(Edited to add: Don’t stop if you don’t want to. I’m not saying you can’t offer free things or that you’re bad if you do. I’m saying, if it isn’t working for you, if you’ve found that you’re attracting people to your list who get mad when you ask for a sale, maybe the “free stuff” strategy isn’t working for you. This is why you should stop – because it’s not working for you and it doesn’t make you happy. Once you get through my rant, below, I’ll give you some strategies for stopping…if you want to…and, also, reasons why there may still be a time and a season for free things. You get to decide your business model…just be sure it’s working for and, preferrably, not negatively impacting the community around you.) ❤
The last few days, an idea has been simmering and it keeps returning to my thoughts…”Why don’t we just stop giving things away for free?” Why don’t we just say, “Screw it, I work hard and deserve to get paid!” I mean, why do crochet designers give things away for free, anyway?
Just a note…this is a rambly, stream-of-consciousness post. So, if you hate that kind of thing, you should probably stop here. 😉
OK, now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at this and see if we can make some headway on this whole issue of free stuff.
How did this ‘giving away free stuff’ trend start anyway?
Honestly, I don’t know how it started. I’m guessing it is just the natural offshoot of a common strategy in the blogging world…give something away for free in order to drive traffic to your blog and encourage email signups.
OK, fine. That’s great. But what’s next?
What happens after you’ve trained everyone on your email list or everyone who visits your blog that you’re the place to go to get free stuff? How is a new designer/blogger supposed to make money? (ETA: bloggers who are monetized so great with this strategy because they can generate significant ad revenue from free patterns.)
Well, you’re supposed to sell to your list! Right? You’re supposed to try to sell patterns to the very list you just gave free patterns to….
How’s that working?
Here’s the trouble with giving away free stuff…
You teach people how to treat you. Plain and simple. You teach people how to treat you.
If a prospective customer’s first encounter with your blog or business is that you give them something for free without any indication that you (a) worked hard to create this thing, (b) will be charging them for this thing in the future, and (c) need to pay the bills, feed the fam, and buy nice things just like everyone else who runs a business…you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and an empty bank account.
If you’ve been designing or blogging for long and you’ve given away free things, you have, undoubtedly, encountered Entitled Elizabeth. She’s the one who asks you to create a video for your written pattern (for free). She complains when you charge more than $1 for future patterns. And she is furious if you send her a free pattern on a day when she can’t get to the yarn store. Oh, yes, Elizabeth is a gem.
The trouble is…you created Elizabeth…or Jeanne…or Helen…whatever her name is.
If we are to take 100% responsibility for everything that happens in our business, we need to own the fact that we (designer/bloggers) created the problem of a giant email list filled with Entitled Elizabeths.
I’m going to be proposing a solution, below, but let’s dig a little deeper into the benefits of offering freebies and why you might want to utilize this strategy in your business.
Why Crochet Designers Give Away Freebies
On any blog, freebies can look a number of ways – they might be free patterns, free resources, free vaults, traditional giveaways, or collabs with several designers. Wherever your imagination takes you, I’m sure it’s been done.
So…why? There may be any number of reasons but it usually comes down to some combination of getting traffic to an obscure blog, getting email signups, and/or networking with other designers (in the case of blog hops).
And it works…which is why so many people do it.
And as your blog grows, driving traffic becomes a sort of addiction…”Well, as long as I sign up for an ad network, I can still make money from ads, drive traffic, and it’ll all be cool.” For sure, it is cool…until Elizabeth complains that she can’t get her free pattern for all the ads!
A similar thing happens with email signups. “If I give away free things, I’ll get more email signups. Then, I can drive more traffic to my ads…I mean, my blog.”
This works, too. But in the end, the message starts to build “patterns are things we get for free”…kind of like the free dinner, I mean snacks, you get at Costco. All those freebies are training your email subscribers and blog visitors that patterns don’t hold value.
And, for sure, this is not the message we want to send.
Finally, blog hops. You know I love blog hops…but I always monetize them. In the past, I have had my participating designers contribute a pattern for free on the first day and then offer a bundle of patterns for sale for a reduced price. Again, though, I’m feeling more and more uncomfortable with this strategy. I’m not even sure about bundle sales anymore….don’t we deserve to be paid full-price for our designs?
It seems that we’ve gotten ourselves all tangled in a web that needs to be detangled and turned into yarn. LOL Always with the yarn. 🙂
So, what do we do now?
If you’re a designer who has found herself on the losing end of a freebie strategy, what should you do? (There are some who love this strategy and are thriving with it. If that’s you, this is not for you.)
Here’s my recommendation…stop with the freebies.
Stop.
Even just for a season. See, “There is a Season for Everything,” below.
But for now, this is what I’m suggesting:
For email lists:
- Don’t have a free pattern be your email list opt-in.
- Create an opt-in that attracts your ideal customer but is not a pattern.
- Add a tripwire to immediately follow your opt-in (train them to see you as a business).
- If you can, tag all subscribers who purchased your opt-in. These are your people.
- Also, tag all subscribers with a “freebie” tag when they have never purchased from you and delete this tag when they do make a purchase. This is typically possible with any email service provider’s automations.
- Do what you will with this information but I think it’s useful to know who is paying to stay on your list and who is a dead fish that you just happened to catch in your net.
For free patterns:
- Stop relying on free patterns to drive traffic.
- Learn about SEO. Learn to use Pinterest. Work on your photography. All of these will help you drive traffic to designs that you can, then, charge for.
- Start retraining your readers.
- Work on your copywriting…write posts that make your paid patterns irresistable.
- Learn how to use brand ambassadors to help you market your designs.
- Have a strategy for upselling your premium designs with photo tutorials, multiple sizes, charts, video tutorials – all the bonuses for premium PDFs and just have the pared down version for free.
- Look at ad revenue as an additional source of income, not THE source of income (if you want to). I understand some people set up their blogs to be only free patterns and their ad revenue sustains them. This is a valid business model but these are not who this post is addressing.
For blog hops:
- Start participating in blog hops that are highlighting paid designs rather than offering free patterns as a way to drive traffic.
- Participate in blog hops that also drive revenue rather than only traffic.
- Recognize that blog hops are more of a networking opportunity than a traffic-driving opportunity. They benefit the organizer the most – consider hosting one yourself for a specific reason like trying to reach a traffic goal in order to apply to an ad network.
- Don’t rely on blog hops as a regular strategy. Focus on your own blog and take on 2-3 blog hops a year.
- Start saying no.
There is a Season for Everything
You might be thinking, “Hey, Pam, I thought you told me that blog hops are great, opt-ins are awesome, and giving away free patterns is a valid strategy for getting my name out there!”
And I did tell you those things. But, here’s the rub…these strategies have a time, a season, and a reason. In my mind, they are meant to be tools used to reach a particular, specific goal all within a larger strategy of growing a profitable business. Profitable means you get paid.
So, what is the season?
For email opt-in freebies:
This is the only thing that is always in season, when it is monetized with a tripwire. Your tripwire does the job of moving a subscriber from window-shopper to customer. Keep opt-ins.
For free patterns:
Free patterns are a beneficial strategy for driving traffic to a new, unmonetized blog. Say, for a blog launch or rebrand.
They’re also great for a celebration, holiday, or other time that you just want to get some eyes on your business. Then, be sure to get those visitors to subscribe to your list and buy your tripwire.
Once a blog is monetized, free patterns are a helpful way of creating passive income through ad revenue. However, keep an eye on giving away too much. This is totally subjective. For me, if I were starting my blog again, I would either go with a 50:50 ratio or 75:25 with 75% of posts being for premium patterns. In this way, free patterns will be seen as more of a gift than an expectation.
For hosting a blog hop:
Hosting a blog hop is a great way to bolster traffic when you’re working toward meeting a pageview or sessions goal. If you’re trying to qualify for an ad network or meet a particular ad-income goal, blog hops are really helpful for this…but they are a heck of a lot of work. Monetizing your blog hop with a bundle makes the work much more worth it…but also ads yet more work.
I wouldn’t suggest hosting more than 1 or 2 blog hops a year for fear of burning out your subscribers and creating an expectation of free things and deep discounts. Also, blog hops are not for the faint of heart. Please be a seasoned blogger before taking on this leadership task.
For participating in a blog hop:
Participating in a blog hop is a great way to get your name out there when you’re just starting to blog. However, be aware of what you’re committing to and be sure you can meet those commitments including a tech edited, tested pattern, good photography, social media marketing, and meeting deadlines. I suggest participating in no more than 2-3 high-quality blog hops per year.
Conclusion
There it is. This is what’s been on my mind.
What do you think? How are you feeling about the whole “giving things away for free” thing?
Has this impacted your business at all? What has worked for you in trying to retrain your audience? I’d love to hear your thoughts, below!
PS Don’t think the irony of this subscribe form is lost on me. 😊
Price Your Products Like the Pros
Includes: the exact formula I use to price my products for maximum sales and profit while attracting my ideal customer.
Many crochet bloggers who have free patterns on their sites make 5 figures (or more) a year on the ads on their sites. So they are getting paid. Also, many of them offer the PDFs of their patterns for sale on Ravelry, Etsy, and/or other sites, and make a lot of money that way. It’s a business model that is quite lucrative for many. Just because it’s not your business model, or because you can’t make it work, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. You greatly overestimate the number of entitled people there are out there, or else your experience is quite different from most. If you educate your readers on how “free” isn’t really free, by letting them know you get paid from ads or when people buy the PDFs, or when people buy the linked products in the designs (affiliate money can be HUGE), then most of them don’t complain. Some will even come back to your site to purchase items from your links out of loyalty to you. They were going to spend that money anyway, and by using one of your affiliate links, it makes them feel good.
Before you go insulting the way others do business, make sure you really understand HOW they do business. This whole post sounds like either you tried some form of this business model and couldn’t make it work, or you feel threatened by people doing business this way and want to make them look bad.
Hi Jessie,
It’s evident I need to edit this post and make myself more clear. I’m not sure if you didn’t see or skipped over this part (There are some who love this strategy and are thriving with it. If that’s you, this is not for you.) but I am well-aware that there are many veteran bloggers who do fine offering only free patterns. However, to deny the fact that there are repercussions for the entire industry would be naive and short-sighted. I wrote this post in the heat of the moment after hearing from several new designer/bloggers who repeatedly get hate mail from entitled subscribers who are shaming them for charging for their patterns. I feel protective of my readers and students – they are expected (even by those who are ‘educated’) to offer free patterns but can’t monetize their blogs yet as they are new and don’t have the traffic and, then, they get shamed for charging. Just because this doesn’t happen to you or those in your circle doesn’t mean it isn’t happening to hundreds of designers every day. I’m sorry if my words came across as insulting. My intent was to simply state the fact that there have been and are ramifications from the fallout of the “everything is free..kind of” business model – I wasn’t calling anyone out or saying anyone has to stop. In fact, I believe (like I said in the post) that there is a time and place for free things and, if there is a solid strategy in place…cool. But new bloggers who feel that they HAVE to follow suit and just suck it up until they start making money (or bear the wrath of angry subscribers) need to hear that there are other ways of doing business. Ways that can be equally as lucrative without the same negative long-term impact. Then, they can choose which way best fits their goals for their business. I meant no offense and feel no threat and if you knew me you would know that making people look bad is not my jam. Wishing you only the best. Pam
Thank you, Pam.
I know that this is a bit of a sore spot for me, because so many times various friends and I have been told we are destroying the industry. There are so many people out there who want everyone to do things either the way it’s “always been done”, ignoring changes in the world, or exactly the way they do things. It’s infuriating when people don’t admit that there’s often several ways to make things work. It’s obvious that various ways work, because you and others are successful with your business model, and there are plenty of others who do well with a business model that includes “free” patterns and tutorials.
Thank you for seeing that there is more than one way to run a business in this industry. It’s never my intent to tell others how they have to do things. Unlike you, I’m not someone who teaches others to run a business, as that isn’t the part I enjoy the most. I stick to creating and educating about creating; because that is where MY expertise is and because that’s what makes me happy. It makes me so happy, that when I see a pin come through my tailwind tribe that says designers should stop making free patterns, I take it personally. I see that I took more offence then I should have, but it really is a sore spot for a lot of free pattern designers as we have been called out as “destroying the industry” quite publicly many times. Clearly that’s not happening, as plenty of people, yourself included, still have a successful business without free patterns.
I hope this helps you see why I was distressed by your words.
I wish you only the best as well, and though I don’t personally know you, I do know enough about you from others to know you are a kind person. That’s part of the reason I felt like I could tell you how your post read to me, though I admit to reading it through not-so-rose-colored glasses.
This is why we need one another…all of us, in the community. I had no idea that there had been any previous backlash or sore feelings on either side of this issue or I may have tempered my words or, at least, re-read the title of pin and acknowledged what it actually said rather than what I meant by that. I actually DO offer mostly free patterns through my other blog and know it’s a viable way to run a design business (once you’ve got some traffic and means of monetization) – I just see so many new bloggers getting heartbroken by a lack of growth when they do the same without knowing the strategy behind it. Would love to chat about this over coffee at the next conference we find outselves at. 💗
I would like that very much! 🙂