Frequently Asked Questions

How can I see samples of your work?

Visit our site at https://members.larryjacob.com. There you can give yourself access to our project portfolio which contains a number of video tours of sites we have built for customers.

NOTE: Our https://members.larryjacob.com is a good sample site as well. It makes use of our preferred tools LearnDash, Memberium and Keap to give access to our site portfolio and gets you access to several free and paid online courses. Feel free to explore it.

Do you offer membership site and online course building services?

Absolutely. Our team provides consulting services for small businesses that need their membership and online course sites built. We are really good at that. Keep reading to learn about the platforms we support and the additional services we provide.

Building a membership or online course site when you build 3 or 4 of them a month is straightforward. We know what works and doesn’t work. We also understand best practices so the solutions we build have foresight in anticipating issues that can arise for first time builders.  Everyone on our team follows a common process outlined in our Larry Jacob Goals Alignment Process or GAP so our customer projects get consistent results.

Do you offer membership sites and online courses in strategic consulting?

For sure. It’s difficult for any business owner to look at their teaching materials objectively. We are too close to our subject. We work with many business owners looking to take materials they use in their consulting, coaching, and/or training practices and advise on how best to confirm that into an online program.

We find that many first-time course builders need someone experienced and outside to give them a fresh perspective. They are ready to take the expertise from the formats they used before to their online equivalent. They benefit greatly from strategic guidance from a team with expertise you can only get from years of building sites like these.

Oftentimes, we get called in to build a site and find that the project is far along and they have already missed out on best practices that could make a big difference in the results they get. Partnering with us with our strategic consulting expertise can make a big difference in the success of your offering.

How long does it take to build a membership site or online course site?

We typically tell customers to expect a 6-to-8-week process. This can be shorter for simpler sites or longer for sites that are more involved. Many of our customers will tell you that we schedule our work so that we hit our dates. Unpredictability is an issue for any business owner and we want our customers to get what they signed up for.

How much do your charge for a typical site?

We want to preface this by saying that we provide what we know to be the highest quality solutions available in our market. I start with this because I know you can find low cost providers via services like Upwork, Fiverr and other online services that claim to do what we do.

Our custom build solutions start at $4,800 and average around $8,500 to $10,500. We have built sites that cost much more. Even if you believe this is outside your range, feel free to contact us. We do our best to get project estimates that line up well with our customer needs and work to develop win-win project plans that keep us happy and deliver on what our customers need.

Do you offer do-it-yourself or group coached programs for building my membership or online course sites?

In addition to building and strategic consulting services, our team offers our Breakthrough Course Selling System. This is for business owners wanting to launch online courses.

This offering started from strategic consulting engagements we ran with business owners one-on-one. We saw how much they benefited from those engagements so we packaged this program into an online course.

We find that many first-time online course builders make some common mistakes. They will spend a lot of time, money and effort building online courses they later discover will not sell. This program works with you to (1)investigate your market methodically, (2)confirm what your customers want and (3)guide you in launching a first version of your program to paid members. This validates your will sells and sets a foundation for success.

You can sample the first several lessons of this online course at no charge by signing up for our free trial.

What membership and online course technology do you recommend?

There are much great memberships and online course building tools available on the market. Because of our history of working with Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) since 2010, we have developed expertise using Memberium. It is our preferred membership building tool. Memberium was built to work with Keap. It’s an especially good match for business owners that already use Keap.

Before LearnDash existed, we would hand build online courses using Memberium and WordPress. Courses and lessons would be made up of WordPress pages and posts. These courses worked well, but they required some expertise to build.  When LearnDash was released, we started using it and were happy with how it simplified the course building process. It also included quizzes and other features our customers were wanting. Switching to LearnDash improved the solutions we offered to our customers (as it does today) and enabled us to build bigger and better online courses faster.

Of course, there are other solutions out there. Feel free to contact us directly if you would like to ask about other tools. We have a lot of experience working with other tools and would be happy to share what we know with you.

We’ve heard so much about BuddyBoss. Your thoughts?

BuddyBoss released their Social Networking for LearnDash many years back and we took a liking to it. For LearnDash online course builders wanting to offer social media / community features to their learning environment, it is unique in what it offers.

We do find that many first-time users try to do too much with it from the start. They get overwhelmed and spend time building features that eventually do NOT get used by their members.

We work with business owners needing a team like ours to build BuddyBoss sites for them. Those are part of the consulting services we offer. We also provide strategic consulting for small business owners to decide how best to use BuddyBoss to address their needs.

Are there any WordPress themes and site-building tools you recommend for membership and online courses?

Our current favorite or recommended WordPress theme is Astra. We make use of Elementor for site building. We are constantly on the lookout for emerging tools and test them out to see how well they work. In the past, we built sites using ThriveThemes and have opted for the Astra/Elementor combination this past year. We consider it a step up. We still run a good number of sites using ThriveThemes and find it to be a good tool as well.

I see a lot about Keap on your site. How does that relate to membership sites and online courses?

Back in 2010, I was introduced to Keap (then called Infusionsoft) by a customer. He needed help with it. I attended their user conference that year and saw it as a strategic tool for our agency. We then started working with small business owners to get them the benefits Keap provides.

Because of our history with Keap and our then experience building websites, building membership sites and online courses was a natural step for our team. Today, over 80% of the work we deliver for our clients is related to membership and online course sites. It’s what we do best and because of our experience using Keap, we do a lot of work with businesses that also use Keap.

What e-commerce platforms to you recommend?

Keap provides e-commerce features so that is always a part of solutions we build for Keap users. We have also developed expertise using WooCommerce. In many cases, we use both WooCommerce and Keap which integrate well together using tools like InfusedWoo.

These solution integrate well with BuddyBoss, LearnDash and other tools that are often a part of sites we build for our customers.

Is Memberium a good standalone membership site building tool?

No. Memberium is a connector between WordPress and either Keap or ActiveCampaign. Without one of these, Memberium doesn’t provide any functions.

What is your recommended tool for building standalone membership sites (meaning don’t use Keap or ActiveCampaign?

We have taken a liking to Wishlist Member. This is a standalone membership site tool that integrates well with WooCommerce, BuddyBoss, and LearnDash. This combination of tools is a solid platform for building membership and an online course site.