Most Freebies Suck. Here's How to Create One That Actually Helps You Grow Your Email List.
By someone who launched 15+ freebies and made all possible mistakes.
I’ve been a digital entrepreneur and content creator for six years, and if I had to choose one lesson to pass on to new creators, it’d be this: Build your email list.
I made a lot of mistakes on this journey.
It took me more than two years to figure out how to properly monetize my work.
I created hundreds of pieces of content that flopped. And I sold myself short more times than I could count.
But one mistake I didn’t make was to wait too long before I started my email list. In fact, I started it way before I felt ready or understood why it really mattered.
Frankly, it wasn’t my own intelligence that prompted me to start my newsletter early on. My partner Philip has been creating digital courses since 2015 and was one of Skillshare’s most successful instructors in the early days. He was making five figures on the platform when they decided to shift their earnings model — to his disadvantage, of course.
Well, guess what he didn’t have? An email list to contact his existing customers.
Suddenly, his 10,000+ followers and thousands of students were worthless, and he had to start from scratch.
This is the most painful way to learn why having an email list matters, which I hope you’ll never experience.
Now that you know why collecting email addresses matters, let’s talk about the easiest way to actually do it: Freebies!
Freebies are also called lead magnets and are basically bribes you give away in exchange for someone’s email address.
This sounds more horrible than it actually is.
Usually, it goes like this: You discover my content and like it. Somewhere along the content, you see a CTA (a call-to-action) where I encourage you to download a free guide, ebook, course, etc. You immediately receive your free gift and are now subscribed to my newsletter. You can unsubscribe anytime, but ideally, you’ll like my emails so much that you’ll stay subscribed.
Sounds easy, right?!
Well, if it’s so easy, why do most creators, marketers, and entrepreneurs struggle to grow their email lists?!
Because their freebies suck!
Usually, they’re irrelevant, too long, confusing, or just not aligned with the rest of their content or funnel.
Let’s solve this drama once and for all.
Here’s everything you need to know to create compelling, high-converting, and useful freebies:
Your freebie has three goals
Most creators and marketers know that freebies are important, but they don’t understand why they matter.
Sometimes, you can get ahead in life by just doing the right things without understanding why. Sadly, this doesn’t apply to freebies.
I know what I’m talking about because, over the past six years, I’ve created dozens of different freebies. Most of them sucked and didn’t deliver any results.
Having any freebie is better than having none, but if you’re making an effort to create one anyway, why not create one that’s actually going to help you grow your audience and income?
If done correctly, your freebie achieves three different goals that help you grow your business:
#1. List growth
This is the primary reason we create lead magnets: We want our email lists to grow because we’re told that list size matters. And it does.
The fact that you have a newsletter is rarely a compelling enough reason for subscribers to actually sign up.
Nobody likes newsletters.
We just like what a newsletter can do for us. And we usually don’t know what to expect before subscribing. Lead magnets are a great way to invite potential readers to get a taste of your newsletter.
I used freebies to build two different newsletters with over 45k subscribers in total. I eventually killed one of them (that’s a story for another day) and am now running a list with 22,500+ subscribers.
#2. Authority + Credibility
If done correctly, your freebie helps you establish authority and credibility. It allows you to introduce yourself and share why your perspective on a topic matters.
Through this increased level of trust, you build a personal connection, and ideally, your subscriber is more likely to become a loyal fan or even a paying customer.
This is also a great way to establish higher engagement rates since your subscribers are more likely to respond to your newsletters.
#3. Conversions
Even though freebies are free gifts for our subscribers, they’re not only a gesture of goodwill.
Eventually, the goal of your freebie is to get your subscriber closer from being a stranger to becoming a client.
By offering value upfront, you’re setting a positive expectation for your reader. More importantly, your freebie is a great opportunity to showcase your expertise and the value of your work.
It’s hard to ask for money if people don’t understand what your work can do for them. But once they get access to your lead magnet and actually like what you do, they’ll be curious to learn more about your paid offers.
What’s a freebie, anyway?
Technically, a freebie can be anything your audience wants to get access to — free content, a guide, a course, etc.
But there are best practices for freebies that actually convert and grow your email list plus income.
Let’s take a look at all the different options you have:
#1. Digital documents
This is the most popular type of freebie.
Think of:
Ebooks
Checklists
Templates
Worksheets
Printables
Infographics
Sample chapters of a book
These are easy to create and are supposed to be easy to digest for your subscribers.
Depending on what exactly you create, these documents can vary.
A simple worksheet, for instance, can be a 1-page PDF document, but I’ve also seen creators give away entire ebooks with hundreds of pages (not recommended!).
I’m offering dozens of freebies in this category because I can pull them together within a few hours, which makes them very attractive.
For instance, I offer a simple cheatsheet to get rid of writer’s block:
Digital documents are attractive for numerous reasons: Since they’re easy to create, you can quickly create timely freebies to capture many email addresses during a specific period.
I did this by creating a timely report with online writing trends for 2023:
I can easily update this freebie to create a new version for the next year and run a big promotion for it since there would be urgency around the topic.
Another great opportunity for digital downloads is curated content. For instance, I interviewed dozens of writers and turned their insights into a simple ebook:
#2. Multimedia Content
The second type of freebie you can create goes beyond text and involves multimedia content such as video or audio elements. These freebies can be downloadable or available on online platforms.
For instance, I’m offering a simple 30-minute video training where I explain the four different elements of a digital education business. When you sign up, you receive a link to a simple page with the video:
Webinars or online challenges can be used as freebies as well, but those can be more complex to set up and sustain, so I wouldn’t recommend using them if you’re new to list building.
#3. Interactive Freebies
Other fun but complex types of freebies are quizzes or assessments that prompt your subscribers to answer several questions and enter their email addresses to receive the results:
Email courses are slightly less interactive but equally powerful when used as freebies.
This is my personal favorite for building a strong email list because when someone signs up for an email course, they’re already interested in receiving your emails.
Most email courses range from 3–7 days and teach a specific skill or help solve a small problem.
Since you deliver your content over several days, you have multiple opportunities to build relationships and trust.
Plus, you can break up complex topics into easy-to-digest pieces since subscribers expect to receive your insights over a few days anyway.
If a reader completes your email course and likes it, she’s typically more likely enjoy your newsletter as well.
#4. Free Access to Your Offer(s) or Promotional Offers
If you don’t have the resources to create a proper freebie, you can give away limited access to your paid offers or discount codes.
This is an option, but not a promising one. If possible, avoid it and create a proper freebie based on one of the first three categories.
Which freebie should you create?
Choosing the right type of freebie involves three different aspects:
Understanding your audience and their needs
Having a basic idea of your marketing funnel
Mapping out your ideal customer journey
Solve problems
Over the past four years, I’ve worked with hundreds of creators, and the #1 mistake I see when people create freebies is thinking about what they’re interested in creating.
If you create something that’s nice, you might capture email addresses and grow your list, but you won’t necessarily make money.
There’s more involved in creating a freebie that actually turns subscribers into fans and customers.
The #1 question you have to ask yourself before creating your freebie is:
What’s your audience’s pain point?
Why do they care about your content?
If you know their problems, you can create freebies that help them get closer to a solution.
Ideally, your freebie will provide a quick win or at least valuable insight into how they can get closer to finding a solution to their problem.
The more specific the problem you solve, the better.
I often see creators and marketers creating huge freebies trying to impress their subscribers. The truth is that nobody has time for a 100-page freebie.
Your new subscribers are looking for a quick win that helps them decide whether they want to check out more of your work or not.
Take this from someone who has actually built gigantic non-converting freebies like this 44-page PDF that maps out our entire 26-step digital business framework:
This is a valuable and compelling freebie, but it’s too much, so most people never make it past the first few pages of the document.
If they don’t make it to the end of the freebie, they’re less likely to take the next step and, for instance, join my paid programs.
Ideally, your freebie will solve one small problem for your subscriber.
To solve the next problem, they’ll have to move to the next stage in the customer journey, which could already be a paid product.
Here’s an example of what this could look like:
Freebie: An ebook showing three specific ways entrepreneurs can win more clients by guest speaking on podcasts.
Problem solved: You learned how to win new customers when being invited to speak on a podcast.
New challenge: How do you get invited to speak on podcasts?
Solution: A structured approach on how to reach out and convince podcast hosts to let you join their show.
First paid offer: 12 LinkedIn outreach scripts that help you “get on any podcast you want.”
Makes sense, right?!
Here’s one more example by Amy Porterfield, the queen of online courses:
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