How much should you give away?
If your whole business is built on people paying you to do something for them, then HOW much you should give away for free? I get this question often, and I wanted to address it head on today.
How much should you give away?
Want to listen to the podcast version of this blog post? I’ve got you covered!
I give away a lot for free.
People tend to ask me this question because I give SO much content away for free. If you’re just getting started with content creation, knowing the line between what to hold close to the chest versus give away is tough. Let’s talk about how much you should give away and how to find that line in your business.
If you’re worried or afraid about whether you’re giving too much away, you’ve already failed at the mission.
The truth here is that you should give EVERYTHING away for free. So if you’re worried about giving away too much… you aren’t.
As a content creator, your job is to give it all away. Whether you’re a service-based business or a product-based business, you should be showing the behind the scenes and give it all away.
I have a local friend who tells me that they won’t show the behind-the-scenes in their store because they’re afraid someone will copy what they do. And any sort of fear around copycats or giving too much away is SUCH a limiting mindset.
Take that fear out and let yourself roam free! Don’t stick with your limiting beliefs.
You should be giving it ALL away.
If you haven’t read Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, it talks a lot about this concept and it’s an easy read.
If you’re giving a lot away, then people will inevitably pay you for your services.
Let’s say you’re a yoga instructor and you do free yoga classes on Instagram live. But, you also offer paid classes. If you think that doing those free classes mean that people won’t come to your paid ones, then you’re wrong.
How can I give it all away and still make money?
- You can never, ever, actually give it all away for free!
Keeping the yoga class example here, you won’t go live four times a week on Instagram at the exact same time and do a free class. But you are going to get them hooked on your yoga class with a quick 10 minute flow, and tell them they can get it every day with your paid classes.
The same thing is true for course creators! If you think that giving people a ton of information for free will stop them from buying from you, it won’t. I did a whole podcast episode about my Instagram Reels experiment where I walked you through a lot of info for free. But because of the length of a podcast episode, I still couldn’t give you everything. My Insta Sales School course that includes that case study is HOURS long.
Even if I took everything I talked about in the Insta Sales School course and created free content on YouTube about it… Well, first it would take me MONTHS to actually publish it into the world because of my constraints.
2. The way that the existing, free platforms are structured
A lot of my content on YouTube is search-driven. And there are a LOT of tips about Instagram that people wouldn’t necessarily search for, but that they NEED to know to succeed on the platform. So that would probably lead them to buy something from me.
Someone might get recommended part 10 and not even know how to find parts 1 through 9. Bam, they need your paid content.
3. The platforms that exist just aren’t built for the same level of depth as paid content does.
You can do your best to give everything away, and the constraints and restrictions set up on the platforms won’t allow you to actually give it all away.
So, long story short… you SHOULD give it all away, but because of constraints, you’ll never actually give it all away.
Giving everything away for free will definitely lead to people wanting to know how they can pay you. And in their minds, even if they don’t realize it, they’re thinking about how incredible your paid content is.
“Wow… if they just gave me that much for free, I can’t even IMAGINE what they’re going to teach me in this class. I can’t imagine what their service will do for me.”
You should give it all away because people have to know, like, and trust you to buy from you.
If people don’t know, like, and trust you, then they’re not buying a single thing that you sell. And one of the best and quickest ways to build that know, like, and trust element is to show off that you DO know what you’re talking about through free content.
I sold my YouTube Rockstars course when I had less than 10,000 subscribers on YouTube. So I didn’t have the vanity metrics to say that I was a YouTube expert. INSTEAD, I showed people that I knew what I was talking about through my free content.
If I can help you for free and I tell you that I have this thing that will help you do it even more… then you’re ready to buy it.
If you’re holding back, then you’re actually hurting yourself, your sales, and your audience.
Your audience is less likely to know, like, and trust you. You won’t be seen as an expert as quickly. And you’re going to make less sales, because you haven’t really proven to people that they should buy what you’re selling!
When you give it all away, you’re never going to give it all out in order.
People PAY to get all of the information they need in the order that they need it in. You could literally give away everything on your YouTube channel for free, but out of order, and I PROMISE you that people would pay to get that information in a step-by-step plan.
Actually, you could give it away for free in order and STILL get people to buy from you… because there’s always more.
With free content, you can only hit surface-level stuff. With paid content, you can dive DEEPER.
If I teach you how to tag your YouTube videos, then GREAT, I just taught you a big piece of YouTube strategy. But I didn’t teach you how to figure out the keywords that you need to use. Or how to incorporate those in your description and title.
Take my podcast for example. I’ve been recording it weekly for almost 2 years now, and I’ve never had a guest on my podcast, ever. That's more than 100 episodes of just me telling you strategy tips… and I still have more to share.
So if you're worried that you might be giving it all away, don't be. You SHOULD give it all away. Because truthfully, you never really can.
