Each of us faces a unique set of circumstances while working towards our own goals, but the one thing we all have in common is the number of hours we have available.

Are you trading or investing those precious hours?

What I mean is, are you trading your time by doing busy work such as sorting emails, calling dead leads or holding meeting, or are you investing your time into projects that will produce reliable, recurring income and free up your time?

With either choice, you will probably put in about the same amount of work today, but over the next few months or years, the time that you’ve invested will multiply your free time and income dramatically while the time you’ve traded will simply be gone.

Want some examples? Aaron Wall stopped selling products or services years ago and turned SEOBook.com into a subscription-based website that produces income month after month. Nicole Deal could have promoted her services as a copywriter, but she chose to make better use of her time by promoting PLR articles that she can sell over and over. Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr decided to develop Digging into WordPress a book on one of the most widely-used blog/CMS systems available, instead of selling their time as consultants.

All of these experts used their knowledge to create something that could produce income over and over, even when they aren’t actually working. That means more income and more free time! What are you doing to emulate their formula?

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably put off creating your own informational products to sell because you don’t think you qualify as an “expert.” You might have your doubts about whether anyone would be willing to part with their hard-earned money in exchange for your knowledge. Or maybe you just think there are already enough “experts” in your industry and you won’t be able to differentiate yourself.

It’s time to put your doubts and fears behind you because I’m going to let you in on a little secret – you don’t need to be the top authority on a subject. You just need to know more than the other people who want to learn about it. The problem is that you underestimate what you know because you already know it. What may seem basic to you is brand new and valuable information to someone else. Information that they will often be more than happy to invest in!

Here is a quick little exercise to show you just how much you really know:

1. Find three people who want to learn about your area of expertise, and give them each a free, private one-on-one consultation where they can ask you anything
2. Record the call
3. Listen to the call. Did you notice how you were able to quickly give them the answers they needed with little effort? (note: there are a lot more people like them than people like you)
4. Use their questions and your answers to create your own informational product to sell.
5. Repeat steps 1-4

It’s as simple as that.

Ahh…the holidays are upon us yet again. Thanksgiving has already come and gone, and many of us (fortunately, not me) have endured the unending lines and frenzied crowds to be a part of the insane Black Friday tradition. Now, as we jump knee-deep into Cyber Monday, many businesses are beginning to wind down for the year. But instead of a relaxing (or stressing out over holiday preparations), you should be using the next thirty days to build up a competitive advantage and set the stage for a record year in 2010!

While your competitors are content to simply wait for Santa Clause to climb down their chimneys, you can leverage your reduced workload to develop your own products to sell. You may have already thought about this a long time ago, but gave in to your own excuses. Stop that and get started! Each product you develop gives you a new stream of income that can work 24-7, is infinitely scalable (it doesn’t take any more effort to sell 1,000,000 than it does to sell 1) and helps you to generate revenue from the clients who you would have otherwise turned away because they couldn’t afford your services. Don’t leap before you look, though. There are lots of innovative ideas and tools for testing if there is a market for the product that you want to develop, and Pat Flynn does a great job of outlining them step by step.

You’ll quickly find that this can be a major turning point for your business that can grow exponentially and make life easier.