Selling Zoom workshops through Squarespace

Hey 🙂

I'm planning to start selling online workshops (Zoom) and I'm researching the best way to do this. I am currently on Commerce basic plan so I can create paywalled pages , courses, membership sites etc. I am confused by the options and could do with some clarity what will work best in my situations.

I need a simple way to store a link to the forthcoming Zoom class + Downloadable PDF worksheets. (This could be emailed after purchase)

After the live class I need to store the link to the workshop recording for say 60 days. After the time limit the recording will be deleted/access denied.

Is anyone else doing something similar? What is the best way to build this? Using a the course option sounds like an over kill. 

Would a simple memberships site with a one off payment be the solution? Or a paywalled page??  What's the real difference here? Or is there an even easier way?

Thanks in advance for any clarity on this 🙂

Hi @calligrapher007 - the good news is that you have a lot of options! 🙂 I might say to take a look at Squarespace Scheduling aka Acuity which has some really helpful ways to set up classes plus it has a Zoom integration. This would work if you're ok with the customer follow ups with your PDFs happen by email though because there's not a great way to have any sort of page for past classes with content people can access. 

If you were hoping to create a "portal" of sorts I would go with Member Areas over password protected pages because they're more secure and you can better control access. However, depending on how many classes you have, you could quickly amass a TON of member areas (assuming you need one for each class) which might not be practical. 

TL;DR you have several ways you can go and the best one is going to depend on a few factors such as how many classes you have and what your customers expectations are for post-follow up access. Hope this helps get the ideas flowing!

Thank you @KristineNeilStudio! I am planning to run up to 4 per month and allow access for 2 months so I would end up with up to 8 member areas. Is there a limit how many I can keep open at any one time?

Hi @calligrapher007 so there's no limit to the number of areas but the thing I would pay attention to is the transaction fees. You can sell access to an unlimited number of member areas on your current Basic Commerce plan, however the transaction fees without a Digital Products additional subscription are 9%.

The Digital Products add-ons range in price from $9 - $89 /mo... but the transaction fees drop from 7% to 0% so depending on the price point of your classes and how much you're selling, it could work out better for you to pay to be on a Digital Products subscription just to avoid transaction fees. 

By contrast, if you wanted to look at the Acuity Add-on that could also work really well for what you're trying to sell and help you maintain a better calendar and roster of students and that additional subscription would max out at $49/mo. None of the Acuity plans have any additional transaction fees. 

This just adds another layer that you might want to look at that technically you can set this up a number of different ways but cost-wise there might be one over the other that works best for your unique mix of product price point x volume. 

Let me know if this helps! 

I also just noticed that Acuity (Squarespace Scheduling) released a new class template view of the booking page that could be really interesting for you 👀: https://help.acuityscheduling.com/hc/en-us/articles/16676870180237-Choosing-scheduler-templates#01FQHRMYK3WB22W0SQNABG3SST

Thank you @KristineNeilStudio really appreciate your help.

I love the simplicity of the Acuity class view, worth considering! Do you know if it integrates well with Email Campaigns? For example can I easily email just the participants of one class after the live workshop with a replay link? Sorry I'm bombarding you with questions 🙂

@calligrapher007 no worries at all - happy to help! So Acuity doesn't play super nice with Campaigns BUT you can set up a series of follow up emails right within Acuity. If you're on either of the highest plans, you can have up to a series of 6 follow up emails. (The lowest plan you can only have 1.) They're timed based on the end of the appt so you can set it up to be X days after the class ends. 

More here: https://help.acuityscheduling.com/hc/en-us/articles/16676948151309-Email-notifications-for-Acuity-Scheduling-clients#01FGW55QACCN5C7GYS6YP7DRN0