Building an online course and then making sure your clients have a way of purchasing it, can be a difficult process. This is why we have made it possible to connect Thrive Apprentice with your SendOwl account.
With the help of this connection, you can sell the course you have created with Thrive Apprentice in an easy way. Here are the seven steps you will have to take to achieve this:
Step 1: Create a course in Thrive Apprentice
The first step is to create a course in Thrive Apprentice and publish it.
You can structure your course on more levels: you can add lessons, chapters, and modules to it:
After you have created the course, make sure you publish it along with every lesson, chapter, and/or module that it contains.
You can learn more about how to complete this step here.
Another thing that you need to do here is to add your course to a Thrive Apprentice product:
Details about how to do that can be found in this dedicated article of our knowledge base:
A product is a digital layer that helps you protect your Thrive Apprentice courses. Whenever you want to restrict access to a course or non-course content from your website, you will have to first add it to a product, and then set up the correct access requirements for it.
The steps for setting up the access requirements are detailed in the last section of this article.
Step 2: Connect Thrive Apprentice with SendOwl
The next step is to set up the API connection between Thrive Apprentice and your SendOwl account. This step has two phases you have to complete:
a) Set up the API connection with SendOwl
You will need to create a set of API keys in your SendOwl account (if you don’t already have one) and copy it.
Access the “Settings” section of your SendOwl account:
Next, scroll down and click on the “SendOwl API”:
At the bottom of the page, you will see the “Add API key” button:
You will need to set the right permissions here, otherwise the connection you make will not work properly.
This means that you have to select the checkbox next to the “Manager” type, which will also automatically select all the other permission types as well:
Then, go to the “API Connection” section of your Thrive Dashboard:
And create a new connection by pasting the API details in the corresponding fields, just like you would do with any other e-mail marketing or delivery service. Once the connection is done, you will receive this notification:
b) Set up the API Account Keys in the Integration Settings
The second phase you need to complete is related to the “API Account Keys” (Signing keys) that you can find in the API section of your SendOwl account.
You can find the “Integration Settings” if you go to the SendOwl section of your Thrive Apprentice “Settings”:
Click on “Integrate with SendOwl” and paste the keys in the corresponding fields, and once done, click on “Save Keys”:
For detailed info on how to connect Thrive Apprentice and SendOwl, check out this tutorial.
Step 3: Create a Product/Bundle in SendOwl
At this point, you will have to create a product in your SendOwl account that will represent your course.
So this means that your Thrive Apprentice product will be tied to a SendOwl product.
a) Copy the “Single Thank You Page Redirect” URL
Before creating your product, go to the SendOwl section of your Thrive Apprentice navigation bar, and click on the “Quick Start Guide”:
Here, select the first step from the list:
And copy the “Single Thank You Page Redirect” URL you will find there under point 3:
Then, go to your SendOwl account, and in the Checkout Options:
Here, complete the “Return URL” field with the “Single Thank You Page Redirect” URL that you have previously copied:
When this URL is saved as the “Return URL” in SendOwl, the “Thank You Page Settings” from Thrive Apprentice will be applied, after customers buy the products.
b) Add a new product in SendOwl
Now you can add the new products in the “Products” section of your SendOwl account.
You can create different types of products here, such as digital products or redirect type products. The important thing is to tie the product you create with your Thrive Apprentice course.
Since you have set up the “Return URL”, the “Thank You Page Settings” will automatically be applied to the product you tie with your Thrive Apprentice course.
In the case of adding a “Redirect” product type, you can also use the “Single Thank You Page Redirect” URL, or you can enter the URL of the course directly (you can copy this URL if you open the “Course Details” option of your course).
Learn more about creating SendOwl products here.
Step 4: Complete the Checkout Settings
This step consists of two parts: adding a registration page to your setup and completing the ‘thank you’ page settings.
You will have to go to the SendOwl settings of your Thrive Apprentice navigation bar, and click on “Checkout Settings”:
a) Add a Registration Page
First, you will have to add a registration page in SendOwl. You can add an already existing page or create a new one. Once you have the page, you can edit it with Thrive Architect and use different landing page templates while doing so:
Keep in mind that when editing the registration page, it is important to keep the “Checkout” element on the page, as this is an essential part of the purchasing process!
More info on this here.
b) Complete the Thank You Page Settings
Next, you will have to set up what will happen after a purchase is finalized. You can choose between having a “Static Confirmation Page for all products” or “Redirect the users to the start of the purchased course” along with a personalized message:
Here as well, you can either add already existing pages, or you can create new ones and then, edit them. If you have Thrive Architect, you also have the possibility to choose from different ‘thank you’ landing page templates.
You can find detailed information on how to do this here.
Step 5: Set up the SendOwl Listener
In order to make sure that Thrive Apprentice and SendOwl can communicate with each other when the course is sold, you will need to set up the SendOwl Listener.
This can be done with the help of the “Listener URL”. Go to the “Integration Settings” of the Thrive Apprentice SendOwl Settings:
And copy the “Listener URL” from the second section of the page.
Then, access your SendOwl account again and, with the help of the “Listener URL” that you have copied, set up the minimum of four webhooks that are needed for the integration to work:
- Order completed
- Order failed
- New payment
- Refund issued
Note: You can add other types of webhooks here as well, depending on what scenarios are likely to occur with the purchase of your course.
For instance, you can set up a “Free order issued” webhook as well.
However, please make sure, that you do not set any conditions while setting up the webhooks, because these conditions might lead to errors if they are not met while the visitors try to purchase the course, ask for a refund, etc.
Here you can find more info on how to set up the listener step by step.
Step 6: Create a sales page with a Purchase Link
Once the above setup steps are completed, you will have to create a ‘place’ where your clients can buy the course. This can be a sales page, for example.
You can create a new sales page that will have the purpose of presenting and selling your course, or you can use an already existing one.
The main point here is to insert the “Purchase Link” of the course on the page so that the visitor of the website can click on it and complete the purchasing process.
The “Purchase Link” of the course can be found in the SendOwl Settings, from the Thrive Apprentice dashboard:
First, you will have to generate the purchase link. Click on the “Product” or the “Bundle” section, depending on what you want to generate the link for:
Then, use the “Select an option” drop-down field to open the list with the products/bundles. Select the exact product/bundle (meaning the courses you have set up as products/bundles in SendOwl) that you want the purchase link for:
Then, copy the generated purchase link, which is the URL that appeared in the section under the Product/Bundle section:
This will be the URL that you will have to insert into your sales page. Add a call-to-action (e.g. Buy this course now!) to the sales page and link it to the course (in form of the SendOwl product), by using the purchase link of the product that you have previously copied.
More info on adding purchase links to sales pages here.
Step 7: Assign Access to Your Course
Assigning access to your course (and setting up the SendOwl protection options) is another way of creating a ‘place’ where your clients can buy the course.
In order to achieve that, you will have to set up a restriction for the course: make it available only if the visitor has already bought it as a SendOwl product and logs in, or if he/she will buy it now.
Access the Thrive Apprentice course from the “Products” section:
Click on the “Access requirements” tab:
Then, in order to add a restriction rule, open the corresponding SendOwl field from the list. If you have created a single product, open the “SendOwl Product” one and select your product from the list. If you have created a bundle, go for the “SendOwl Bundle” field:
After you select the product, don’t forget to save your work:
Next, what you also need to do here is to also configure the content that will be shown to the users who are trying to access the course without having the necessary permissions:
You can read more about how to set up these options in these two articles:
- How to Configure the Access Restriction Rules in Thrive Apprentice
- Access Restriction Rules at Product Level
When you finish setting up the restrictions you should save them. Then, the visitors of the page, where your course is, will have to either log in (which means they already bought the course) or register in order to buy the course and get full access to it.
In the purchasing process, the customer clicking on the buy button will automatically log into SendOwl using the WordPress credentials, and then be redirected to the purchasing process. This is all automated, so the customer will just need to insert the payment details and complete the order.
Here’s another article that you might find useful with regards to how the purchasing process works:
After all 7 steps will be completed, your course will be ready to be purchased by the visitors of your website! All you have left to do is to advertise it and make sure people see your sales page/course page.
If you need any other details regarding the Thrive Apprentice & SendOwl integration, please look through our Thrive Apprentice knowledge base section.