Lessons, Tips and Tricks for Selling Online Content

A dude standing next to a Ferrari that may or may not be his. The guy on a lounge chair with a laptop on his lap and the beach in the background.

There’s a “line” somewhere that everyone has in their mind. It’s a line in your head that, when crossed, feels like you’ve done something unethical or dishonest. The line is different for everyone. For some people, the line stops just short of outright fraud. (“As long as I give them something for their money, no matter how pathetic, I feel OK.”)

For some bloggers, the line is crossed the moment something is sold. That’s fine for them – to each his own. But we’re not willing to have our “line” be the poverty line either.

People begin discussing “the line” right about the time they decide to put a lightbox on their site to capture email addresses to grow their list. 5 years ago that might have been where our line started. Except we weren’t making money with our content sites.

I admit that our “line” has moved a little over the years. We don’t know where where it will be 5 years from now, but one thing is for sure – “the line” will never be moved beyond the point where we feel uncomfortable giving out our website address to friends or family.

I also know that trapping people on our sites so that they can’t figure out how to leave is crossing our line. Some internet marketers have become so desperate that confusing their visitors when they try to leave is their only option. Do people really say to themselves, “Damn, I can’t figure out how to leave this website! I guess I’ll buy something…” That seems a stretch.

Then again, I can never figure out who’s buying the percocet and viagra from the spammers – but someone must be since they keep spamming away.

I visited a site this morning selling some Google AdWords “secret” that I literally couldn’t leave. I’m a pretty web-savvy guy so when even I get fooled into clicking a “Cancel” button, I’m surprised. I had to close the entire browser to get away.

These types of pop-up box tactics or sites that refresh to a different page with a different product for sale are well beyond my “line”:

Where’s your line? Let us know in the comments…

Tim legal issues, online entrepreneurs, starting a membership site integrity in internet marketing, internet marketing ethics

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?

Read more…

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

Ryan Lee is the Continuity King.

After I wrote that sentence I thought, “ContinuityKing.com is a great domain name – wonder who owns it?” Ryan Lee does.

I called Ryan to do a quick interview about his thoughts on membership sites, growing an online business with integrity, and dealing with the time pressures of being an online entrepreneur.

As usual, four different ways to listen, watch or read:

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

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

Transcript:

MemberCon.com: Hi, everybody Tim Bourquin here from MemberCon. I’m going to talk with Ryan Lee today and a lot of you probably know of ryanlee.com. He’s a pretty much a leader in terms of membership sites and giving advice and education and coaching for membership sites, but I met Ryan at Blog World Expo really briefly. Ryan thanks very much for joining me on the phone today?

Ryan Lee: I’m excited to be here.

MemberCon.com: I watch your videos and of course you notice right away that the domain is your name, you’re branding yourself as the product, was that a conscious decision because I always think down the road of selling it and branding yourself as a person is tougher to sell while, but you make more money while you own the site. Was it a conscious decision to kind of make it your brand?

Ryan Lee: Yeah. And you know what it’s a great question because for years I fought it. I fought branding myself because of your exact reasons like it’s really hard to exit, but for me this is one component of my business is something I’m going to do forever. Like I’m Ryan Lee, just like Donald Trump, he’s Donald Trump, Martha Stewart is Martha Stewart. She’s not going to sell Martha’s. She’s always going to be doing whatever she’s doing, but what I’ve also done is build a lot of other business that aren’t depended on my name. I own a lot of membership sites. I own one called strengthcoach.com. My own software called Fitness Generator, a Nutrition Generator, and I own a lot of different properties that are not necessarily tied into my name. So Ryan Lee is kind of the umbrella for a lot of my Internet marketing stuff, but there’s still a ton of things that I own that are not my name. Like I have a new magazine coming out, it’s going to be called Dot Com Lifestyle and I could have called it like I could have been kind of an egomaniac and called it Ryan Lee Magazine or something like that, but I wanted to build a separate kind of brand, and I set up some separate corporations for some of these and separate merchant accounts. So if I were to sell those, it’s easy to just slice off little pieces of it.

MemberCon.com: Yeah. I’m glad you brought up about the magazine again too because I want to talk to you about that. You’ve got the recurring revenue report, which is a printed newsletter and a CD.

Ryan Lee: Correct.

MemberCon.com: And then you talk about doing an actual print magazine now?

Ryan Lee: Right. In case, I don’t have enough on my plate.

MemberCon.com: OK, you’re right, exactly, exactly. But I’m curious about that decision because of course prints are having a tough time right now and Internet is all about making it easy for digital downloads and things like that, did you find that people are signing up more for membership stuff these days if they get something physical on mail?

Read more…

Tim legal issues, online entrepreneurs, starting a membership site, subscription pricing continuity income, membership sites, recurring revenue, Ryan Lee

I was watching World News Tonight (ABC national evening news) and was surprised to see a membership site featured as the final story.

The site is RethinkAutism.com and features videos for parents of Autistic children. Touted as a much cheaper alternative to hiring experts to work with children who suffer from autism, members pay $100 per month to watch videos of experts working with children of autism so that they can do the same exercises and tasks seen in the videos themselves.

It’s an excellent example of how $100 per month can be downright cheap compared to alternatives and a great example of a niche continuity income website business. The reporter practically sells the service by remarking what a great value it is.

Here is the link to watch the video clip: http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=9070241

Congratulations to RethinkAutism.com for the publicity – I’m sure they have a few more members this evening! And to their public relations team that no doubt pitched the story to ABC News – nice work!

Tim creating content, online entrepreneurs, selling content online, site marketing continuity income, passive income, recurring revenue