Examples of content & content creators where You Pay For The Linear Walkthrough Of The Graph.
Seth Goden
Seth Goden writes posts every day on his blog of about the same length and quality as a page in his book, but they’re randomized and have no overarching Narrative. His books organize those posts into a narrative. More info: How Seth Goden Writes A Book.
Paizo (Pathfinder)
Paizo puts all of the rules for the TTRPG Pathfinder on the internet for free, but they still sell plenty of books and pdfs.
What you are paying for in the book is not the raw content, but the curated linear walkthrough of that content. The book provides certainty that I wont get overwhelmed. All of the game modes, rules, and items are brought up naturally as we follow the story.
And once I understand it, having the ideas easily referenceable and shareable is an amazing Memetic Capsid for spreading the game. Specific rules/items can easily be linked, discussed, shared. It’s helpful to be able to link to things.
Fast AI
This entire AI course is published for free as interactive Jupiter Notebooks. What you are paying for is for them to format that source material into a standalone linear package that walks you through the concepts one by one.
They’ve set up an automated Jupyter → Book pipeline that allows them to easily update and improve the source material (the Jupyter Notebooks), without discrepancy between the two. When it’s time, they can run a script that recompiles the books using the new Jupyter Notebooks.
YouTube Coaches/Gurus
Healthygamergg, KillYourInnerLoser, CaptainSinbad, Sorelle Amore, and so many more.
All regularly publish content for free, while offering both premium 1:1 coaching (This is more dynamic because it’s live, but less scalable), and pre-packaged online courses.