I think that as conscientious Solo Entrepreneurs, we tend to think that creating a new product means starting from a blank sheet of paper. Kind of like baking from scratch, rather than from a box.

I don’t know about you but cake from a box is mighty fine to me!

There are dozens of ways that we can create new products without that empty piece of paper. For example, you may have noticed that the introduction of our newsletters are now taken from this blog. I write one piece, and then use it two ways. Then, if a particular blog post gets a lot of feedback, I might turn it into an article. Or conduct a teleclass. I might then package a recording of the teleclass with a workbook. And so on.

This principle also works from the other direction. If you’ve written a chapter in a book (or a whole book!), turn it into several articles. Post the articles in directories, use them in your newsletter, etc. Have someone interview you about your book, and sell the recording as a download.

In my opinion, the glory of all this is that each *new and improved* product gets better than the last. Your message gets clearer, you find new examples, the prose flows more smoothly. And your customers benefit!

So the next time you start to feel guilty about not writing from scratch — don’t!

Last 5 posts by Terri Zwierzynski

• The Grateful Life of a Solo Entrepreneur - November 17th, 2008
• Can a Lifestyle be a Niche? - November 4th, 2008
• Social Networking: Top 10 Tips for Twitter Success - November 3rd, 2008
• Virtual Book Tour: Becoming an Online Business Manager - October 20th, 2008
• Link correction: Viral Twitter Tactics - October 13th, 2008

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 3:30 am and is filed under Internet Marketing, Article Marketing, Email Marketing, Multiple Streams of Income. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.