Why Should I Sell Something?

That's a lot of nice talk from a company that creates and sells things. Of course we think it's a good idea. But if selling products isn't your primary business, why should you waste the time looking into it? Why is selling something such a good idea?

Great question. We've got a whole bunch of reasons. Ready?

1.    Creator Economy
Welcome to the creator economy. Gone are the days when people punch the clock and put in their hours at work. Now we create things. Now we work for ourselves. It's a massive shift in thinking.

Your primary source of income might be service based. You perform a service and get paid. But the creator economy means you can also create products based on your service and generate extra income. You can find a way to package what you do and boost your income potential.

The entrepreneurs in the room are drooling.

2.    Move Beyond Your Limitations
You only have so many hours in the day. You can only rack up so many billable hours. There's a limit to how much money you can make. The income potential of your company is ultimately limited by people and hours.

Unless you sell products.

If you can find a way to package your service into a reproducible product, like an ebook or software, then you can move beyond those time-based limitations.

Selling stuff online can be like having a second job without having to put in the hours. You work the initial hours to create it, but then it keeps making money for you regardless of how many hours you put into it.

3.    Think Like an Enterprise
Big, rich companies don't leave money on the table. They see the value in something and find a way to make money. You need to start thinking like an enterprise.

The stuff you create is valuable. You love it, so you don't want to think about it this way, but it's a commodity. Find a way to package it and charge money for it. All you're really doing is monetizing your assets.

Use some fancy business lingo if that works for you. But get on board. Make your assets work for you.

4.    Income That Works For You
A big reason you should sell your own stuff is because it's an income stream that compliments everything else you do. If you accept advertising on your site you're ultimately pushing people away. If you do referral income with affiliates you're also pushing people away. These might be fine ways to make money, but they're income streams that work against you.

Instead of using your space, energy and effort to make money for other people, make money for yourself. Put that space and bandwidth into getting people to buy your own stuff. It keeps people engaged with you. It keeps them on your site and ultimately in your sphere. You're earning money and reinforcing your brand. Win, win.

5.    Risk & Reward
If you want to make some money you're going to have to take some risks. Creating stuff involves a lot of risk. But there's also a lot of reward. Just ask Mark Zuckerberg or J.K. Rowling. It used to be that creating stuff required sharing the risk and reward with a publisher or other backer. Someone would share the risk with you to create whatever awesome idea you had. But in order to get that backing, you had to share the reward.

Publishers, record companies, producers and more gatekeepers got rich with this model. Some creators also got rich, but a lot of creators were deemed too risky. But today the Internet has made it possible to assume the risk yourself, or at least spread it among the crowd.

Author Hugh Howey found success on his own by selling his books in the Kindle Store. When the publishers came knocking he sold the print rights to his hit novel Wool but kept the digital rights for himself. The publisher couldn't offer anything that he couldn't already do. The success of Wool was a big risk that Howey took on his own. Now he's keeping all the reward for himself, as it should be.

All the Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects flourishing today are an example of the risk being spread out. The giant gatekeepers aren't the only ones who can take on risk these days, and that means all the reward isn't locked up in their greedy fists. There's more reward for creators like you.

So the bottom line is you should create and sell something because the risk/reward model has been flipped upside down. There's not nearly as much risk to create your own stuff and the reward can be all yours.

6.    Stability
It's a tough world out there. After the past few years we all know the nosedive the economy could take at any time. And no matter how well the economy is doing, you could still lose your job. You could lose that big client. Your traffic could disappear. You never know what's going to happen.

There's very little security out there.

Which is why it's important to take care of yourself. Cover your bases by having multiple income streams. Selling a book probably isn't going to replace your salary, but it's a nice trickle that can provide some semblance of stability. When things start getting ugly, you're going to want every bit of stability you can get. It's a little extra to keep you going or stop the worries. It's an additional income stream that might give you the security to try something new or take a vacation.

7.    Your Own Longtail
Nobody is reading your blog posts from 2009. But there's probably good stuff there. Just because it's five years old doesn't mean it's worthless. You could repackage it and help people rediscover it. Making content easy for people to find by repackaging it makes it worth paying for.

You should create something because it's an easy way to make the most of your content. In some ways it's even an environmental approach: Reduce your work, reuse your stuff, recycle your income.

And that's something everybody can do.