Is My Content Less Valuable Because It’s Free?

I’ve been trying to study up on what I should be offering in return for trying to convince y’all to buy memberships.

I’ve been doing some research and the one thing that keeps repeating itself is that if your content is free it’s not as valued by the customer as it might be if they are forced to pay for it.

In that case…pay me what I am worth.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind paying my dues, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to expand and grow the LMBG brand. I want to have a perfume line, a clothing line, a pantie line. I want all kinds of things for the future of this company, but I am stuck.

I was thinking about reaching out to brands, but the thing is, is that I am not interested in promoting already successful brands for pittance. A lot of Black creatives have been taking free stuff in return for paid posts, and while it’s a good business model if you want free stuff, it’s just not sustainable.

I’m absolutely hungry, and in order to feed myself I need money to pay the grocery bills. A free purse is a great idea, but it’s just not realistic. Especially since I’m not a big fan of purses and clothes. I’m most likely to be found in a pair of jeans or sweats than I am a fancy outfit.

I was talking with Latasha yesterday and we were talking about this very thing. In fact I’m pretty sure I got that hungry quote from her, and I’m pretty sure she got it from Fast and the Furious.

That doesn’t make it any less true however. We as Black creatives already have to work ten times harder than our white counterparts to get half as much attention and we don’t often spread that content creator love around as we get more successful.

That’s why I have a huge list of Brown Girl Bloggers, which I will be curating soon. I want to cut it down to blogs that I actually read and actively support. I want to create a network of Brown Girl Bloggers from around the world, and in order to that I have to create more content.

People rarely think about the content they consume these days, as you can tell by the lack of comments I receive on this website, it takes a very long time to create a space of community on any website. Let alone a fledgling website that people aren’t entirely sure of just yet.

I don’t think my content is any less valuable because it’s free, but I think the reason that it doesn’t mean much to you, the reader is because you aren’t being asked to pay for it.

And who am I to put up a paywall and ask you to pay for the content you so freely consume? I am a person who believes that her time and energy is worth a few dollars. So I am working towards creating a members only section.

That being said, I already have my Buy Me A Coffee Page, but what I’d really like is for this website to be my legacy, that means creating content here on LMBG.Com that you can consume, that costs money.

I don’t know what that is going to look like yet. Some people have suggested that I do videos and interact with my audience with Zoom Calls, which is certainly an idea.

That means putting myself out there into the world in ways that I am not completely comfortable with yet. It means finding within myself a kind of self confidence that I am not entirely sure I have inside of me.

Okay that’s a load of bullshit, I know I have that kind of self confidence, I just don’t want to. I don’t want to be the only Brown Girl on this website. I want a whole army of Brown girls on this website. I just haven’t figured out how to get there yet.

So I put it to the collective, if I were to do a members only section, if I were to make this website more interactive, what would you like to see? What would you be willing to pay for? I’d really love your advice. Please consider leaving your thoughts in the comments below.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall