The LifterLMS story continues to unfold, empowering education entrepreneurs all around the world to teach online and build profitable teaching companies. 2017 saw incredible growth for LifterLMS in many ways. I’d like to take a pause and share some highlights from 2017. What went well with LifterLMS in 2017? We released the Infinity Bundle and began adding advanced functionality to it with Private Areas and Social Learning. 2 new add-ons were added to the Universe Bundle: Twilio and Authorize.net. The launch of the 30-day demo so prospective LifterLMS users can test out the premium add-ons and bundles before they buy. 61 new releases to the core free LifterLMS plugin bringing new features, integrations, bug fixes, and security enhancements. According to the small percentage of users who allow tracking in their LifterLMS install, over 1.5 million students have enrolled in a course or membership powered by LifterLMS. According to WordPress, LifterLMS crossed over 150,000 downloads with 7,000+ active installs. LifterLMS live Office Hours was born to help power-users and the community find live strategy, technical, and industry help. The LifterLMS expert program rolled out to provide custom freelance services to the LifterLMS community and create a new revenue channel for LifterLMS and general WordPress freelancers. The LifterLMS community Facebook group grew to over 2,500 members. The free LifterLMS Labs was born to incubate niche features and deeper integration with tools like Beaver Builder and Divi. A new user and customer onboarding support system was built. LifterLMS documentation pieces crossed 300. LifterLMS awarded 23 partial scholarships for education entrepreneurs in extreme situational need or with limited financial resources. Our podcast for course creators called LMScast crossed the 150 episodes milestone. LifterLMS Cofounder Thomas Levy took over as lead organizer for WordCamp Los Angeles. LifterLMS sponsored WordCamp Sacramento, WordCamp Los Angeles, and podcaster Joe Casabona from How I built It. LifterLMS attended CaboPress for the third time. The LifterLMS project turned 4 years old. What could be improved on with LifterLMS in 2017? More theme options with direct LifterLMS integration like Astra is doing now. Quicker support turn around times. More evolved public beta testing program. Deeper page builder compatibility. What’s in store for LifterLMS in 2018? 2018 will be a great year for the LifterLMS community as growth continues to compound on itself. Smart education entrepreneurs, would-be course creators, and membership site builders are flooding into LifterLMS for good reason. Some of the biggest things to look forward to in 2018 are: The complete roll out of the Infinity Bundle with the release of Assignments. A commitment to the WordPress ecosystem with support and leadership around Gutenberg compatibility with LifterLMS users. Improvements and new features across ALL existing LifterLMS products. A commitment to helping other entrepreneurs launch products, services, training or integrations for LifterLMS like you see with Astra, Wisdm Labs, WP Plugins For You, the Larry theme, Ventura, The Core, ConsultPress, Course Lady, WP Fusion, AffiliateWP, iDevAffiliate, WP Crafter, WP Tonic, and the LifterLMS Experts. But wait! There’s one more thing … I have not talked about this publicly yet … This year we are also rolling out something completely different that the online course, membership site, and LMS industry has never seen before. This new thing is fundamentally revolutionary. It will solve these 3 problems: After release of this new thing student engagement and completion rates will soar. After release of this new thing experts and teachers will be able to teach way more effectively. After release of this new thing education entrepreneurs will be able to focus a lot less on marketing, because the course will literally sell itself. That’s all …

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help (verb) definition: make it easier for (someone) to do something by offering one’s services or resources. Sometimes we all need a little help. This is a busy time of year. Actually, let’s get real — it is always a busy time of year. Whether it is the holidays, tax season, back to school, summertime, end of the school year, a birthday, or just life, we are always busy. If you are like me, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and fall into the trap of trying to take on everything yourself…and as a result get very little, or nothing at all, actually done. Here’s a personal example.  When I first lived on my own, I loved planning meals.  Every Sunday I would sit down and create a healthy, balanced menu for the entire week — breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I would figure out all the ingredients and grocery shop for all of my food for the week at once.  This would involve price comparing and going to several different grocery stores.  Fast forward to twenty years later.  With 2 kids, a job, family, and outside community commitments, my “meal planning” had evolved into something quite different, and less than ideal.  It went something like this: “Mom, what’s for dinner?” Me, looking at the clock as I try to finish up a few more emails…”Umm, I’ll figure it out in a few minutes.” [30 minutes later] “Mom, have you figured out dinner yet?” Me, looking at the clock and realizing we have 45 minutes until I need to scramble to get the kids off to activities and very little in the fridge to eat…”How does pizza sound?” So, I used to be a thoughtful meal planner and grocery shopper.  It used to be in my skillset.  But, at this moment in time, at this point in my life, I had to accept that this type of meal planning was no longer at the top of my list.  And in order to prioritize other things in my life and still feed my family, I knew something had to change.  I needed help. So, I outsourced. I recently subscribed to a meal kit delivery service. And yes, it is a little bit more of a financial investment than going to 3 different stores and bargain shopping, but it is also a lot less time consuming. This investment allows me the freedom to spend more time focusing on the things I want and need to focus on — my job, my family, and my community obligations.  And, in turn, I let the experts plan and ship ingredients and recipes for 3 healthy family meals a week right to my front door. LifterLMS Done For You Service I shared my personal story, because I know there is someone out there reading this who can relate. It’s not easy to “do it all.” As an online course creator, you know that your unique online course has the power to change peoples’ lives…but you need to get it out of your head and onto the web.  Maybe you are a business advisor, a health and fitness coach, or a foreign language instructor.  Whatever your niche, you have a special skill set, a specific information base, and you’re eager to share your knowledge with the universe. You likely empower your students to overcome the obstacles obstructing their path to success, and if technical requirements of building your course platform are slowing you down, it’s time for you to do the same. Overcome the obstacles keeping your course offline. With our freshly relaunched Done For You services we handle the details of installing, styling, and deploying your …

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