There was a time when the last thing I wanted in my life were problems. Now I'm a good scavenger of them. I'd even search for them in the garbage if I have to - or maybe not...but you get what I mean.
There are 2 things that keep me up at night, one of them is thinking about how to solve my problems and the other is finding a solution to other people's problems.
If someone told me some years ago that problems could pay the bills, I'd probably just scratch my head. The truth is that the most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who solve common problems.
People are constantly searching for ways to solve their own problems. These same people are willing to pay to have their problems solved, because just like you and I their problems keep them up at night too. There's an urgency to make that pain point go away. If you can solve it, you win - and get your bills paid. It's as simple as that.
Yeah, I know, some of you may ask, "But most of the solutions are on the internet and a good number of them are out there for free. Why would anyone want to pay for that?"
That doesn't stop people from paying you to solve their problems. Paid solutions carry greater impact in the minds of your target audience because:
1.A paid product that promises to solve their problem looks more valuable than a free product because it has a price tag. So, if you put a product with a price tag side-by-side with the free one it creates the impression that the one with a price tag has more to offer than the free one. Simple psychology. If both products were the same then why would one be paid, right?
2.Creating a product that gives more detail or something extra is worth being paid for, especially if it stands out from the free info out there.
3.It's true that a good number of solutions to the problem are free but you'll always find people who are searching for something better, faster and more efficient solutions to their problems irrespective of this. That totally increases the value way above any free content out there.
4.You put in time and effort into creating something valuable. Ingenuity and hard work are worth paying for. Thankfully a good number of people know and respect this.
5.A lot of people will pay for products that will save them from the years of pain they would have experienced if they did the research on their own. It's so much easier, faster and cheaper to buy a product than to go through years of the school of hard knocks. It'll surely save you a headache - and probably a heart attack too.
So, "all the good ideas are taken" and "the solutions are already free on the internet" are just excuses and pure BS. Get over it.
If you're reading this right now - which I'm sure you are, since you've gone this far - you have a ton of solutions to problems that you have experienced at some time in your life.
Maybe you've been through depression and survived. Share how you were able to get over your depression. As at the time I wrote this article "how to get out of depression" had 128,000,000 search results on Google. This is what Bryan Forsythe did when he wrote his book Crack the Depression Code. (It's not an affiliate link, in case you're wondering.)
Maybe you taught yourself a skill like web design or copywriting and learnt it the hard way. Create a product that can help make other people's life easier.
Problems will never go away. No matter how saturated the internet may be with free solutions, there will still be may people searching for how to solve their problems in the best way possible.
Putting a price tag would not scare people away. It sets you apart. You're not seen in the same league as the free stuff.
It's all cool from here, but this does not give you the golden ticket to do sloppy work. If you want to get paid, then make the product worth it. Play it fair and don't cut corners. If you want the world to take you seriously and worthy of every cent they give you, then you've got to prove it.
A valuable product will give you passive income. All you're required to do is put in the work first then afterwards you can rest all you want and get paid in the process. What can be a better deal than that?