Are You Remembering to Build Assets & Skills?
There are a million ways to make money online but unless we build assets that can become residual income streams then we will never be much further up the ladder than those who struggle in their paid day jobs.
The Freedom That Comes From Working Online
When I think about the reasons why I quit my day job I can sum up the majority of it in just one word…
Freedom!
- Freedom to choose when I want to work
- Freedom to choose where I want to work
- Freedom to choose what I want to work on
- Freedom to create something that belongs to me
I was a software engineer in my day job and when I handed in my resignation people assumed that I was going to do freelance programming and build up a client based business. This could not be further from what I want as that kind of work doesn’t give me the freedom that I crave. I have to do the work that the client wants, when the client wants it and anything I create ultimately belongs to the client.
That is not freedom.
I get emails all the time from people asking me if I do paid work. I’ve been asked to help setup niche sites, be a paid blogger, develop WordPress plugins, do social media consultation etc etc. I could so some of these things and bring in a guaranteed income for a while but what happens after the work stops? I have to go out and find more work and this is a never ending cycle so I don’t see much difference between that kind of work and a day job. It just sounds like endless hard labour to me.
Assets Are The Real Goal
What I want to do is build assets. I consider an asset to be something that can continue earn money for me in the future after the majority of the work on it has been complete. I see a life where over the coming years I build multiple assets which bring in multiple streams of diverse income and over time I have to do less and less work to maintain these assets.
Let me give you an example of some assets that I am trying to build for myself:
Infoproducts Such as Ebooks
I have released my first ebook recently and although it is free to download, it is an asset that earns me money because of the affiliate links embedded inside it. The main marketing push is done now so I have probably seen the majority of the income already but now that the book is on people’s hard drives I never know when somebody may pick it up, read it and buy something through one of those affiliate links. This is a product that could continue to earn money (albeit sporadically) for months or even years to come.
What if I created an ebook every month? That is the business model behind Instant Money Reports which I reviewed recently. Once an infoproduct has been developed then there is little ongoing maintenance. If you can set up a consistent traffic stream to it via some kind of paid advertising perhaps then you have a long term income stream. If you then repeat that with several products you can see how these assets provide multiple streams of income.
Membership Sites & Web Tools
The problem with individual products such as ebooks, courses, software is that they are one off sales so you constantly have to find new customers to sell to. The shelf life of any one product will be limited so to create a truly sustainable income you need to occasionally update your products or create new ones.
The membership site model is different because it is based around a monthly fee and the idea is that you try to create something that members will want to keep paying for. I’ll give you a few examples of membership sites and web tools that I pay for:
- Teaching Sells - teaches how to build membership sites that I am discussing right now! I joined TS when it first launched and plan to develop my own membership site (project coming soon!) based on what I am learning.
- Blog Mastermind - teaches how to build an authority blog and monetize it so it can create a full time income. I was late joining BM and I wish I had joined right when I started my blog as there is no way to skip ahead to later lessons and I feel like I am always one step ahead. Still, some advanced material is coming and I just love Yaro’s work so I’m staying with it for as long as I have this blog.
- Weight Loss Resources - allows me to keep track of what I eat. I actually use it to build recipies. I’ve been a member for many years.
- Allakhazam - years ago I used to play a game called Everquest. Being a paid member of this site allowed me access to their EQ database which gave me lots of advantages in game. I don’t play any more but I was a member for a long time.
This Blog
Blogs are a funny one because there are many different ways in which you can earn money from a blog. The way that I see this particular blog as an asset are as follows:
- More readers = more people to buy from affiliate promotions
- More readers = more people to click on banner ads
- More readers = a higher rate I can charge for advertising
- More readers = more people I tell about products that I create
So as you can see, more readers = more potential income. The trouble with blogs is that when you have a highly individual and personal blog like this one, you can’t outsource the work. I could never hire a writer for example. And by the way, that’s why I don’t use guest posters here. A guest poster is not Caroline Middlebrook :-)
But the cool thing is that my time becomes more valuable as the blog grows. If I review a product on the blog and make a few affiliate sales then that post earns me a certain amount of money for my time. The more readers I have, the more money I can make yet the time taken to write the posts doesn’t change. Right now, my blog posts earn me more money than they did 5 months ago. A year from now I would hope that I would have readers in the thousands and thus my blog posts would be even more valuable.
Niche Sites
So far I really have failed quite miserably at all my attempts at creating niche sites. I started out with the Thirty Day Challenge and created two niches with that and didn’t make a penny. Then I tried the high paying niche experiment which meant building three niche sites and all of them failed to make any income. Most recently I created another niche site for the bum marketing project and that one does make me a little money but just pennies. I think I’m up to about $30 in total from that site.
However, I do think the idea is sound if only I could come up with good niches! The idea behind this business model is that you create a small site that provides value in some way and you just monetize it. There are many ways to do this - AdSense, affiliate sales, whatever. You get traffic to the site either in some paid way or perhaps via organic searches and then you leave the site alone.
Every site you create is an asset that has the potential to create income over time. I recently talked about Garry Conn who does this with blogs. He runs over 100 blogs and although most of them don’t earn much individually, the whole collection brings him over $5000 a month in income which is rather nice.
Other Income Building Assets
So far I have only discussed the assets that I personally am considering building but there are many more ideas out there. A few months ago I wrote a long post showing 512 ways to make money online that discussed ways of mix and matching content, traffic & monetization strategies and that post included ideas such as forums, web games and matching sites.
A few months later I wrote a similar post that showed 10 strategies to make money online that could all potentially develop into a $100 a day income stream.
The important question to ask yourself about your work is whether or not what you are spending your time on is helping to build something that can continue to make money for you in the future. Of course not every activity can be a direct money earner. For example, I spend at least an hour a day answering email and responding to blog comments and that doesn’t directly make money money but it is an essential part of developing the asset that is my blog.
The Hidden Asset - SKILLS
A couple of days ago I rambled a little about some difficulties I was having with Web 2.0 and said that I often found it hard to get into new things and tended to stick with the familiar. I can see quite clearly how building new skills in these areas is an asset in itself because it allows me to get going more quickly and to build other assets with ease.
These are some of the skills I would like to develop to help me in my Internet Marketing ventures:
- Writing and distributing a newsletter
- Selling a paid product
- Creating an AdWords campaign
- Learning to use AdSense properly
- Learn more about SEO
- Creating a video tutorial
- Selling things on eBay
- Learn how to do split testing
- Learn how to build a membership site
- Learn Php & MySql (Programming langauges)
There are more things I could add to the list but you get the idea. Basically, I want to make sure that the vast majority of my time is spent building an asset or developing skills that can help me build assets better.
Does your work develop income-generating assets for you or are you just doing hard labour day after day?
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k.
February 22, 2008
Regarding the fellow who runs 100 blogs and makes $5,000 a month- I make the same amount of money by consulting with clients about blogging and social media - and I’m sure the time I put in (maybe 15-20 hours a week) is a lot less than what’s required to run 100 blogs. Just thinking about running that many blogs exhausts me. While I agree with you about building assets that earn you money in the future, I have to wonder if running multiple blogs is the way to do it.