Just came across a great little post from blogger Danny Brown on monetizing your blog, and this just reinforces what I’ve been telling local business owner for the past 18 months – “You must create multiple streams of income for your business.” I don’t believe LBOs should start a blog with the intention of making money from it, but like Danny points out, within a short period of time you have a lot of content you can re-engineer.

In other words, you can repurpose your old content from something you once gave away for free, to something brand new that you can sell, and make money from. He talks about my three favorite ways to produce content – eBooks, videos and webinars. As a local business owner, your main priority is your core business, no question about that. However, some pretty cool ideas came from repurposing resources that were either lying dormant or just not making any real money.

The best example would be KingsFord Charcoal. A whole company was created because Henry Ford couldn’t deal with having tons of sawdust go to waste in the process of making his Model T body frames. How about Listerine? It was invented over 130 years ago to be used as a surgical antiseptic. Over the years it was added to cigarettes, became known as a cure for the common cold, and even became a treatment for Dandruff. It wasn’t until the Roaring 20s that Listerine found it’s niche as a cure for bad breath.

With the invention of the Internet, you now have a way to productize your knowledge. After years of toiling around in your business, I bet you’ve figured out why certain things work, and why some don’t. Shortcuts and sidesteps you can take to get the same result, but maybe in half the time, or with less of an investment – people would pay for that kind of information. The more information you hoard, the less chance you have of earning from that information.

Information products are your tickets to added revenue. If you don’t know where to start, start a blog and dole out some of that information to your audience. If it’s solid stuff, they’ll be back for more, and if they come back often – sell them something! It’s called a win-win, and that’s the best kind of win.

Marcus Roman is founder of the Upper Level Media Group and the author of the Local Business Reboot Manifesto, 12 reasons why local business tend to fail and 12 ways to make sure it doesn’t happen to you. For more information on how you can become the number one choice in your local community for your product or service, apply for a Strategy Session.