You want to start your next business, niche site, or side project. You want to make more money. You want to improve your situation. You’re ready to start working. You just don’t know if it’s worth going after your specific idea. You’re not sure if you should invest your sweat equity just yet.

That’s all good. This post is for you.

How can you test your idea right now?

Make sure a market even exists.

You can use the Google keyword tool or any complex tool out there to see what the traffic is like. I personally use Market Samurai. I do a search of the relevant keywords or whatever I would type in if I was looking for this specific market. I then see what the volume is like. I see how many other relevant keywords are popular.

I do this just to see if there’s even a market in the first place. For example, when I started my niche site I realized that there was more than a strong enough market out there. I just needed to get specific and target a segment of that niche.

Before you work on any idea, you simply need to see what the search traffic is. If nobody is searching for it, then nobody will ever find you. You can’t persuade someone that they have a problem. It’s better to find those looking to solve their problems. Why bother putting in the work for something that nobody cares about?

Make sure you actually solve a problem.

No matter what niche you enter, you need to remember to solve a specific problem. We as human beings generally want more sex, time, money, and recognition. If you help someone gain more of any of those then you’re solving a problem. If your throw out general advice, you’re not solving much of anything. You’re just killing time.

Create the best solution.

Why go half way? If you want to enter the niche or bring this new idea to life, I suggest that you create the best possible solution. There’s no point to create something sub-par. If you truly love the topic, you’ll be able to pump out something that’s very high in quality.

Get feedback from real people.

One thing that many of us rarely do is ask real people for feedback. We read blog posts and go on Twitter. The thing is that there’s a huge difference between what people actually want and what they say they want.

You need to think of your potential target audience and see what they think about your idea. For example, if you want to start a nutrition business helping people get in shape, I would suggest reaching out to someone that’s looking to get into shape. Ask a real friend. Ask someone at the gym. Don’t just rely on Twitter for feedback. Everyone on Twitter will tell you that yes, of course they want to eat better and get in shape. How many of them actually want to do this and are willing to pay for it?

One more thing here: please DON’T ask your parents for feedback. They’ll tell you that you’re the best. You don’t want a false sense of hope. It’s cool to keep your family and friends involved. Just please don’t solely rely on your family for feedback. Positive reinforcement can only take you so far when your new idea sucks!

That’s how you can test your next idea out right now. I don’t want you wasting any time or money on something that wasn’t meant to be. Trust me, I know. I learn when I released an eBook that nobody bought. I just assumed that there was a market there. There was clearly no market.

Do you ever tell yourself that you’re going to start a new workout regimen? Do you also convince yourself that you’re going to train every single day and eat clean all of the time? Do you notice what happens? You go all out for a few days and then you give up.

This also happens with personal finance. You plan on getting totally serious about saving money. You have bold plans to save thousands of dollars. You plan on never spending money again. You want to just make money and save it all. You’re totally amped up about this. Then nothing really happens.

This also applies to passive income. You look for passive income sources so that you can make thousands of dollars from passive income. When you realize that it requires a ton of effort, you sort of give up eventually. You realize the fact that passive income won’t come over night and you’re suddenly no longer interested.

Why don’t you start off by saving $100? Why don’t you start off by making $100 in passive income?

What’s the point of this? Why should you start off by making $100?

All I’m suggesting is that you get started by saving up a little bit of money at first. You’re not going to build up any passive income if you don’t get into the habit of saving money. By saving $100 you can then turn around and invest this money in your passive income sources.

How does $100 impact your passive income? Why should you strive to make $100 in passive income?

It’a start.

You need to start somewhere. The end goal is to make thousands of dollars from passive income. The first goal should be to stop reading so much and to take some action. You should start off by shooting to make $100 in passive income just to see that it’s even possible to make money online. The first online income that I had was $20 coming in for a monthly text link. I took this $20 with a smile on my face despite knowing that $20 would get me like three drinks at a bar.

You begin to build momentum.

To get the ball rolling on anything you need to build up that first bit of momentum. As I just mentioned, the momentum started rolling in for me with my first $20. That’s all. $100 in passive income usually means that you’ve read about passive income theory, put some work in, and tried something out. Just the fact that ou made $100 should be enough motivation to try again.

You can see what works.

When you make $100 in passive income, you’ll suddenly know what works. Once you make your first hundred dollars you can start to tweak your approach. You can make changes so that in the future you can make more money. You can see what the market demands. Until you make that first $100 you won’t know what works or what doesn’t work. You’ll just have consumed a plethora of passive income theory. Making that first bit of income is proof that you’re onto something.

Are you going to go after that first $100 in passive income?

The biggest excuse for not building passive income is always going to be time, with money as a close second. We all blame time for not being able to build passive income. We all wish that we had more time. We all have busy lives in one way or another. Time is the most sought after commodity on this planet.

What if you could only work 1 hour per day? Let’s say you woke up earlier or later every single weekday. Could you devote one extra hour per day if you knew it would build you passive income?

Could you build passive income with only one hour of work per day? Yes you can.

I wanted to look at how you can build your passive income up over time with just one hour of work per day. Let’s look at how this can be done with various sources of passive income:

Real estate.

Most of the time involved in real estate income is going to come from building up your savings for the down payment of your rental property. How you do this is up to you. You can use your main savings for the rental property or you can start a new savings account. This all depends on your income and your rate of saving money.

When it comes to finding the property, you can use the hour to conduct research online. You can search for properties, look at rental prices, and at the work involved in the process. You can do all of this work online. When I was looking for a second condo, I would check out new developments online and email the company for further information.

When you finally do buy the rental property then that hour could be used to put up ads and slowly screen tenants. This will take about an hour a day at the most.

Once you finally do have a tenant in your rental property, you won’t have to worry about that one hour per day because you’ll just deal with phone calls as they come. You can also hire a property management firm to deal with this for you if you want to create true passive income.

Selling an eBook.

The funny thing is that an hour a day is enough time to get some solid writing done. You can’t look at the short run. In one or two hours you might only be able to bust out 1,000 words. You have to imagine over a month or two. You could easily pull out 20,000 words with an hour a day over a month.

You have to write on a consistent basis for an extended period of time. After a few months with online one hour per day, you’ll have your new product created.

Then you need to outsource the rest of the work. If you don’t have the time to worry about designing the eBook or creating the sales page, this is the process for you.

Once your final product is ready you’re going to have to devote some time to guest posts, advertising, and promotion.

Then you launch the eBook. After this the only work involved is dealing with complaints and refunds. The grunt work is done once you’ve completed the writing.

That’s how you can work on your passive income with only one hour per day available to you.

How will you use your one hour to create passive income?

I’m a big fan of meeting new people. I enjoy going on many trips and going out often. When I was in Puerto Plata I met a bunch of characters. This one dude in his 40s was pretty cool. He was always out by the bar, having drinks, laughing, and having a good time. We were from Toronto and it turned out we had the same flight home.

We started to talk about work one evening. Then he started promoting his business…

It’s a pretty sweet business. All I have to do is give him $500, and then invite some friends over for a presentation. I will make lots of money. I’ll be receiving huge checks in the mail in the future. It takes no effort and all I have to do is give him $500 to join.

End sarcasm.

Yes this guy has been sucked into some get rich quick. He’s excited about the idea of making fast money and easy money. He wants to make money while he’s traveling the world. He wants to make money without putting in crazy amounts of hours into this work. He wants the dream. To make money without doing anything.

This leads me to the point of this article. Passive income is not a get rich quick scheme. The idea of building passive income will come off as a scam when you first hear about it because we’ve all seen far too my schemes to get rich quick out there. We all know someone that has been conned into some cult-like group that will convince them they will make a fortune in the next few months.

If passive income isn’t a get rich quick scheme, then what is it all about?

Passive income is the idea of putting in the work today so that you can enjoy the benefits tomorrow. There’s nothing easy about building passive income. It’s going to take a lot of work, commitment, and perhaps even a financial investment to create passive income. I know this because I had work for a very long time to save up the money to put a downpayment on my condo. When I finally did save the money, I was able to purchase my first rental property. Now the rental property generates steady income for me on a monthly basis. I wouldn’t have had this income if I didn’t work for it.

Passive income is planning for the future. You’re taking care of your future because you’re investing time, money and effort to enjoy the benefits in the future. When you finally do start seeing some passive income, you’ll know that it was well worth it. You’ll see the money coming in and you’ll be proud of what you accomplished.

When you finally do create passive income, you’ll see that it’s far from easy. It also shouldn’t be your only source of income. Before you start to even worry about passive income or making easy money, you should focus on your active income. If your current income sucks, then you shouldn’t expect to start generating thousands of dollars on the side without much effort. That’s not how it works.

When you’re trying to build up your passive income, you also need to watch your expenses. You don’t want to be spending more money than you need to be. You also want to be able to put as much of your income towards generating more passive income as possible. As we all know, most decent passive income sources require a decent initial investment. To save up for this investment, you’re going to have to watch your finances for a bit.

What are fees that you shouldn’t be spending your money on?

Banking fees.

The other day my friend was complaining to me about his banking fees. He’s too hesitant to join with an online bank, so he has stayed with his traditional bank down the street for all of these years. He knows all of the employees at the branch and gets along with them. The only problem is that his account sucks. He gets 25 transactions for free and then gets charged per transaction. What kind of a deal is that?

What’s the point of even paying $5 a month if you don’t have to? Why spend an money when there are plenty of free online checking accounts available? You need to keep as much of your money in your pocket as possible. Banking fees should be non-existent just like your ex-girlfriend.

Late charges.

Late charges in general are annoying and a waste of money. It sucks because it’s like you’re punching yourself for punching yourself. You mess up and now you have to pay for it. Who wants to pay extra for something? Not me.

What are some late fees to look out for?

• Parking tickets.
• Movie rentals.
• Bills.
• Utilities.
• Car payments

Ridiculously high cell phone bills.

Cell phone bills can get pretty insane. Especially for a smart phone. I’ve paid some insane bills over the years. I’ve had cell phone bills that would make the average person cry. The funny thing is that it’s easy to get out of this situation. You just need to be a realistic and call your cell phone provider to get a better plan. If you love to text, why not pay more for unlimited texting? If you plan on chatting a lot, why not get unlimited calls? Planning ahead certainly beats getting killed with a bill for going over.

Credit card fees.

Don’t even get me started on credit cards. We all know that interest rates on credit cards can really haunt you in your 20s. The other problem here is late fees. If you miss a payment on your credit card, you’ll get hit with a hefty late fee. These fees can really add up and leave you stuck in a vicious cycle. When trying to build passive income, you can’t afford to screw yourself over like this.

Those are fees that need to be avoided. If you want to build up your savings, you’re going to have to watch your expenses. We already spend enough money on the basic necessities of life (gas, utilities, etc.) and we really don’t need to be spending money on the aforementioned fees.

Did I miss any fees out here?

I hate to fantasize (well not always), but let’s assume that you win the lottery. You play your usual numbers, you check the news, and it turns out that you’ve just won millions of dollars. You have a boat load of cash coming your way. You’re excited about all of the possibilities.

You now have millions of dollars available. You can do anything with this money. After travelling the world and buying your favorite brand of beer in every country, what would you do to sustain the money? You’re eventually going to want to figure out how to keep some of your money so you don’t become one of those lottery winners that went broke.

How would you create passive income if you won the lottery? A few options that came to mind for me include:

Buy a sport’s franchise.

If you win enough money you can buy a sport’s franchise. Imagine owning an NHL team or an NBA team (Mark Cuban style)? You could easily turn this into passive income by being one of those “silent partners” that never really does anything. If you ever want to bring a date somewhere cool, imagine going to the VIP seats of the final playoff game? And if you really wanted to get involved you could try your shot at being the General Manager. There’s nothing wrong with being a public figure– until you make one bad trade.

Buy a chain of franchises.

You know that a Tim Horton’s anywhere in Canada is a solid investment. You also know that a McDonald’s almost anywhere in the world is a strong investment (I’ve been to a McDonald’s in Canada, U.S, Mexico, Poland and Hungary). If I won the lottery I would definitely try to get my hands on one of the more popular franchises. I wouldn’t manage any of them since I would be too busy hanging out in Ibiza, Spain. I would treat all of my franchises around the world as passive income.

Purchase a huge blog.

With the value of popular blogs being so ridiculously high these days, I would aim to buy a fairly well-known blog that would go for a few million dollars. I would use this blog to promote my much smaller blogs, creating passive income on all of my sites. Hey, a man can dream, right?

Buy more lottery tickets.

Why not try to win more money? If you got lucky once, you could spend a ton of money to increase your odds of winning the lottery again. There’s no point in quitting on the lottery just because you’ve already won once.

Those are my favorite ideas for turning a winning lottery ticket into passive income. How would you invest your money if you won the lottery? I’m looking forward to some creative responses.

We take pride in North America about being extremely productive. We look up to those that manage to sleep 4 hours a night and always find new things to fit into their schedules. We feel good about all of those emails that we responded to and functions we arrived late at because we were at another meeting. Being productive is just such a positive trait to have.

I always thought I was productive son of a gun until I read a certain book. I then realized that I often just kept myself busy for the sake of being busy. You know because it’s important to be busy these days.

In the 4-Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss sums up the idea of being productive the best:

Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness– lazy thinking and indiscriminate thinking.

This is a tough quote to process at first. It’s sort of a huge slap of reality across the face. After a few hours I caved and realized that this was totally true.

What’s next? What if this quote suddenly makes you realize that you’re not all that productive?

I’m not going try to pretend to be some productivity guru or claim that I have the secrets to getting things done. I will just drop quote that I’ve decided to live by when it comes to productivity and getting quality work done.

What expression makes me produce quality work?

Do shit that matters.

It really is that simple. The next time you’re responding to redundant emails and typing away on the computer for hours, just ask yourself this: does this shit matter? As I started writing this post I asked myself this very question. After a few seconds I concluded that this does matter because I wanted to share two highly valuable quotes with you guys.

What do you think? Do you do shit that matters? Will this inspire you to be more productive?

Do You Want to be Your Own Boss?

Lately it feels like all of my friends with “real jobs” want to branch out to be their own boss. Maybe a lot of them are taking business or online MBA courses with the aim of doing just that. Most entrepreneurs take deep pride in being their own boss. I think it’s cool to be your own boss and all but is it all that it’s cracked up to be? I’m personally one of those people that will always at least hold down a part time job. I don’t think I could ever fully be my own boss.

What if you’re reading Passive Income Now and strongly considering becoming your own boss in the near future? A few things to consider for those of you that want to leave your job to be your own boss:

The buck stops with you.

You can’t go home at 5 (or stop working if you work from home) just because the work day is officially over. There really is no work day. There really are no boundaries at all to be honest. The boundaries between work/leisure time and home/office space become pretty much non existent. Just from running a blog I find myself checking email, stats, and jotting notes at the most random times. My friends will assume I’m texting a check on my phone when in reality I’m responding to an email from a reader. The thing with being your boss is that the buck stops with you and you’re ultimately responsible for EVERYTHING that involves your business. You can’t pass on the money problem to that annoying guy in Finance.

Long hours.

If you think your 8-hour shifts suck, just wait until you become your own boss. There will be days where you watch reruns of The Office all day. Then there will be days where you don’t have time to respond to a text from your best friend. You take the good with the bad and hopefully you understand that just because you work for yourself it doesn’t mean that you work less by any means.

The only beauty about being your own boss I find is that most people get so caught up in their work that they don’t mind and they don’t even feel like they’re doing “real work.”

Payment/money issues.

Most of us pretty much hate dealing with money. We want to receive our paycheck and move on with life. Anyone that has ever had to run their own business will tell you that a major cause of stress comes from:

How will the business earn money?

Where will the money come from?

Working for someone else you’ll never ever have to really think about these two questions. Now as your own boss these two questions will consume your mind on a daily basis. Are you ready for this?

Once again I want to make it clear that as much as I support entrepreneurship, I fully understand that I will always hold down some sort of a part-time job. Being “your own boss” sounds exciting and all, but I’m not ready for all of the risk yet.

How do you feel about being your own boss? Are you willing to give it a shot? Have you tried it?

(photo credit: theerin)

I recently took some time to look over The 4-Hour Workweek again. As I was looking through the sections that discuss getting your “muse” or income generating plan off the ground, I picked up some quality insights that I almost forgot about. Instead of just reading the points and getting motivated for 10 minutes, I figured that I would share the entrepreneurship tips with you guys.

Below are a few quick business tips for your small business as you attempt to grow it:

Don’t be the CEO/President.

It comes off as super minor league when you walk into the store and the only employee happens to be the President, CEO, and CFO. Running a small side business is no different. This is why I refuse to ever give myself the highest title within my own company or any other business that I may have in the future. As tempting as it may be for your ego, giving yourself the title of “President” can come off as totally lame.

Put up multiple contacts on the website.

This works wonders for strange reasons. The more employees in a company, the more major league it comes off as. I feel that advertises and other potential business partners want to speak with the person that’s responsible for a certain aspect of the business, as opposed to the president that’s busy with the vision and running the whole company.

Don’t put up your home address.

This one makes perfect sense. Think about it– how amateur does it look when a supposed business gives a home address? This is why I suggest obtaining a PO Box if you have to just to give your side business that extra boost of credibility.

Do you have any other quick small business tips that you can share? Are these quick tips useful or are they pretty much pointless to you?

Are you on the path to building passive income? Is passive income one of your major goals for 2011?

One of my goals for 2011 is to build my online income along with my passive income. Some may not see the difference between the two but I think there’s a distinct one. Online income is rarely passive. You often need to put in lots of effort upfront in hopes of a return down the line at some point.

With that being said let’s get to the important point: what should one be doing to improve their passive income this year? This is a list of the steps that you should be taking to reach your passive income goals.

Jotting your ideas down.

If you’re anything like me then the odds are that a million different ideas to earn a passive (or any kind of ) income hit you. My problem and likely a problem that many share with me is keeping track of these ideas. You can use a notepad and a pen or you can try out some sort of mind mapping software. Either way you should strive to keep a record of the ideas that hit hit you during the day. You never know when something amazing will hit you.

Ruthlessly testing ideas out.

Okay so you wrote your ideas down. What have you done about it? The next step is to test out the viability of these ideas and if they could actually work. How do you go about this? There are many strategies for this. It really depends on the idea. If you want to release a digital product you can check out ClickBank to see if there are any similar products selling out there. If you want to start a niche site you can conduct a simple Google search to find relevant sites. If you want to target something specific, Google Keyword Tool can always help you. All that matters is that you take a moment to test out some of the ideas that you write down.

Saving up money.

Most passive income strategies will either require a time or monetary investment. The thing is that time is money. So even if you’re looking for time, you might have to buy this time. This might mean outsourcing personal tasks in your life. This could also mean that you might have to work less hours at your current job. This is why saving money and investing it into your online projects is very crucial to your success. If you’re clueless on the topic, then it’s time to learn how to save money.

Working on it daily.

We often over-estimate what we can accomplish in a day and under-estimate what we can do over a few months. This is why daily focus and effort is required for all of your projects. Even something as simple as checking comments on your blog on a Sunday morning can go a long way.

There you have it. Four straight to the point tips to help you reach your passive income goals this year.