find a solution for your business problemIf you’re looking to find the best passive income ideas for an online business, you should think first about solving real life problems.

One of my biggest pet peeves about people who don’t understand online marketing is that they think that internet marketers are just looking to make a quick buck, without contributing anything of value.

This stereotype really bothers me not just because I’m a full time marketer, but because nothing could be further from the truth.

The best online marketers, those that are the most successful developing their passive income ideas into long term businesses, are those who address the needs of their audience first, and worry about the income aspect later. That’s how affiliate marketing really works.

Affiliate Marketers Solve People’s Problems

Users (potential customers) are Googling because they have some sort of problem they need to find an answer to. Maybe that problem has to do with how to get rid of the moles in their garden, or maybe it’s how to decide which new smartphone to buy.

Either way, the same premise holds: the user has a problem they need solved. Any website that can reliably solve that problem for them gains their trust because it provides them with value.

Affiliate Marketers Solves Companies’ Problems

On the other side of the equation, affiliate marketers fill a huge market gap.

Companies are constantly looking for ways to source new leads (potential customers). There’s only so much outreach any single company can do to find new prospects, even if that company is a large firm with deep pockets.

Put simply: there are far too many people looking for solutions than there are companies that can clearly address those solutions.

Not only that, but many companies are fundamentally disadvantaged when it comes to sourcing those leads, because they can’t step back and evaluate their products from an unbiased perspective.

Take the smartphone example I used above. If you read a review by Apple on why the iPhone 6 is better than the Samsung alternative, would you trust the information given?

Affiliates are inherently unbiased. It doesn’t matter to me which product you buy, or even if you buy any product at all. That’s because I know that my role is to provide honest, up to date information that will help you, my reader.

Finding Passive Income Ideas is About Finding Problems to Solve

Now that you understand how it is that affiliate marketers can solve two different sets of problems at once, brainstorming a list of passive income ideas is just a matter of identifying problems that you see people having.

For you, as an individual, those problems are all around you.

Try to think of 10 issues you’ve tried to solve in the past week.

If you can’t come up with any, all you have to do is check your search history in your internet browser. I guarantee you that your personal searches represent market niches that could be addressed with affiliate marketing.

This is also a great technique to use because you’re going to provide value as an affiliate only when you’ve actually faced the problem yourself, and know what your end user is going through, and what they’re trying to find.

From there, building it into a business is easy.

Click here to learn more about how to build an affiliate business out of your idea.