"I don't like how much of your community is paywalled." Great. Who asked?
Inspired by a stranger's unsolicited opinion.
A stranger replied to one of my posts on LinkedIn this week.
He’d seen something about the Freelance Writing Network and felt compelled to share his thoughts. “I don’t like how much of your community is paywalled,” he said.
Great. Who asked?
I’m genuinely proud of what the Freelance Writing Network offers. Daily job posts, resources, creative writing opportunities, live sessions, and more, all curated and kept running by actual humans I pay to be there.
Yes, I pay multiple freelancers to keep this thing going (I have no idea how anyone looks at this output and thinks I do everything by myself). It’s a real operation with real costs and real people behind it. Even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be free.
And yet, apparently, the existence of a fee is enough to make someone’s day worse.
I’d love to know if this man also fires off strongly worded messages to the New York Times about their paywall. Does he stand in the supermarket, furious, because they won’t let him take food home for free? Has he considered that we may not, in fact, live in a communist utopia where paywalled newsletters are a moral failing punishable by public shaming on LinkedIn? I have questions. So many questions.
Maybe he has strong feelings about supermarkets too. Maybe I just caught him on a bad day. Maybe I’m overreacting with a giant rant on Substack.
What I do know is this: only I get to decide what my work is worth.
Not a stranger on LinkedIn. Not a guru with a course about growth hacks. Not someone who spent thirty seconds reading a post and typed a sentence before scrolling on. Me. That’s it. Full stop (or period, as my friends across the pond would say).
And the same goes for you too, by the way.
It doesn’t matter if your community has 50 members or 50,000. It doesn’t matter if you launched last month or three years ago. If you’ve built something you believe in, something that takes your time and your energy (and possibly your actual money) to run, you get to charge for it.
No one else gets a vote on that. Not the critics, not the gurus, not the bloke who typed a complaint at you and moved on with his day.
If people want to pay for it, they can. If they don’t, nobody is forcing them to.
The size of your audience does not determine the value of your work.
So many people wait, convinced they need to hit some magic number before they’re allowed to charge, before their work “counts.” That number doesn’t exist. You made it up, or someone else made it up and handed it to you, and either way it isn’t actually real. What’s real is the work you’re doing right now, and whether you believe it’s worth something.
If you do, and you would like to, then by all means charge for it.
Will the growth gurus tell you a paid community limits your reach? Yes, probably. And look, they’re not entirely wrong. Free things spread faster. More people will try something they don’t have to pay for. That’s just how life works.
But your worth isn’t a growth metric, and you don’t have to build a free product just because someone with a large following says that’s the smarter play. Tactics are one thing. Self-respect is another. It’s your work and you set the terms.
If you’ve built something good and you believe it’s worth paying for, then say so. Charge for it. Stand behind it. You rock, genuinely, because building anything takes guts and most people never do it. And even worse, some will scorn you for doing it too (these people are best ignored or blocked).
Most people have an idea and don’t follow through. Most people follow through and then give it away for free because they’re scared someone will tell them it’s not worth the price. You don’t have to be most people.
There’s a particular breed of online criticism that dresses itself up as feedback but is really just a complaint about not getting something for nothing. “I don’t like how you have to pay” isn’t a critique of the product. It’s an objection to the concept of paying.
These are very different things, and it’s worth knowing which one you’re dealing with before you let it get into your head.
Because it will try to get into your head. You’ll read it and for a split second think, should I lower the price? Should I make it free? Is he right? That moment of doubt is normal and human and fine. What matters is what you do next. You can acknowledge the comment (politely, like I did), close the tab, and get back to the work.
That’s a valid response. Probably the best response.
You don’t owe anyone free access to what you’ve built. You don’t need to shrink your price to win approval from people who weren’t going to value it anyway.
Be so, so proud of what you’ve made, keep building it, and let the negative comments wash over you like background noise.
Your work is yours. The price is yours to set. Own it.
First and foremost I want to say that I hear you (or rather read you). You are correct that what you are providing is a service, a valuable and much needed service in the freelancing community. I did assume you did it all, so please forgive my naivety and send my regards to your employees. Your feelings and reaction to the comment are valid and I am glad you are being transparent for your community. I'd like to offer an additional perspective. As someone who is new to the freelancing pursuit, I can understand and empathize with where this commenter came from. I don't necessarily agree with their approach, but please hear me out. Any industry that requires you to spend money in order to make money can feel like a barrier to those who have so little to start out with. What may seem to you like a well-deserved price point can feel to them like an undue burden. Granted, this person has a choice whether or not to take advantage of your services, so I'm not saying you shouldn't charge. Rather, for them it likely feels like yet another capitalistic barrier to trying to make it in this already challenging and competitive world. I loathe paywalls, especially when I am trying to seek information that is for my livelihood, rather than entertainment. I get it, the New York Times has bills to pay, therefore they get to name their price. Typically if an article has a paywall, I simply choose not to read it. Your supermarket analogy is a little off-base, being as groceries are a necessity and not a choice. I too have strong opinions about grocery prices and would love to have a chat with the person who decided a dozen eggs are $7. Alas, I don't own my own egg-laying hens, so I am at the mercy of the supermarket value. All this to say, I think your work has value and your price is your own. I think the person who commented also has a point, that they are making poorly. Everything these days feels like a subscription, an added expense just to get a foot in the door. If you pay, then you get to play, otherwise you are SOL. I urge you not to take their comment to heart. Know your worth. But also, know that the world out there is tough and any leg up that someone can get just by making a payment feels sometimes like a stepping stone not everyone gets to take. Give this person just a little grace.