If you’ve ever considered purchasing an online course or buying into a coaching program, you may have wondered if it’s really worth it to pay for something when there are so many free videos, articles, webinars, and slide decks already available.

Where once you had to attend a fancy, expensive school in order to get access to privileged information, that very same information is available for free to anyone with the ability to read this article.

You can absolutely learn how to perform brain surgery or build a rocket for free on the Internet. That doesn’t mean you’ll be legally allowed to do either of those things, but that’s a different point. 

Want to start a podcast but don’t know anything about audio editing or microphones? There’s hundreds of YouTube channels and blogs that will teach you everything you need to know without spending two years and $50k getting a degree in audio engineering.

Want to start a bakery but don’t know how to bake, or run a business? Yep, you can learn that without getting an MBA or attending culinary school. 

So the question becomes, when if ever is it still worth paying for information? 

Safety

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way. If the information you seek is about an activity or endeavor that is potentially dangerous, to you or others, you should probably pay for it. 

I’ve learned how to do a lot of household repair since becoming a homeowner by watching YouTube videos. But when it comes to electrical work, I still hire an electrician. I know I could learn how to do what they’re doing by reading articles, studying diagrams, and watching tutorial videos, but the risk is too high.

If you want to be a brain surgeon, you should go to medical school. The risk of doing brain surgery without extensive and proper training is obviously too high to learn it on your own, even if the information is readily available for free.

One of my goals in 2021 is to learn infant CPR since I have a child now. I could just read the articles and watch the free videos, but I’m going to pay for a class to have an expert teach and certify me.

It’s worth the price of admission for safety.

Confidence

When you learn something on your own you tend to second-guess whether or not you’ve really got it right.

Paying for a course, book, or coaching from an expert means you’re much more likely to be certain that you’ve truly understood the information, both in acquisition of knowledge and implementation.

Have you ever tried to do your own taxes? You can read as many articles and watch as many free videos on YouTube as you want, but you’re never really sure you’re doing it right. Pay an accountant to do it right the first time, or at least double-check your work. A good accountant is always worth the price.

Again, all that information is free in blogs, often from the very same account you’ll end up hiring. But having that knowledge is very different from being confident you’ve applied it properly.

Speed

This is a common reason you might pay for information that is otherwise free to learn and implement: getting it done quickly. 

When I wrote Three New People I was going to purely self-publish in order to save money. But as I began reading blogs and watching tutorials about the publishing process, from how to organize a creative non-fiction book to securing the ISBN to interior design to building additional resources that would convert readers into email subscribers, I realized it would have taken me years to learn it all and feel confident I had implemented properly (and even then I probably would have made many mistakes and had to double-back to fix them). 

So I decided to do hybrid publishing instead. I hired a team of freelancers, each serving a different role one traditionally gets access to with a publishing deal. It cost a lot: development editor, copy and line editor, interior designer, exterior graphic designer, and marketing consultant. 

The result is I got the book published and into the world within 9 months of having finished writing it instead of 2-3 years. And I did so without the headaches and trial-and-errors that would have accompanied relying solely on free information.

Curation

This is the big one as far as I’m concerned, and the inspiration for this entire article. 

I have a new product launching this week entitled Podcasting for Professionals. It’s a massive and comprehensive self-guided course on learning both the technical and artistic aspects of podcasting. It’s designed for professionals in any field who want to leverage a podcast as part of their marketing strategy, either to achieve brand awareness or build an audience. It took 8 months to film and edit, and ultimately contains 12 hours of instruction across 60 videos and 10 PDF resources. 

One of my subscribers asked, “Why should I buy this course? Can’t I learn this all for free on YouTube?”

It’s a great question. And the answer is, of course you can. In fact you can learn a lot of it for free on my very own channel.

So, why might someone consider purchasing the course anyway? Because I curated the information.

The Infinite Shelf

The problem with information being free isn’t that some information is free, but ALL information is free. 

If you don’t already understand the subject, how are you supposed to know where to start? How are you supposed to know which lessons are relevant to you, your project, or your situation? How are you supposed to know if the information you’re learning requires preexisting knowledge you don’t already have?

That’s what a great online course, coaching program, or mastermind does. 

I’ve pulled from thousands and thousands of hours of potential instruction you might find in a Google search and meticulously organized only the information that is worth knowing at this stage of your journey, and put it in precisely the right order.

You can absolutely learn everything in my course(s) for free. It’s all out there. But each tier of paying for information tends to bring more curation.

If you buy a book, it’s curated, but generally, because anybody could be buying that book.

If you buy a course, it’s curated more than a book, because search analytics help course creators market to the right kind of person at the right stage of their journey.

If you buy into a group coaching program or mastermind, it’s even more curated because the instructor works with the group personally.

And of course if you enroll in 1-on-1 coaching, it’s the most curated the information could possibly be, because it’s for you and you alone.

Attaining Knowledge vs Developing Wisdom

That’s how I see the difference. Free information is about attaining knowledge. Paying for information is about developing wisdom.

I leverage free information all the time, most of the time, in fact. I’m sure you do, too. I’m constantly Googling for “how to…”  I get the answer, implement immediately, and move on with my life. 

Once in a while, however, information is worth paying for. I’ve paid for $10 books, $100 consultations, $500 courses, and $5000 coaching programs.

Of course there are scams, and that’s a topic for a different article (actually, I wrote that article a few months ago).

But when the instructor is vetted, I’ve always found paying for information worth the price. Sometimes to avoid hurting myself or others. Sometimes for the confidence that I did in fact understand the information and not merely attain it. Sometimes when speed was of the essence. And most commonly when I needed the information to be tailored specifically to who I am, my specific strengths, and the details of the project I was working on.

Now I want to hear from you:

Leave me a message about a time you paid for information that was otherwise available for free, and found it totally worth it, whether it was $10 for a book, $100 for a contractor, or more for a course, coaching, or mastermind.