Free Meditation - To Pay or Not to Pay?

There are many meditation-related websites out there. And there are many people searching for information on meditation. Free meditation is a big keyword in search engine statistics.

Why do people want meditation for free, and when are they willing to pay?

Meditation is often seen as a self-help tool. It is linked to spirituality in the minds of many. This is both its' blessing and its' curse. There's a huge self-help/self-improvement market out there. There's also a large percentage of the population that doesn't like the idea of spirituality: it's all too New Age for them. In their minds, New Age is the equivalent of Hippy in the 1960s and 70s.

Meditation websites are often created for communities of meditators and, as such, there is a strong leaning towards meditation products being freely available for all members of the community. Spiritual people tend to think that if you want the world to be more spiritual, you have to make products freely available to the world. Non-spiritual people, on the other hand, tend to think that if you want people to come to the party, you should charge them an entrance fee.

People search for free meditation info because they know it's out there. And it's out there because people are looking for it. There's definitely a market for free meditation products. But is there a market for meditation products that aren't free? When will people pay - and why?

There will always be a market for high quality products. Just as there are people looking for no-cost products, there are also those who believe that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

People will pay for something when it has value for them. If it's free, how does it have value? How do you get people to pay for your products? And if you don't want them to pay, how do you get them to cover your costs?

Often, donations are requested on free meditation websites as a way of keeping the products free.

Some people don't want to ask for money because they find it too hard or they don't know how to ask. Some think all products should be free. And some think that nothing should ever be free.

My suggestion would be to have a lot of information available for free. Free downloads, free articles, links to other sites. And I would also have a range of quality products that cost money. I don't mean have a free item and the upgrade will cost you. I mean, have a range of products that aren't like the standard items. Provide a guided meditation for free, then offer meditations using brainwave entrainment and music, for a fee. People can have the best of both worlds then.

It's nice to get something for free, but it's also nice to be able to treat yourself, to be able to buy yourself something. People who have healthy relationships with themselves enjoy treating themselves as much as treating others.

So give people quality: quality products for no cost and quality products that cost. And watch what happens.

Phoebe Dangerfield is an NLP Master Practitioner, Results Coach and lover of hypnotic language. Phoebe has a free caffeine replacement meditation download currently available at her blog http://blog.meditationmonk.com/ The meditations available through meditationmonk.com do not contain subliminal messages, audiostrobe or screen flashing and can be used with or without headphones depending on what you choose.

Visit http://blog.meditationmonk.com/ to get your free meditation download and to learn more about brainwave entrainment.


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