Free vs Paid Content

For experienced marketers, the question of free versus paid content is often a pondering point throughout their online experience. So, which is better (for your bottom line, that is)?

Physical Products

Are you (or do you intend on) selling anything other than your content? If so, it’s safe to say that the two monetization models don’t necessarily blend well, particularly with subscription-based services. You can sell an e-book along with a physical product, for example, but if your primary content model entails a premium membership to regular posts (published through a gated blog, for example), charging a monthly amount for it may not go so well with your audience if your bread & butter is a physical good.

It’s taken even large brands years to realize that free content (associated with their goods, either discussing their development or related uses, etc) drives traffic. And with it being organic, or in this case informative (rather than a flat-out sales pitch), we can anticipate that potential & existing customers may more likely be enticed to buy.

Social Media

While major search engines still drive most of the free traffic, mainly through editorial listings (whether the content is authentic or AI-powered), social networks are decent channels for highlighting shareable articles, audios/podcasts, videos, and apps.

Keep in mind that we’re referring to content originally displayed on a publisher’s (i.e., your) website… as opposed to publishing & re-directing it exclusively through social media (i.e., from one business page to another, generally yours ultimately).

Here, we can easily see that the content should remain free, publicly available on your site, and as a persuasive graphic (with some descriptive, equally persuasive text) or short video (with a simple, catchy title) on social media. The latter should obviously be free as well. People tend not to want to pay for content when they’re already on a platform engulfed with it, regardless of how good it might be.

Digital Courses

Speaking of high-value, quality content — courses (paid courses, that is) continue to remain a viable sell on the Internet. Naturally, this type of digital good (otherwise known as an e-good [or egood]) can be packaged as a one-off product (in the form of an elaborate PDF, often seen with modern e-books [or ebooks])… but it can also encompass a complete membership site (or area of your website).

In the latter, established publishers (i.e., seasoned marketers) will more often than not continue to update and/or add content regularly, sometimes offering smaller freebies and even entire courses alongside the original course. It’s a decent in-between, bridging the gap between charging customers for something you developed with great care, yet still giving something back to existing clients virtually free, no pun intended.

Can you deliver in-depth courses through your site completely free of charge? Of course you can. Is it suggested? Not really. A person (let alone an enterprise) can still create/publish free, publicly available content (through a blog, or standard static pages, etc) — but when you don’t have the resources to sell anything other than your words (and possibly not enough traffic to rely on affiliate [program] sales), courses (via direct marketing) provide a legitimate means of generating income.