You can create streams of passive income by solving problems for customers. Learn more!

Last week, I shared the idea of creating your own “lottery prize”: Passive income of $1000 a week or more for life.

This week, we will look at how you can get started.

The way to create your streams of passive income is to solve problems for customers. This is easier than it may sound to you. You may already be solving problems by offering consulting or other services. You may even be making $1000 a week or more (perhaps a lot more) by doing so. The problem with this model is that you are trading hours for dollars. That means that the moment you stop putting in hours, the dollars stop, too. And, there will always be a limit to how much you can earn.

However, when you create products that solve problems, the products can be earning for you 24/7, even when you are not putting in hours. And there is no limit to how much you can earn.

What product should you create? This is the thing that hangs up lots of people. They spend a lot of time thinking, planning and agonizing about what to do, and no time doing it. The answer is simple, though.

Find out what your customers want. You don’t have to be a mind reader to do this. Just ask. Do a survey, post questions to your blog or ask your Twitter followers. Get feedback about their questions and concerns. What is their biggest problem or obstacle?

Once you know what your customers want, create it for them. You might hold a teleseminar, then record and transcribe it. Or you could create an ebook. Or a software program. Or templates. Or videos. Ultimately you will want to have products in many formats, so don’t worry about which one to do first. Just choose a topic and format, and do it.

What if you don’t have a big mailing list or a bunch of Twitter followers to survey? Start building your list now. Today. But in the meantime, go to the forums or websites frequented by your target market. Read the questions and the comments there to determine what people in your target market want to know.

Get started on this now. Take one or more of the above actions to discover what your market wants. Then decide on a format. Then create your first product.

In an upcoming article, we will talk about how to create your first product, or your next product.

What would $52,000 a year do for you?

A colleague of mine had an uncle who won a lottery prize that gave him $1000 a week for life. Now, $52,000 a year does not make you “rich,” but it gives you options. The uncle was a small business owner who never took time off because he believed he could not afford to close his store. After winning the lottery, he kept the business but started taking some time to travel, relax and even have surgery he had been postponing!

What would $52,000 a year do for you? Maybe it would cover your bills so you could take a year or so to finally write that novel. Or pay for you to go back to school to begin a new career. It could fund your kids’ college fund. Or enable you to quit a job you hate. Or pay for trips and other extras you don’t think you can afford now.

At the very least, having that money coming in the door every week could mean that you wouldn’t have to worry about paying your bills (unless, of course, you went nuts and started spending $5000 a week) even when other income slows or stops.

The bad news? You probably are not going to win the lottery.

The good news? You can create your own $1000 a week lottery prize. Although there are no guarantees about how much you can make, here are some ideas about how you can win your own lottery.

The lottery prize is just a form of passive income. Creating your own streams of passive income takes a bit more effort than buying a lottery ticket, but requires a lot less luck than winning the lottery.

First let’s define “passive income.” I don’t think of passive income as “money for nothing.” Passive income is money you earn by doing something once, but getting paid many times.

One good source of passive income is selling products. With products, you do it once (create the product) then get paid hundreds, thousands or millions of times.

What do I mean by product? It could be an information product, such as a book, ebook, audio program or multimedia course. Or something you invent and have manufactured.To make $1000 a week on a product with a $20 profit, you would need to sell an average of 50 every week. That’s about seven a day. Is that doable? Sure. Or you could sell 10 (three sales every two days) of a product with a $100 profit. Or one a week if the product had a $1000 profit.

But maybe you would prefer not to put all of your eggs in one basket. You could create a variety of products at different price points and even toss in a few other income streams, such as affiliate marketing, advertising income, etc. In fact, that can be a good plan because it can help to smooth out income fluctuations.

If you are starting from square one, you might not go from $0 to $1000 a week overnight, at least not consistently. You can get there, though, if you have a plan and follow through. And $1000 will be just the beginning. You can continue to grow your passive income streams until you are earning several thousand dollars every week.

So what should your first step be? I’ll share that with you in an upcoming article. Meanwhile, think about what you would do with an extra $52,000 a year.