BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

2) Because with said experiences, she developed mastery on the topic (cf the 10'000h rule)

3) Because she can now charge sweet sweet money for her services (being the #5 quiz maker on BF would imply that she knows how to provides value)

In retrospect, even if she did if for free, it wasn't a bad deal: it was a fun way to spend her time and she gained some skills

It's not much different from whoever hacked Linux servers as a teen, then suddenly found this skillset could translate to good money on the market- sometimes more than what they studied for in college.

> Labour competes with other labour

And consequently, capital competes with other capital. And in this day and age, it's not expensive to create a website.

Assuming she's a world genius at making quizzes, all she needs in a domain name + some viral marketing, then slap ads on top on that. Some extra content would help, to drive visitors. But considering how people thrive on just doing quizzes, her MVP may not even need anything besides the quizzes.

> labour isn't very mobile, while capital is global

The $ I spend on mechanical turk and the online contractors I hire when I need them say otherwise.

> capital captures the difference in the cost of labour and the value created by labour.

No, factors of production are paid at their marginal productivity. Capital without labor usually can't produce much. When labor is scarce and highly productive (software engineering), it commends high prices.

I agree with you that writing quizzes seems simple, and a skill that could easily be learned by anyone. However, she has written thousands of them. The article says she was #5 of BF. There are not many people who do that.

Let's take another example: anyone can play basketball. But it takes some special skills to score while a team of highly motivated, trained and paid professionals try to prevent you from scoring. If you keep succeeding, this is what commends a high wage - even if anyone can play basketball.