Show notes
In this episode, I explain why paid launches are working so well right now — and why they might be the smartest move you make for your next launch. I break down the difference between traditional free webinars or challenges and paid launch experiences, and I share exactly how my two-week, five-session paid bootcamp model works, including standard and VIP tiers.
I also talk honestly about why free launches have become harder — from audience overwhelm and low show-up rates to freebie collectors and creator burnout — and then walk you through four powerful reasons to test a paid launch instead. While you may see fewer sign-ups, the quality, engagement, and conversions can be significantly stronger.
3 Key Takeaways:
Paid = Higher Commitment
When someone invests money, they’re far more likely to show up, engage, and implement — which leads to better results and stronger trust.
Engagement and Conversions Improve
Paid participants are more serious and qualified, meaning higher show-up rates, better interaction, and stronger conversion rates into your main offer.
Your Launch Can Fund Your Marketing
A paid launch can generate revenue upfront, giving you cash flow to fund ads and scale — rather than relying on a free event that only costs you time and money.
If free launches have been feeling heavier, harder, or less effective, this episode will help you see why — and show you a practical alternative that could change the game for your next launch.
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube
Transcript
After 10 years in the online space, I have done every type of launch that you can imagine, and there is one launch that is working really, really well at the moment, paid launches. In this video, I'm gonna be sharing with you what paid launches are, why they work so well, and the four reasons that you should consider trying a paid launch for your next launch.
If we haven't met, my name is Teresa Heath-Wareing and I work with course creators, membership owners and coaches to help them grow their online business. And I have recently been given the award of Business Coach of the Year from the National Coaching Conference and Awards, which I am obviously over the moon about.
And every single week I put out a new video and podcast. What I share with you. Tactical and strategic things that you can actually do in your business that is going to help you grow your online business without all of the overwhelm and with what is working right now. So if you haven't [00:01:00] subscribed to the YouTube channel, I urge you to hit that subscribe button and to make sure that you get notified every time I put a new video out, and I would be so honored if you could share this video with someone who was in the online space that you think could benefit from it.
Okay, let's talk about free versus paid. So what do I mean by free versus paid? Now, most launch experiences have been free, so you would do a free webinar, a free challenge, a free bootcamp. So basically for them to come into the launch experience, and I call launch experiences, just the mechanism that you're using, like I said, a webinar, a masterclass, which they tend to be the same thing, a bootcamp, a challenge, a.
Open house. Those are what I call launch experiences. And when I talk about launching, I don't necessarily mean for the first time. This is just basically a focused period of marketing where you are selling your online thing, like your course, your program, your membership, whatever it might be. So [00:02:00] in most cases.
Up until fairly recently, most launches were free. So you would advertise that you were doing a free webinar, a free challenge, and people would sign up and come and join that challenge or come and join that masterclass for free. And then at the end of the thing, you would then present your offer, which would be your paid program, course, membership, whatever it was.
Kind of marketing activity that you were doing to get them there in the first place was free. Now, let me explain to you what I mean by a paid launch experience. So ordinarily and what I've been involved with and what I teach is more about a paid bootcamp or a paid challenge, something that is a bit longer.
I would say that you can do paid workshops rather than. Masterclass or webinars, masterclass and webinars tend to be about an hour or to an hour and a half. They're very much focused on the what and [00:03:00] the why and less so on the how. And your program tends to be the how, whereas when you are doing something paid, it normally means it's going into more depth.
So let me explain to you my paid launching the I am using currently. I'm doing a bootcamp where basically the bootcamp is over two weeks, but it's five actual sessions, so it's two sessions on week one and three sessions on week two, and for that bootcamp, it is a paid thing. Now the. Cost of the, the bootcamp is low, so my cost of my bootcamp at the point I'm recording this is 49 pounds.
But there is also a VIP level where if you join the VIP level, you get additional things. So for instance, rather than just the five sessions, you will also get some q and As with me where. I basically get to coach you. There are also things like you might get some other bonuses and some other nice bits that you would get if you sign up for the VIP.
So basically there are two levels to my paid launches, the standard level, and [00:04:00] then the VIP level. But they're both paid. The standard level is 49 pounds. The VIP level I think is 97, like I said at the point of recording this. But the point is to come into that launch experience, which is a bootcamp you have to pay now.
You might think, well, this doesn't make sense because I want them to buy the bigger thing, and if they're buying the lower thing, will they buy the bigger thing? We're going to address the reasons why you might want to consider a paid launch, but let me talk about why free are getting a little bit more difficult.
Well, the first thing is the overwhelm is massive. There are so many. Free things that we can now do online businesses and launching has become way more popular than it ever has done and will continue to grow. And because of that, there'll be lots of free events, lots of free challenges, lots of free boot camps, which means there is often low commitment from the person that is engaging or signing up to them and the poor sharp rates.
So when I started this back in. Or when I started in the online [00:05:00] space about 10 years ago, the show up rate for a webinar would be anywhere between 40 and 50%. Then when we hit COVID, it went up. It was actually like you could get 60%, which is great, and now we are seeing some as low as 15 and 20% show up rate, which means the number of people who signed up to come to say, your webinar only.
15 to 20% of them might actually turn up. And one of the key things is you want them to turn up because if they turn up, they're way more engaged. They're more likely to consider buying your thing that you're selling. At the end, you are also potentially attracting freebie collectors. So there are people that just like to sign up to free stuff and will busy themselves with going to all the webinars in the world.
Therefore, you might attract some of them when you are doing a free thing. Often when we are doing free launch experiences, we tend to give information without implementation. And if you've watched any of my other videos, if [00:06:00] you've listened to the podcast, then you will know. One of the big things for 2026 is we need that implementation.
That actually what we don't need is more content or more information. At this point, we need to actually get it done and we need ways to help us get it done. And sometimes when we're doing. Three things, rightly so, we are just giving them the information because there has to be a balance of like how much we give away when we are giving it for free.
And this can lead to creators, to online business owners, to you to meet, burning out basically. Launching is not a very quick and easy thing to do. It takes work and time and effort. And sometimes you might find yourself feeling very resentful when you are putting in all this time and effort. You are delivering really good stuff and people just aren't engaging and they're not taking it seriously.
So there are lots of reasons why free launches are not as successful and not as good maybe as