The Asset versus the Transactional Model

It is possible to monetize on just traffic alone without building a customer list. However, this is transactional and has no way of recreating revenue in the future. One of the characteristics of an asset is the ability to generate future revenue. So gaining revenue from traffic alone is just an automated version of receiving money directly from your customer. The best way to capture this revenue is to turn the traffic into a customer list (an asset) and then you have a way of generating future revenue with this list.

As shown in the diagram above, a customer list by itself is worthless unless it has systems built around it. With the right systems, work today keeps generating future revenue and the good news is the benefits are stacked up as shown in the diagram below:

Even though an asset creates the potential to create future revenue, do not underestimate the value of a system as an essential part of your financial freedom goals. Without an asset like a customer list, a good system has the capability of automating revenue. The only catch here is you are not capturing the value for future purposes (i.e. building an asset). Your model looks like this:

The asset model is more sustainable over the long run.

Like the freelance model, the transactional model earns income from the customer once without no way of repeating the sale. This is detriment to your financial freedom goals. If you are going to use your business as part of your financial freedom plan, you need a way of building recurring revenue. While the transaction model is a good way to start, it is not a good place to stop. To build financial freedom with your business, you need to work diligently at creating assets surrounded by system which in turn churns income.