The #1 Difference Between Your Free Content & Your Paid Course

All right, so Maggie, thanks for letting me record this. You have a. You're a cake decorator. Amazing. I don't know if you can show us anything when you come on to the video. And you also teach cake painting to home bakers. Now what happens is you are getting some good traction with your free content on Instagram, for example, and on YouTube. Now it's more complex to get people to pay for a course, but you're also wondering, what's the difference? Tell me if I'm right. What's the difference between your free content and what the content of your paid courses should be? Is that right?

Yes.

Yeah. And cool. You got your, you got your cake in the background. Just one. When you want to show everybody, are these actual cakes or are they wax cakes?

They're dummy cakes. So it's Styrofoam, but I coat it with chocolate cream so it lasts pretty much ears. So I can always show it?

Yeah, you can always show it when you're in your videos.

Yeah, yeah. And also for kick clients, also like perspective. Get them excited, but also give them perspective about the sizes that they can get.

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, okay, so here's a simple way of thinking about it and then let me know if you think this is helpful and we can talk through this for, for your sponsor specific business. A course, online course, a curriculum course is basically information that is complex and comprehensive. Comprehensive about a particular topic. Of course. The, the challenge with knowledge is that I, I say knowledge is, is like an accordion, right? Like, like if you, if you, you could teach cake painting in, you know, 10 minutes, you know, in, in a one minute YouTube short, I'm sure you could, you could could, right, say something about cake painting in a one minute YouTube short. It could also become a, you know, one year course because there's so much to it. And so for any one area that you're teaching a course on, for that one area, you are teaching the most comprehensive information. And, and it's probably complex, otherwise they could, they would have done it already. Yeah. If it wasn't complex or advanced, they would have done it already. So with the free content, however, free content, I think of it as, it's easy rather than complex and advanced. Free content is easy to do or to consume. Okay. Easy to do or to con and to consume. And it's also a sample, it's a sample of what's in what kind of stuff you talk about in your, in your course. It could be a sample. You don't have to give a sample but you, you, you know, for people who say, well, I like to teach how to in my free content, it's not my ideal situation, but if you want to teach how to, that's fine. Just don't make it as complex and comprehensive as your, your, your paid course. Another way of thinking about free is that it is a, it is philosophical. Okay, so philosophical meaning you're, you're diagnosing, you're diagnosing the root cause of why your, your potential student hasn't been able to do cake painting as well as you're teaching them in the course. So you're helping them understand, oh, no wonder I haven't been able to do this is what they should walk away from the free contents. That's, that makes sense why I haven't been able to do this because I don't have these tools or I don't have this particular skill or I haven't practiced as much and I don't have the right steps that you're, you know, that I should learn. And how should I learn it? Well, good thing I have my cake painting course or something like that. Yeah. So anyway, let me pause here and see if any of that makes sense or is helpful.

Yeah, it is helpful a lot of times because, you know, I took other course before. I don't know if you're like, for example, Amy Porterfield, like.

Yes.

You know, like how to create digital course, blah, blah, and her courses are.

A lot more expensive than mine.

Right, yes.

Yeah.

And it's sort of like, okay, you get people with this, you know, free workshop or training and, and then in that workshop or training, then you're selling them your, your full product, your course.

Right, right. That's one model. Yeah. Right. Notice I don't do that. I, I used to, I should say I used to sell courses via webinars, but then I haven't done that for 10 years. I now sell courses simply by selling them, simply by making them available because I know I have an audience and you have a bigger audience than me. Okay. For, you know, for those who, who, who want to, you know, you could later on below, I would say similar.

I think your audience is more engaged.

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, but, but, yeah, but you have, you have tens of thousands of people following you and you know, there's enough people. I mean, so, so let me ask you this then. When was the last time you launched a course?

Last year, probably.

Okay, all right. Last year. And tell me how that went.

So that was when I tried to, you know, this idea of Having a free training webinar sort of thing. So I put the free cake smoothing course so people have a hard time to smooth the cake like a pro. So it's like part of making a cake. Right. So it's like this. But I want to empower them because a lot of beginner have a problem with that.

They.

Yes, they can't. The crumbs are everywhere and all that.

Yes.

So I did create that for free. I show up live, there's some prerecorded session. I showed them the key components of how to make the smooth cake with ease. And I. And at that time, I also give them access to step by step of the free smoothing course.

Yes, yes, yes.

Prior to that, the pretty buttercream course that I tried to sell, only I just posted on Instagram and a few trusted people, sort of like people that already know me, that already know my stuff. So I sold three.

How much was it? How much price?

The beginning, like beta version, it was 75.

Okay. Yeah. Very affordable. Okay.

And then 150.

Yeah.

So two. Two people bought it. So I guess I have probably four.

Okay, okay.

275 and then 250.

Right. And then the, the other, the smoothing course or the one that you sold on the free webinar, how much was that?

I think it was one. Maybe, maybe I increased it a little bit more. So like 190.

Okay. So it's not, it's not exact. It's not huge. Huge prices. However, every market has a different sort of expectation or willingness to pay.

Right.

And my guess, my guess is that your market is more mass market than mine.

Yes.

My guess is there are more bakers than there are solopreneurs or whatever. And so because your market's more mass market, it means you. Your strategy has to be bigger audience, smaller prices.

Yeah, I think so. Especially for beginner. Ish.

Yes.

Decorating.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. Now if you're, if you're teaching like a. How to create a cake decorating business type, of course it makes sense that it would be hundreds of dollars or maybe even more. But if it's just like a hobbyist, right. Like, like whenever we're teaching hobbyists, they want to pay $20 for a course, you know, $30 for a course.

Right. I could see. I think because, because of that, I was thinking like, okay, I did pay for like calligraphy beginner course that I. It's sort of like similar model. I took her free calligraphy training, like the basic strokes, and then she has like this bundle thing and then it's like 90 something or maybe a little bit like 145 or something, you know.

So I thought, okay, that's a, that's a good example. But the thing about pricing is that obviously pricing matters a lot and the problem is we don't know what prices we should be charging unless we actually test it out. Now what you could do is you could ask them through market discovery calls or polling, what have they paid for when it comes to courses? Yeah, that would be interesting. I don't know if you've asked them the question, but it would be, it would, I think it would be interesting to know for sure. It would be helpful to know what have you bought in terms of online courses and if they could give you links or they give you enough information where you can go check out the prices that then you know for sure what their current buying expectations are. And if you can match your product with their buying expectation, they're much more likely to say yes. So I don't know what their buying expectation is right now.

Right. I think, I haven't, I haven't really asked that. But thinking about me myself in the past, because there are a lot of YouTube, right. Like decorating video. So why. Right. Like if I could get this information.

Exactly. This is why every market is different. Like you're competing with Xero as the course and it's freely available on YouTube now. So, so the question of why is very important. I think you need to, you need to explain that in your content and in your, in your, in your course, you know, sales page to say this is not the same as any other course decorating. And you know that ideally, ideally your content is unique enough compared to what's out there. They're like, oh yeah, I like Maggie style. I like Maggie style. And so when you sell the course, it would be, have to be the Maggie style cake decorating course. Then it's not a, you can't, you're a product, you're a market of one. Or sorry, you're, you're, you're, you're the best in the world because you are, you are the only one in the world to sell this, you know?

Yeah. So can you say something a little bit specific about the webinar version that you did in the past and then why you did abandon it? And then. Yeah, because I'm thinking to sort of like, okay, you know what I felt like, because that's how I felt about the free, even the free buttercream recipe that I did.

Yes.

When I had 30 people on my email list, I felt like this sucks. No one wanted like yeah, blah blah, blah.

Right.

And then I decided, you know what, maybe people just don't know about it. Let me try to make a real sort of a taster of.

Yes.

What it is actually how easy it is. And like you mentioned easy. How easy it is.

Yeah.

So I decided to make a real.

That's great. Yeah.

A sample of. I literally make a video and then like showing them like this is buttercream, this is condensed milk.

Yes.

Forget about the flying powder sugar because that's going to make everything harder. And even, even though I laying down the steps like and then here's the link if you want written down recipe and people did still I thought I was like people are not going to like I already show it in the video but somehow people still wanted the written recipe.

Good. That's a good sign. Yeah.

But like, yeah, notice that how initially I was doubting and then like I'm going to try it again. See, you know, is it the thing or is it just people don't know about it well enough or messaging. Right.

Like, well always I, you know, I, I talk about the art framework for, for marketing and I say that, you know, I mean I not only say it, I believe it. This is how I think about my own marketing is that there's these three factors. There's alignment, there's reach and there's trust There. The more your course offer product service is aligned with their buying wants and expectations. The easy it is to, the easier it is to sell. So alignment is one, one notch you can go up. Reach of course, the more people you're reaching about any product or service, the more, even if it's, even if it's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny percent buying rate, you reach a million people, you're going to still get know at least 10 sales or 100 sales or whatever. Even if it's tiny, tiny, you know, percentage of people who are likely to buy. And then trust of course is like, oh my gosh, I like Maggie's way the best. Yeah, there's nothing, there's nothing else like, like online like the way the Maggie does it. High trust, whatever you're going to sell. Maggie, I, you know, I've been following your content. Of course I'm going to buy it. So huge trust it will also make, make a huge difference. And like these are three levers we can pull. And so you're talking about reach. Of course reach. You know, as you keep growing your audience, maybe you run ads or whatever. Yes, you're going to make more sales. What I'm talking about right now is alignment is of course, since you're in the market discovery course, you're in the Create Aligned Offers course. Really focus on the alignment piece. And with alignment, you don't need to, you don't need a huge audience. Right. The higher the alignment, the greater the conversion rate for any product or service. I mean, you could have an email list of 50 people and then 45 people buy because it's so dang aligned with what those 50 people want. So this is why I'm so, so this is why I'm really interested to know. Okay, your, your current audience, what would they say is, are the courses they bought? And then you, you want to see what the price points are so you can know. Oh, okay. It's not just a price point. You want to see what course they bought so you can say how involved were the courses and then what are the price points? So I can shape my skills to the level of complexity and price of that course of the courses they've been buying. Then they don't have to change their behavior. They know that price is what I'm used to. And this kind of complexity of the course, that's what I'm used to. I'm of course going to buy from you, too. And, and, and then, and then to your question about why I abandoned webinar selling, I was honestly very good at it. I was very good at it. I remember one webinar, a single webinar, I sold $75,000 of my courses. So I'm very good at selling on webinars. I can, I can convince people to buy, but why I stopped doing it was making a lot of money. Why I stopped doing it was because it wasn't authentic. Because I know why. I know why I'm there on the webinar. I'm there. I'm not, not really. To give you free training. Not really. I mean, yeah, I could say, oh, yeah, I'm there. What a wonderful free training George is providing. No, no, I'm trying to get you to pay me money. That's the, the webinar. If it's going to sell well. If it's going to sell well. The webinar can't just be a generous, you know, generous from the heart. Here's my free training. Oh, we have five minutes left. Let me tell you about my course. Not going to stop.

That's what I was doing.

Right. So, so the way that the webinar selling has to work is the whole thing has to be holistic, designed as a clever sales pitch where throughout the thing, you're dropping hints about the paid thing and that you're really creating a gap of understanding. By the time the end of webinar, they're like, oh, my gosh, I see the map now. I didn't believe the map before. Now I believe the map. And now who's going to take me there? Like, there's no details to the map. Oh, my God. This is why you should buy my thing. And by the way, for the, for the first, for the next 10 of you who sign up for the course, you're going to get this amazing bonus that will change your life and that you will find nowhere else. And this is the only time I'm giving it, you know, but it has to be done by the end of the day. I did all of that and more. I was very good at it. And I was like, every time I did it, I'm like, okay, I made money. But it felt just, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this for my living. It's not, it's not an honest living. And so I stopped doing it. And I, I said, okay, I'm going to just create content calmly but consistently, and then I'm going to sell calmly and consistently. So this is why I asked you in the beginning, when was the last time you sold a course because of, if you don't sell often enough, you will not have enough market data. And also not just market data, because every time I, because I, I've, I've been launching something like 8 to 10, 8 to 12 courses a year for, since 2017, when I started 2016, I think I started doing courses. No, maybe 2014, I started doing courses very actively. Again, I've been doing about 812 courses a year. Launches. And so every time I launch, I get better understanding of what, what they want to buy and what they don't want to buy. Of course, I do market discovery to, to try to find out beforehand, but I still have to launch it to see humbly. Okay, anyone? Anyone? Anyone? And sometimes it sells very poorly and sometimes it sells way better than I expected. Usually when I launch, let's say 10 courses a year, like I did last year and the year before, when I sell 10 courses a year, two of them do really, really well. I mean, really, two of them do enough sales where I don't have to sell anything else for the rest of the year. In terms of courses, I Still have my membership program and that, that brings some money in. But in terms of my courses, I'm like, if I don't sell, if I sell a single course this year, I'm happy. Two of them, only two. But the other. And then maybe two of them or three of them are complete flops. I'm like, there are four people on the call, what the heck is going on? Right? Two or three of them are like that. And then the others are like, that's okay, did okay. And every time I do that, I not only learn more from them, but more important also, as importantly, I give my audience the, the right expectation that this is what I sell consistently. Because if you create a bunch of free content and then you only occasionally sell, they are surprised.

That's what I am doing, I think. And what is your definition of launch?

Because yeah, my definition of launch is very gentle.

Courageously put like one email and it's kind of like last minute also instead of just like maybe one post and then like one email.

Yes, which is fine. I do two. That's the extent of my launches is two posts. Two posts everywhere on social media that I'm on. And then those same two posts also go out as emails. This is very different from the normal Amy Porter field launch or anybody else's launch. They're going to teach you 17 emails. So. And none of us like it. I don't like it. I don't like sending 17 emails and my recipients don't like receiving them unless the emails are really entertaining and they have value. But still everyone knows the shoe is about to drop. So this is why I, this is why to, to post two emails. The first post for your course could be like pre launch sale. Everyone likes a sale. Say hey, I'm about to launch my cake, cake decorating course. But I'm still getting the sales page together, the web page together, describing it. If you're in, if you're in now before I get that together, you get a discount. Here it is, here's the special link. And it goes right to the shopping cart. It goes right to the order form. There's no pretty pictures or anything that they just goes right there and they get a 25 to 33 discount. Something like, I mean it's up to you. You can go 50 discount. So up to you. And then the next message is, hey, the course starts next week. Remember, courses are always better if they're, if they're live. Live sessions is what people want. Much more likely to buy it.

I noticed that I really like your life like this? Kind of.

Yes.

Do you notice that? Is that. Have you always been doing this or is that kind of a shift at some point? No, no, I've always been doing it. Seems like people want live.

Yeah, I, I've. Okay, that's not true. I have sold evergreen courses in the past that just as is and it always didn't sell as well. I mean, live courses for me anyway. And I hear from this from other people, it sells usually like 50 to 300% more than an evergreen course launch. It sells way more. And so I'm just like, I'm just gonna do it live. I still, I still have my, my other recorded courses on my website, but they get way fewer sales than when it's launched live, so.

I see. And for example, I'm curious about. Sorry if it's too much like. For example, like you have this Create align offers.

Yes.

And then. So you have. For those people who buy, they have that life sort of session and then, yeah, the next time you launch it, it's gonna be. They have that lifetime access to that life version.

They have lifetime access to the old version now. Because here's the thing. I only relaunch courses now because I have so many courses. I only reached on relaunch them every four years, believe it or not. So I don't feel bad that you bought my, you know, Facebook ads course in 2020. Well, I retaught it in 2023. You're gonna. Now what I do is I give them a discount link for upgrade and they're very grateful. They're like, oh, wonderful, it's half price off. You know, I. And they'd like vaguely. Oh yeah, I remember I took this like two years ago or four years ago or whatever, and now I can get an update for half price off. Okay, cool. And not just an update, but I also get access to the Q and A calls for. For two more months. And so it's, there's, there's live. There's live access to me to troubleshoot everything, you know, they, that they, that they have. So this is why. Yeah, that's what I've done. I know people like. And the reason I do. Look, I know the people like Amy Porterfield or others might give like lifetime updates for free, but that's because they charge $2,000 for a course. I charge 200. So I don't, I don't feel bad at all that I'm asking someone to pay a hundred dollars for an upgrade that also gets two months live access to Me for troubleshooting their issues. So I, I think that's more than fair. Now, if someone bought, if someone bought an old course, right. If someone bought an old course within the last three months, maybe also six months, I, I stretch it sometimes last three to six months, maybe nine months. But I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm usually quite generous. I feel like if someone bought a course, I'd be like, you know what? I'm just going to give you free access to the new version because you'd only bought it a few months ago. So. Yeah.

Interesting. I see.

Yeah. Is this helpful? Like, do you, do you feel more hopefully empowered to launch your course soon?

So I guess I'm still stuck. Okay. Should I still do the free smoothing course or is it really.

No, I don't think. I mean, basically this. Okay. If some, if a course is worth doing for free, it's worth doing paid. This is very important. And if a course is worth doing free, it's worth doing paid. Now, it could be a lower price. Sure, that's fine. You were going to charge zero for it. It's worth $20 for it. Easy, $25. Whatever. It's, it's worth it. If it's not worth paying for, in your opinion, then it should just be free content and not a course. Because a free course, I mean, unless you have a huge audience, most people are not going to go through it. Right? Like, maybe not nobody will go through it because, oh, I got it for free. Wonderful. On to the next free thing that I can get. There's no accountability. There's no motivation. Not, no, but there's low motivation. Sure, you're always going to get a few people doing it, but it's not what people sell you on. Oh, you, you launch a free course and then they'll upgrade to the paid thing. You have to have a huge audience like Amy Porterfield for that to work for people like us. With merely 35, 000 Instagram followers, you know, you'll get three people who actually complete the free course and then zero, you know, one, one third of one person decides to upgrade, which is nobody, you know. So it's just, it's, it's worth just selling. Plus it'll, it'll feel more valuable. Oh, well, not just feel more valuable, it's literally has more value because you put a price to it and they'll be much more likely to go through something they paid $20 for than they paid zero for. Yeah.

Hey, George, I have a question on that. I don't want to interrupt, but on that topic, specifically in terms of a free course. Now, I know lead magnets are kind of, you know, Yes. A touchy subject, but as I'm looking at like doing a, a five day email mini course.

Okay, that's okay. I'm glad you, I'm glad you clarified that. An email mini course is so easy to consume and I've been part of it myself and I've appreciated the ones that have done well, the ones that are. So what I'm talking about is like, wonderful. You just, you just signed up for my free course. Here's my teachable log. Here's your teachable login, and here are five modules. I'm like, all right. And onto my YouTube videos. I'd rather watch YouTube videos. You know what I mean? Like, it's just too complex. But if I'm getting the email anyway and I can directly consume information, the value in the email, and it's nicely written out where it's not overwhelming, you know, one sentence, paragraphs, one sentence, paragraphs. You know, it's so easy to read and go through. I'm like, I just got value. Amazing.

I can't wait for the next, like short video content.

It's not too long.

It's on one particular subject. Like, this is, this is going to be like.

And that's. And it's really interesting. It's really, it's like, makes them think outside the box. It's not something generic open. They're like, wow, that made me think differently. I can't wait for tomorrow's.

And it represents one piece of like the larger signature course that I'm offering. And it's specific of value, like for. Specific to digital decluttering.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. As long as it's by the end of the course. The email, the free email course. It's not like, all right, now go ahead and do your two hour digital decluttering project. Good luck. Right. Then they're like, yeah, it's too much now, right?

Yeah, exactly. Just little pieces. Something that they can get a taste.

And feel for or do something so quick in five minutes. Then like, what Wesley said worked, what Maggie said, I just did it. Amazing. Okay. I can't wait. Anything beyond a few minutes. Yeah, I don't, I don't like that. Yeah.

And just to give like kind of a taste through the video content, you know, of my vibe and, you know, my, my energy signature and all.

Okay, cool.

I didn't mean to step on anything, Maggie. I Don't mean to interrupt.

Yeah, no, thank you.

Yeah. So thanks George. You're welcome. So Maggie, I'm hoping this helps you to make a better decision. But in short, I encourage you to launch the paid course and well, I encourage you to do some market discovery finding out what courses they bought and what the price points and the complexity of the courses they bought are. I think that's very important information. But then I also encourage you to launch your course as soon as possible. Even, even if you don't want to do the market discovery right now, launch the course because, and do it lightly just like you've already done. Don't put too much effort into it, into the launch and just see because part of the, part of market discovery is launching as well, you know, so.

And like for example this create a line offers course, you know, pre sell for 50 discount and then like when do you decide to like oh okay. Like when is your full offer?

Yeah, I, I, I, my launch is always the same. The course starts in two weeks today. Two weeks before the course starts is the pre launch discount. And then one week before the course starts my sales page is ready. It has graphics now. It has nicely laid out formatting, formatted text and the price is normal. Congratulations. Just because you waited a week you have to pay the normal price which I think is still a great deal. Don't you all agree? Right, yeah, of course. You have to make the normal price still to still valuable still like oh yeah, that's a good deal. It's just that the pre launch price is even better and so no, that's how I do it. I raise the price to normal when the sales page is ready which is one week before the course starts. Yeah. So now some people might argue with me and say no, no, the pre launch price should go all the way up until the day the course is beginning. I understand that too. That makes sense too. So I just, that's just been my, my rhythm right now is one week pre launch, one week normal, you know, so well Maggie, I, I hope this helps. Really, I really do and I look forward to. And we have another Q and A tomorrow if you want to think about this overnight and come back with some more questions.

Yeah, okay. Thank you.

Thank you.