Jobs vs Passive Income

This website is junk. I just skimmed several of his articles and the only example of passive income he gives is maintaining his website--on how to make passive income.<p>He does though like to say things like you have to "create value". That's useful advice. Thanks Steve.

I understand everyone's sentiment about Steve's blogs on earning passive income. If you look around his site he does have some interesting blog posts on things like Polyphasic Sleep.<p>HN readers for the most part are probably not in need of his motivational/inspirational "speeches" and articles. And most understand the desirability of passive income but understand its challenges, obstacles, and reality.<p>Someone similar who shares Mr. Pavlina's strong beliefs and desires for everyone to achieve their life's goals and live every day to its fullest is Ramit Sethi (<a href="http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/</a>) with his own book and numerous other "programs" like Earn 1K. Ramit recognizes and addresses the reality of passive income and recommends not going after it at first.<p>Both Ramit and Steve are excellent reminders and motivators to keep working towards your goals similar to 21times.org's daily email newsletters for startups.<p>UPDATE: I like what someone else said in another comment here. Paraphrasing it: Don't think of it as passive income, think of it as delayed income.<p>UPDATE: Let's clarify what we all really mean by "passive". It's not really passive as in "you don't have to do anything". What we mean is that we are no longer trading straight time for income. Our income potential is no longer limited to the number of hours we are awake trading our time for money.<p>UPDATE: The delayed income relies upon a long tail return. Often the amount of energy consumed to setup the long term tail is very similar to the amount of time and energy early (and bootstrapping) startups invest in hopes of recouping their time and money investment at a later date (and in hopes of that return being many times greater than what a hourly rated "job" would pay).

i think we all agree passive income is the bomb.<p>the difficulty comes in building the passive income while having to be realistic about health insurance, and well, having food to eat.<p>i wish these sorts of articles would spend more time on the bootstrapping portion of this journey instead of the "glorious future" when everything is all running smoothly.<p>i mean its just as easy to write a article about Facebook and say "just build one of those" but obviously the devil is in the startup, so to speak.

Pff there is that passive income crap again. Passive income is not passive income. You have to work hard to GET to 'passive' income and when you have it, you have to grow it to make it realistic to live on. Earn so much that you can pay taxes, healthcare, mortgage, kids, pension and future (you know, when your very passive income suddenly ends). So during your first passive income you'll be working your ass off to add more streams. And, unless you hit it big with at least one of your streams, it is very likely you'll be in this loop the rest of your life; hence actually working hard. And usually harder than an actual job with more risk.

How is it that "keep a blog about passive income" is such a common path to living off passive income?

tldr; Once you have substantial passive income, you will not want a job working for someone else.<p>How did this long, uninformative dribble make it to the front page?

It's a little weird to post this out of context. This article is part of a long (planned) series about passive income. And this particular article is focused more on convincing the people who want to go that path but have mental barriers holding them back.

I'm not sure what kind of friends OP has but I don't know a single person who would argue that a day job making the same amount is better than passive income.

I always read Steve's articles with a mix of fascination and horror. If I ever find myself taking him too seriously I just look at the bottom right of the page and remember that he believes that the number 11:11 has magic properties and is evidence that the universe is sending him secret messages. (Really, look at the bottom right of the page).

Some people are talking about how the point of this essay was to convince those who don't understand "the desirability of passive income." But is there really anybody in the whole world who doesn't understand the desirability of setting things up so you can get money while you are doing nothing? It's not that people think that's not <i>desirable</i>; it's that they think that's not <i>possible</i>. And that is almost always true, from widget factories to startups. Anybody who says otherwise is trying to sell you something by deceiving you.

Amusing dialogue but the phrase "passive income" always strikes me as disingenuous. I know a few people who technically have "passive income" in the way that this article suggests, but in reality they work harder than most other people that I know.<p>If you really have got yourself into a situation where you could literally take as much time as you wanted off without worrying about your income level because all your work has been delegated then congratulations; you're a parasite.

This is a great read. From someone who was recently on the entrepreneur train and had to make a stop at jobville, it's giving me some serious yearnings to get back on the train.

Note that there are many industries in which passive income is simply impossible. Yes, this is _Hacker_ News, but fields outside of software engineering do exist.

Doddgy as all fuck any site that has a header dripping with faux iliminati symbols and appears to be punting MLM and make monney fast should not be on hacker news.

I have been thinking hard about passive income lately. The more I think, the more I realize that there is no such thing. Yes, there is something called "actively working hard on your own thing using your own resources/time that helps you being able to generate the most important thing in life :Time for yourself and your family/friends". And that for me means to bootstrap something and make it profitable enough that it takes care of <i>your</i> needs (whatever that is in your definition). Of course, that could take years of active/hard work.

How about another category of income called "My needs income". An income where you set the work, the ideas, the amount of hours you put in (vs. amount of hours you spend with your loved ones/leisure etc.) and the amount of money you can make out of it. Some people are ok with maintaining a blog and making few hundred bucks a month (maintaining a day job perhaps) while some people want to take the full entrepreneurial plunge risking everything they got but hoping for a huge payout in terms of time, money and personal gratification.