I think the best strategy is to focus on organic SEO, then that truly can become "passive" income in the right niche. You will still need to do an SEO campaign every couple of months to remain on the first page, but you can outsource this to a reputable business for a lower cost than your profits. PPC is too active and difficult for my tastes.
The trick is to pick the right niche. If you're only looking at forex, MMO, affiliate webhosting etc you're up against competition that knows what they're doing. Try picking an obscure niche within alternative medicine that hasn't been fully tapped. Get a large volume keyword 20k/mo and optimize your site around it after reading up on the latest Penguin updates (hint: if you think off-site backlink anchor text linking with your exact keyword is a good strat, you're not up to date on SEO). You should be focusing your anchor text within your on-site links in a non-spammy way, not offsite. Yes you can fool the algorithm easily, but rest assured once you get traffic, you will have a manual review, and you will be penalized if you've tried this.
Build a legitimate site in a non-competitive, high search volume monetizable niche, do your SEO with the latest penguin considerations in mind, and I promise you this can be passive income. SEO only becomes a full-time job in a competitive niche which has at least 10 other people who know what they're doing. There's lots of untapped gold still out there, niche and keyword research still remains the most important factor in IM in my opinion.
The trick is to pick the right niche. If you're only looking at forex, MMO, affiliate webhosting etc you're up against competition that knows what they're doing. Try picking an obscure niche within alternative medicine that hasn't been fully tapped. Get a large volume keyword 20k/mo and optimize your site around it after reading up on the latest Penguin updates (hint: if you think off-site backlink anchor text linking with your exact keyword is a good strat, you're not up to date on SEO). You should be focusing your anchor text within your on-site links in a non-spammy way, not offsite. Yes you can fool the algorithm easily, but rest assured once you get traffic, you will have a manual review, and you will be penalized if you've tried this.
Build a legitimate site in a non-competitive, high search volume monetizable niche, do your SEO with the latest penguin considerations in mind, and I promise you this can be passive income. SEO only becomes a full-time job in a competitive niche which has at least 10 other people who know what they're doing. There's lots of untapped gold still out there, niche and keyword research still remains the most important factor in IM in my opinion.