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Saved $50 / month coding Zapier connections myself. Here's how you can do the same

I’ve been using Zapier to connect Webflow, Teachable, and Mailchimp as students sign up for my courses and take lectures.

I LOVE Zapier. But, this weekend, I saved $50 / month coding everything myself

You can do the same with basic coding skills 👇🏻

Whenever I code, I find it helpful to describe the steps in plain English.

In most cases, coding is simply the act of automating a task you would have otherwise done manually.

In my case, I needed the following to happen:

  1. Student signs up for a course on Teachable, then gets a ‘thank you’ email through Mailchimp
  2. Student takes a lecture, then gets an email if there’s a 24-hour gap between lectures
  3. Student completes a course, then gets an email asking for feedback

For each of the 3 actions (sign up, complete lecture, complete course) the following happens:

  1. Student completes action
  2. Teachable thinks “something happened! I should go tell Mailchimp”
  3. Teachable tells Mailchimp about the action
  4. Mailchimp updates student info

Zapier made automating all of these steps super easy (like I said, I LOVE the service).

…and Zapier was especially helpful because Teachable has a terrible API

Sticking with plain English, here’s how I got my code to work:

I created a “webhook” to get Teachable to keep an eye out for students completing certain actions and then do something when the action occurs.

Ex. when a student signs up for a course, that webhook gets notified, then passes the information over to Mailchimp

Then, I used Mailchimp’s API to update the information about the student that we got from Teachable

I picked the information I wanted to store in Mailchimp (the student’s name, email, course name, price paid, etc.), then told Mailchimp to store it.

I’m a big believer in the No Code movement, but I’ve found it incredibly helpful to know how to code so I can supercharge whatever I’m doing and save money along the way.

Having taught myself to code to build my last company, I know what it’s like to be a coding n00b.

I taught coding at General Assembly to help beginners like me learn to code, and now I’m running Like I Am Five to teach entrepreneurs to code their own products.

If you need help, reach out anytime!

And, if you want the code from today, just click here: likeiamfive.com/email-list

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