Lessons, Tips and Tricks for Selling Online Content

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?

Don McAllister: Not really. It’s still probably, the most intensive part of the workflow. I mean that each show now is never normally less than 30 minutes. Sometimes it goes up to 45 minutes. And, it’s sort of compressed into the latter half of the week. So I’ll try and sort of do the recording on a Wednesday and try and do the editing on a Thursday and then do all the postproduction stuff on Friday to get it published.

I mean obviously, I’m becoming faster as I get more experience and I’m now faster at editing. And there are templates I use and there are a set of tools within the editing suite that I use now that I’m quite familiar with. So, the process is speeding up just because of the experience I’m gaining.

And there’s a lot of automation as it regards to the encoding side of it, which is another big part of video. once you’ve corrected your video, you’ve then got to do the encoding and the transcoding and then the uploading. So, again there is some automation there whereby I’ll take a master file and drop it on an icon and that will generate the four different versions of the show that I need and I can just, let that go ahead. So, yes and no. It’s certainly not fully automated but there are levels of automation in there that speed the process up.

And investments in the kits as well. I took the decision early on. And again, one of the reasons for going full time is that, the show pays for my Mac addition. So it’s easy for me to justify buying the latest and greatest Mac gear and, certain specialized stuff that I need. special video, encoding cards and stuff and that is all tax deductible and it’s part of a legitimate business expense. So, that’s good as well.

Tim – MemberCon.com: Do you use iMovie still to do the video editing?

Don McAllister: No. No. No. I’ve moved on to – well I actually use a couple of applications. Now, I use one called ScreenFlow, which is the thing I use to capture. Now ScreenFlow itself does have an editability and that’s sort of optimized for a screen capture. You know that’s a total reason for being glued. It’s a screen capture and an editing tool. But because I’ve been doing this for awhile I actually use Final Cut Pro and, I’m familiar Final Cut Pro and there are some aspects of ScreenFlow which are limiting for what I normally do. So, I capture in ScreenFlow and then actually I do most of the well all of the editing in Final Cut Pro and use Motion as well for graphics and titles and stuff. So, yeah they’re the current main tools that I use.

Tim – MemberCon.com: How about affiliates? I know you’ve got a tab up there for them? Are they a big proportion, a big portion of your memberships or have you not kind of gone down that road?

Don McAllister: Not really. Well, it was something that I thought I’d sort of put forward. But it’s certainly not a big deal as far as I’m concerned, you know? I get the occasional sale come in from the affiliates. I see the clicks coming through, etc. But no it hasn’t been a significant part of the business to be honest, although it’s nice to have it. It’s good that people, enjoy the show and support the show that they would want to become affiliates. So in that respect it’s good. But it certainly doesn’t generate a ton of revenue to be honest.

Tim – MemberCon.com: You’ve mentioned maybe even off recording that you do a lot of marketing just by word mouth? People hear about it and they hear about how good the content is. Are there outside of word of mouth or do you upload portions of the premium videos to YouTube? What kinds of things are you doing to try and get some exposure?

Don McAllister: Well, to be honest I sort of haven’t pushed very hard in sort of traditional advertising. I’ve obtained the occasional sale on the site now and again from an affiliate. But most of it is word of mouth. And the good thing with it being a Mac podcast is there is a large Mac podcast community and, that’s sort of cross promotion. Well, not so much cross promotion to be honest because I don’t really promote other Mac podcasts on ScreenCastsOnline, although I do participate in a few Mac podcasts other than ScreenCastsOnline. So, the Mac Jewelry, I do the Mac Roundtable as well and these are also like pundit type, panelist type shows whereby we discuss what’s going on in the Mac world. And, that’s been a really great way of getting, the brand out, the ScreenCastsOnline and myself as well.

Now, it’s only really in the past six months when I’ve started to take it more seriously sort of promoting sort of myself. Because it was always that, I hid behind the camera and I didn’t really appear on screen. The screen casts were just the desk top. But it’s only really been the last six months when I’ve come from behind the camera. So, now I’ve set up a YouTube channel and I do sort of like video comments pieces to camera. So you can actually see me in the studio and I’ll do one or two sort of video comments every week where I just either talk about the case, or I talk about the show or I talk about what’s going on within the Mac world.

And on there as well, I’ve set up playlists for hints and tips for the Mac so these small two or three-minute clips. You know just a little small hidden thought tip on what’s going on to the Mac. I’ve put the tray list for the member shows as well and I do like a 90-second to 2-minute trailer just describing what that particular member show is all about. I put them up there as well so people can see them. So, a little of that, but it hasn’t been within the past six months that I’ve actually started to look at that seriously.

Tim – MemberCon.com: One of the things you touched on was doing comments about other things outside of just the business. And I noticed in your Twitter account, you do a ton of tweets and you’ve kind of combined your individual persona with the business and do talk about both. That’s been a struggle for me. I’m not sure whether or not my website should have its own Twitter account and I personally should have a Twitter account but you seem to have blended it pretty well.

Don McAllister: Yeah. I mean I have got a separate Twitter account, I’ve got a ScreenCastsOnline Facebook fan page, but I still can’t get scripts with Facebook. It still does nothing for me. I hate going on to the site and I really don’t. I don’t know Facebook really is more for personal use than business use to be honest. But I sort of followed the trend that, you should have a Facebook presence so I have a Facebook fan page.

What I tend to do is I have a Twitter business account. Sort of an actually online Twitter account and I’ve linked that to the Facebook page. So whenever a new show comes out I’ll go to Facebook and post the details of the show and that will then post across to Twitter on the ScreenCastsOnline account, which has relatively few followers. I think 500 or 600 followers something like that.

But my main account, my Don McAllister account on Twitter, yeah, you know? I mean most days it just sits on the corner on my screen. I monitor it. I will tweet away about sort of what I’m doing that day about nothing too personal to be honest. It’s maybe all to do with Mac. there’s a great bunch of people on there that are all Mac heads and we converse on Twitter. And then I will, throw in the occasional business related one, but never blatantly. I’ll post about my daily blog posts ’cause again I have a blog, TheMacScreeCastGuy.com and I try and do at least one blog post a day. I can’t always keep to that to be honest. But if I do produce a blog post I’ll post that in the Twitter stream. So, I would think the ratio is probably, even up to like 30, useful normal conversational tweets to like one sort of business related tweet really. The ratio is very low for, trying to promote myself or the business. It’s maybe all – I’m just a normal Twitter user that tweets away about the daily activities.

Tim – MemberCon.com: Nice. I notice you have some free tutorials on your site as well. Have you come up with a good ratio of free stuff I’m going to put out to promote the premium stuff versus…?

Don McAllister: Yeah.

Tim – MemberCon.com: too much and having too much free?

Don McAllister: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s again and that’s something that sort of evolved over time. I mean initially it was completely free. I felt bad taking away free content and replacing it with paid content. So, in the early days, the very first take was – it probably goes back to the $25 for six months. That was only for one member show every month. So it was one member show and three free shows. The member show that was restricted to members plus it was in HD so I sort of removed the HD side from the free shows. And I also introduced sort of chapter markings as well to make the shows easier to navigate for members.

And then I went from, the one member show to three free shows a month to alternate weeks. So, one week would be a member show the next week will be a free show. And that lasted probably for the past two or three years. Up until when I sort of took the decision, not longer after blog world actually was sort, blog world I was sort of thinking about it then and I decided that as from January I was going to completely flip it and do one free show a month to three member shows and also increase the price. That’s when I put the price up to the $57 for three months. So, at the moment it’s one member show to three free shows.

Again no negative feedback at all from the people who subscribe to the free shows. What I did do though is before I flipped it was to do a crazy 50% off offer for November. So that anybody who’d been with me for awhile yet was still sitting on the fence, you know I sort of said, “January we’re moving. We’re going to three member shows and one free show plus the price is going up. But, if you’re on the free feed and you want to join know now, you can get in and we’ll do a 50% offer.” And, that did get a significant number of people in that month. all the people who probably would never have paid the full price even before I put the price up and changed it jumped on board at that point. So I had quite a big spike in the membership numbers for November to get those sort of stragglers on board before I put the price up.

Tim – MemberCon.com: So, used it as a sales tool. I like that idea. Now, I know if it was me because, I have this attention disorder I’m sure that after about two or three years I’m itching to try and replicate this somewhere else. You’ve stayed really focused on this, which has always been a challenge for me and just to grow these numbers. Have you considered trying to duplicate this success on maybe a different membership site?

Don McAllister: Not really because it’s so time consuming. it really does take well all of the working weekend and longer. I mean I always say that when I left my IT job really it was sort of like retiring because I was stopping that to do what I enjoyed. But I’ve actually worked hardest since I left my full-time job than I ever had. Because it’s not just the ScreenCastsOnline, there are other podcasts that I take part in. There’s the whole running the membership site, doing the websites, all the ancillary stuff. I mean my wife has come on board now and she does a lot of the admin stuff now to help out in that respect. But there are always things to do. my time is pretty much occupied. There’s no real free space for me to branch out, which in some respect is a bad thing. But I want to focus on the show and deliver value in it.

I think when you are delivering a service like this on the net, you have to be consistent. attention to detail is paramount. You have to deliver a good product and, that’s the way people remain loyal to you. So, I can’t really see me freeing myself to do too much outside of what I’m doing now.

Again the other think process which is a time consumer that I still do myself, I suppose I could look at, getting an intern in to take some of that off my hands. But again, I see the editing process possibly, the creative process. Because, it’s never one take. There are always things that I either fluff or I need to retake. And, there’s a judgment joining the editing process when, of the best way, which take to keep and how to tie it together. So that people don’t notice there’s been a fluff. And, I enjoy that bit quite a lot. So, I might sort of try and free myself off for other projects, but certainly not at the minute.

Tim – MemberCon.com: Alright well listeners and viewers of this, check out Don’s website. It’s ScreenCastsOneline.com. We’ll put the link right here in the transcripts as well on the top above the video. Don thanks very much for taking the time to talk to us today and more success for you going forward here.

Don McAllister: Thanks a lot a Tim. It’s been good to talk to you.

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