I don't disagree absolutely with what this post is saying, but as someone who has run multiple successful ventures that I'd consider "passive" income, I have to say its not a fantasy. But maybe my concept of "passive" is different from yours. Here we go.<p>My first passive income business was in high school. I sold video game cheats I made through the internet. I made around $400 a month (a fortune for a high schooler). I considered it "passive." Sure, I'd make some cheats per month, but not because I had to, but because I wanted to. It took me maybe a handful of hours per week to do this. No support.<p>My next passive income venture was in college. I built a service for students that I scaled up to almost $100,000 a year. I would work on this around 8 hours _every 3 months_. I considered that passive. I also had a full time job. So I was basically raking it in. PayPal transfers every night, a few thousand would show up per week. Passive.<p>My current passive income venture is a SaaS. It almost pays my rent every month. It takes up about 1 hour a month of my time for support.<p>At the same time, I'm starting a real, very not passive company that is unrelated to anything above.<p>So each and every passive income venture shared the following traits for me:<p>* I built it to solve my own problem, then charged for it because I figured other people would have that problem as well.<p>* I didn't expect to get "rich" from it, but if the income to hours spent ratio breaks down well, I'm happy. i.e. I'm paying rent on an hour or two of work a month right now. That is pretty good.<p>* I never had a "team" of more than 2 people. This was not a _business_. It is just a thing that makes money. Legally it is a business, it is taxed like a business, but from a managerial perspective, it just runs itself. The "employees" (all two of them) run themselves.<p>* When I felt like I didn't need it anymore, I let it go. So far, I'm 2/2 at selling my ventures. The first I sold for a few thousand dollars, the second I sold for much much more. The third I have no intention or plans on selling, but if I feel like I'm not giving it the time it deserves, maybe I will (but don't plan to anytime soon). And if I don't sell it? I'll keep running it, because it is easy.<p>* During all my passive income ventures, I've had a real job. I think passive income works best when supplementing your natural income. I've had steady passive income for the past 8 years of my life. This can really change your quality of life or your ability to save for retirement or that "next big thing" (car, house, etc.).<p>My point is: Don't try to build a life on passive income. Just let it happen if its going to happen. You can't force it. You shouldn't force it.<p>Just do what you like to do. And if you make money doing it, that is pretty darn cool. But if not, you're still doing what you like to do, so smile.