The Hidden Downside of Giving Away Too Much Value
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Hi Reader, Want to fix a toilet, cook a roast dinner, or start a blog? Google “How to…” Or YouTube it. The net gives away a lot of stuff we take for granted. When building my writing website, I invested hours and dollars in producing explainers, tutorials, guides, and how-to articles. Topics people type into Google or YouTube when they’re stuck. A lot of this content crushed it (traffic-wise). Some examples of high-traffic value posts? How to Use Scrivener for Blogging The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Book A Guide to Finding the Perfect Book Cover Designer This type of valuable content attracts traffic, readers, and viewers in droves. People love how-to content. They’ll bookmark, consume, read, and save it. They’ll even write in. Giving away value content worked out ok for me for a few years. All that juicy traffic translated into ad revenue from AdSense and YouTube. But I discovered a painful lesson about giving away so much freeking value. Create how-to-value content to grow an audience and go viral. But consumers of freely available value content rarely buy. Sure, they’ll follow your guides and tutorials but once they get what they want, they don’t need you anymore. Adios! What’s more… Some will even write in to complain or leave nasty comments because they couldn’t follow a step. The other day, a dude left a comment on a tutorial video I recorded—one thousands of other viewers successfully followed—to say, “Didn’t work.” Creating value content is kind of like putting on a buffet. Anyone and everyone will turn up. They’ll pick and choose, and some will leave a mess. So what should you do instead? If you want to sell products and earn more money, create content based on your insights. It’s more like fine dining. You won’t attract the masses; instead, it’ll appeal to a high-end audience. Explain what you did and what you learned. Describe your philosophy about the problem or topic. Then, save the best stuff for your paid products. You won’t get as much traffic or views, but this type of content converts more leads into clients. It’s more fun to create, and you’ll earn more, too. If you need help fixing your content strategy so you can add $10k to your business, reply “INSIGHT” to this email. Write on,
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