I’ve said this many times before. If you’re not building a list, you’re not building a business, you’re building someone else’s business. I know that sounds rather cliché, but, it goes even further than just building a list.  The real question is, “Do you have any other real assets in your business?”

The Wiktionary defines an asset as: Any component, model, process, or framework of value, that can be leveraged, or reused.

The key words in that definition are “leveraged” and “reused.”

If you’re just driving traffic from Google to a merchant’s website, you are not building an asset for your business.

If you depend on surfing programs, exchanges and safe lists for your traffic, you are not building an asset for your business.

If you only advertise in e-zines, you are not building an asset for your business.

Don’t get me wrong… You can generate a lot of traffic, using the methods above. But once you stop, the traffic stops. If you depend on one source of traffic and that source dries up, so does your cash flow. Also, if you are using Adsense on your site, you will find that Google disapproves of traffic generators.

You need assets that generate sustainable traffic and sales around the clock, whether you work, or not. That’s what it’s all about, right? Making money on auto-pilot!

So what kind of assets can you create, to build your business?

Asset 1: Your List.

Building a responsive mailing list, is the best investment you can make in your business. I say, “Investment,” because it takes time and money to build a good list. But, your efforts will be rewarded ten fold in time.

The keyword here is responsive. It is no use having a huge list, who never buy from you. It would be far better to have a small list, in a specialized niche, who are hungry for your information and products.

If Google forces you out of a market, or drops your ads, you will still have your list. It’s your asset and no matter what happens, they can’t take that away from you.

And once you build a list of any size, you can leverage that asset in many ways:

You can swap ads with other list owners, to build your list faster.

You can endorse affiliate products, or sell advertising, to increase your cash flow.

You can get feedback on products you may want to create, by conducting surveys.

Once you establish yourself as an expert (or at least knowledgeable) on your topic, your subscribers and customers will respect your opinions and advice about the quality products and services you sell.

Asset 2: Your Blog.

 If you do it right, you can get a ton of free traffic, just by posting to your blog each day.

If you publish quality content, run contests, or give prizes to your readers, you will get repeat visitors and traffic through word-of-mouth advertising.

If you target a niche market, that’s not too competitive, you can generate free traffic from search engines, by using the right keywords in your posts and links.

If you encourage visitors to comment on your posts, you get other people to add unique original content to your blog.

Publishing a blog is a great way to communicate with your subscribers and customers, while building an asset for your business.

Asset 3: Your Articles.

An article is an asset because it’s yours. It’s something unique that you create and you can use it any way you wish.

You can optimize your articles for specific keywords, submit them to article directories, and get free traffic, from search engines.

You can submit your articles to a distribution service and get them published in major e-zines, for instant quality traffic.

You can combine your articles and create a viral PDF report, to give away to your subscribers.

Now you might be thinking, “But there are tons of PLR articles, that I can buy dirt cheap.” Sure, you can buy private label rights to tons of articles, for pennies each. I have thousands on my hard drive… Do you want them? They are worthless to me…

99% of the PLR articles and e-books people are selling, are poorly written by people who don’t know the topic at all. I wouldn’t sign my name to a PLR article and an e-zine owner would have to be pretty desperate, or plain stupid to publish them.

You won’t get much traffic from search engines, because Google and Yahoo systematically purge duplicate content. Unless you’re the first to get a PLR article listed in the search engines, you won’t see any traffic from your efforts at all.

About the only thing you can do with PLR content, is re-write it yourself. But there are much better articles, written by experts, that you can use as “templates” to create your own.

I’ve given you three examples of assets, that you can create for your business. There are many more, including viral reports, audio and video reports and reviews.

Basically, anything that YOU create, that will continue to generate traffic and sales over time, is an asset to your business.

This article was written by Derrick Van Dyke. For more affiliate marketing tips, visit his blog at http://affiliatecashsecrets.com/blog . Also join the affiliate program, at his website AffiliateCashSecrets, at: http://affiliatecashsecrets.com/thankyou.htm?

Derek Robson is an up and coming, South African, internet marketer, with a vision of empowering all fellow South Africans and non U.S folk, to have equal opportunity and success, on the internet. He is a syndicated article writer. He and his wife Sally, have started a string of sites, resources, courses and articles, as part of Dersalsites. For daily postings and articles, on Internet marketing, South African business, list building, affiliate marketing, the law of attraction, rugby and general topics, check his blogsite, at: http://dersalsites.com/southafricanbusiness  

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