Having and owning a valuable life skill will always be admired and appreciated by others. It takes a lot of your time and sometimes money to master these skills to be the best they can be. Once you have got one, there will be time to learn another. However, sometimes money may be a burdening factor. There is a way you can use your previous skills to trade for a new one.

What is your Talent?

Trading talents with others seems like a dream scenario to save money to learn more in life. However, it can be challenging to know what your talent is or even if the talent you have will be worth anything to anyone else. There will always be someone out there who will be interested in learning the skill you have perfected, be it:

• Music
• Gardening
• Writing
• Cooking
• Sewing
• Child/pet care
• Decorating
• Painting
• Dancing and so on

Even if your talent is as niche as knitting hats for cats, someone out there will be interested in trading what they have for that. Sometimes they may only want an element of the skill you have. In this instance, they may like to learn to knit in general. So you can trade just aspects of your knowledge instead of the specific skill you have.

How do I Find my Talent?

If you are still unsure what your talent is, or you have too many ideas and are not too sure which one to concentrate on, it’s best to research other people who have these skills as well. You can contact them to see how they handle it, how long it takes them, if they enjoy it, etc. The main thing is that you enjoy it. If it is your passion and something you are very good at, you will be able to master it with determination alone.

If you are still unsure, you can ask yourself the following questions to find your talent:

• What do you like talking about/are passionate about the most?
• What are your hobbies/activities outside of work?
• What was the last activity you lost track of time on?
• What activity is most enjoyable?
• What hobby/activity do you not need help with?
• What do you read/ research about the most?
• If money wasn’t a factor, what would you do for work?
• What are your strengths?
• Has anyone ever asked you to teach them a skill? If so, what was it?

Selling your Talents

Once you have found and perfected your talent, it is time to trade it with others to gain their skills as well. This can be a prosperous thing for your abilities, and learning new skills for others means you can pass those on. So this becomes a cycle of learning and passing on new skills through trading. You can trade your skills face to face with other people however, this is where time becomes a factor. There are only so many hours in the day, and having one to one can be time-consuming if you include travel etc. Although this is still a positive thing to do, the internet is an excellent tool for time and money-saving skill sharing.

How to Trade your Skills Online

Start a Blog – You can get your talent out there to the world first by writing a blog about yourself and what you have to offer. You can open up in blogs and talk about whatever you’d like to promote about yourself and talk to others within your field

Social Media – Having social media platforms that are centred around your talent is a great place to start. Social media is the most significant and easiest way to spread your skills around. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook are the main accounts where you can upload videos of your skills to spread them around the web for more to see. Using hashtags and tagging notable people in your videos can boost them and hopefully help them go viral. Showing your skill off is 100x better than just explaining it.

Marketing – You can market your skills around the web through paid ads that will come upon people’s feeds that are interested in similar skills because of the algorithm. You can also send out marketing emails to people online who have again been chosen by an algorithm to show they have taken an interest in a similar skill.

Trading sites – You can find websites online where people trade their skills with one another. You can post your skill on there and describe yourself, location, what talent you have and what talent you are looking to learn. This is a great way to find people in similar situations like yourself who are willing to trade skill for skill without spending money.

Where to Start

Sites like SWYVL will be able to make trading talents with others online easier and quicker. When you sign up, you can choose more than one skill you are good at and what you feel you could trade with someone else. No money is exchanged in these connections, only time. This is a great way to learn new things and find relationships within various fields, which could lead to growing the business you build around your talent. Take the first step with SWYVL to gain a good foothold in the talent pool.