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How to Monetize Your Knowledge with AI (Without Selling a Course)

How to Turn Free Trainings Into a 7 Figure Business Using AI and the UBI Strategy

November 17, 2025

This playbook gives you the exact framework for monetizing your knowledge without ever selling a traditional online course. It is designed to save you from the oversaturated, high-churn, and low-margin business of selling courses, and instead build a sustainable, high-revenue business by giving your knowledge away for free.

I built a business that has generated over $10M in revenue, and the majority of that revenue came from giving away courses and trainings for free.

We will walk through the five core models for monetizing free content: SaaS, Productized Services, Coaching, Digital Assets, and Affiliate Marketing.

The UBI Strategy: Useful But Incomplete

The core of this model is the “Useful But Incomplete” (UBI) strategy.

You teach the “what”, the “why”, and the “how” for free, but you sell the easy button aka implementation.

You provide immense value, establish yourself as the expert, and then sell a product or service that makes the implementation faster, easier, or more effective.

The KEY: After watching your training, people should be able to implement without your product, but the key lies in your product making the implementation faster, easier, or more effective (even more powerful when you stack it with authority & proof)

The mistake most people make:

  • They either hold back too much (no trust, no sales), or

  • They give away everything including full implementation (no reason to buy).

The sweet spot is what I call UBI: Useful But Incomplete.

UBI means:

  • Your free training is genuinely useful.

  • People can see the strategy clearly.

  • They understand the opportunity and the “big picture.”

  • But the easiest, fastest, safest way to implement that strategy is your paid product.

In other words:

Teach the framework, sell the implementation.
Free: “Here’s how this works and why it’s powerful.”
Paid: “Here’s the tool/asset/service that does it for you or with you.”

The Formats:

  • Courses: Multi-module, in-depth trainings.

  • Masterclasses & Webinars: Live or pre-recorded deep-dive sessions.

  • Tutorials (“How to X”): Short, tactical “how-to” videos.

  • Assessments & Free Consulting: Personalized feedback and recommendations. (This can be automated with AI using a Custom Bot)

  • Free Challenge

  • Mini Series

Anything that teaches a framework qualifies.

Now, let’s look at the five ways to monetize this free content.

Model 1: Free Training → SaaS

The Playbook:

  1. Build or Find a SaaS: Create a software that solves a specific, painful problem. You can vibe code one in a weekend, hire a team, or whitelabel an existing solution like GoHighLevel.

  2. Create a Free Training: Develop a masterclass or course that teaches the framework your SaaS automates.

  3. Sell the SaaS: At the end of the training, position your SaaS as the ultimate shortcut to implementing the framework.

Real-World Example: My company built a micro-SaaS for accessibility compliance. We created a free masterclass showing agencies how to manually audit websites for compliance. 3,000 people attended the free training, and 627 of them bought the software (priced between $247 and $497 per year), generating over $600,000 in revenue in less than 60 days. (Combine total launch days)

Model 2: Free Training → Productized Service

The Playbook:

  1. Define a “Done For You” Service: Package your expertise into a standardized, high-ticket service offering.

  2. Create a Free Training: Teach the core principles of your service.

  3. Sell the Service: At the end of the training, offer a free consultation or a direct link to purchase your service.

Real-World Example: I used a free training to fill our done-for-you agency service. About 800 people attended, 80 booked a call, and we closed 15 sales at a $15k-$25k price point. We had to pause the offer because we couldn’t handle the demand.

Model 3: Free Training → Coaching & Support

The Playbook:

  1. Structure a Coaching Program: Create a group or one-on-one coaching program that provides guidance and support.

  2. Create a Free Training: Teach the foundational concepts of your coaching program.

  3. Sell the Coaching: Offer enrollment into your coaching program as the next logical step.

Real-World Example: When my business launched an AI Accelerator coaching program, we simply created a free training that demonstrated the opportunity and then invited attendees to join the accelerator for hands-on support.

Model 4: Free Training → Templates & Digital Assets

The Playbook:

  1. Create a Digital Asset Bundle: Package up your ‘done for you’ templates, SOPs, swipe files, Prompts, funnels, canva designs, agency kits, email sequences, scripts, automation workflows, and other digital assets.

  2. Create a Free Training: Teach a process that is made easier by your digital assets.

  3. Sell the Assets: Offer the bundle as a toolkit to accelerate implementation.

Real-World Example: My product “Local Agency Box” is a collection of 8 done-for-you agency templates. We ran a free training showing how to use the templates, and then sold the kit. A total of about 2,700 people who watched the free masterclass training generated $180,000 in sales.

Model 5: Free Training → Affiliate Product

The Playbook: Teach the method → Sell someone else’s product

  1. Find a High-Quality Affiliate Product: Partner with a product that you trust and that solves a real problem for your audience.

  2. Create a Free Training: Co-host a webinar or create a course that teaches the strategy behind the product.

  3. Promote the Affiliate Product: Drive traffic to the training and earn a commission on every sale.

Real-World Example: I generated over $100,000 in sales as an affiliate for a partner’s product using this exact model. We co-hosted a training, and all my team did was to do was send attendees to attend a free training. I didn’t have to build the product, create the funnel, or handle customer support.

Other affiliates and partners promoting my products generated over $7M sales for us and more than 50% of that revenue came from those affiliates sending people to watch our free webinar or enroll for our free masterclasses, bootcamps & courses.

Model 6: Free Training → Platform Revenue & Brand Deals

The Playbook:

This is a long-term strategy that monetizes the audience you build from giving away free, high-quality training.

  1. Choose a Platform: Focus on a video-first platform like YouTube or TikTok.

  2. Publish Consistently: Regularly post high-quality trainings and content related to your niche.

  3. Build an Audience: Over time, you will accumulate views and subscribers.

  4. Monetize the Audience: Once you reach a certain threshold, you can monetize in two primary ways.

Monetization Channels:

  • Platform Revenue: YouTube, for example, will pay you based on the number of views your videos get through its Partner Program. Revenue can range from a few dollars to over $20 per 1,000 views depending on your niche.

  • Brand Deals: As your audience grows, brands will pay you to promote their products. You can get paid a flat fee per video, on a performance basis, or a combination of both.

Why it works: This model turns your educational content into a direct revenue-generating asset. While it takes time to build, it creates a highly sustainable and defensible business.

Bonus: The Self-Liquidating Offer

To scale your free training registrations, you can charge a small fee ($9-$47). This fee is not for profit; it is to liquidate your ad spend, allowing you to acquire new students for free and scale your audience indefinitely.

The Foundation: How to Find an Idea That Sells (Even If You're Not an Expert)

With AI as your sidekick, you no longer need to be a world-renowned expert to monetize your knowledge. The most important thing is to ensure there is demand and a high-converting product (yours or an affiliate’s) you can upsell to that hungry audience. Don’t create what you want to teach; create what your audience wants to learn.

The 3P Validation Formula

Use this simple formula to validate your idea before you create any content:

  • Painful: The problem must be a significant source of frustration. People pay to get out of pain.

  • Paying: The audience must already be spending money to solve this problem. This proves they are willing to pay for a solution.

  • Personal (Optional): You have lived or solved this problem before. With AI, this is no longer a requirement, but it can help with authenticity. The most important is Painful & Paying

The Power of Specificity

Solving a specific, high-stakes problem is the key to success. A general problem leads to a weak solution and a message that resonates with no one.

  • Bad (General): “I help businesses with marketing.”

  • Good (Specific): “I teach freelance copywriters how to use AI to write high-converting email sequences for SaaS companies.”

Once you have a validated, specific idea, you can create a training that teaches the theoretical basis and sells a product as the implementation. In the course, make buying the product the next logical step to implement the strategy.

AI-Powered Course Creation & Distribution

You don’t need to be a video editor or a marketing genius to do this. AI can create your entire course and marketing campaign for you.

Course Creation with AI:

Marketing & Distribution with AI:

  • Landing Page & Emails: Use MarketingBlocks

  • Content Distribution: Use the Founder-Led Growth framework, automated with the MarketingBlocks AgentPack, to drive traffic to your free training.

Why This Beats “Traditional Course Selling”

Traditional model:

  • Spend months creating a course

  • Sell it for $47–$497

  • Fight for attention against thousands of course sellers

  • Deal with refunds, low completion, and “I’ll buy when it’s discounted” behavior

This model:

  • Gives your best teaching away for free

  • Uses AI to create and distribute quickly

  • Makes your real product (SaaS / service / coaching / assets / affiliate offer) the hero

  • Builds your list, custom audiences, and brand at the same time

Putting It All Together

Let us recap the whole model in one flow.

  1. You pick a specific audience and a painful problem.

  2. You decide what your backend offer will be, for example a SaaS, a service, a coaching program, a template pack or an affiliate product.

  3. You design a UBI style free training that explains the strategy and the opportunity behind solving that problem, while intentionally leaving implementation to the offer.

  4. You use AI tools to outline, script, design and record the training in days instead of months.

  5. You build a simple funnel with a registration page, reminders and an offer segment.

  6. You use AI to create daily content that drives people to the training and automates DMs and lead capture. I Automate this with AI Agents from MarketingBlocks

  7. You improve the promise and offer based on actual data, then add scale with ads and recurring sessions.

The course itself is always free.
The money comes from the implementation people choose after they understand the method.

The old model of selling courses is dead. The new model is to give away your knowledge for free and sell the implementation. 

By using the UBI strategy and leveraging AI for creation and distribution, you can build a highly profitable, scalable business without ever selling a course. You become the expert, and your expertise becomes the funnel.