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11 October 2009

How To Cover Your Assets

There is this paraphrase from the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" published in 2002 by Robert T. Kiyosaki. This paraphrase differentiates the rich folks and poor folks. He says,


The difference between rich folks and poor folks is that rich folks acquire assets, while poor folks acquire liabilities.


What he said is very obvious but it is a line you should think about. A lot. To make sure you do, you're going to take record of your online assets as you read this blog.

The reason is a surprise. It is not mine, but yours. The surprise you'll get when you see just how many resources, skills and assets you have at your disposal. Most of which you haven't thought about before. Before you can list them, you need to know what they are. Consider: There is a difference between assets, resources and skills.

For instance: An affiliate program is a resource. Recruiting affiliates is a skill. Your affiliate force is an asset. An asset is anything that has real commercial value or that generates cash directly. Keep that in mind as you make your lists. What are the main assets you might want to develop for an online business? The most obvious are:

  • Completed Products
  • Domains
  • Sales letters that convert
  • Effective landing pages
  • In-demand content
  • Your opt-in list

Let's start with the obvious.


Get a notebook or open a document in your text editor or word processor. Create headings for each of those categories, and get typing. List each asset you already control, in each area. "Control" means that you can use it for your own benefit. You don't need to "own" it. If you're a member of a group and can advertise to that group legitimately, that's an asset. (Access is considered an asset, rather than a resource.)


Create a separate document for assets you need to get or build. Create another for resources that are necessary to getting or building those assets. And another for skills you need to have access to in order to make it all happen. You don't need to master the skill yourself in order to have access to it. If you have a staff member who can do web design, you have access to that skill.


Access without ownership can often save you a lot of time and money that you can use for other things. Learn to think like this. You'll find that both your business and your sanity benefit greatly. You'll also find that you have a lot more opportunities than you thought. Start your listings now!

Okay. If you're that eager to read more of my deathless prose, it can wait. But at least start them now. List the main ones for each group from memory. That should only take a few minutes. If you don't start now, you might as well close this page. There's almost zero chance that you'll finish them later if you don't do the basics while you're reading this.


Now for the not-so-basics.


Keep in mind, this is far from a comprehensive list of possible assets. Literally anything that makes you money or increases your available resources qualifies. List them all. List everything that occurs to you. If you think of it, it has value, real or potential. Any idea you have thought of put it down. Don't throw away assets because you don't understand how to use them yet.


Inbound Links: This is an area that creates a lot of dispute with more advanced individual. Some think that any link is good, while others think you need to be selective, to guard your reputation with the search engines. To make it more confusing, the impact varies with the search engine you're talking about.


My advice is simple. Don't go out looking for links from places that seem to exist only for that purpose. If the link makes sense relative to the content of your site, and it's not just a publicity stunt to get more links, it's probably a good thing.

How do you find out who's linking to you?

Try IBP's inbound link optimizer. IBP have proven their software receives a top ranking from nearly every company they have worked with. It is very easy to enter your detail to begin immediately. Just type in your domain name or relevant keywords at the link manager and watch the magic happen.


You don't need to list every site that links to you, but you might want to list the top 10 or 20. The big thing is to know how many links point to your site, and to have an idea of where they're coming from.


I won't go into strategies for getting links here, but I'll give you one suggestion. Look for places that link to sites like yours. Axandra's demo version software to search for sites similar to your's. I'm sure you can find plenty of sites that cover the same topic, or related topics, that you do.


List the domains and go back and do the same search outlined above. Think about ways you can get your site listed on those same pages. This is also a very effective way to find people who are promoting affiliate programs with products similar to yours or in related fields. Try this. It's an eye-opener. And quite the little goldmine.

Effective Text And Graphic Ads: This one is simple. What's working for you right now? If it works to sell your product directly, you can use it in more places, or give it to your affiliates to use to sell more of your products. More importantly, you can use it to find out what your prospects really respond to. That's the best way to build even better ads in the future.


Search Engine Listings: To find these, use google webmaster tool, yahoo site explorer or SEO Chat indexed page tool. That will show every page that is listed which includes the domain name you specified. This doesn't show you where you rank for people searching on your keywords. It just lets you know which pages have been indexed.


Finding where you rank for your targeted keywords is easy enough. Type them into a search engine and see where you show up. Be aware that you'll rank differently in each search engine. That is getting into search engine optimization, so it's probably best to stop there.


Your Network: This is the big daddy.


It is possible to run a business with nothing but a good address book. Yes it is possible but I don't recommend it. And it is a lot easier to run a more "regular" business profitably if you have access to people who will help. Your network consists of anyone that can help that would tend to respond positively to communication from you.


Some examples:


  • Your subscribers
  • Your affiliates
  • Your professional associates
  • Your contractors
  • Your clients/customers
  • Your advisors and mentors
  • Your mastermind group

List everyone by name who fits any of those categories, except your subscribers and your customers. You'll notice that "personal friends" wasn't one of the categories. There is very likely to be some overlap between your network and your friends. Maybe even a lot of overlap. That's good and normal. Just keep in mind that being friends with someone does not mean you want to do business with them. Or that they want to do business with you. If they do, great. Just make sure that the business doesn't interfere with the friendship. This is an area that is tricky to give advice on, because every relationship is different. You don't have to mix the two, but being friendly never hurts.


Build your network. There is nothing more important to your long term success or enjoyment of the business.


You have learnt something new today. Go. Practice! I'm working on mine.

2 comments:

SEO Manchester said...

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of increasing quality traffic to a web site through search engines by improving ranking in search engine results. To make your website visible in search engine(s) provide high-quality content on your pages, especially at homepage. This will attract visitors and other webmasters to link to your website.

Blaise Dominguez said...

Definitely yes for me. I agree with you on that one. Thanks for pointing it out for me:)

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