Too many people look at their content as an expense. They're either creating a time expense by writing all their content themselves or a monetary expense by outsourcing to a ghostwriter. This is the wrong way to look at it and if you do, you are fulfilling the trite marketing axiom of “leaving money on the table”.

Content is an asset, not an expense, and an asset means that it adds to your net worth. Assets grow in value over time. If you look at your content production in the right way, you can have a virtual empire in the time that many put up one simple website. This does not involve a lot of extra work, either, just proper planning and getting a little creative.

This article will focus on those of you who are creating your own content but the ideas can apply when outsourcing, as well, with a few tweaks. “Work smarter, not harder” is another adage we hear so often that most have stopped paying attention but it really is true, especially with your content creation.

When you first start to research your topic is where you should be planning your virtual empire. Many writers have told me that they research for ten to fifteen minutes (or more) and then write one article. They then go to spend another period of time researching the next keyword and so forth until they have ten articles to begin their initial website. Do you realize that this amounts to about 100 to 150 minutes of research for ten articles? That is an average of two hours, just to make a small website – and that's just the research!

Save yourself at least half the time by doing all of your research at once, before you ever start to write the content. Open a document and list all your keywords on the page. As you research and find good information, copy and paste the facts and ideas you find below each of the keywords that it applies to. When you find real authority sources on your topic, be sure to add the url to your research page so you can easily find it again if needed. It should take you no longer than an hour to do this for most topics.

By researching all at once, you will find that you have enough information to create far more than ten articles in the end. In that one hour, you will have learned more about your topic than you would by focusing in on only one keyword so this will give you an edge when writing. This should make your actual writing time less than it would be otherwise so you save even more time.

Once you have your ten articles (web pages) finished, don't think of these as the end of the line. Quality content can be used over and over again, leveraging the work you've already done into many other things. This doesn't just mean to submit the articles to directories, either, although that is an excellent way to make your content work harder. There are many other ways to use this content for your maximum benefit.

Ten articles of 500 words is 5000 words of content – you can easily excerpt parts from each one (or even use the entire piece) to compile a very nice report. Turn this into a PDF and use as a giveaway to entice subscribers to your list or submit it to the various PDF sharing sites with links back to your sites or product pages.

But you're not finished with that content or the research you've already completed. You did save that research document, didn't you? By combining paragraphs from the content you already created with new facts and ideas from your research, you should be able to come up with many more articles.

Take your content beyond your website and the directories by utilizing various web 2.0 properties such as Squidoo, HubPages and other similar sites. By combining pieces of several articles, you can easily create an entirely new article for these sites.

Have you attached a blog to your website? Take pieces of those articles created for the web 2.0 sites to use for blog posts. One of the best ways to do this is to take one idea that was mentioned and expand on it a bit in your blog, adding in personal experience and opinion. Since blog posts are usually shorter than full page articles, they don't take more than a few minutes to knock off a post whenever you want.

These are just a few of the easiest and fastest ways to build your content and get it all across the web. There are many more ways to get creative with what you already have including making slideshow presentations, videos, audio recordings...this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Remember, your content is an asset that will keep working for you for years to come. Treat it as such and plan for multiple uses for the best return on your investment.