Should You Have a Membership Site?
…or should you just use your LMS?
Justin from LearnDash (the Learning Management Software we use) made a great post today revealing some of the issues WordPress blogger owners face when they are trying to sell courses.
The issue will come up. When is determined by how far along you are in your courses.
In Justin’s latest blog post he stated:
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Assuming you are going to self-host your WordPress site, you will ultimately face the following decision:
- Use a WordPress LMS like LearnDash
- Use a membership plugin
- Use both
The answer to this question really depends on the specifics of your project, so unfortunately I cannot give you a hard-set rule as to when to use each. However, let’s explore some common scenarios.
Using an LMS Plugin (Only)
If you’re just starting your investigation into solutions, you might be surprised to know that you actually don’t need a membership plugin with solutions like LearnDash. Our LMS will protect your content without the need of a membership plugin.
For example, if you are selling three different courses, each course has its own protection rules. Only people who are registered for the course (either by purchasing or self-enrollment) can view the content.
An added bonus is that someone can have access to multiple courses at once (essentially, multiple “membership” levels), which isn’t always as easy to accomplish with a traditional membership plugin.
You can take this one step further by using a shopping cart to sell your courses. Using LearnDash, a shopping cart product can be associated with many courses which allows you to create various bundles.
People who choose the LMS only approach appreciate the streamlined process for creating their course offering. It also cuts back on having to learn another solution.
Using a Membership Plugin (Only)
There are some situations when using an LMS plugin isn’t necessary.
If your project just requires that you protect a couple pages, posts, or a assets on your WordPress site, then a membership plugin like PaidMembershipsPro is all you really need. Using a learning management plugin in this case would be overkill.
Another possible scenario is if you don’t require a structured course offering.
One example would be if you have a site that includes a community forum and perhaps some valuable downloads for the members. In this case, you don’t need an LMS because there isn’t a need for course enrollment and tracking.
Using Both
Sometimes there are advantages to using both solutions.
If you want to have additional metrics on your members, then using a membership plugin is a nice value-add. Many membership platforms come with their own reporting capabilities. Used in conjunction with an LMS like LearnDash, this gives you more insight into your users.
One common scenario for using both is if you have a membership site already and just want to add some course capabilities in a more formal, organized fashion. Inserting an LMS plugin makes it easy to add value to your membership site by creating courses for your members to take. [/content_container]
Sell Courses Online With Your Own WordPress Campus
We take a little different approach.
If you are going to sell courses online, we’ve found it’s beneficial in the long run to think of your WordPress Powered Blog as a “Campus”. This does a couple of things to your perspective.
You still can still….
Add Unlimited Courses: Create unlimited courses lessons and lesson topics with any WordPress media type for your training. No software or setup required
Enjoy Hassle Free Technology: Your WordPress Blog and Campus Will Be Managed by WPBlogSupport so you never have to Worry about taking care of your WordPress Site again.
Sell Courses & Memberships: Selling your courses or creating recurring revenues from your courses has never been easier! All you need to get started is a standard PayPal account.
Drip Lessons and Courses: Sequentially deliver the lessons to your users on a pre-set schedule. This is true set and forget drip-feeding, and extremely easy to setup.
Assignments & Pre-reqs: Let users visually track their progress using the progress bar or their profile. Easily set lesson assignments and course pre-requisites.
Quiz & Certify Students: Insert quiz questions at any point in your course using the built in quiz formats and badge OS recognition system.
Detailed Student Reporting: Detailed Student Reporting and notifications are always available using the automated built in e-mail feature.
Assign Leaders & Groups: Easily put your users into their own groups and assign the group leader to organize and monitor student by class or department.
Use Any Lesson Media Types: Upload videos or e-learning files to supplement your course material. Only registered users can view them.
Time Courses and Lessons: Set a timer for your lessons and users can’t mark it complete until the timer reaches zero.
Integrated Course Discussion: Forums and Social Interaction Are Integrated Into Your Campus. Members learn more – fast with your online discussions and social profiles.
Encourage Blended Learning: Enhance Your Students Learning with Live Webinars. Use the live class calendar to organize and promote your live training events.
Those powerful features are available with both Membership site plugins and your LearnDash LMS… but here’s what isn’t and why we recommend setting up both LearnDash with either Paid Memberships Pro , WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads.
Integrated Affiliate tracking programs, especially across multiple WordPress installs.
Course Bundling and Single Pricing for Multiple Courses
Integrated Communities (Campus) Like Buddy Press/BBPress
Flexible Payment Gateways
Multiple Course Author Tracking
Blended Learning with Live Events and event Calendars
eLearning with WordPress!
If you’d like to find out more about having your own Campus Powered By WordPress and LearnDash, so you can have your own campus that makes it easy to create and sell courses, set-up quizzes, automatically award certificates, and download user reports, book a time for a personal conversation with a “Campus” specialist.
