I'm generally put off when I see free value advice, youtube videos or ebooks only to hit a paywall for a high ticket course or digital product.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing unethical with the strategy in general. But when everyone's doing the same, it becomes kind of obvious when you start seeing someone trying to offer a ton of free value. You know that it's not going to be long until you hit a high priced product that's going to burn your pockets.

Although there's only one problem I see with this approach - Trust. You also come across as one of those people "who's doing it for the money" and even if you genuinely care for your customer, it still is questionable.

What's wrong with doing it for the money? Nothing really if you look at it logically. But one must acknowledge that this is still a way we think naturally, at least in some cultures.

A typical example is DanLok's High Ticket Sales. DanLok gives a bunch of great advice on his youtube videos but if you follow along his webinars, likely you'll land at a $5000 course ( or more ).

It's probably worth it, sure. But he's never going to win my trust though, even if I end up buying one of his products out of different motivation.

Instead, here's what I'd do to really build trust with my customers -

Openly recognise when the product or service isn't for the customer

Clearly explaining why the product is priced the way it is contributes a lot to trust (eg. how many hours of research, even better if you reference those researches ).

Taking the time out to clearly identify when a customer's goals can just be fulfilled by one of the free content, or communicating if they're not going to find everything they're looking for in some way makes you a lot more trustworthy.

Show cheaper alternatives, even if its from competitors

I really appreciate a product or service that genuinely cares for its customers, to the extent when they say a competitor might be a better fit. It's very hard to see such products these days but when one does, as a customer I tend to remember their good-will gesture.

Another side effect is if in the future the same brand sells something else, I'm more likely to be driven by trust to try out a purchase from them even if I know it probably won't serve all my needs.

Convert into a form of lifetime value

Anything over $500 or $1000, needs to have some element of lifetime value into it. The more value it brings in the future, the better. A great example is David Perell's Write of Passage. The course is priced at $7000 (at the time of writing) for a lifetime course, but with each cohort the value only keeps getting better because of the community.