Lessons, Tips and Tricks for Selling Online Content

I was halfway into making a video about how we make videos for our membership, subscription and premium content sites when a friend sent me a link.

Someone beat me to it.

It’s an opt-in page, but the videos so far on the other side are really good, and Video 2 is exactly how we make our videos:

http://www.membercon.com/links/VideoBoss

They’re no doubt going to be selling a product after video 4 (I’d be disappointed if they didn’t given all the work they put into the first two videos I’ve seen), but the free video #2 alone is better than most “how to” programs I’ve paid for.

I followed Andy Jenkins back when he was with Stompernet (I was a subscriber to their magazine and bought of few of their SEO products early on that helped us get our first sites going).

So if you want to see how we do our videos, their explanation is a heck of a lot better than mine was going to be.

Tim creating content, selling content online Andy Jenkins, how to make videos, the video boss

Back in early 2008 I wrote a post called “Internet Famous, Dirt Poor” that got a fair amount of traction in the blogosphere. I wrote it because I was tired of hearing bloggers bash anyone who tried to make a living with their content.

The idea that “content should be free” always sounded like nonsense to me, yet a very vocal group whined of “sell outs” every time a fellow blogger tried to sell an eBook they’d written or, heaven forbid, used an affiliate link in a post.

Here is part of that post:

In the “old days” anyone who was famous in the media had the big bucks that naturally accompanied that fame. But these days, there seems to be a whole lot of folks that are “Internet famous” because of blogging, podcasting, Twitter, flickr, etc. and yet need to ask their audience for donations in order to buy a better microphone. It’s a bizarre and ironic result of the ability for anyone and everyone to start producing content and gather an audience.

Sure, there’s a great deal of talk about how one can leverage fame into fortune with speaking gigs, book deals, TV appearances and jobs with Fortune 500 companies. But how many people have actually turned their fame into real dollars? Not many, simply because great content creators are often terrible marketers. You can say that great content will open doors all by itself, but in reality it just doesn’t work that way.

Twitter, blogs, podcasts and new media in general have created a wave of “famous” people – people with a “wealth” of attention and inbound links, but can’t pay their bills at the end of the month. Worse yet, some seem to think that if you do find a way to make your living successfully, you’ve “sold out” and are no longer true to your audience. That’s a shame and it needs to change.

The “link” and “attention” may be the currency of the Internet, but until someone can show me how to pay my mortgage by linking to my bank from my blog once a month, that just doesn’t fly with me.

There has always been a large divide between the Internet Marketing crowd who were the “evil capitalists” and the “socialist” bloggers who shamed anyone who dare make a living in their world. I must admit, I relate much better to the Internet Marketing crowd. I always have. The socialist bloggers who want to live in a commune for the purity of their work are completely alien to me.

Thankfully, more and more bloggers, podcasters and content creators are realizing that they don’t have to be ashamed of making a profit. In fact, they can be proud of the fact that they want to make A LOT of money while providing great content through eBooks, membership sites and subscription content. So when I saw that veteran bloggers Brian Clark, Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse and Sonia Simone started a membership site called The Third Tribe, I signed up.

Welcome to the dark side, guys – you’re going to love it.

I do still sense a tinge of guilt from them, though. The “Join” tab on their site answers the question, “Why not free?” and goes on to explain why they are charging for membership and the value of the content. It stops short of an apology, of course, but the very fact that they feel they need to justify it says there is still work to be done. Anyone who needs an explanation will never join…ever. You’re simply letting them know that you do indeed feel a little guilty for making money from your expertise.

My only advice – change the answer under “Why not free?” to simply: “If you have to ask, this site is not for you.”

I’m looking forward to their monthly content as a paying member.

Tim starting a membership site

A few years ago, Emile and I briefly worked on the idea of creating a “dating reputation” site, whereby you’d be able to search our engine for the name of your date and read comments left by people who had previously been on a date with that person. (I think someone did actually launch such a site, but a quick search of Google just a minute ago didn’t reveal anything.)

As you can imagine, there were a host of problems right from the start that made the site difficult to execute. The obvious issue of trying to ensure the comments you were viewing were for the right “John Smith” you had a date with that evening was just one of the many, many issues we tried to tackle. Privacy issues were another.

But there were also a number of interesting things we came across that we didn’t expect. When we floated the idea to several people in the digital identity industry as well as several people who study online ethics, one person’s comments struck us as odd. She stated that such a site should include the ability to control every piece of information about the person being commented on. In fact, she truly believed that everyone should have full control of their own reputation online. This made no sense to me. In the offline world, a person does not have control over their reputation. Sure, you can act in a way that improves your reputation, but ultimately your reputation is controlled by everyone who knows you. It’s something that can be tweaked and adjusted based on your own behavior, but full control? I don’t think so.

So why should the online world be any different? Just as a poor reputation can cause you to lose out on a job opportunity (or a date) in the offline world, the online world can have the same affect. With one exception – there is no central database of “reputation” that people in the offline world can go to. Prior to the world wide web, you had to connect to someone who knew a person to get their opinion – and then it was just one person’s opinion. Today, Google, Yahoo!, MSN and more offer a central database of information on people. And it is a database that doesn’t forget, forgive or die. That old friendship that soured five years ago could be forgotten as lives moved in different directions. But the nasty comment you left on your blog and later regretted – Google never forgets that thanks to the magic of caching – even if you delete it.

It would be interesting to have two types of search results that I could view when I was searching a person – what they wanted me to see, and what the search engine thought was the best overall representation of that person. When I search for John Doe, another button perhaps would be added to Google’s home page under the search box: Google Search, I’m Feeling Lucky, and….”John Doe’s Results”, where I see the results that John wants the world to see when they search on him.

In the end, the online world operates a lot like the offline world when it comes to reputation. Just like an offline jerk can begin to improve his reputation by being kinder to his fellow human beings, you can massage your online reputation by adding connections and content that pushes the past further into the past (and in this case, further down in the search engine results).

You do have control over your online reputation – to a point. An article by Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin is a good example of how a person can do just that.

By the way, we never launched the dating reputation site. In the end, we felt that unless we required everyone who left a comment on their date to use their verified real identity, it wouldn’t be of much use. Unless, of course, the goal was to ruin your date’s reputation.

People just weren’t ready to use their full identity online back then – they still aren’t actually. But as a content creator and website business owner, you don’t have a choice. I see so many content sites trying to sell something without a shred of information about who is behind it. I guarantee they don’t sell a thing. Nobody wants to buy from someone who doesn’t trust their customers enough to let them know who they are.

If you want to start a successful membership or subscription or content sales site of any kind, get used to the fact that people will know your name.

Tim online entrepreneurs, online reputation online identity, online reputation

Here’s Part 2 of my interview with membership site owner, Don McAllister of ScreenCastsOnline.com. Part 1 can be found here.

4 ways to watch/listen/read:

1) Listen to the audio here (click on the triangle play button):

2) Download the mp3 file here
3) Read the transcript (below the video)
4) Watch the video:

Transcript:

Tim – MemberCon.com: Now, you have a forum, which is really busy. I’m looking at it now. Are only members allowed to comment on the forum?

Don McAllister: No. No. Anyone can join. You have to become a member of the forum, but you don’t have to be a ScreenCastsOnline member to access the forum. I did initially set up a members’ only sort of area on the forum, but to be honest I’ve not really leveraged that very much. I don’t use it very much. I did in the early days. I sort of had conversations with the members in that particular forum, but I tend not to do much in there now. And to be honest, the forum itself is pretty much self-managing, which is a good thing. I did find a couple of people in the early days who were really, keen and frequently on the forum and they’ve done moderators. So in effect it self-runs, although it’s set up.

I mean I’ll drop in. I always go in every week and start a new thread to do with the show so that people can actually talk around, what I’ve discussed on that week’s show. I’m making extra information and, they can give comments about the show. So, that’s something that I regularly update as part of my workflow publishing the show. But everything else, the chit chat forums and their requests for help – it will be too difficult for me to actually manage that on a day-to-day basis. So, the moderators. And really the community of people on there is super. most of them are very knowledgeable. Everyone’s very helpful and it’s very friendly. There’s no spamming. There’s no aggression in the forums. it’s really what I feel to be a really safe place for a new Mac user to go to because they will be helped out. It’s a really valuable resource.

Tim – MemberCon.com: I like the idea. That’s interesting. Most people that start a membership site, they put the forum behind the wall as well. You’ve decided not to do that and in a way I can see that being a really nice marketing tool. You’ve got the members talking about how great the last video was. Maybe it’s enticed people to join up and at the same time, you haven’t had to worry about trying to get that momentum going on the forum?

Don McAllister: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, very much so. I mean the only thing I might – in retrospect what might be better would be to actually put the discussion on the show page itself. on the main site rather than over on the forum. And I think I need to use testimonials a bit more. Because, I get tons of really good feedback on the forum for every show and that sort of – it’s definitely not behind the wall, you know? Anyone can see that, but they have to go to the forum to see it. When I get time to redesign the site, I might actually bring that across and actually put that on the main page for each show.

Tim – MemberCon.com: Now, you’ve been creating content for awhile. You’ve got a ton of HD video already up there. Do you find yourself struggling at times to find out what the next show’s going to be or has it always been easy?

Don McAllister: It’s fairly easy because the Mac market, it’s a rapidly evolving market. There’s tons of software available. Apple themselves, bring updates out. What I’ve tried to do, it always has to be something that I’m interested in. I never do a tutorial on a bad product. If it’s a bad product, I just won’t cover it. So, again that goes into the recommendation engine type of concept as well. So, it always has to be something that I’m interested in or more importantly something I think that, the viewers would be interested in. And if I can sort of expose something that people don’t realize or is, hidden away the more the better. So, I like to sort of bring the best out in a particular application set in its context and that gives people value. They’re not just, learning the nuts and bolts. They can see how it works and where it would work and where it might fit in with what they do.

Yeah, I mean there are weeks when I sort of scratch my head when I’ve got, a choice of things that I want to do and I’m not quite sure which one to do next. But there’s a ton of stuff. And also, I get loads of suggestions from people asking me to do stuff. So I’ve got a list, as long as my arm of applications that people want me to cover. So, if ever I do run out, I’ve always got that to fall back on.

Tim – MemberCon.com: And video is really time intensive. Have you been able to systematize it a little bit to make it easier?

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Tim creating content, online entrepreneurs, selling content online, starting a membership site Don McAllister, mac podcast, ScreencastsOnline.com

Part 1 of 2

Don McAllister owns a successful membership site that started as a humble podcast back in 2005. He built his membership entirely from scratch and eventually quit his full-time job to focus on the membership site as a business, ScreenCastsOnline.com.

Don has a tremendous reputation within the Mac community and in this 2-part interview he talks about how he built his membership site and continues to attract a loyal audience for his weekly Mac tutorial videos. Don breaks all the “rules” when it comes to membership sites, including not auto-renewing his memberships. But he has a specific reason for not doing so and it works for him.

4 ways to watch/listen/read:

1) Listen to the audio here (click on the triangle play button):

2) Download the mp3 file here
3) Read the transcript (below the video)
4) Watch the video:

Transcript:

Tim – Membercon.com: Hello everybody. Thanks for joining me at MemberCon.com for another interview with a membership site owner. We’re going to be speaking with Don McAllister. His website is ScreenCastsOnline.com. I’ve known Don for a few years now ever since back when I owned the podcast in New Media Expo and Don was one of the early adaptor podcasters that I learned about early on probably back in 2005 or so. So, we’re going to talk to Don about how he turned his site into a membership site and some recent tips and tricks that he’s learned about attracting new members. So, Don thanks very much for joining me on the show today.

Don McAllister: No problem Tim. Nice to speak to you as always.

Tim – Membercon.com: Well, when did you first start your podcast?

Don McAllister: Well, the podcast actually started back in the summer of 2005 so it was quite an early podcast. It’s one of the first podcasts really that came out. And when I started it, it was, a hobby podcast basically. I was generating content and I’m just throwing it out there for free probably for three or four months. So, it was very much a passion of mine, you know? It’s all to do with the Mac. ScreenCastsOnline is a video tutorial site and each week I would create a video tutorial using a screen capture technology. So these will be screen casts, hence the word ScreenCastsOnline. And I basically take people through, using the Mac, using the latest Mac software, and using the operating system. Really just sort of helping people through, how to get the most out of the Mac. And, it was something I really enjoyed doing.

Tim – Membercon.com: And so your target audience is basically anybody with an Apple product or basically a Mac computer?

Don McAllister: Yeah. Yeah. Really, speaking, although it’s quite interesting in that I do get, Windows users as well who are interested to find out what all the fuss is about the Mac. I mean, I was sort of caught away as well at the time because, the Mac sort of gained in popularity significantly over the last three or four years especially over here in the UK and in Europe. So, I still get lots of people who aren’t Mac users, but still are interested in possibly switching across to the Mac and really just want to see what it’s all about. And they just can catch some of the free content and start to understand what it is that makes the Mac so attractive and why it draws so many people in and people enjoy using the Mac so much.

Tim – Membercon.com: So, a lot of our listeners are probably in the position you were in back in 2005. You’ve got free content you’re creating. You realized there’s an audience for this. At what point did you decide, “I can monetize this. I can actually turn this into a business?”

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Tim creating content, membership pricing, starting a membership site Don McAllister, membership site videos, ScreencastsOnline.com