Let me preface this by saying that I truly hate the term “value” — it’s so lazy and devoid of meaning. People throw it haphazardly without understanding what value means to their audience.

Spent days on a single piece of content? Sorry to break it to you but that doesn’t automatically mean it’s valuable to your audience.

For the sake of this issue, let’s assume we all know what our audience finds valuable. The question that plagues a lot of small business owners and creators is: how much of it should I offer for free? Should I paywall the rest?

The quick answer: offer all of it upfront, with minimal gating and no paywalling, if any. People don’t pay for information, they pay for something else.

Let’s unpack that.

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This could be a paid newsletter but…

The feedback I get most often for this newsletter is “I would have paid for this”. Yes, I’m bragging because I’m extremely proud of this. I even put it on ​my newsletter landing page​.

Full disclosure: that was my initial plan.

I let go of it because I realized that people don’t actually pay for information. Not even if they subscribe to a media outlet like The New York Times.

At the surface level, it looks like they do. But the truth is that all the big pieces of news you read on The NYT can be found elsewhere. Even if it’s a journalistic investigation, it will be re-published by other free outlets, so you can still access it without spending any money.

People pay for:

I know, there are exceptions to this but they are rare. In my field, at least, it’s never about the information per se.

Don’t get me wrong. It takes quite a bit of time to write this newsletter and I’d lie if I said I wouldn’t like to be paid for every issue. But I don’t think that’s the most lucrative way to go about it.

While there are a lot of thriving paid newsletters out there, I believe there are more lucrative ways to use your free content.

What should you give away for free and when?

If you offer services, give everything away for free.

People don’t pay you to teach them how to fix a problem, they pay you to fix it for them. It’s done for you, not do-it-yourself. No plumbers were ever out of a job because they published a video that teaches you how to fix a sink.

When you write about how you solve problems for your clients, you show you’re an expert — someone they’d be wise to pay. So give everything you know for free, it will serve you well.

What about the competition? Won’t they steal my resources if I give away all my processes for free?

Yes, they will. But they will never have the full picture. They won’t know how a specific process of yours fits in with everything else in your business. They will always have an incomplete puzzle.

Plus, there’s plenty of freely available information. Sure, some people might find your style better than what’s out there and they’d be willing to pay.

But they will ALWAYS, ALWAYS pay more for direct access to you, a different format, or working 1:1 with you.

What about digital products? People want to get paid for those

True but, again, it’s not about the information. It’s about the way it’s presented.

I bought courses and info products from many creators. The truth is the information inside was already freely available on their blogs, in their newsletters, even on social media.

I don’t feel duped, though.

Because I paid for:

  • Accountability (in communities)
  • Access to a network of peers (in communities)
  • A better format for that information (courses)
  • Actionable advice (good courses tell me how to apply the information; they don’t just share it with me)

Everything in my digital products has already been freely shared. I never, ever held back on information to include it in a paid product.

I’ll explain this product by product, starting from the most affordable one:

  1. You can learn how to write story-based emails from my newsletter. Or you can get pre-written emails and a method to come up with great subject lines of your own by spending only $19.99 on ​my launch sequence​.
  2. You can build your own template for a marketing strategy based on ​this issue​ but I’ve already done it for you and I added a ton of actionable how-tos, so it’s easy to use even if you’re not a strategist. And yes, there are plenty of free templates out there — but none of them has actionable advice and how-tos at every step.
  3. You can read what I teach in ​the Audience Accelerator course​ in my newsletters. In fact, all of them contain information that contributes to building a relevant audience, even if not all of them have “audience” in the title. It would take you roughly 1,100 minutes to go through all my newsletters + the time to decide how to apply the information. Or, you can spend 80 minutes watching the course and getting the condensed information plus action items you can implement immediately at every step.
  4. Everything else in ​my shop​ is a service. During a ​1:1 strategy​, for instance, you get personalized advice that applies directly to you, my “pre-show” research, and more. So the value is pretty clear there — the personalized advice.

So far, no one has complained that they can find the information in my paid products freely in my content.

Another reason not to paywall your informational content

There’s a famous quote that I don’t know whom to attribute to: “People pay with time or money, whichever they value less.”

The last part is what grinds my gears.

Sure, it can be about mindset. But oftentimes penny-pinchers aren’t cheapskates. They pinch those damn pennies because they have very few of them.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been there. I have. I read hundreds of blog posts to put together information that I would have had to pay for otherwise.

It’s not that I didn’t value my time or that I didn’t get that time is limited while money is theoretically unlimited. My money was very limited at the time. So I valued it more than my time.

Right now, I’m privileged. I can pay for a course or a consultant that gives me a solution in an hour, not a full month. I’m at this point partly because other people didn’t paywall their most valuable information. They allowed me to consume it freely.

I’m a strong believer in paying it forward and not paywalling my content is one of my ways of doing it.

Since I started this newsletter, I received hundreds of replies and messages telling me how I’ve made a difference for my subscribers. Three different messages explicitly said “I wish I could support you by buying something but I don’t have the money right now.”

I consider this one of my biggest success stories — I am able to pay it forward.

There’s no KPI to measure this but, if paying it forward is not your thing, consider the “you always meet people twice” adage. You never know when someone who can’t pay you today gets their big break and is in a position to become your biggest client.

On the fence about paywalling?

It’s not an easy decision, I know. After all, you’re running a business, so you need cashflow.

A few litmus tests you can run to decide if your information should be paywalled or offered freely:

  • Does it do more than inform people? For instance, does it include actionable items, recipes, and so on? → Yes? Paywall it!
  • It is information they can’t find anywhere else, like an in-depth research report, your own proprietary method of doing something? → Yes? Paywall it!
  • Does the format help them use the information better? For instance, video courses versus long blog posts? → Yes? Paywall it!
  • Is it something that can get tangible results for your buyers? (Test this — don’t assume!) → Yes? Paywall it!

Think of it in terms of grocery stores versus restaurants. You go to grocery stores to buy the ingredients to make your own food. The user experience matters but it’s not pivotal. The quality of the ingredients matters the most.

In restaurants, they both matter — the food (the information) and the user experience (service, cleanliness, and so on).

Can you deliver both? If so, paywall the damn thing!

If they pay, they pay attention

Ultimately, paywalling your assets is also a way to get people to truly consume them. They are more likely to do so if they paid for access rather than read it in a free newsletter or blog post.

In the end, it’s all about knowing your audience and what they are willing to pay for and consume.