How to decide which content should be free vs paid
What’s the difference between free and paid educational content for your brand? And how do we decide how much to ‘give away’?
If you ever find yourself creating free educational style content in the form of blog posts, YouTube videos, or opt-in freebies/lead magnets for your audience, you may have wondered ‘am I giving away too much information for free’? And ‘what content should be held back for my paid products and services’?
When we create free content for our audiences, we of course want to provide value, because the whole point of this type of free content is to promote our expertise, but if you’ve ever worried about sharing too much, I’m breaking it down in this blog post!
Table of Contents
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What is the difference between free content vs paid content?
There are several places you may be creating content for in your business that makes it hard to decide what should go where! I like to think of your content & offers as being in a funnel that looks like this:
Free Content
Eg. Blog posts, YouTube videos, social content etc. that raises awareness of your brand and helps to position your business as an authority or expert on a certain topic, and therefore should contain valuable information for the reader. This is at the top of the funnel because it’s how people find you.
‘Lead Magnets’
But there are also content pieces such as ‘lead magnets’/’opt-in freebies’, where someone signs up with their email address and in exchange receives some extra free content from you, such as a PDF, mini ebook, worksheet or template, for example. This is the next step inside the funnel because people will often sign up for these after they’ve consumed your free content, and it brings them a step closer to purchasing from you.
DIY Offer
Now we come to your offers (products & services) in your business that include content that people should be paying for. If your content is contained within an online course or longer ebook, we call this a ‘DIY Offer’ because the customer consumes the content and then must take action themselves to get the desired outcome.
‘Done-With-You’ Offer
This is another paid offer where you might have a course, programme or service that includes accountability/feedback from you or your business to help the customer achieve a result. This is going to be more valuable and therefore more expensive than your ‘DIY Offers’.
‘Done-For-You’ Offer
The final tier of paid offerings is the ‘done-for-you’ - typically a service where you come in and achieve a result or outcome FOR your client. This will be the most expensive option.
Your business may have all of these steps in the funnel, or it may only have a couple, but viewing it like this is key to understanding what content should go where.
EXTRA RESOURCE: How to make money with your email list using funnels (FREE masterclass)
Why create free content at all?
You might be wondering what is the point of creating free educational / high value content for your audience, especially if you have paid offers and can make money from all this information!
I’m personally a huge fan of giving away a lot of free content because I believe it’s the best way to nurture and build trust with your audience. When people see all the free content you’re sharing, they’ll start to see you as the ‘go to’ expert on this topic, and so when they come to needing your product/service, they’ll immediately think of you.
You’re creating awareness of your expertise and positioning yourself as an authority, and in my experience, this is one of the most effective forms of marketing. Imagine your audience thinking ‘wow - if I’m getting this much value from their FREE content, imagine what I’ll get inside their course/programme/service/with their product!’.
Also if you’ve ever said “I’m really passionate about helping X type of customer, but they don’t have a budget for what I offer”, this is how you can still serve them; with free content!
What if I give too much away in my free content?
Are you worried that you’ll end up delivering so much value in your free educational content that you won’t have any left for your paid offers?
I will give you some examples of how to structure your free content so that you DON’T do this in a moment, but it’s important to also bear this in mind:
There are people in your audience who need to have made a financial commitment in order to make a mental commitment to get stuff done. EVEN if that means paying for a course or ebook containing information that they could have found for free on the web.
How many times have you read a blog post or watched a YouTube video containing really valuable information, but you never ended up actioning what you learned?
It happens all the time!
Then there are the people who will happily pay for CONVENIENCE. The convenience to have everything in one place so that they don’t have to spend hours sifting through info and looking for what’s relevant to them on the internet.
So even if you DO find yourself giving away tonnes of value for free, don’t underestimate the power of COMMITMENT and CONVENIENCE that people are happy to pay for.
What to cover in your free content (and what NOT to cover)
If you’re still worried about sharing too much, but you still want to make sure you’re providing great value in your free content, try structuring it using the below tips:
Teach the WHY & WHAT in your free content (and save the HOW for your paid offers)
See examples below:
This blog post you’re currently reading!
FREE CONTENT = WHY free content is great and WHAT you can share in your free content
HOLDING BACK FOR PAID CONTENT = HOW to actually create the content (this is something I teach in my courses on blogging, Pinterest, Instagram, email marketing etc)Dog trainer
FREE CONTENT = ‘WHY dogs can get aggression around food and WHAT to look out for’
PAID CONTENT = HOW to fix this behaviourHealth coach
FREE CONTENT = ‘WHY diet culture is bad for your health and WHAT to look out for’
PAID CONTENT = HOW to change your mindset around food
What are the things people need to know BEFORE working with you/buying your paid offer?
See examples below:
Brand designer,
FREE CONTENT = ‘How to get clear on your target audience’ (This IS sharing the ‘how’ of a topic, but it’s not something you help with in your paid offerings, so that’s okay.)
or ‘How to choose a name for your business’.Personal trainer
FREE CONTENT = ‘Which trainers are best for gym beginners’
or ‘Why warming up / cooling down is important’
What are the things people need to know AFTER working with your/buying your paid offers?
See examples below:
Brand designer example
FREE CONTENT = ‘How to launch your new brand’
or ‘How to apply your brand guidelines to your website’ (Notice how you can also use this content to promote your paid offer because it mentioned that as well.)Personal trainer
FREE CONTENT = ‘Tips for improving confidence in the gym on your own’
Include snippets from your paid offers
See examples below:
If I wanted to create valuable free content that also promotes my ‘Organised Business Blueprint’ course
FREE CONTENT = ‘How to set up a Podcast Editorial Trello Board’ (It’s just one board so I’m not sharing all of the other boards, process and systems we cover in that course - just one part.)Hypnotherapist
FREE CONTENT = ‘Simple exercise to combat anxiety’ (It’s valuable but just one exercise, so doesn’t share the other 8 exercises they cover in their paid offer or any personal, tailored coaching.)
What to give away in your ‘lead magnets’/’opt-in freebies’
But if you’re giving all that away as free content, and the ‘HOW’ and detailed steps are held back for your paid content, what on Earth do you use for lead magnets / sign up freebies?
For a valuable lead magnet (aka opt-in freebie… whatever you want to call it!), you could technically take all of the info inside your free content and turn it into a slightly more detailed version in a PDF, free video training, mini course or mini ebook, for example.
But the key here is really to deliver a ‘quick win’.
You want to include something that your audience can implement or action within (ideally) an hour of downloading this freebie, that gives them an instant result. Just something small!
That way, they can see for themselves the value and results you can deliver (again, prompting the question ‘if it’s THIS good, what will the paid stuff be like??’) with a quick turnaround, but because it’s something small, you’ll still have content in reserve for your paid offers.
This is why worksheets and templates are usually really effective as lead magnets, because people can take instant action on these.
FURTHER READING: How to deliver lead magnets & freebies to your audience
How your paid offers (products & services) are different
As I said before, when it comes to your paid offers, this is where you can go into much more detail and really take people through the ‘HOW’ and the step by step process to achieve specific results.
It might also be that you want to position this for a specific segment/niche of your audience, so that they value from the relevance of the information as well.
DIY Offers
Remember, with many (if not most!) online courses, people could technically stitch free content from the internet together to get all the information you’re providing. Yes, you can put your own spin on it, but most importantly you are providing COMMITMENT and CONVENIENCE for people who don’t have enough time to do that research on their own, and need some additional motivation.
DWY (Done-With-You) Offers
It’s likely this offer will be more expensive than a DIY offer, so again, you’re making people take a bigger commitment financially which is usually more motivating for them to help themselves get results. But here of course you are also providing accountability and potentially feedback and more tailored support that is much more valuable than any content - free or paid,
DFY (Done-For-You) Offers
As the most expensive type of offer, people will be getting all their value from having you get results for them - the ultimate form of convenience!
A final example to leave you with:
Imagine people who want to learn to play the piano. You can 100% find all the information and trainings online via YouTube videos and blog posts to learn how to play the piano for free.
Some people will learn the piano this way. They have the time to research and find the content, and they may not have a budget for any paid offer to assist with this.
However, there are some people who would rather have everything they need all in one place created by one expert piano teacher who they trust, than sift through the internet to find what they need. These people will buy a ‘DIY’ online course.
Then there are people who may not have the motivation to learn via a DIY online course, and they’d prefer to have tailored, 1:1 tutoring and support. These people will pay for a piano teacher (a DWY/DFY hybrid paid offer, I suppose!).
In most industries you will find these different tiers of people, which is why:
It can be really helpful to set up these different levels of offers (DIY, DWY, DFY) in your business for the different types of budgets and needs of your customers!
There’s really no need to worry about giving away too much for free!
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