Subscription sites – ScreenCastsOnline.com

I’m doing research on community-sites that have a paying subscription element as a part of our re-think for ShowMeDo. I found some nice data on ScreenCastsOnline and I figured I’d share it.

Don McAllister (UK) is the voice behind ScreenCastsOnline – he provides weekly screencasts to teach viewers about Mac software and web sites.

Don was interviewed by Robert Scoble in December 2006, he mentions that:

  • He started in August 2005 to help family members learn the Mac
  • He went full-time in March 2006
  • In December 2006 he had 1,000 paying members
  • He has 11-12k free listeners subscribing each week

Does anyone know of more recent information on the growth of Don’s site? I’d be particularly interested in more recent paying-subscriber figures so I could get an idea of how these things can grow.

According to the Extras page the subscription is $25 for 6 months. For that you get access to high-definition versions of the screencasts and the full back-catalog (costing $20 as a one-time setup fee). Casual followers get access to 3/4 of the content in a lower-definition format.

Don promises 1 new episode every week, the content is typically about Mac software or related websites. Episodes appear to be 30 minutes long. Apparently 21-25k screencasts are downloaded weekly (March 2007) – this is about 3* our own (according to our mostPopular page).

Christmas special – Don is offering a 10% reduction in the subscription during December.