Give away high-value free courses on established educational platforms to unlock influencer partnership models
Creating comprehensive free content for established educational platforms (like freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel) serves dual purposes: it provides massive exposure through an already-trusted audience, and it validates the influencer partnership model that can then be replicated with other creators at scale.
When to use
When you have a subscription product in education or content and need to break through initial awareness barriers. Works best when there's an established platform with a large, relevant audience that accepts contributed content.
Don't do this
Keeping all content behind a paywall and trying to build your own audience from scratch, or paying for influencer promotions without first proving the model works through free collaboration.
1 Founder Who Did This
Created a free 8-hour Go course for freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel (18M subscribers), giving away premium content to leverage their existing audience trust. This single collaboration validated the influencer model that Boot.dev then scaled.