Leverage - Often talked about but few examples. Got any?

Sylvia, another way to gain leverage is to use other people's content. A good example is this forum, another would be a blog with active commenters.

Reduce the amount of repetitive work you do in your business.

Do it once, record it with Camtasia or put every step down in writing and pay someone else to do it for you.

Hi Sylvia,

Leverage comes in many forms. Which ones are available are a factor of how much you can think outside the box in your chosen niche and with the resources you have to hand.

Leverage is all about efficient use of your resources to maximise what's possible with them.

The 2 biggest things people need to leverage are:

1 - Time
2 - Money

You usually have one or the other, if you're short on both then exchanging your knowledge or skills in other areas with someone who can swap those with you for their time or money.

You can use software tools to leverage your time - using content management systems like Blogs instead of creating html from scratch.

You can leverage your time to create money by charging for your knowledge or skills.

You can leverage other peoples time by paying them to do things which you don't want to do or that they can do better or quicker.

You can leverage an email list to get people to give you better commission rates when promoting their products.

You can leverage your product value to get people to promote them by offering preferential referal rates (this is one of the benefits of having your own products rather than just being an affiliate).

The options are limitless and depend on where and how you can find value and use that value to move towards your goals quicker by exchange value with others.

If you have no time but lots of money - you can leverage your money by buying an existing profitable business, or high quality coaching to get you making money quicker.

Designers leverage their skills in different ways to writers and programmers - there are no limits.

You can outsouce.

You can use software tools to save time.

You can exchange knowledge for skills.

You can use content created for one purpose by reframing it to be fit for other purposes (using PLR material, reprinting articles, turning articles into ebooks, audio, video etc.)

You can use plugins for wordpress to automate bookmarking, link building, content sharing etc...

etc. etc.
Andy

A couple of specific examples...

Article Marketing: You do your keyword research, choose niches and phrases, then start writing. For EACH article...

Step 1: Submit to AC for upfront payment. It's pocket change but hey... it's money right?

After that is approved for payment then

Step 2: Add your bio and submit the same articles to EZA

Once those are approved then

Step 3: Remove the bio and weave in a few keyword rich anchor links - point them to either your own sites, products, or affiliate products. Spin them if you want (not needed) then submit them at places like LinkVana, 1waylinks and ArticleMarketingAutomation (I use the later).

You can stop there if you want, or go on to leverage the content more by submitting them to additional standard article directories, loading them onto one or more of your own sites and blogs, package into ebooks and reports, turn into autoresponders, etc, etc.

Another area I try to leverage is photography. I create stock photos and upload them to ~7 different micro stock agencies online, and they drip earnings day in and day out.

Whenever possible, I create my photos around or related to niche topics I have websites on. Then I use them to illustrate blogs, ebooks, reports, create website templates with, etc. In some cases I also use them to promote my primary photography website too, and I'll also use them as backlink builders.

[Edit] Almost forgot: I sometimes create niche specific screensavers or other "software" like stuff from my photos, then I give those out for free as traffic and link generators.

Essentially leverage in the examples above is to create something once, then repurpose and reuse it in as many different ways as you possibly can.

Hope that helps a bit without being too confusing
Kathy

Couldn't resist adding another one: Expert research, statistics and writing

I leverage excellent expert material from the public domain to create websites or ebooks. My preferred method these days is to actually turn it into Kindle books.

I can create a mobile travel guide about a specific place or area for example, but searching around for public domain material about the place/area. I then piece it together in a unique/custom way, weave in my own thoughts, opinions and experiences with the place, scatter some of my photos into the mix then viola! New travel guide/book

"Leverage" is a buzzword - overused and misunderstood I think.

If you haven't read Jay Abraham's book Amazon.com: Getting Everything You Can Out of All... - you should because he explains it in very practical terms.
Highly recommended reading for the entrepreneur.