How I built a valuable content library as a sole proprietor

I run the business. I manage the finances. I take out the trash. Just like a lot of entrepreneurs. In the beginning I couldn’t afford to outsource anything.

The biggest challenge is doing enough marketing, product development, and fulfillment to not only get by, but to also grow. Here’s how I did it.

I created a marketing assembly line. Every week I created new content. My target was a 500 word article. It took me less than two hours to write each one. I featured the article in my newsletter. And posted it on my website. Every week my website grew. And that brought more and more people to subscribe to my newsletter.

The most important secret to building a valuable content library is to get two or three uses out of every act of content development.

Articles go in the newsletter. And posted on the website. And become the topic of webinars. And become materials in courses. And part of a future eBook. And conference presentations. And handouts. And get posted on LinkedIn. All of them link back to my website to build audience.

Creating all this is easy once I wrote the article. Every single week I wrote a new article. And it only took two hours.

Every couple of months, I had a new online course to sell that was built one article at a time. The same articles, turned into a tutorial became an eBook. Handouts were more marketing than product being designed to be pass around to others. The same article, posted on the socials were marketing pieces.

I’ve done this for 20 years. 20 x 52 = 1040 articles. The total is actually higher because some weeks I wrote two articles. That's well over 500,000 words since I always exceeded the target. Google says a typical novel is 900 words. So if I chose to sell in the form of books, I'd have six of them. Once you have written a couple of hundred articles you'll have a library of sellable content with the possibility of subscription revenue, and enough content for a few tutorials, at least 10 online courses, and a book.

This is how I was able, as a sole proprietor, to create product while delivering services, building my website, sending my newsletter, managing operations, and taking out the trash.

Don’t just randomly create. Create so that things add up to something bigger and sellable. It’s a good idea to have an editorial calendar so that you cover all the topics you need to cover. It’s an even better idea to write the table of contents for a major creation and then nibble away at it with weekly pieces like articles so that in the future you can stitch them all together.

Don’t forget that you can collaborate. Invite others to contribute a piece of what you’re building and compensate them by promoting the hell out of their contribution. When you have a team you appear larger, more credible, and deliver more value than just some person promoting themself.

Just make sure that every piece you add grows your audience as well as gives you something to sell. When your audience stops growing, so do your sales. In fact, place a higher priority on audience building. Create to build an audience of potential buyers. If you don’t build an audience, then no one will be there to buy what you want to sell.