Since 2013, The Sweet Setup has offered 60,000 subscribers in-depth daily articles, reviews, and paid courses on the best apps and workflows to improve their work and personal lives.
This content helps members tighten their focus and get more out of the apps and resources they use every day.
Shawn Blanc, founder and editor-in-chief of The Sweet Setup, has reviewed and shared his insights on apps and gadgets for more than 20 years. In 2007, he left his 80-hour-a-week career in non-profit marketing to focus on his WordPress-based tech blog and spend more time with his wife and three boys.
Shawn used a simple membership platform to create his first online course in 2015. Though the project was successful, he was concerned about the number of limitations of the platform.
On the advice of a friend, Shawn switched to WooCommerce.
“I just wanted full control over the entire user experience for customers…[WooCommerce] just kind of fit right off the bat.”
“I just wanted full control over the entire user experience for customers in terms of actually being able to offer members password-protected content at multiple levels,” he says. “So, when I discovered that WooCommerce offered that functionality, we migrated everything — content and memberships — over to Woo. It just kind of fit right off the bat.”
WooCommerce allowed Shawn and The Sweet Setup to start creating more courses and run a better business.
“We can implement the ideal customer experience when it comes to our courses, membership access, related products, custom thank you pages, and all those things.”
The Sweet Setup essentially designed its learning management system (LMS) because, at the time, extensions like Sensei LMS weren’t available. They manage everything inside of WooCommerce with the help of a few key integrations, such as Stripe for payments. They also rely on another WordPress plugin, WP Fusion, to connect to ActiveCampaign for a robust marketing and communication setup that includes custom landing pages and unique email welcome sequences with relevant messages for each customer and subscriber.
“It has definitely been a great experience and a worthwhile investment!”
Today, The Sweet Setup has over 16,000 customers that access content through an account on their site. Their product catalog ranges from short $19 workshops to high-end courses that sell for $500 and with up to 75 modules.
“It has definitely been a great experience,” beams Shawn, “and a worthwhile investment!”
