There are many misconceptions about passive income, especially when it comes to making money online.
One has to understand that no automation tool generates money on autopilot.
The entire process is in principle the same as in the offline world. To earn money, you have to have some sort of source out there that generates that income.
Whether it is real estate you renting out or you have a significant amount of money as an investment and you live off of the interest.
In a normal world, you can’t just make money out of thin air.
The reason I decided to write this article is the fact that there are so many digital products trying to convince you that in simple 4 clicks you can make hundreds of dollars a day.
Or that you need only 5 minutes a day online and you start generating profit.
It is essential to realize that passive income is only a result of effort and hard work.
What is Passive Income?
Passive income is a temporary (or long-term) state of earning even if you are not actively working.
In the online world, it means that you have a website or YouTube channel which makes you the income.
To break it down a bit;
First of all, you have to consistently generate content around a specific niche.
As a consequence of that, your traffic grows and you becoming an authority within this niche.
People naturally visit your site (whether it is a blog or YouTube channel).
Inside of the content, you have your affiliate links and/or ads that people click on. That means that you monetize your site or blog.
With a huge amount of traffic, you can stop (temporarily) generating the content, and people will be still visiting your site.
Say you decide to go on 10 days’ vacation, with no internet connection. Your website still generates a passive income.
How to Make Passive Income From Home
In the definition of passive income, I use the word “temporary”.
The reason for that is, if you abandon your site, the traffic will slowly decrease and thus your income. People will find more fresh
content and eventually steer to another blog.
Depending on the size of your site this may happen from 4 weeks to 5 months.
Well, that time slot varies depending on the niche and the level of your site authority.
You just have to keep in mind that to sustain the passive income, you have to keep working on your site.
Or, and this is a good one, you can find someone who creates that content for you.
You only keep an eye on her or his work, but you don’t have to spend 8 hours a day building that website.
In your spare time, you can either create a new website or go traveling.
It is up to you.
Example of Passive Income Offline
Just briefly I would like to mention a few ways about how to generate passive income offline.
- Write a Book – This system has been around for a few centuries. If you have experienced something cool in your life maybe it is worth a shoot to write about that.
Or you like to travel and your friends just love the way you talk about your adventures.
I know, it sounds pretty exciting, but the problem is that writing a book might take a few months or also a couple of years.
In the offline world, you have to find a publisher.What makes the internet easy, you can create an e-book (as PDF) and sell it on Amazon. So this example is not 100% offline passive income, but in a sense it is 🙂
- Real Estate Investment – the easiest way would be if you inherited some buildings or just an apartment. You do some paperwork and you are good to go to rent it out. The most lucrative way is to rent it on Airbnb.
Here is a link to a video from a professional regarding passive income:
- Stock Market Investment – I am not an expert in the financial sector. But if you have extra cash, just go to your bank or talk to your spouse or relative who has more experience in the financial world.
Many banks offer investment accounts. Go and check what system you prefer the most, whether higher risk with bigger ROI or you prefer a more conservative approach.
Of course, there are many other examples of passive income; for example Franchising.
The downside is a large investment at the beginning.
Other examples are renting out your equipment you don’t use anymore, or a car maybe a motorbike, since you are about to buy a new one.
Passive Income Online – General Misconception
We have found out that making money without doing any work simply does not work.
It is important to pay attention since there are hundreds or even thousands of e-products out there promising, that they can make you rich with little to almost no work.
All such products have the same pattern.
They say they will make you rich if you buy their product which teaches how to make money online.
So the only way for you to make a profit is to sell this very same product (or may I say garbage) to other people and promise them to make money by selling again this product.
This is just an endless loop with no value for the end-user at all.
People with good intentions to learn something about digital marketing are very often disappointed since the internet is saturated with such garbage.
They often are being taken advantage of.
Passive Income is Possible But It Requires Effort
Consider a few things:
- You like writing or blogging. That is great.
But please keep in mind that there are more than a billion blogs already.
So to be recognizable on search engines, you better be specific with your niche. On top of it, you have to keep adding fresh content.
One Tip – YouTube is still a great place to get ranking pretty fast. But even with YouTube, you need to do your keyword research. - Many gurus you see out there with expensive cars and mansions showing you how much money they generate. What they do not show you how much effort they put into it in the first place. Why would they do that?
They probably want you to buy their high ticket product saying that it is all it takes.
In most cases, it is not true.
Even if that product has value and you can learn stuff, you have to be prepared to start making money online will probably take 6-12 months - It may take you even 2 years until your site will be at top of the search engines. You have to put a constant effort and then when you go on vacation for 2 weeks you can still generate some money.
That is passive income.
Many successful entrepreneurs love what they do. So it is not like they have to work hard to maintain their income.
It is their hobby, so it may look like they do not work since they look happy even if they are working. That can be easily mistaken for a passive income as well.
I hope I deliver basic knowledge about what passive income is.
Let me know if you already made some bucks while you were sleeping, in the section below.
Also in case of any question, you might have regarding passive income I will do my best to give you the answer.
Thank you for reading
Mike
Learn How to Create Passive Income
I have been a member of Wealthy Affiliate since late 2017 without prior marketing experience.
Beginning of 2018 I have learned how to build a website that drives traffic and makes sales.
Since the summer of 2019, I am a full-time internet marketer and I work from anywhere I want, whenever I want, and I enjoy the passive income.
Training within Wealthy Affiliate teaches how to generate a consistent income in the long run.
I had been looking for ways to make money online for over a decade. I hate to admit it, but one of my biggest pitfalls was that I didn’t want to put the work in. I thought once I joined whatever MMO program that existed, the money would just come on it’s own but that is not the case.
Like you said, you can make a passive income, but there is work that needs to be done first and that’s what people tend to forget. I’ve been working on my website for over a month and I haven’t earned a dime. What gives me encouragement is that there are people who haven’t made any money with their sites for over a year and then the money started slowly rolling in. You just have to be active and patient at first.
Once you start gaining more and more traffic, you can relax a bit, but don’t forget you have a job to do which is to maintain your website’s health so you can keep getting that passive income
I think that is a common mistake of most us. We just want to get something, but we are not willing to put an effort into it.
Those of use who realize that we need to provide value first eventually will receive something back.
You said it just right.
Patience and persistence is eventually paid off. How fast you start to make money also depends on the niche one chooses, but generally it takes from 6 to 14 months till the money starts flowing in.
And I mean 6-14 of consistently content creation.
Appreciate your comment
cheers, Mike
This is a very informative post. I just joined the online marketing world I am looking to make some very good passive income from it. What’s pushed me is a saying I saw that “if you don’t make money while you’re asleep, you’ll work till you die”. It’s very harsh but it’s the truth. Thank you for putting this up, I might incorporate YouTube to what I already have. Might be so much stress but it’s all for the money.
I like the quotation. Very well 🙂
Most people work their 9-5 hoping to retire some day. But I believe 9-5 will seldom give you enough resources for fulfilling retirement.
My personal strategy is to work hard today, so I can enjoy the passive income in my late 50s 🙂
The internet is never asleep, so if things are set up just right you may make money while you asleep.
Have a great one
I totally agree with what you have said here in your article, Many people imagine life after passive income as laying on a beach all day without a care in the world.
The real point of earning passive income is not to sit around on your butt all day. It’s to free up your time to do more fulfilling ventures. I will say you have done a good job, but I’ll love to know your number one recommendation
Not many people realize that passive income does not mean being passive and doing nothing:)
That was the reason why I came up with the post.
You said it right – it does not come sitting on your butt all day.
It comes when there is something you created that attracts people and they are willing to spend money.
For example, you have a YouTube channel, explaining how to take gorgeous photos, or how to create a video while driving.
You keep adding your relevant content and after a while you have thousands of subscribers.
You have affiliate links in the description and on top of that you can also have ads (they are sometimes annoying, right 🙂 )
There are YouTube channels which just go viral, and even kids do that. It is their passion.
Many of us are stuck in 9-5 and we are not sure how to start, or what are the exact steps. We think that we don’t know anymore what our passion is.
The thing is , that with a proper training everybody can achieve that (at least most of us).
I would recommend to check out this platform called Wealthy Affiliate. It is well explained how to start and what steps are needed to start an online business.