Experiment: Do we see free and cheap as bad or valueless?

Those who know me know about my online programming courses. If you don’t know, you can see them here. Those courses are on a page called Udemy and that page allows me to create discount coupons or even free ones.

Many times I have created free coupons to give to friends, for promotions, or to people who send me emails telling me that they cannot pay for the course; I gladly share a coupon with them. But in these years I have noticed some things, for example, that a lot of discipline is needed to finish an online course. The average completion of a course is 25% - 30%, but the most surprising thing is this: of the people who have subscribed with free coupons, ZERO 😟. That’s right, of a thousand coupons I give away, ZERO have finished the course, NONE, ZILCH.

The question is, do we not value things when they are free or do we see them as low quality? My impression is yes and it is reaffirmed with another fact.

A few months ago I did an experiment: I have two Android programming courses, both have practically the same content but with different programming languages, one in a language called Java and another in a language called Kotlin. Kotlin is the most modern language and increasingly required in the industry, so the price of the Kotlin course was double that of Java. Many people bought the Kotlin one and very few the Java one, so as an experiment I raised the price of the Java one to the same as the Kotlin one, that is, double. The sales of the course increased a lot overnight, also the percentage of people who finish the course went up from 15% to approximately 25%.

Finally, Udemy also puts on promotions, so courses can come out cheaper for some students than others, and I have noticed that people who buy the course at a higher price ask more questions, which I love because it shows interest and makes me see that the course is serving them. So there must be a relationship between what something costs us and how much we value it.

I think this same bias is seen when we look for brands, for example of clothing, so it is a bit discerning when the phrase “cheap is expensive” applies and when not. After all, I learned to program with almost purely free courses and now it is what I dedicate myself to 100%.