Build Assets, Not Gigs

A gig pays once. An asset keeps paying, and someone may one day pay you for it. Here is how to tell the difference and shift your work toward the second.

By The Digital Owner staff · 6 min read

There are two kinds of work in an online business. Some work pays you once and is gone. Other work keeps paying after you finish it.

The first kind is a gig. The second is an asset. Most founders need both, especially early. The ones who build lasting businesses deliberately move their time from the first to the second.

What counts as an asset

An asset is anything you build once that keeps producing value without the same effort each time.

Common examples in online business:

An email list you can reach directly, without paying a platform each time.
Content that keeps bringing in readers or viewers long after you publish it.
A product that can be sold many times without being remade.
Software or systems that deliver a service without your hours.
A brand people search for by name.

A gig is a single delivery: a client project, a one time job, a post that only matters today.

Why assets matter: the market puts a price on them

The clearest sign that assets are real is that people buy them.

Empire Flippers, a broker for online businesses, reported that content sites sold at an average of 31.6 times monthly profit in 2020. Acquire.com reported in January 2024 that SaaS startups on its platform sold at an average of 4.3 times trailing twelve month profit.

Nobody pays a multiple for a freelancer's calendar. They pay for things that will keep earning after the owner leaves.

Nobody pays a multiple for your calendar. They pay for what keeps earning after you leave.

A real example: one person, several assets

Pieter Levels is a well documented case. He has written that Nomad List, a site he built for remote workers, reached a revenue range of $20,000 to $40,000 a month, with thousands of paying members, by 2017. In 2019 he wrote that it took four years for Nomad List and Remote OK together to reach $1 million in annual revenue.

In a later interview transcript published by the Cheeky Pint podcast, the host summarized Remote OK as having reached $3.4 million in revenue and Photo AI $600,000 in annual recurring revenue, all built largely by him alone.

The point is not the size. It is the structure. Each project was a product that kept selling, and each one stacked on the audience the last one built.

Assets take longer to pay

The trade off is speed. A gig pays this week. An asset might pay nothing for months.

Nathan Barry's records for ConvertKit, now Kit, show it. He wrote that revenue reached $2,000 a month in June 2013 and had fallen to $1,330 a month by September 2014. Only after he committed to it full time did it grow. Latka reported it reached $25 million in annual recurring revenue in 2020.

Assets reward patience. That is why most people stay with gigs.

Gigs still have a job to do

This is not an argument against client work. Gigs fund the early months. They teach you what customers actually want. And they can be the raw material for assets.

Paul Graham, co founder of Y Combinator, wrote an essay called "Do Things That Don't Scale." His advice was that founders should do manual, unscalable work early to get users. The handmade start is normal. The mistake is never moving past it.

How to shift from gigs to assets

A few practical moves:

Turn repeated work into a product. If clients keep asking the same question, write the answer once as a guide, template or course.

Publish what you learn. Every client problem you solve is a piece of content that can bring the next customer to you.

Capture every contact. Make joining your email list part of every sale, every piece of content and every conversation.

Ring fence asset time. Put a fixed share of your week, even a few hours, into work that will still pay next year. Protect it from client demands.

Systematize delivery. Document how you do the work so others, or software, can do parts of it.

Watch for false assets

Not everything that looks like an asset behaves like one. A large social following you cannot reach without paying is rented, not owned. A product that only sells when you personally promote it every day is closer to a gig. A course that goes out of date in six months needs constant rebuilding.

The test is simple. If you stepped away for a quarter, would it still produce value? If it would shrink to nothing, keep working on it until the answer changes.

A simple weekly check

At the end of each week, sort your hours into two columns. Gig work. Asset work.

Early on, most of your hours will be gigs. That is fine. What matters is the direction. If the asset column grows a little each quarter, you are building a business that gets easier and more valuable over time.

If it never grows, you have a job with extra steps.

Sources

Empire Flippers, "How to Value a Website": https://empireflippers.com/how-to-value-a-website/
Acquire.com, Biannual Multiples Report, January 2024: https://blog.acquire.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Acquire-Biannual-Multiples-Report-Jan-2024.pdf
Pieter Levels, "Nomad List Founder": https://levels.io/nomad-list-founder
Pieter Levels, "It took 4 years to reach $1m annual revenue with Nomad List and Remote OK": https://levels.io/4-years-to-1m-revenue-nomad-list-remote-ok
Cheeky Pint, transcript with Pieter Levels: https://cheekypint.transistor.fm/4/transcript/
Nathan Barry, "From losing money to a 51% profit margin in 5 months": https://nathanbarry.com/profit/
Latka, interview with Nathan Barry: https://getlatka.com/companies/convertkit/interviews/convertkit-nathan-barry-2020
Paul Graham, "Do Things that Don't Scale": https://paulgraham.com/ds.html