Economics is a useful framework for content marketing. For starters, we’re playing a game of ROI and we should never lose sight of that; if you want to start a hobby blog to explore self-expression, you can do that on the side (though you can still use these lessons to make it commercially successful).

Beyond that, content marketing has clear costs, indirect costs (opportunity and sunk costs), as well as clear rewards and indirect rewards. Additionally, economic lessons like thinking on the margins and diminishing marginal utility will help you answer questions like:

• How many articles per week should you publish?
• What type of articles do you need to be producing, given ‘market competition’ and your own content assets?
• How ‘good’ does each article need to be (and what does ‘good’ mean in your context)?
• How much should you pay writers, now and later?
• When can you estimate a breakeven point in the costs of your programs and the return on your investment?
• How can you lower production costs to create a larger ‘margin’ in your content program (while maintaining content quality and returns)?

Specific questions to ponder as you go through this lesson:

• What does the metric "keyword difficulty" actually mean and how does it help you plan your content strategy?
• What are direct and indirect costs of content marketing?
• Which factors directly affect the cost of producing content?
• How can a content growth model help you make better decisions?