Membership Site Profile: Don McAllister of ScreencastsOnline.com – Part 1
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?”
creating content, membership pricing, starting a membership site
MemberCon is written by Tim & Emile Bourquin, brothers and owners of Ideas For Download. MemberCon.com is your front row seat to see what we've done that worked and failed in selling content online. Thankfully, we've been pretty successful but we promise to always show you the reality of building an online business.
