Lots of great advice in this thread and just as important, realistic advice.
I don't like the term Passive Income, because for most it is not attainable and people get the wrong idea. As pointed out, most passive income, is actually more properly 'deferred recurring income', you put in the hours up front and in the beginning your hourly wage is less than working at McDonalds - MUCH less, but then as you figure things out, your hourly income continues to grow with each passing day, because you now have a system or product which sales, does not depend on your direct work input.
I like the term 'Lifestyle Business' better to cover what most think about Passive Income. Here I am not talking about entrepreneurship or start ups which is a different thing, though a lifestyle business can be a startup too.
How I see lifestyle business is taking advantage of the ease of scalability, distribution and location independence of the internet. You can do that by selling a product, being an affiliate, running a webshop and other things. The most important is that you take the hours in = salary out from a linear scale to an exponential. With a lifestyle business, unlike the consultant or selfemployed specialist, you stop trading hours for money and instead work on creating self sustaining businesses. It really isn't different than creating a business which can also run by itself eventually, but most who do this kind of thing do not want an office or to manage a lot of people.
Personally, I've chosen the affiliate marketing route and done ok with it so far. I made close to no money for the first year and only poverty money the second year and then it skyrocketed. I wanted to quit many times. I like the comment about having to put in the blood, sweat and tears at some point is correct, no such thing as a free lunch.
I am now looking to branch out into other areas of income, such as writing a book or having software developed, both can create 'passive' income streams.
My recommendation would be to figure out what you are good at, then get skills in that area, such as working for someone who does just that, then strike out on your own after a couple of years. Some people may just be so talented that they can skip the whole working process, but I think most would benefit from some mentoring and learning a business from the inside first.
I don't like the term Passive Income, because for most it is not attainable and people get the wrong idea. As pointed out, most passive income, is actually more properly 'deferred recurring income', you put in the hours up front and in the beginning your hourly wage is less than working at McDonalds - MUCH less, but then as you figure things out, your hourly income continues to grow with each passing day, because you now have a system or product which sales, does not depend on your direct work input.
I like the term 'Lifestyle Business' better to cover what most think about Passive Income. Here I am not talking about entrepreneurship or start ups which is a different thing, though a lifestyle business can be a startup too.
How I see lifestyle business is taking advantage of the ease of scalability, distribution and location independence of the internet. You can do that by selling a product, being an affiliate, running a webshop and other things. The most important is that you take the hours in = salary out from a linear scale to an exponential. With a lifestyle business, unlike the consultant or selfemployed specialist, you stop trading hours for money and instead work on creating self sustaining businesses. It really isn't different than creating a business which can also run by itself eventually, but most who do this kind of thing do not want an office or to manage a lot of people.
Personally, I've chosen the affiliate marketing route and done ok with it so far. I made close to no money for the first year and only poverty money the second year and then it skyrocketed. I wanted to quit many times. I like the comment about having to put in the blood, sweat and tears at some point is correct, no such thing as a free lunch.
I am now looking to branch out into other areas of income, such as writing a book or having software developed, both can create 'passive' income streams.
My recommendation would be to figure out what you are good at, then get skills in that area, such as working for someone who does just that, then strike out on your own after a couple of years. Some people may just be so talented that they can skip the whole working process, but I think most would benefit from some mentoring and learning a business from the inside first.