a business and it’s not established yet— I think this is the key part of this whole thing, it’s not established yet— I want to use WordPress because I want to have that flexibility to scale and grow in the way that my audience or, or my students or my membership is asking. Like, you’re gonna get feedback from your users, and your users might say, “Oh, I wish there was a way to schedule appointments with you.” “Oh, I wish you had these courses in video.” “I wish we could have Zoom meetings in this website.” And it’s when they come to you with those feature requests, in some environments, you’re not gonna be able to provide them.

[00:08:21.500] – Kurt von Ahnen

But in WordPress, you’re always gonna have the ability to come forward to satisfy the request or to meet the demand of your audience, your tribe.

[00:08:32.100] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Um, this is an interesting one. Should you build your website yourself?

[00:08:39.230] – Kurt von Ahnen

Um, oh, you got me.

[00:08:43.340] – Jonathan Denwood

This is a difficult one. Um, I personally think that if it’s your— it just depends, folks, but I think a lot of people can waste a lot of time. And, you know, at WP Tonic, we provide all the software for WordPress, and we’ve got some decent packages that can get you up really quickly and give you a bit of training. And I think it’s just going to get you on the road to where you want to go a lot quicker. And I think that applies to some of the SaaS platforms. They have experts that can help you get it all set up. And it just depends on your experience and the amount of time, but there’s a lot of things to do in getting a membership website with your first batch of students, your first half a dozen, dozen students, and getting the ball rolling. I look, you know, you might have more experience, but even then you probably got more financial resources. Is it, do you really wanna spend the time on the build out or do you really wanna concentrate that time on getting students, getting the business up and running, getting the marketing engine going?

[00:10:08.580] – Jonathan Denwood

It just depends. But I think a lot of people get sucked in to trying to build this out and they don’t spend enough time getting that first batch of students? What do you reckon?

[00:10:22.550] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think people should focus on whatever their strength is. Oh, pardon me. Focus on whatever their strength is. If their strength does not lie in design, white space, format, things like that, then don’t. Then just don’t. Like, you’re trying to force a square peg into a round hole. And you create frustration for yourself. And to Jonathan’s point, with that frustration comes delays. If this is a revenue-based project, meaning you, you’re gonna sell your courses, the sooner you get to market, the sooner you’re revenue-friendly, right? So the longer it takes for you to put out a minimal viable product, the more you’re not making revenue. Um, a lot of people miss the boat on this, Jonathan. A lot of people they start the project, they get distracted by, you know, that shiny object syndrome. They want to build this, they want to build that. They wish it looked different. They wish they knew how to make the beveled edges. They wish they knew how to— and they, and they start going down these rabbit trails. And next thing you know, 6 months, 9 months, a year goes by and they haven’t sold a single membership yet.

[00:11:31.460] – Kurt von Ahnen

But they’ve paid for software, they’ve paid for hosting, they’ve, you know— so I think when you look at what hiring a professional can actually bring to the bottom line, I think for a lot of people it’s silly to not hire someone to do it. Um, some people swear they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the money for it, but those same people will buy Facebook ads or hire SEO specialists or spend money in other ways, which means they would have had the money to launch the website and be, and be revenue-friendly earlier in the prog— in the process.

[00:12:04.680] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, they tend to get things back to front, don’t they? There’s a place, there’s a place for hiring people, experts, but it, it’s at certain stages. Um, and there’s a lot of people selling a lot of stuff that doesn’t really do the job. No. You know, there’s a lot of promises out there, um, that aren’t met. Um, so being part of Lyft, uh, find— finding a community, a Facebook group, finding somewhere where you can just watch and get some feedback, um, and get some advice is really useful. And that’s one of the things why I like about Lift LMS. They’ve got a lot. If you buy one of their plugins, You can have access to certain plugin packages that are not ridiculously priced. You can have access to the LifterLMS community. And I think that really helps, but people tend, I think, because I think it’s avoiding the day where they might be facing failure. Um, and I think we all do it. It’s just easier to build a massive course, to spend too much time on the website. Um, don’t get me wrong, it’s got to look decent, but there’s a lot of people that spend much too much time on it all.

[00:13:43.170] – Jonathan Denwood

Um, right, I think this is going to be one of our shorter episodes, but it’s the important one. I think we’re going to go for our mid break, folks. And when we come back, we’ve got a couple other good topics. We will be back in a few moments, folks.

[00:13:59.110] – Jonathan Denwood

This podcast episode is brought to you by LifterLMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any kind of online course, training-based membership website, or any type of e-learning project, LifterLMS is the most secure, stable, well-supported solution on the market. Go to lifterlms.com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code PODCAST20. That’s PODCAST20. Enjoy the rest of your show.

[00:14:36.410] – Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back, folks. I think I forgot to say at the beginning that, um, we got some fantastic deals from the sponsors of the show, um, some great discounts, and we’ve got a list of great products, WordPress products and that. And you can find all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic.com/deals. wp-tonic.com/deals. So let’s go straight into the second half, Kurt.

[00:15:10.310] – Kurt von Ahnen

What—

[00:15:10.500] – Jonathan Denwood

so if you’re deciding to go with WordPress, and I think you should do for its ownership, its flexibility, you’re never gonna be kind of stuck in a corner with no options or looking at migrating from a whole platform to somewhere else. Um, you just got more control and more freedom. Um, so what plugins and themes and other membership tech will you use? Um, well, you need good hosting. Um, it doesn’t have to at the beginning have to be massively expensive. I think what we offer at WP Tonic is really great value for people starting out, and we offer a great plugin package as well. Plus you get support from people that actually build membership and community websites. So I think, I think the biggest choice is what page builder you’re going to use. Now, there’s an enormous debate about this. I like Gutenberg, but I like, I think I don’t care about full site editing. I’m getting a bit techie here, folks, but I think you can look at Ollie. I think they do a great job. Or Cadence or GeneratePress. They’re the three I like. I use it on my— on the WP Tonic website.

[00:16:48.130] – Jonathan Denwood

CadenceWP. It does everything I need. But those three choices, Ollie, Cadence, or Cadence, um, or Ollie. Um, these, these are solid choices. What do you reckon, Kurt?

[00:17:10.660] – Kurt von Ahnen

Uh, we’re mostly in the same ballpark, Jonathan. We’re really close. Um, you and I both share a certain amount of love for Cadence. Um, I use Astra on a lot of projects. Our— my He has a lifetime license to that and we can share that with our customers. And then we also use a tool called ZipWP. And, you know, at the risk of giving away all the secrets, uh, ZipWP is an AI-like template building tool. So for us, when we have a startup client that doesn’t have a lot of budget and they just want to get something up, that AI tool helps. And Kadence has a very similar tool, Jonathan, that you use with WP Tonic. And so Those two tools work great. Kadence and Astra, to me, they’re peas in a pod almost. It’s very similar. And I’m— and I like both of them a lot, and I get to work with both of them a lot. I’ve been experimenting with different page builders, and I’ll just be blunt, I still am not at the expertise level yet with, with Etch to start really using that for customer builds yet. And I think that would add an element of complexity that most customers just aren’t ready for.

[00:18:22.960] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think Jonathan’s advice of sticking with the WordPress editor is the way to go. For me, if you wanted to be full site editing or, you know, the old block thing, uh, doesn’t matter to me at all. I think SkyPilot’s a wonderful theme and it’s a LifterLMS-provided theme and I think it works really, really well. Uh, it is, but it is a little bit different to edit in full site editing than it is to edit in a tool, say, like Kadence or Astra.

[00:18:48.570] – Jonathan Denwood

And you just got more starter websites with it, um, with Kadence or with Astra or with GeneratePress. Um, I think what Lifter provides, it’s a great theme, but it’s just one theme, you know. You can change it, but then I think you’re getting down the road of spending a lot of time if that particular look suits you and you’re just going to adapt it a little bit, I think it’s fine.

[00:19:18.730] – Kurt von Ahnen

So the thinking with, with SkyPilot, just to be more clear, complete in the answer, if you have the Infinity Bundle, you’re also going to have Aircraft, which is what Lifter calls their page builder, but it’s really a pattern library. So if, if you’re in, if you’re going to stick with SkyPilot, you like the look and the feel of SkyPilot, well, then the Aircraft element is going to be your saving grace. You’re literally, literally going to be able to build pages very, very quickly because you build them in giant sections of pre-formatted content.

[00:19:49.420] – Jonathan Denwood

What about landing pages with Astra and Kadence? I don’t know enough about Ollie. I would imagine it’s the same. I think you can knock up their patterns, sections. You can knock up a landing page pretty rapidly in any of these solutions. Would you agree with that?

[00:20:07.160] – Kurt von Ahnen

Pretty quickly.

[00:20:07.740] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah.

[00:20:08.680] – Kurt von Ahnen

And you know, a lot of people, I think, overcomplicate the idea of like, what is a landing page? To me, it’s a very plain page. It’s got like one call to action, a form to fill out or a button to click, and that’s it. Typically, I eliminate the header and the footer from it. Other people define a landing page a little bit differently. But yeah, Astra, Kadence, Ollie, Elementor, if you went that direction. Um, you can, you can do those all day long.

[00:20:39.770] – Jonathan Denwood

I, I wouldn’t recommend Elementor now. I just wouldn’t. Um, we got people, um, using it. Um, but I just wouldn’t recommend it now.

[00:20:53.030] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, I just redid a, I just redid a client’s website the last month or so. Jonathan, you’re aware of this project and, and the updates have been giving me fits back and forth. I’m not a fan. I, I think they’ve— it’s too many layers, too many levels. I don’t know how to, how to describe it. It doesn’t operate smoothly.

[00:21:13.750] – Jonathan Denwood

No, because they’re being in this transition, transitional period where they got version 4 folks and it’s been going on, and then they’ve got millions of websites and it’s not a small undertaking and And, um, I don’t want to get— now, when, um, when Kurt mentioned Etch, that’s, that’s really, uh, it’s, it’s not actually been launched, I don’t think, is it? It’s launched now, is it? Yeah. Yeah. Um, it’s a real professional tool. It’s for somebody really making an almost full custom website. Um, I don’t. And for that purpose, for the higher price, fully custom, I think it’s a great tool. Um, and people in that bespoke— it’s a bit like, um, off the peg, you know, off the peg can start cheap and go really expensive, but when you go into bespoke tailoring, and, um, it gets really pricey. But, you know, for agencies doing real custom work, I’m sure it’s a great tool. Um, but, um, that’s my— I think the other thing you need is a good form plugin. I think, um, there are loads of them out there, folks. We use Fluent Forms. You get the pro version, and then you need a CRM.

[00:22:53.640] – Jonathan Denwood

We either provide, um, um, either FluentCRM or we’ve got a couple others that we can provide that give you CRM functionality. Um, uh, that’s basically what you need. Anything, you know, apart from the membership or LifterLMS, you don’t need a lot more. People tend to over-install too much, don’t they?

[00:23:21.200] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. Yeah, I would agree.

[00:23:25.870] – Jonathan Denwood

What’s your key membership growth-building strategy? This, this, this is the crux of it, folks. This is, um, hopefully you’ve got, you’ve, you’re known in a niche, you’re known in a community. You don’t need a massive organization, you don’t need thousands of people, but you need a voice. And hopefully got some email list. You got some, and that doesn’t have to be massive. Um, hopefully you’ve just been talking about, you’re thinking of doing a course, you’ve done a, you’ve got an early bird landing page up, you’ve done some initial marketing, uh, you’re just getting some interest. Um, you’re part of Facebook groups, Slack groups. You’ve been given advice. You’re seen as somebody who knows something in that particular niche. So when you do your course, you’ve got people to contact and, um, it doesn’t have to be thousands, a couple hundred, um, a hundred people, 50 people. Just people that might, and you might get that first 12 sales, um, of your initial course. But, and if anybody tells you that’s too, that’s not big enough, the truth is, depending on your experience or the kind of team you got behind you, it’s best that you, you start off reasonably small and then you can build.

[00:25:05.210] – Jonathan Denwood

What do you reckon, Kurt?

[00:25:07.380] – Kurt von Ahnen

I can’t agree more. This, this, uh, as we’re having this conversation, I’m just— it’s flooding my mind with like the concerns that people come to us with. Uh, as you know, Jonathan, I host a couple of masterminds, I do other shows, and consistently in my question bank that comes up is, you know, questions about automations or upgrades or, um, you know, how to handle with this like flow and demand of people that are going to come to this product. And it’s— people are operating on an assumption that they want to automate and they want to do a bunch of like highly technical things in their website because there’s going to be this traffic and this demand, and how are they going to keep up. And the reality of it, like you just said, is, hey, let’s just get to 10 paying customers. Okay. And then the next step is 25 paying customers. It’s— if you had 150 paying customers your first month, you would probably get overwhelmed pretty quickly just trying to keep up with support requests, changes, you know, user, user experience gaps in the site that you missed. I usually talk to customers when I’m working with them.

[00:26:18.910] – Kurt von Ahnen

I say, hey, what’s going to be your onboarding process? Like, whenever you have a membership or a learning site or something like that where learners have to like log into a website, you probably want to have an onboarding process. You want to have like a video tutorial that’s like a screen share that says, hey, welcome to the such-and-such academy. You know, when you want to go to your dashboard, you’re going to click here. When you want to adjust your email to your account, go here. When you want to change your credit card, go here. Like, you want to have those assets kind of made. Um, and realistically, you don’t know what those assets are until a couple of people get in and start using them and asking you questions.

[00:26:54.070] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think that’s good stuff. But, um, can you still be successful in the membership, in the learning space? I still believe in it, folks. There are a lot of possibilities, but you have to be realistic as well. Um, as long as you keep your focus, there are a lot of ways of getting defocused, getting off track. Losing your focus. I think having a, having a roadway and having focus and keeping at it and just moving it on, um, especially if you’ve got a full-time job or you’ve got some other income, so you’re not under pressure. If, and that’s realistic because unless you’ve got a big audience, this is going to take, this is going to take a little bit of work, but it’s totally doable. It’s totally possible. If you’ve got the right product, the right niche, and you’ve built up some credibility with your target audience, in my opinion. So, Kirk, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?

[00:28:05.300] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, if it’s related to this stuff, absolutely get in touch with us at WP Tonic, right? They’ll reach both of us there. But if you want to reach me personally, I’m at LinkedIn. I’m the only Kirk Van Onen on LinkedIn, and I’m easy to find.

[00:28:16.780] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. Um, and as I say, if you want more advice, more knowledge, you can go to WP Tonic. You can book a free chat. It’ll either be me or Kirk that you’ll probably talk to. And if you’re looking to build your membership website, we provide great hosting and great support. Um, we offer a ton of value at WP Tonic. We will be back soon, next week, hopefully. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.

[00:28:48.450] – Jonathan Denwood

Thanks for listening to the Membership Machine Show. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes and leave a rating to support the show. Until next time.

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