How to Decide Which eLearning Content Should Be Free vs Paid

Chris Badgett discusses how course designers may choose which e-learning materials should be paid for and which should be free in this episode. He emphasizes that while many producers are afraid to share too much information for free, free material is actually crucial for gaining a following, developing credibility, and creating authority.

This includes advanced lectures, certificates, coaching, community access, organized, step-by-step training programs, and effective templates or tools that enable students to accomplish a particular objective more quickly and with greater assistance.

Chris offers a straightforward test: if the information primarily raises awareness or teaches an idea, it may be free; but, if it aids in a major shift or the implementation of an entire system, it should be paid for. In general, he advises course designers to reserve the organized systems and results-oriented training for their premium paid products and to provide more worthwhile free content to expand their audience.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high-value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMS Cast. I’m Chris Badgett, and today we’re gonna be doing a solo episode on how to decide which of your e-learning content to make free versus paid. There’s a whole free versus paid dilemma when you’re creating an online course or a membership site, a coaching program, an online education company.

There’s this tension between what kind of free content or free products should I put out there versus premium content That’s only for my paying customers, students, or members. So there’s a fear of giving away too much for free. And, but it’s a super important one because it dramatically impacts your growth, your scale, your profitability, and your brand authority.

Essentially free content, fuels paid success. So that’s the way to think about it. If I had to guess, and you’re out there listening or watching, most people don’t give away enough for free. But there are some that give away too much and just put it all out there and can never monetize. So both problems are bad, but the more common problem.

Is people not giving away free stuff. They get a little too in their head about protecting their intellectual property, and a customer has to pay me money in order for me to help them at all kind of thing. That’s not the right mindset for growth and scale. So essentially the core principle is that you use free content to attract and then paid content to create the main transformation.

Or benefit. So free is about discovery building trust, audience building, and paid is about deeper outcomes and implementation or implementation support. That’s more direct. So there’s like also like within the ping bucket of e-learning content. There’s things that can be very cheap, and then there are things that can be very expensive.

So think about free content as creating awareness, low cost content, courses, memberships, coaching calls, whatever that create activation. But then the most expensive thing is actually what creates the transformation. So let’s. Talk about what makes really perfect free content. And to clarify what I mean by content on a learning management system, website is, could be a lot of things.

It’s lessons, it’s courses, it’s quizzes, it’s assignments, it’s memberships or course bundles, but. Around all this. There’s also just the broader content that goes on your content management system website, powered by WordPress and hopefully Lifter LMS. So we’re also talking about blog content.

We’re talking about YouTube channels, we’re talking about podcasts, social media pages on your site. All these things you can make a decision to make it free versus paid. So some perfect types of content for free would be things like intro introductory content or concepts frameworks, mindset industry education, some kind of quick win that you could put out there.

And the benefits of giving out this kind of intro concept, like thin content. Is that it’s good for your SEO. It’s good for YouTube and Podcast Discovery. It’s authority. It’s authority building, and it also puts the first thing you need out there in order to build your email list. So examples in e-learning context of this kind of free content would be like free mini courses like the Lifter, LMS, official Quick Start course.

You should definitely go check that out. You can do webinars, you can do tutorials, you can do blog posts, you can do podcast episodes. But let’s shift gears and so we talked about what should probably most likely be free. Let’s talk about what should almost always be paid. So paid content should focus on a structured outcome, so step-by-step implementation certification.

Cohorts or any kind of community, any kind of advanced mastery and extremely powerful templates, tools, and frameworks. Definitely like one-on-one in depth or even group coaching access to the instructor or coach. So people pay for results, speed, accountability, and structure. So when you’re delivering content that includes those things, this is premium content that you have and should likely it should likely be paid content.

And one way to test it is a transformation line test is, should I make this thing free or paid? Does it teach awareness or produce a transformation? If it’s learning something new, then it’s free. But if it’s becoming something new, then that’s should be paid content. Let’s also talk about the audience maturity factor.

So different audiences need different free versus paid mixes. So if there’s, if your content is for beginners they’re gonna need a lot more free content. And they also just have more capacity usually, or shelf space to make space for your courses and videos and podcasts and things like that.

But if you have a very mature or experienced learner. They’re gonna pay, they’re gonna be much more willing to pay faster for transformation that is quick and efficient. For example I’ve been in a software CEO coaching program before I went through a couple pieces of free content and then immediately signed up for a high ticket coaching program.

The person who led that, it’s called Dan Martel. You may have seen him on YouTube. But of all the software CEOs in there, they were yeah, very willing to pay. And many of us had seen the free content, but we quickly went to the paid education offer because we’re experienced learners in our space.

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Just to throw like some warnings of like how not to give away too much for free. So teaching an entire course and putting all the videos on YouTube, if it is not a free mini course, and particularly if it’s has a high result or transformation value you don’t wanna put that on YouTube and then wonder why nobody buys.

Cause you’ve already given away everything. One of the best ways to think about this more abstractly. Is a teaching framework. I learned from Evan Pagan back in the day, which is when you’re teaching something, you gotta appear, appeal to the different learning styles. And he calls them the why, what, how, and what if type of people.

Content consumption, practices. So like, why learners? They really need to know why, like, why do I need to know this.

What people, they’re like, show me the process. The how-to people are like, all right, show me step by step exactly what to do. Give me exercises, action items, and I will take those off.

Then the what if people need to learn about the opportunity cost of not taking action. What if they do this? What if they don’t do this? And so on. But one of the ways to think about it is giving away the why and the what is fine. But when you start giving away the how, now you’re going into the premium territory.

And I’m not saying never teach somebody for free how to do something. But once you get into, particularly in depth, high result value transformation and a how that should probably be paid content. Let’s talk about some practical examples for different niches in the course creator industry.

If I was doing a fitness course, some free content I might make are workouts. Tips just general education about certain topics. But my full like transformation training program is, that’s a paid thing. So I would have some free workouts and tips and idea content out there, mini courses, but my main zero to your first marathon.

Training course is a paid course. So if we were doing a marketing course, I might do some free content or free mini courses on certain strategies or just tips or hacks. But a complete marketing system, I’m gonna be charging for that. So that would the step-by-step paid market. Your business effectively training would be a paid offer, and if I was doing a language course.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you definitely wanna check out the Marcus Carter interview on LMS cast. He’s a language teacher. Incredible story. But for free you might, as a language instructor, you might want to give away some vocabulary lessons and just quick conversation exchanges and translations and tips, but a structured fluency path to learn, a language to go from zero to I speak this language now that’s gonna be a paid offer.

So just some course creator specific free content ideas. Don’t underestimate the power of a mini course. So it could even be a one lesson course or even a three lesson course. You can also do a challenge, which you can do, use the course structure in LMS and lifter LMS to create your challenge.

If it’s a five day challenge, you have a five lesson course. Each lesson is like day one, day two, day three, and so on. You can also do webinars and some people use lifter LMS to deliver. Free and paid webinars. You can do free lessons. So Lifter LMS has a free lesson feature where you can mark one lesson as free in a paid course, and then the public can access that without buying.

It’s actually really great marketing. You can also do email based courses. That’s another, way to just do a light version of your course to nurture somebody to becoming a paying customer. So a couple things to think about when doing free versus paid. Lifter LMS has all the infrastructure you’ll need to create a free to paid customer journey.

We’ve got, you have free courses, free lessons, inside paid courses. You have lead magnet courses. Membership previews, you could do like a free membership level. You could do course bundles. You could do upsells and order bumps. You could bundle in templates and other files using the lift LMS membership functionality.

So you can do all kinds of. Things with WordPress and lifter LMS to create whatever kind of free paid mix you’re going for. The key is creating the right mix for you and your audit audience. So my final advice for you as an education entrepreneur is to move the free line. Most people are not giving away enough for free.

Particularly if you’re at the beginning and you’re just getting started and you don’t have an established like email list or authority brand on social media or YouTube or wherever start doing the free content. ’cause that’s going to. Over time compound into organic marketing for you. And there’s nothing more motivated, motivating than watching people engage with and love your free content.

That’s very motivating and gives you direction on creating paid content. So give away as much free knowledge as you can. Move the free line to further than you’re comfortable with. Really focus on the transformation and the big results that you deliver. That’s what you’re selling. But use free content as your marketing engine and build a ladder of value.

You can see this at LifterLMS, like we have a free core plugin, and then we have add-ons and various bundles that we can add after that. So give away more than you’re comfortable giving away, and move that free line and create a value ladder of paid and free, and use lifter LMS and your WordPress site to create, to house all of this great content.

That’s it for this episode. We’ll catch you in the next one.

And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over@lifterlms.com slash gift. Go to lifter lms.com/gift. Keep learning. Keep taking action, and I’ll see you. In the next episode.

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