Content as a currency
First published on Medium.com on 11th April 2018
When I attended university I was fortunate to receive a healthy bursary (non repayable), from the Scottish government. Alongside the bursary I was fortunate to have a part time job at my university, which was very flexible around my classes and paid well for a student. Living at home and receiving support from my parents also helped substantially.
More money!
Despite all of this, I still have student loan debt. Less than the average student, but debt nonetheless, something I still see a deduction for on my wage slip, four years on.
So like most students, why did I choose to struggle through four years at university and take on a lot of debt. Well, simply, because it’s an investment, a trading of knowledge.
Move it
In its most simplistic form, business can be explained as the taking of goods from an area where they are of a lesser value to an area where they are of higher value.
Essentially to make money, you need to transport a product. In some cases this product need not be physical, it can be information.
People often associate information with being a service, information in most forms, is a product.
Swapsies
The information available to me at university was a product. I traded money for it, money I borrowed from the student loans company. Four years later, I left university and was able to trade the information I had received for a wage at a company. I took the information from the University of the west of Scotland, and brought it to a market where it was of more value.
Any content produced can be viewed as information that can be traded. If it can be traded, it can be viewed as a currency. Before physical currency was introduced, people traded goods like rice, fish, or other food they could grow or catch, for other products. The fish was currency, the rice was currency, in the same way, your content is currency.
Let’s talk about trade
If you can accept the fact that your content is currency, when producing it, ask if people can trade it. Could someone take this information and trade it for something else.
People pay for tutorials because if they learn something new, they can barter that information for a higher wage from their employer. If your content gives them nothing to trade, it’s not worth their time, it’s fluff.
Think
If you aren’t trading information directly for money, then you need to think about why someone should keep visiting you to receive that info.
Seriously.
Think about it.