What is Barter System? Why you should not do it?

If you are a content creator on Instagram or YouTube there is a high chance you must have come across brands approaching you for collaborations on a barter basis and it would have left you scratching your head whether or not you should go for it.

Let’s dive deeper into why you should ALWAYS avoid barter collaborations but before that let’s understand what exactly is a barter collaboration.

What is a Barter System?

We all have read about the barter system in our Social Studies textbook in class 10. It refers to the exchange of goods without the involvement of money.

Say Person A is a shoemaker and needs some wheat and Person B is a wheat producer and needs new shoes. Both Person A and Person B meet each other and get the goods they need in exchange for their products without the involvement of money.

It is a relatively outdated term but with the onset of the creator economy, it is extensively used in Influencer Marketing.

With a twist, here the brand sends you their product, and in exchange for that you talk about their product on your social media, say Instagram or Youtube. 

Why should you say NO to barter collaborations?

Brands approach the creators who create content on Instagram/ YouTube in a similar niche as them(brand) and ask them(creators) to promote their(brand) business among their (creator’s) followers in exchange for a few brand products.

Brands get the exposure they were looking for through the creator’s audience but the creator didn’t gain practically anything apart from a few products worth 100s or 1000s at max.

You know how difficult it is to ideate and shoot even a 1-minute long video. It takes you around 8-10 hours on average to shoot a 5-10 minute long video.

It is immensely challenging to come up with an idea to promote the product in a way that the audience is hooked till the very end, those who do it on a daily basis would agree with us on this.

Many big creators nowadays refuse to take Barter Brand Collaborations as it doesn’t equate to the hard work and the efforts they put into conceptualizing and shooting the video.

We understand you want to part with the Barter System too and we are here with a solution!

CloutFlow.

Join the CloutFlow community today.