Content platforms increasingly let creators sell paid content alongside free posts. This "freemium" model raises a critical question: does giving creators a way to monetize cannibalize the free content that attracts users to the platform in the first place? If paid options cause creators to stop contributing freely, platforms risk undermining the very ecosystem that makes them valuable.

Here, we show that the opposite happens. Using data from Zhihu, China's largest Q&A platform, we find that creators who gained access to paid live events increased their free contributions by approximately 88% relative to non-participants. This effect was driven by creators strategically using free content to signal expertise and attract potential buyers to their paid offerings. They ramped up answers in the weeks before the paid events and aligned topics with upcoming sessions. The effect was stronger for less-established creators and those facing intense competition, and weaker for highly reputed creators who already have built-in audiences.

Management insight: The freemium model doesn't kill free content, it revitalizes it. It serves as an effective retention tool for creators whose engagement would otherwise naturally decay. However, highly reputed creators respond less and may need separate incentives. Platforms should also be cautious with built-in promotional tools (e.g., email blasts or paid advertising for creators), as these may crowd out creators' incentive to produce free content as self-promotion. Instead, platform can use recommendation algorithms to surface creators' free content to relevant audiences. Finally, unlike ad-revenue models that tend to push creators to tailor content to mainstream tastes to maximize eyeballs, the freemium model incentivizes creators to produce free content in their areas of expertise, thereby enhancing content diversity on the platform and enabling it to better serve heterogeneous tastes across different user segments.