From @jackbutcher on Twitter again:

Build one, sell twice. Move from selling your time to storing your effort in digital assets that you can sell twice.

It’s not always easy to see how to store your effort in digital assets to sell later. But a few days ago, I experienced just that. That store was 200wad, and the digital assets were the words I write here, on various topics that interest me in work, specifically about nococde.

Nocode isn’t even something I wrote about often, but even that had proved its worth this time. I was asked to write something about nocode and civic tech, and after coming up with the main theme with the publisher, I just reached into my 200wad archive, opened all the posts, and copy and pasted sections over for this article. What could have taken a few days to write was done in a few hours. It was mind-blowing to be able to do that. And it could have only been possible because I had repeatedly wrote about work stuff in a format that can be re-used, instead of say, writing journalistic entries about my day (which of course, has it benefits too but less “sell twice” potential, don’t you think?). OK the caveat was that I didn’t quite sell that article.It wasn’t a paid gig nor was there any monetary exchange. But I can imagine a paid gig done the same way. 

And now I can also see how my efforts using Codepen and tinkering with code repos for different UI elements and patterns might also be another store of digital assets. That seems to be culminating into my Custom Carrd Co idea, selling code snippets for Carrd site owners. Building once for sure, and selling twice, or more. 

I love how with hindsight all these disparate efforts seem to be now making sense (and also money). Just like how @jackbutcher said, in another tweet:

Keep going. What feels futile early is foundational later.