The freemium business model uses free content to attract traffic. Also, the free content is used to market paid content. Paid content can also be called premium content. Hence, the term freemium (free + premium). This is an excellent model because it helps you avoid these two common pitfalls when building commercially-oriented sites.
One of the most important concepts to understand in online marketing is having points of differentiation. This means doing things that make you different from your competitors. In many niches, there are a lot of competing sites. The sites that provide unique offerings will get noticed while the sites that simply follow the status quo will get ignored.
Here is a practical way to stand out from the crowd and capture the attention of your niche: Add audio and video to your sites.
This may be surprising to you, but a big percentage of the population doesn’t read. I found these quotes from the short ebook, Teaching Sells.
In light of these stats, it’s surprising to find that many sites don’t offer video and audio content. And if a site does have video and audio content, oftentimes that content is not prominent on the site. Webmasters are readers, so we expect our audience to be readers too. However, the stats are clear. Many people don’t read much.
You can see the popularity of non-text content. YouTube, a video hosting site, is one of the most visited sites on the whole internet. The audiobook industry is growing and it’s worth over $400 million.
It’s doesn’t have to be a difficult thing to produce audio and video. You can take your existing text content and use them as a basis for your audio and video products.
Also, as you may have seen on YouTube, your non-text content doesn’t have to be super high quality. Your video content doesn’t have to look like it was created by a Hollywood studio. Your audio content doesn’t have to sound like it was made by a professional radio advertising firm. If you have a small budget, you can still produce quality non-text content. One of the most popular videos on YouTube was a online show produced by a webcam that cost less than $200.
By creating non-text content, you can get on relevant sites like podcast directories and video hosting sites. If you want your video and audio content to be found in the search engines, add text to your content. I like to publish transcriptions of my audio and video content.
Finally, you’re probably one of the few sites in your niche that’s using audio and video, so your site’s reputation and branding should go improve.
Further Reading
Aaron Wall has an excellent short post about the power of simplicity. He writes:
Some of the posts I write about the macroeconomic trends of online publishing and the search economy take 5 hours to write, get few or no comments, get few or no citations, and probably scare off potential customers. Those posts do not cater to people looking to buy SEO information. The short SEO videos I recently made are easier to create and easy to consume. Daily sales are near my all time high.
Oftentimes we build new sites in niches we’re experts in. This is a good thing. Expert knowledge is valuable. Expert content gets links and shows our readers we know what we’re talking about. However, because we’re experts, we often forget most of our readers are not experts and so we write too many “high level” articles. What’s the most useful content for our readers? I think it’s basic, fundamental content. The stuff for beginners.
Much of the content on Aaron Wall’s short SEO videos are basic SEO principles. Yet he’s making much more sales. The simple videos make him more money because they target people that are more likely to buy his SEO ebook. The SEO experts that follow his blog probably won’t buy his ebook because they’re experts already.
As a blogger, sometimes I feel like I should not post content geared towards beginners because I want to show off my expertise. Showing off your expertise is not a bad thing but make sure to intersperse beginner content with expert content. The simple, basic content reaches more readers. And even experts need to brush up on the basics.
Also, learn how to write the basic fundamentals of your niche in different ways so you don’t sound like a broken recorder 
Use different examples and illustrations. Use different mediums like video, audio, charts, graphs, pictures, and even sketchcasts.
People learn in different ways, so by varying your mediums and illustrations, you’ll be able to reach more people with the same content. Your content can be reformatted multiple times. This adds value to your site without you having to come up with new content. Also, this leads to better branding and market positioning.
So, ask yourself? Who are you targeting with your content? Is it mostly experts like yourself? Or is it also people who know less than you and are more likely to buy your product?