How LifterLMS Simplifies Online Course Creation for Educators

Online education is booming, but creating and scaling a successful course can be challenging without the right tools. That’s where LifterLMS comes in. Founded by Chris Badgett, this powerful WordPress LMS platform simplifies course creation, making it easy for entrepreneurs, educators, and businesses to launch and grow their own online schools. In this interview, Chris shares the journey behind LifterLMS, insights on the future of online education, and expert advice for aspiring course creators. Be sure to check out LifterLMS on social media (Chris’ X, LifterLMS X, YouTube, and LinkedIn) for more tips and inspiration!

The Birth of LifterLMS

SBS – What was the inspiration behind LifterLMS?

Chris – LifterLMS is over 10 years old. I started it in 2014. It’s a learning management system software for WordPress websites. WordPress now powers about 43% of the websites on the internet. I decided to start an agency where I would build websites for clients in any kind of business. Then, I fell in love with the online education industry. I created an organic gardening and permaculture course site myself, and I started getting clients in the coaching and online school industries. There wasn’t a good tool to combine all the features that a learning management system for WordPress needs, so we built it, and it was the beginning of LifterLMS.

Standing Out

SBS – What makes yours different from similar course creation platforms out there?

Chris – One of the biggest things I recommend for anybody starting a business is getting a product-market fit. When we first launched, we got 42 customers. We charged $150 for the software even though we knew we wanted to make the main part completely free to the world, which we did a couple of years later. 

We make money by charging for LMS specialty features. We have customers in about 170 countries worldwide. A lot of them use free software, but there are also those who pay for it. 

What makes us different is that we are giving more free software than a lot of really expensive paid solutions do. In WordPress, specifically, our clients own the platform. They’re not signing up for walled garden software with limited features— they can bolt LifterLMS onto their existing WordPress website. It can look however they want it to look. They can add other features to their websites besides courses and memberships, so it’s kind of infinitely extendable.

Top Features for Businesses

SBS – What features on your platform do you believe businesses can benefit the most from?

Chris – Many people today are content creators who have a YouTube channel, social media accounts, or a blog where they can educate people on something. But when it comes to structuring information into consumable, usable, helpful outcome — generating courses — we have the all-in-one building structure for that, and you can do it all on one screen. 

Easy e-commerce is another big thing on our platform. If people want to sell courses, more advanced degree programs, continuing education programs, or multi-instructor platforms (like Udemy), Lifter can scale with you from having a single course to a multi-instructor online platform. 

There are also other things we combined into the all-in-one platform. We created a Facebook-like experience for group or community learning (it’s like having a Facebook group — but on your website). We’ve also thought a lot about offering training at scale. Many of our creators offer training to individuals, but they also offer courses to companies, school systems, or governments. So, we have a lot of features around one-to-many education.

Common Pitfalls

SBS – What mistakes do you see online creators make when they’re trying to set up an online teaching platform?

Chris – There are several, but I’ll tell you the top ones. Thinking you have to put everything you know about a topic into one massive course that becomes overwhelming is a huge mistake. That comes from people thinking about what they know and not what the learner needs to learn and do to get results without getting overwhelmed. If someone’s course is getting too big, I often recommend they break it up into several courses they can put under a membership. We have a lot of resources on learning fundamental instructional design principles like chunking information down and developing milestones, getting learners to take action— not just reading or watching information. 

Another mistake people often make is getting distracted by technology, particularly if you get into marketing tactics and the design of your website. Sometimes, people start drifting into way overcomplicating the platform. A great product is the best marketing, so I often recommend people focus on creating a free mini course or lead magnet, as it’s known, to just help people buy teaching products from them. If you start teaching them for free, they can get to know you and get some results before the sale. 

There is also the mistake of having imposter syndrome or fear of failure. That slows people down and sabotages their projects. Another mindset shift we’ve already talked about is going from an inward focus of wanting to teach online. You should avoid overfocusing on yourself and what you want and need. You need to find your ideal customer profile, hone in on their primary problem, and dedicate yourself to that. If you do a good job there, you will make money, and your platform will be successful.

Industry Insights

SBS – What trends do you expect to see in the industry in the next few years?

Chris – It will continue to evolve. Also, online education is not new. Ever since the internet was created, it has been used for government defense, but it has also been used by universities to share information. So, we’ve been doing online education for a long time, and it’s not going away. 

WordPress — the niche area I’m in — is also not going away since almost half the internet is powered by that. 

In terms of trend or trends, microlearning is a huge one. I like encouraging people to think about creating a lot of mini-courses as opposed to one giant course. 

Community is also a trend — pairing self-study websites and learning with things like group or private coaching calls or in-person events. The human element is going to continue becoming more and more important, especially in the world of AI. 

The other trend regards the more macro picture — as people evaluate the return on investment of higher education, more and more folks are turning to the internet to do what I call just-in-time education as opposed to just-in-case education. Those are niche certification programs or niche entrepreneur training in a particular type of business, and people are turning more and more to the internet to get the education they need right before they need to use those skills. 

AI is also at play, just like it is everywhere. In my space, particularly, one of the biggest opportunities has to do not with AI replacing the teacher, but with leveraging AI in ways to help tutor the students when they get stuck. Using AI in combination with self-study can be really powerful. A course or a training program should work even in challenging circumstances. People are not robots, so when they get stuck, it’s important to have resources, whether it’s AI, access to the instructor, or access to the community. That helps keep the success rate of a learning program up.

Expert Advice

SBS – What is your advice for someone who wants to start an online teaching platform?

Chris – The first piece of advice is to develop the ideal learner avatar and think about the result they want to get. Then, structure what you plan to do based on helping them achieve the result as quickly and efficiently as possible. 

One mistake that people make is they sometimes go into months or even years of creating something with no validation or feedback from others. So, if you’re just getting started, it can even be better just to deliver the training live through Zoom and make sure you can help these people before you try to automate it with a self-study program. 

Another piece of advice is to pre-sell. If you’re going to create a program, at least get some signal of interest. LifterLMS has a way to pre-sell a course with a future start date, and you can build the syllabus even if you haven’t created all the content yet so the learners can see your offer. Once you get those orders, that gives you the motivation, momentum, and deadline to create the course. Then, you can use things like drip content — if you send them a new lesson every week, you don’t have to build the whole thing beforehand; you just need to stay one step ahead.

If you build the first version of your course and it doesn’t work and nobody expresses interest in it, it’s time to revisit the fundamentals of choosing your avatar and finding the result people want, and look at better ways of validating your idea.