Great content can be the path to starting a successful online business — but it’s not the only step involved. To build an online empire, you need a business structure that supports your writing.

Chris Guillebeau has created a way for you to learn that business structure without years of trial and error. The Empire Building Kit offers in-depth instruction on how to create your own empire: a sustainable business that can earn you at least $50,000 a year and that typically revolves around something you are personally interested in. As a writer, that approach is ideal. More than a few of us want to wind up owning our own businesses, although the idea of exchanging our time for money day in and day out doesn’t seem like an ideal plan. Chris’s concept of building empires will let you use your writing skills to move beyond business models like freelancing. Chris himself is a writer, and his personal empire supports his travel habit — he has a personal goal of visiting every country in the world by 2013. So far, he’s visited 125 out of 192.

Learn to Build Your Own Empire

As Chris has built his online empire, I’ve been working on one of my own. I wish I’d had this kit when I’d started. The Empire Building Kit includes interviews with successful empire builders, all of whom earn at least $50,000 a year from their businesses and some of who have hit the $150,000 mark. These interviews include details that you won’t find anywhere else: Chris convinced each person to talk about details like how they created their marketing plans, how they handle logistics and other details that most business owners are normally very tight-lipped about.

Chris even opens up his own business practices, talking about the successes he’s had with the Unconventional Guides business (along with a few mishaps along the way). I think every freelance writer needs to be studying the Unconventional Guides, by the way — this is how to turn your writing skills into a business model. The Kit also includes 365 steps — small steps that you can do over the course of one day — that will keep up your momentum for an entire year as you launch your own empire.

Why is momentum so important? As Chris explains,

When you’re first getting started, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and not know where to begin. When we get overwhelmed, we tend to do nothing — or at least, nothing highly productive. Breaking it down over time not only makes it easier, it also makes it more likely to succeed.

It’s also important to say that small steps taken over time can create a huge impact, but you have to take the right steps. For example, lots of people get hung up on the tactics and logistics. I’m happy to talk about tactics and logistics all day, but the reality is that having a clear vision for your business idea is much more important. The question to ask is: “What is really going to create such an interest in your business idea that people are actually willing to pull out their credit card (or log-in to their PayPal) and send you money?” That’s what the 365-day series focuses on relentlessly. And of course, with 365 messages to work with, I’ve also got a few surprises saved for the journey.

Why Do You Need The Kit?

It’s rare that I say that anybody absolutely needs a product that I review. But if you want to build up a business of your own, but you are having trouble finding where to start on your own, I think that you need the Empire Building Kit. You can put years of hard work into building a business, learning the information that Chris has put together on your own, or you can read, listen and watch all of the information included in this kit and have a business that is actually earning you money in a year.

You might ask why hard work isn’t enough. I actually asked Chris just that. He said,

You have to do the right things. Hard work and passion are extremely important, but you’re right — they’re not sufficient. I like to say that I can be passionate about eating pizza and playing video games, but so far I haven’t found anyone willing to pay me for it. Therefore, the key is to build a business not only around your own interests, but also around what other people are willing to pay for. Knowing how to do that is probably the number-one takeaway from the whole project.

I did receive a review copy, but I would happily pay full price for the information contained in the kit. It’s like what an MBA really needs to be.

The Empire Building Kit is available from EmpireBuildingKit.com Oh, and Chris’ travel habit does mean that the Empire Building Kit will only be available today, for just twenty-four hours. Chris is leaving tomorrow for Africa.