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As someone who has navigated the often confusing waters of online course creation, I understand the importance of having the right tools at your disposal. Whether you’re a seasoned educator or just starting out, the right course builder can make all the difference. In this article, I’ll share my humorous insights on Forento, a course builder that promises to take you from zero to hero in no time. Not only will I highlight its features, but I’ll also explain why it’s essential for anyone looking to monetize their expertise.

How I Chose the Best Course Builder

When selecting the best course builder, I considered factors such as ease of use, features offered, pricing, and customer feedback. I wanted to ensure that the tool not only meets my needs but also provides value for money.

Forento

Forento is like that friend who always knows how to throw a great party. Whether you’re looking to launch a Masterclass, sell e-books, or offer coaching sessions, Forento has got your back. It’s designed for course creators, online coaches, and solopreneurs who want to monetize their expertise without the headache. With features like GDPR compliance and white-label options, you can build your own branded platform to showcase your content. Plus, it’s super user-friendly, so you can focus on what you do best—creating awesome stuff.

What People Say

Users rave about how easy it is to set up and manage their courses. Many have highlighted the excellent support and comprehensive help articles that make the learning curve a breeze.

• I’m early in the journey but super impressed so far – support has been great, help articles are comprehensive and well written. Everything works – which always helps.– ben6825
• Very easy to use and very robust LMS solution. Highly recommended!– AprenderInglesRapido

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Great support and resources
• User-friendly interface
• Flexible pricing plans

Cons:

• Some features require a subscription
• Limited customization on lower-tier plans

Why You’ll Love Forento

• Build and host your own branded platform
• Sell courses, coaching programs, and digital products
• User-friendly interface for easy navigation

Long-Term Cost Benefits

Investing in Forento can save you money in the long run. With a one-time fee of $49 for the basic plan, you avoid ongoing subscription costs that can add up quickly. Plus, you get lifetime access to the core features, which is a steal compared to other platforms.

When Forento is Your Best Friend

Forento shines when you’re ready to launch your first course or digital product. It’s perfect for those moments when you want to impress your audience with a polished, professional platform without needing a tech degree.

Your Quick Start Guide to Forento

Setting up Forento is as easy as pie. Just sign up, choose your plan, and start customizing your platform. You can add your logo, set up your courses, and even integrate payment options—all without breaking a sweat.

Current Price: $49

Rating: 4.81 (Total: 88+)

Buy Now

FAQ

Is Forento really worth my hard-earned cash, or will I end up crying into my coffee?

Ah, the age-old question of whether to invest in a shiny new tool or just stick with the trusty old pen and paper. I get it! Forento is priced at a mere $49, which is less than my last impulse buy of a questionable kitchen gadget. With a solid rating of 4.81 and rave reviews from users who are actually using it, I’d say it’s worth a shot. Plus, think of all the time you’ll save not having to manually juggle your courses and SEO like a circus performer. Just imagine the coffee you could enjoy instead!

I’m not a tech wizard. Will I need to summon a team of IT specialists to use Forento?

Fear not, my friend! Forento is designed for mere mortals like you and me. I’m no tech genius, and yet I’ve managed to navigate it without accidentally launching a rocket. The drag-and-drop builder is as easy as pie—if pie were made of pixels and not calories. Plus, the help articles are so well-written that even my cat could probably figure it out. So, grab your favorite beverage, and let’s get building!

What if I want to add some fancy features later? Am I stuck in a basic plan forever?

Oh, the fear of being stuck in the ‘basic’ lane! I totally understand. The good news is that Forento is like a buffet—there’s always room for more! You can start with the basic plan and upgrade as your empire grows. Want to add Zapier integration or drip content like a pro? You can do that! Just think of it as leveling up in a video game. The more you grow, the more features you can unlock. So, no need to panic; your future self will thank you for the flexibility!

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, Forento stands out as a robust course builder that caters to a variety of needs. With its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features, it allows me to create and sell courses with ease. The positive feedback from users reinforces its value, making it a worthy investment for anyone serious about online education. So, if you’re ready to embark on your journey from zero to hero, consider giving Forento a try.

It just makes things a whole lot more enjoyable and increases your likelihood of pushing through hard times.

They say there is no fast money in the world or no fast and easy money in the world. And after 25 years in digital marketing, I can say that that is in 99.75% of the cases, absolutely true.

Sometimes the concepts are easy and these are sold to us as a get-rich-quick opportunity.

But while the techniques and methodologies might be easy to set up, growing the business they support can be really hard work.

Some estimate 80% of bloggers give up after the first year, and similar in the second.

Why? Because it’s hard.

There are always exceptions to the rule, and as we’ve seen in more recent years, the virality of some content can thrust others into the light of success earlier than others.

But for the bulk of us, success in business is just hard work.

My personal experience

I’ve grown businesses from nothing to a quarter million dollars a year. I’ve built businesses from $200,000 to $10 million a year, and I’ve built businesses from $12 million to $40 million a year.

And along with a lot of other smaller projects that grew at less impressive rates, all of them took time and consistent effort to get them to grow.

There are some tools and levers that can be pulled and a lot of those are low-hanging fruit for a lot of people, but you just have to prepare yourself for the long, hard road, especially if you are an entrepreneur.

A wealthy friend once said to me, “Smart people never spend their own money.”

That has not been something I’ve ever really been comfortable with doing.

I think taking on the pressure of using other people’s money to grow a business is probably why I have not built the next Uber.

I think my wiring means that I need to be able to look people in the eye and tell them honestly whether I can increase their money or not.

And while it’s likely in most cases that I absolutely can, I also don’t want to put that pressure on myself.

Bootstrapping your blogging endeavors

So I’m an organic grower. I like to grow things organically and I usually like to bootstrap everything where possible.

So all of my side hustles have always been 100% bootstrapped.

The benefit of that is that any profits are mine. The negative is that if I backed myself, I could probably scale much faster.

When you’re working on a side hustle, knowing that it’s probably going to take you a lot longer than you think to reach a measure of success depending on your effort and output, you need to have an interest and I would definitely say a passion in the area to make it a real success.

When I started reselling consumer electronics on eBay in about 2002 even that took effort. I also had a full-time job.

I was buying consumer electronics as a retailer of a wholesaler and when things sold, I had to drive all the way across town to the distributor and pick up the items, then drive all the way back in my lunch hour, package it, send it.

And as that grew, so did the customer inquiries, so did the number of trips across town, and it eventually became quite a time-consuming activity.

I ended that because I moved country.

Passion keeps you up at night

In the next country I moved to, started a side hustle with a coupon and deal site.

This site was an absolute passion for me because I love building websites and online destinations that people come and engage with.

This is one of the passions that drive me, being a creator, not only of front-facing content but also of the engines that drive those platforms.

I took all of the skills that I had learned from self-teaching myself PHP programming in addition to an open-source content management system and built out what was really a very comprehensive site that was heavily trafficked and was making me decent money.

I was employing three part-time student writers and had moved country again, not needing to worry about income and living off the fruits of that.

But this took passion, and because I loved doing what I was doing, I could push through.

I had a full-time job still, and in the evenings I would go home, eat and work until 1:00 am, 2:00 am, 3:00 am in the morning on the website, developing improved user experience and automation that would simplify the site as it scaled, but it was an enormous amount of work.

And had I not been passionate about building such a platform, and had I not been passionate about the way that traffic was growing, I never could have succeeded at it.

Sometimes you have to get up again, and again, and again

Unfortunately, the 2009 Google update wiped me off the face of the earth, and I didn’t have quite enough passion to restart that project, feeling like I could never see it being a sustainable, long-term success.

It felt ‘thin’ and wasn’t very fulfilling.

That was a mistake because had I just continued with it, restructured it, and kept going, I probably would have created a platform that no longer meant I’d need to work today.

I’ll skip through a few of the other e-commerce businesses that I either built and closed down or built and sold and exited from.

My current side hustle is making money from blogging.

It’s not too dissimilar from my deals and discounts website, which was really just blogging whatever good deals people could have around the web, but it is much more in-depth.

See, I’ve had a couple of sites now that didn’t like Google or Google didn’t like them, they have grown and then had updates wipe them out.

With this current project, I’m committed to creating the best content I physically can.

I still have a job now and I keep my job because I like my job. I like working with people and if I quit and go full time just on my project, it will just be me, and my extroverted personality type likes to be around people.

So once again, I am in the position of technically working two jobs, but now I also have a family and two kids.

Coming home from work and spending time with family and then continuing on in my studio until late at night, most nights, requires passion.

The buzzword at the moment is grit, and I definitely think that the two work hand in hand.

You have to have the grit to push through, the grit to overcome your physical tiredness, the grit to make things happen and choose to do the hard thing every week or every day by continuing to try to build the side hustle that you’re on.

Your passion makes your grit bearable.

I’m not saying burn yourself out, I’m definitely saying take some time. But if you push yourself, then you’ll eventually see results – if you’re putting out good content (I know it’s hard to know what ‘good content’ means – but I can tell you).

Good content comes in bundles

But I couldn’t do this every night if I wasn’t passionate. Part of my current strategy is not just writing for the web, but it’s also doing all of my own HD photography and also matching all or a lot of my posts with YouTube videos that I produce for each individual article.

• Keyword Research
• Writing
• HD Photography + Editing
• Video Shooting + Editing

(Edit – I now have a few talented VAs helping me on this work. More on that later.)

I can tell you that when you’re just writing for the web or you have writers writing for you, that is one thing.

But when you put on your plate the need to then do all HD photography of anything that you’re working on in addition to recording videos, it’s an enormous step up.

But I firmly believe if I’m going to be successful in this space and with the way the web is going, needing all facets of media on your articles or blog – video + photography and writing is going to be, in my opinion, the way to dominate in the game.

Of course, all that content has to be good, but the more you do it, the better you get.

And if you think that it may be too late to start, it’s never too late to start.

I told myself that three years ago, but I persevered with the great stubbornness that is now reaping really great rewards.

The niche of my main side is incredibly competitive and there are a lot of supergiant websites that dominate the space.

The reason I’ve stuck with this niche is that I’m passionate about it, and I figure eventually my passion will shine through.

If I had a niche site that was talking about gardening, I would have flamed out long ago.

So keep your passion alive, and choose a side hustle that matches. And if you’re blogging to make money, then try to choose something that you really are passionate about.

And if you choose a highly competitive space or niche, be prepared to double the time it takes to make it successful.

But the reward is once you’re successful, the niche that you’re in will be undoubtedly large and hopefully offer you unlimited earning potential.

If you wonder about the tools and strategies I use to automate and streamline my workflow, then definitely check out this post.

…or what the heck is wrong with Safari 16.0?

When your a digital entrepreneur your brain is normally working faster than your fingers.

What kills me is when my tools and software don’t manage to work as fast as my fingers and I’m forced to wait for things to load, debug or unfreeze.

I currently run a Macbook Air M1 laptop.

It’s far from lacking in power for the typical work I do.

And it’s an Apple product – one of their own.

So why is it that when I recently upgraded recently to Safari 16 that is done nothing but complain at me everytime I open more than 4 tabs.

I get this really awesome message and my windows all but freeze.

It says “The webpage is using significant memory. Closing it may improve the responsiveness of your Mac.”

I’ll close it alright…right on your f…..

At this point I’m only using Drive, Gmail, ClickUp and maybe one other tab with WordPress loaded.

I appreciate ClickUp can be a little hungry but it works fine in Chrome.

Surely there is a bug in the system but I don’t see anyone else complaining.

I’m hoping the 16.1 update, when it comes, will fix these issues.

I just hate slowing my day down to wait for technology.

The biggest frustration is not only that I have to wait and this means slower productivity, but it also means I lose my flow and at times…forget things.

I know I should write things down but I don’t have time…moving too fast.

Robots should know we have businesses to build!

It’s 10:16pm.

I’ve been sitting at my computer in my home office for 3 hours after an 8 hour work day in the office.

I’m tired.

I was up until midnight last night filming videos and finding new staff and photographing products and, and, and.

But, I’ve just remembered to look at todays sales report for affiliate revenue and I hit my first $500 day (well, it’s $497.89).

I have to believe it won’t be my last but once I add on a little Mediavine revenue, it should be a great day.

I have to celebrate these moments and take a minute to breathe.

Sometimes we’re so busy blogging and writing and videoing and photographing that we forget we don’t have to do it all in one day.

It takes time and there are things we can’t control that force us to slow down.

Google being one of them.

We can’t force Google to like us, or promote it.

It takes time for Google to get to know us, you know, see if they think we have long term potential.

So, if you’re doubting yourself today/tonight and thinking it’s impossible.

It’s not. But it will take more work.

Don’t be afraid to get in to forums, sites like this and ask for advice on things so you are heading in the right direction.

Use software to help automate tasks to save you time.

Ask friends and family to look at your site, your writing and give feedback to you so you can make it better and better.

Never give up.

And on that note, I’m going to sleep.

That’s 1350 days or 44 months of hard work, late nights and low points before I had the thought that this blogging to make money might work.

Let me say, if you’re not passionate about your blog, you won’t survive, or you’ll not enjoy the journey very much.

I did start making money quite quickly into my blogging journey but the kind of money I‘m talking about is money where I might actually consider thinking about quitting a full-time job and going full-time on writing.

Initially I think I made $20 and that was enough to remind me I have done this before and I can do it again.

I love my main niche site. It was born out of a passion for the topics. 

It’s not the hardest journey I’ve been on, but it is certainly one of the hardest. It’s definitely the longest time I’ve ever taken to grow a business to this size. 

In the past, I’ve built & sold or built & closed down or built and had closed down (thanks Google) a few different successful enterprises. The most time I spent on most those was a couple of years before I ran out of steam on them. 

When you’re choosing a niche to start blogging in, or deciding on a type of business to start running, the biggest challenge is choosing something that can continue the scale and grow. 

Unfortunately, the businesses that I started that focused on selling products online, had a market capacity that I maxed out. 

One in particular, after reaching the number 2 seller in the country for a particularly popular brand of product I was selling, I realized that I couldn’t really grow that much more. 

What I love about making money from blogging is that there is no cap on what you can do, or earn if it works out for you, or you work hard for it. 

There’s no limit on how much you can earn, so I’m told. 

It is important that you choose the right niche for this to happen. 

The other option that you have if you don’t choose a limitless niche is to run multiple niche sites. 

I definitely have one site that I’m still bubbling up slowly which only focuses on one particular, very narrow space in the FMCG Marketplace space. 

I know that there will be a limit to how much I can grow this particular site.

But I also know that the average order value of the products and the search volumes are high enough that it makes it attractive to me. 

In addition to this, I have a lot of propriety knowledge in this topic and can speak quite confidently to it, which also makes it quite attractive. Less competition.

Back to my first site, it’s really making me the most money right now, it’s the site that is taking me a long time to build because it is in a very large highly competitive niche. 

And I’ve chosen that niche because I’m passionate about it and I know that my passion can sustain the work required to get a site to a level that will earn me a decent income. 

My commission cheques this month where around $7500 which was great, although, a lot of that was thanks to Prime Day. 

The July prime day was good and then this month, with an additional Prime Day in October – I’m sure in a couple of months when the commission cheques roll in, it’s gonna look pretty good. 

I never get my hopes up too high.

The challenge I have is to build up the quiet times, the summer times, the July-August times when people are shopping less and spending less and outdoors more, enjoying the sunshine. 

We’re coming up to the run-up to Christmas so, with an additional early fall Prime Day in October, and soon a Black Friday, Cyber Monday event, then rolling in the Christmas, there’s no doubt that search volume will be high and affiliate commissions and advertising revenue RPMs will be high also. 

So, it feels really good to finally feel like I’m making head way and that the money is starting to roll. 

The other thing to know is there’s been numerous google algorithm updates in the last 6months which have benefited me as I continue trying to create really great quality content rather than churning out low quality, uninformed, unintelligent information, that is clearly being scraped source and rewritten from other websites. 

I’m really focused on creating the best and most unique content that I can for this site. I’m proud of what I’m putting out.

So, if you’re on your journey to make money and its feeling like hard then just believe that if you stick with it, and you create good content and you keep publishing then you can make it. 

It sounds like a cliche, but it’s true

I love Jon Dykstra’s course. He says in his mind – just publish at least one thing every day. If you publish one thing every day then at least you’re taking small steps forward to a successful site. 

I’ve definitely been knocked down a couple of times at google, and it happens. 

But if you just keep consistent and keep plugging away eventually, you’ll see some returns. 

I’ve been hearing about Klaviyo for months, years even.

The email service provider began to dominate the eCommerce email space with solid affiliate marketing and a niche focus.

Everyone talked about Klaviyo.

So, when it was time to upgrade to a new ESP, I moved from MailerLite to Klaviyo.

I left MailerLite as they weren’t fulfilling my eCommerce needs and they released a whole new v2.0 platform and didn’t grandfather their faithful customers from v1.0.

About now I’m starting to sound like a whinger.

I’m not. I give credit where credit is due.

Is Klaviyo powerful? Yep, it’s pretty good. I’d still take Listrak any day but, it’s good.

But it’s not always easy.

They’ve done two things right to grow.

1: Strong affiliate programs and advertising

2: Integrate with everything – especially Shopify.

They were smart and tied themselves closely to the fastest-growing SMB e-commerce platform in the world.

The nature of this focus almost guarantees success thanks to the whale your attached to.

Number 2 is why I went with them.

They have literally integrated with every eCommerce plugin on the planet (exaggeration).

So, frustrated?

Here is why.

1: They don’t provide sales metrics where it matters.

You should be able to view a sign up form and be able to view the sales attributed to that form.

Instead you have to go to Metrics > $source > value.

And when you do select a date range, it’s super unclear what days/range it includes.

Frustrating.

2: Auto resend

Should be able to set up an auto-resend to unopened after XX days.

But you have to clone the campaign, create a segment and then send.

Long winded solution. Time is money.

3: Bugs.

I had an email with a dynamic coupon in it. I wanted to restart the flow by putting everyone in the list back into the flow.

Computer said, no. I had to remove the dynamic coupon.

So I did.

But it still thought I had a dynamic coupon.

So I went code nuclear, edit the HTML and removed any hint of a dynamic coupon. I left just naked, cold, alone HTML.

Still, it told me there was a dynamic coupon in it.

I emailed support.

They said, you might need to clone the flow and then try again. It does it some times…

Really…?

So, I did. It solved it but I really shouldn’t need to.

4: Editor

The editor is terrible. Editing text in WYSIWYG text boxes.

So much can go wrong here.

I did like MailerLite as it worked more with blocks. A little like Gutenberg editor in WordPress but, if you need code level you can get it.

Half the time if you change the color of a font and then leave before the backend can figure out what you’ve done, you’ll lose the color change.

It’ll change, and then when you click out to do something else and come back, it’ll be back to the old color.

Still frustrated. More buggyness.

5: Image optimization

With most email and CMS platforms you might work with, if you upload a nice big fat juicy image (e.g. 2000 x 2000px @ 72dpi) it will then CDN it, optimize it and serve the right-sized image.

With Klaviyo it was a no….

So, when our Shopping Cart Abandon email fires out, it loads the full-sized image from Shopify and then loads it into the email.

It loads like an 80’s IBM on dial-up. Line, but line, by line, by line.

But, even Shopify doesn’t serve those images – they serve optimized images.

Email to support. “Sorry, you’ll have to upload the correct sized files”…

Frustrating.

6: Cost

Beware the cost of Klaviyo if you are growing fast.

What starts like a cute sleeping Labrador soon becomes a ravenous Komodo Dragon.

Sucking money from you for every small subscriber increase you get.

I’ve had to upgrade our plan every month since we started.

And it’s not just email limits, it’s SMS limits too.

So you’re not only upgrading your email account, but your SMS account too.

About every 500 subscribers that’s another $25 thank you.

How did I miss this…

Should have gone with Bento, who only charge be about 1c for every subscriber I sign up. Instead of these big steps every 500.

Sorry, Jessie. I chose wrong.

7: Heatmaps and Click maps

Really, no heatmaps or click maps built in? I have to use UTM tracking to get what I need?

This really bites.

When I’m A/B/n testing emails and click-through is a major design factor, I want to visually see the outcome of where people clicked.

Did A design work or did B design work?

Yes, links can tell me this but it’s not very awesome.

You can integrate third-party tools to do this but it should be standard.

8: Value of a specific List or Segment

If you want to know what the value of a list is, or a segment you can’t just look at the list and say ‘how much has this list made me all time or in the last xx days?’.

You have to go here: Analytics > Metrics > Placed Order Metric you go to the ‘Best People’ link in the top right and select download. Then it asks you to select a list or segment.

You have to download the CSV file and see what people have purchased.

It works.

I just don’t like CSV files, or downloading stuff.

Now…breathe….

There’s more but this is where I am at today. And that’s all I have time to be trusted with.

I have to get an email sent today…with Klaviyo.

Powerful, yes.

Good for newbies. No.

Room for growth? Yes.

Other platforms catching up? Yes.

Good choice for those on Shopify. Yes, but prepare for the learning curve.

Email is a commodity so choose wisely.

Klaviyo is not a bad choice at all. It’s got skills, but it just makes me grumpy at times.

Questions? Want to fight it out in the comments? Let’s go!

Rant over.

Almost…

9: Can’t manually add customer profiles into segments, or tag them.

The other thing that is driving me crazy is the inability to manually add a customer record in to a segment. I can’t search a profile and add a tag to them, or add them to a segment manually.

It has to be done dynamically or based on a set of rules.

This is annoying as I would like to add all staff in to a segment or tag them. But I can’t. But why not?

Seems like a reasonable case.

Now, rant over.

Mark