When Giving Advice Away for Free Diminishes Its Value
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I love the blogosphere - social media in general, really. Almost no where else in existence do people so openly and widely share amazing information with each other for free.
Think about it for a minute. How many of us have become better writers because of Copyblogger or blogging from Problogger?
Then there’s SEO. There are so many really good SEO blogs that you could learn the trade and become a professional SEO specialist without any other resources that what you learn in the SEO blogs. At the very least, you can avert hiring an SEO specialist by reading the most popular SEO blog posts and applying their advice.
Should this great content always be free? I don’t think so, myself. I think free can dimish the value of excellent information and effective advice.
I ran into this problem just this past week as I was working on a blog post that was titled 97 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website.
I had spent hours coming up with all these great ideas of how to drive more traffic to your website. Some of them were obvious such as engaging in social networks and publishing articles. Others were not so well know like…
And there begins our crux. You see, if I give away some of best secrets of how I’ve driven traffic to my own website over the years, doesn’t it diminish its value? You may think differently, but I think it does. I think it cheapens the information when there’s not some sort of exchange.
What I ended up doing is taking my list of website traffic generating ideas and moved it offline. I deleted the blog post and figured I just use the resource with my clients. But the list kept growing. Soon I was over 130 than 150 and now I’ve listed more than 180 viable ways to drive traffic to your website.
Obviously there’s tons of value in what I’ve put together. So much that I didn’t want to reserve it only for my clients. Yet publishing it on my blog openly just makes it another in a huge pile of lists that is quickly forgottten for the next set of lists that front page Digg.
So I decided a different route. I created a teleclass around the my traffic generating ideas called 97 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website. And I’m doing the first one next Tuesday for a limited audience of 60 people. And to add value, I’ve created a booklet that not only lists each of the more than 180 techniques for driving traffic to your site, but I’ve addd my commentary to each one with tips so you can use any of them.
To go further, I’m spending 90 minutes in a dialogue with the people on the call so that we can go even deeper into the issues of getting more traffic to your website. Recording the call and offering it to the participants as a download completes the package (there is some space left for you, by the way).
So now I have something that’s taken a good amount of my time and has immense value to me that I can offer as a value proposition to others. The teleclass participants get the value of all my work and the dialogue with me so that they can find the traffic generation methods that best fit them and their business.
In turn, everyone wins. I gain from my efforts. The content wins because it’s valued for the work put into it. And each participant wins by getting the help they need in driving traffic to their site.
This has been a tricky post to write. Sure, I’m promoting a course I’ve designed - no doubt, won’t deny it. And if you’d like to take the teleclass, register before the spots fill up.
At the same time, I’ve wanted to use my experience as the beginning of a discussion around the value of free content. That’s the bottomline point of this post. Are we wasting some of our best content, best ideas and best advice by publishing it free on our blogs all the time? Or is some content valuable enough that it needs to be exchanged for? That’s all a sale is - an exchange.
What do you think?
Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Kelly McCausey is an internet marketer, blog publisher, podcaster
and web business coach. Host of 
Bill Parlaman is owner of 
If you don’t put a value on your time why should anyone else.
Dawud, great post and great points
I have sat down to write a blog post only to realize what I have is better suited to a free report that I could offer in exchange for someone joining my mailing list.
I’ve also ended up with small ebooks that I’ve sold for a price.
As a web publisher I evaluate my ideas and topics and ask myself where it can be best used. Blog post? Distributed Article? Viral freebie? Low cost product? Bonus for higher priced product? New product for my membership site?
Some folks have content that I would have used for all of the above on their blogs… and maybe they have monetized it just as well there, but in most cases I would guess not.
Thanks for starting this discussion
I look forward to hearing other people’s thoughts.
Kelly McCauseys last blog post..Vote For Your Favorite WAHM Blogs!
You’ve brought up some good points. On one hand, I agree with you. Quality information is definitely valuable, no doubt about it. And I’m willing to pay for stuff that is a good deal (aka: I’m going to make more from the information I’ve gained than I’m going to spend). No doubt about it.
On the other hand, it depends on how you’ve chosen to monetize your work. If you sell advertising, then “writing for free” really isn’t free, is it? You are selling your visitors’ eyeballs. So yes, they don’t have to pay for the content. But they do view your ads and therefore contribute to your success in that way.
I think you’ve come up with a grand solution: add value that your users can’t get by perusing an article, while still providing excellent content to your readers.
Sarah Brays last blog post..The Five Biggest Things I’ve Learned from My Blog Failures
@bob - For you, how does that balance with the value the market puts on it?
@Kelly - That’s awesome to hear. I think it’s so important to define what you’re willing to give away and what you need an exchange for. This is a huge business lesson on so many levels.
Dawud Miracles last blog post..Are You Being Misled By How Much Traffic Your Website Is Getting?
In a bit of a similar analogy, I cam across a website of a person selling photos online while looking for pricing suggestions.
The advice they gave was to price higher than you’d expect. Or at least, don’t price low.
His comment was that they had originally been selling photo prints at $5 each and while he got lots of hits, he got no buys.
He then raised the price to $25 each and while fewer people were interested, he started getting sales.
There is a perceived value when something has more cost.
Josh Millers last blog post..Just One Reason for Consumer Decline
You’ve made some good points. It’s a fine line isn’t it? I wrote a post about this too, but you’ve put it so succinctly.
I think some people don’t realize they can look at what they’ve written in that way - as virtual real estate they can do whatever they want with and even do more than just one thing with.
As long as I don’t automatically follow the crowd with “moving the free line”, I can decide in each situation which works best for me and my subscribers.
Thanks,
Peggy
Peggy Barons last blog post..PLR Articles>Opt-In Report>Growing List
I think this is a great post.
I have had people feel quite content to take hours or days of my time, ask me to travel across the country for a lunch and brag to people about how my advice helps them personally and professionally …..
…. but when you say, “given that we have established that this has value, perhaps you should compensate me for my time”, suddenly they move on to the next free source.
It’s quite ok to ask for compensation … otherwise you will go broke creating opportunities for everyone else.
Some free loss leader stuff is fine … and pro bono stuff to good causes is excellent ….
But knowledge has value and should be compensated for!