The other day I received an email from a Kate’s Take listener that started out like this:
How much content should you give away for free?
“I just discovered Kate’s Take and love it!”
As you can imagine, I was pretty stoked to see this email come through.
It continued, “I do have a question or topic that would be great to explore: How much content should you give away for free? I know there is a spectrum of opinion, but I would love Kate’s take.”
Okay, now this really got me fired up – and for a couple of reasons:
1. Someone was listening to my podcast, took the time to reach out to let me know they loved it, AND asked to hear my take on something he was struggling with. I could dive into so many things just off this reason alone, like the power of podcasting and how it helps you connect with your audience. This one email revealed to me something that at least one of my listeners is struggling with.
2. This also happened to be something I struggled with in the beginning, so it hit close to home hearing someone else ask about it. Before, I was always feeling like if you gave away too much free content to your audience, then you wouldn’t have anything left to sell to them.
3. When I received this message, I was literally in the process of writing an email that we would send out to Fire Nation on this exact same topic. In fact, the email subject line read: “How much free content should you give away?”
So I want to first take a second to give a huge shout out to John Alton for listening to Kate’s Take, for sending me an email, and for asking a really great question.
How much content should you give away for free?
I think a lot of online business owners struggle with knowing whether or not the free content they’re giving away to their audience is “too much.”
My feeling on the subject is that there is no such thing as “too much”. One of John’s favorite quotes is from Zig Ziglar, who said:
“You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
I think this quote says it all.
There is no such thing as “too much”
Here’s an actual example of something John just created here at EntrepreneurOnFire that I think exemplifies why we don’t think you could ever give away “too much” free content.
John just launched something called Free Podcast Course, and it’s a 15-day email series that walks you through each step of creating and launching your podcast, and each email comes with its own video tutorial.
It’s something we’re giving away for free, and there are probably a lot of people who would say this falls into the category of giving away “too much”.
In fact, after covering everything you need to know about creating and launching your podcast, John dives into the struggles and setbacks that hold most Podcasters back.
Finally, towards the end of the Free Podcast Course, John shares the top 5 ways to grow your podcast and the top 5 ways to monetize your Podcast.
But here’s the thing: John has a lot of knowledge to share about how to create, launch, grow and monetize your podcast – so why wouldn’t he share that with our audience?
Providing your audience with free, valuable content
Do you think that people would come to us as podcasting experts if we didn’t provide free value to them in some way?
Do you think people would be interested in joining Podcasters’ Paradise if we didn’t even share how they can get started with podcasting first?
When you can provide your audience with valuable content – when you can give it away to them for free – then there’s always a higher level of content (or additional benefits) they’ll be willing to pay for.
Because it’s not about giving away all of your content for free and never creating a viable business – that’s not what we mean when we say you can’t give away “too much” free content.
It’s about giving away valuable content for free that helps them solve a problem or pain point they have. In doing so, you’ll be building trust, authority and credibility with your audience, and they’ll be getting to know the type of value you have to offer.
When you’re thinking about the type of free, valuable content you should give away to your audience, make sure it makes sense. Is there a higher level of content, or some additional benefits you can offer them that they’ll pay for at some point?
If you can’t answer that question right now, then that’s okay, but it’s something to keep in mind when you’re creating free value for your audience.
Free Podcast Course Podcast
In addition, John has also been working hard to create a 20-episode podcast to accompany the Free Podcast Course email series. Sticking to the email series branding, we named it Free Podcast Course Podcast.
More free content?
Yep! …and we’re excited to be delivering this content in the audio format versus an email / video series for a number of reasons:
1. It’s evergreen, so we can point people to this free Podcast anytime and update the content easily if necessary.
2. It leverages the power of the directories, like Apple Podcasts. When people search for a Podcast course, this will be a free option at their fingertips.
3. It allows us to offer multiple calls to action to our other free and paid products.
So this is an example of both the power of giving away free content AND the power of leveraging multiple mediums, which allow you to share your content with a wider audience AND gain even more trust, authority and credibility in your industry and niche!
So what do you think? How much free content should you give away? Let us know in the comments section below!
