Give It Away and Let It Pay
Turn the best of what you have already written into a free library that brings paying clients to the door.
By James Schramko · Updated October 2026
People read my stuff and leave. For years I had no idea who they were.
Now I give the best of it away on purpose. The playbooks on this site are free. Every one of them. The last two people who joined my paid group came in through that library.
That is the whole model. Give it away. Let it pay.
Who This Is For
You have years of material. Posts, emails, talks, notes, answers you have typed a hundred times.
You have a paid offer that solves a bigger version of the same problem.
You want clients who already trust you before the first conversation.
Why Giving It Away Works
A free playbook does three jobs at once.
It establishes authority. A reader who follows your method and gets a result knows you can do the work. No sales call does that.
It starts conversations. People reply. They ask the next question. They tell you what they tried. Each one is a person you now know by name.
It brings people in. Some readers want the version with you in the room. They ask. You did not chase them.
Selling the method and giving away the method look like opposites. They are the same move. The free version proves the paid one.
The longer answer to why a free method does not cost you the paid one is in When the Framework Is Free, What Are You Actually Buying. That page is the why. This page is the build.
The Build
Step one. Gather your best practical pieces into one library.
Go through everything you have written. Keep the pieces a reader can act on this week. A method, a checklist, a sequence, a template. Leave out the opinion pieces and the news. Rewrite each keeper as a short, complete guide. One problem, one method, one outcome.
Put the library on your own site. Your domain, your pages. See Own the Racecourse for why this is the base and everything else is distribution.
Step two. One opt-in on the library.
The library page asks for a name and an email once. Keep it to one ask. A reader who gives you an email has opened the door. Do not put a second door behind it.
Step three. Tag every opt-in by the page it came from.
When someone opts in, record which page they were on. This is one hidden field on the form. Without it every lead reads the same and you learn nothing. Measurement Before Spend covers the setup.
Step four. A keyword in the comments delivers a piece by message.
On social, write about a problem one of your guides solves. Close with: comment the keyword and I will send it. A comment keyword then delivers the guide by direct message. The reader gets the piece. You get a conversation that started on their side. Epic Social Media has the post structure.
Step five. One piece a week by email.
Every week, send one guide to the list. The best one for that week, or a new one. Readers who opted in for one piece now get the whole library over time. The email is the porch light. It keeps you in front of the people who already know you.
Step six. Read which pages the paying clients came through.
When someone buys, look at their record. Which page did they opt in from. Which guides did they open. Over a few months a pattern appears. A few pages produce most of the buyers. Write more like those.
What It Produces
On my site the library brings in four to five opt-ins a day, each one tagged by the page it came from. The weekly email goes to all of them. The comment keyword runs on every post that fits a guide.
The last two people who joined my paid group both read playbooks first. One of them had worked through several before asking about the group. They arrived knowing how I think and what the work looks like. The sale took one conversation.
I sell my paid group this way myself. This page is part of the library it describes.
Common Mistakes
Gating everything. A library behind a wall is a brochure. The guides are free. The opt-in is the door to more of them.
Giving away opinion instead of method. Nobody opts in for a hot take. They opt in for the thing they can use on Monday.
No tag at capture. Six months in, you have a list and no idea which page built it.
A second offer on the library. One free door, one paid room. Two paid rooms and the reader stalls at the door.
Stopping the weekly email. The library finds people. The email keeps them. Drop it and the library becomes a one-time visit.
Quick Reference
- Your best practical pieces, rewritten as short guides, on your own site.
- One opt-in on the library. Tag it by page.
- A comment keyword that delivers a guide by message.
- One guide a week by email.
- Read which pages produced buyers. Write more of those.
The library is the free door. Mentor is the room behind it. The owners inside bring the problem the guide got them halfway through, and we finish it together.