Instead of going along the lines of “what product to create”, an asset-based approach and solving a need will help you conceptualize a product with a hungry market behind it.

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In the business world, creating and marketing your own product ranks at the top of the value chain.

It creates unmatched opportunities to:
1) Brand yourself
2) Control product or service pricing and distribution
3) Gives you free rein to develop related products, form joint ventures.

Bottomline is that you’re in control.

Misbelief is that you need to put together something exotic like belly dancing or how to make a blackforest cake to have it sell online.

Not true.

—when i first started blogging, i had the belief that i needed to blog about something that no one was talking or writing about. needed to invent new techniques… not true.

Instead, you need to find something you’re good at, and you’re capable of teaching, to put it online, and more importantly market it effectively to the people who will find it relevant.

Assets – easy to think of ebook or a CD or DVD as an asset, but it’s more than that.
A particularly insightful forum posting or email reply, or a comprehensive answer on your customer support board forms the foundation of your knowledge base.

Some criticism about “crappy ebooks”. A lot of it has to deal with the fact that there’s no “knowledge base” in place.

So want to go beyond thinking of selling a physical or electronic book, or a CD, DVD or teleseminar for a moment and focus only on assets.

Assets are your knowledge. Something you know, something useful to somebody else that will bring them value, help them solve a problem and that they’re be willing to pay a fee for, to solve a problem or challenge they’re facing.

Looking at the root of things, let’s look at tapping the assets you already possess.

what you already know and seems common will provide value to someone out there.

• know how to cook chicken fried rice – lots of americans and europeans coming over to singapore, find that the local food here is delicious. wouldn’t you logically be able to market it to ready market over ebay or your own product site?
• curry national dish in the UK – what passes for curry isn’t very pleasant, why not put together your receipes and start marketing them.
• stay at home mom in pennsylvania or ohio and you have a great biscuits and gravy receipe – get in touch with me. it’s one of my favorite foods. would be popular in asia.
• busy professionals, how do you keep your house in decent condition in 1 hours quick cleaning a week?

know lots of programmers who’d benefit from it.

So the issue with creating a product or generating a profit with it has nothing to do with how to create a CD or write a book.
The issue is more basic than that.
So skip the idea of thinking you have to be an accomplished belly dancer. You don’t even have to be a rocket scientist to do well on the Internet.

You only need to be able to think out of the box, and bring value to your customers.

Newer marketers may know, but fail to incorporate the concept that information is the true currency of the Internet.

It could be something as simple as knowing the URL for an open source software, or something more complex like the techniques of breaking into elite Internet Marketing inner circles. If you don’t know where and what and how to do something that will help you achieve your goal, you will be severely limited in your marketing, and by extension your income generation ability.

As a newer marketer, your core focus areas should be:

• Absorbing as much of the relevant intellectual property assets as is needed to accomplish your goal
• Develop IP assets to help you directly or indirectly generate income (and achieve your financial goal).

Specifically Information Marketers should focus on:

• Understanding their target market and going beyond harvesting relevant keywords, to fully understand their thoughts and needs
• Developing (as a product creator) or recommending (as an affiliate marketer) appropriate and relevant products and services to serve those needs

A maxim I’ve heard recently is that “it’s never your visitors fault if a campaign flops – It is solely your fault” because you did not meet their needs.

What’re some ways to gain an advantage in this “information war”?

• Develop Critical Asset Mass

A successful PPC campaign is an asset. An ebook or program which helps your audience meet their goal is an asset. Having the right network of contacts to be able to broker deals is an asset.

You probably don’t realize all the assets you have at hand, and auditing and keeping track of what you know and what you can do goes a big way in reaching your goals.

How do you define a “critical asset mass”, you know you’ve achieved “critical mass” when your assets have taken on a momentum of their own and enable you to achieve your goals easily.

Need to put a deal together? If all it takes is a single phone call to accomplish it, you’ve got networking mass.

If you need to create a customized package for a client and it’s a matter of bundling your existing IP assets together, you’ve achieved product mass.

Which brings me to my next point.

• Developing Relevant Asset Mass

If you’re taking an adhoc approach to developing assets, you’ll naturally end up with a hodge podge of assets and it can be a struggle to bring your assets together.

You’ve probably realized that a number of the posts in this blog are geared towards developing a focus.

You may just now understand that a number of things you do every day generates an asset: from the emails you send, the private messages, forum posts, blog posts – all these generate assets.

But are these assets focused in a specific area?

Or do they run across a chaotic spectrum?

If the IP you are creating each day is tightly-themed, you can be sure that brought together, their value will multiply and may just help you move that next mountain you come across.

PS: In response to questions about IP assets, I created my Apple iPhone-themed Rabid Niche Cash Machine to help you gain a headstart in your Internet business building.