All those posts you see about generating passive income? Well, they're wrong.
You know the type.
“Start drop shipping, get Amazon affiliate links, sell ai art, start a YouTube channel, day trade, start marketing, flip cars, flip houses, flip your dead granny’s jewelry, get into real estate, sell nft’s, print on demand, sell a course, buy my course, buy my course, buy my course!”
How to Create Passive Income: (Spoiler, You can't easily)
Passive income, the buzzword of the demi-decade.
If you've done any research at all into ways to make more money you’ve surely come across the phrase. And it’s definitely popular, the Reddit page for passive income has 529,000 members, and the TikTok tag has over 1.8 MILLION posts.
It feels like half the internet these days is made up of people telling you how easy it is to make thousands of dollars a month with just a few hours of work.
After which you can kick back your feet and watch the dough roll in (if you buy their course of course) but the fact of the matter is, passive income as is pushed online doesn’t exist.
Now I’m not saying that these methods influencers are pushing for how to create passive income aren’t ways to make money. In fact some of them can be quite lucrative if you’re lucky or really know what you’re doing. But none of them are actually passive. Which is my gripe.
As far as people like you and I (those who aren't big influencers with audiences) are concerned the only real passive income is dividends from invested stocks.
(A Dividend is a sum of money paid regularly by a company to its shareholders out of its profits)
Of course even those can’t do something like pay your rent till you have over half a million dollars invested.
So What's the Deal with Passive Income?
The thing is that all of these so-called “passive income streams” is that they actually require a substantial amount of work to pay out, or a substantial amount of luck.
Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise, or sell you a course on how to do it with only a few hours of work is at best someone who got unrepeatably lucky who doesn’t understand what they’re teaching, or at worst someone who’s trying to scam you.
Bold claims, I know, but I can back them up.
My Experience with Passive Income:
Let’s take a look at YouTube for one example.
It’s entirely possible to make money off of YouTube. Hell, I’ve done it. You see I’ve run a YouTube channel since August 2021.
And I make about $100 a month. Sounds nice right? I won’t deny it is, but I’ve posted nearly 300 videos just to get to this point. And I'm still posting (semi)consistently.
Let’s do some quick maths. Assuming I work for four hours on each video (some take 3, some take 30) that’s 1200 hours of work to get to the point where I can pay my electricity bill.
It's nice, good to have certainly, and I wouldn’t trade my experience for the world.
But I would never in a million years call it passive.
1200 Hours of work to average $100 a month.
That sounds insane right? Of course I do it for my enjoyment, the fact that I can make a little money off of it is a perk certainly but not the main reason.
My Main point? It's not passive income, it's active income. Very Very Active Income. A side hustle if you will.
We'll swing back around to that point, but first let's look at another one of these passive income methods, Print On Demand.
Back In early 2020 I created a Redbubble Shop. (Redbubble is a popular print on demand platform)
I'd heard someone on TikTok espousing how it's a great way to make some extra cash, simply take a couple hours, publish a couple artworks, and rake in the sweet sweet money.
So I did just that.
I took a day out of my weekend, drew about ten simple designs, uploaded them, and let them rip.
And Lo and Behold, I made Money!
It took about a month, but I made about $50! Sounds Great, Right?
Well... the thing is I only started making sales when I was constantly promoting my Redbubble shop on my personal twitter and TikTok. Tens of hours of work going into what was functionally social media marketing. I'm sure I annoyed the hell out of my friends.
You see what I noticed was that when I wasn't promoting, I wasn't making sales. There was nothing passive about it.
Which is unfortunate, because it got real old real fast.
So I stopped posting, and the sales dried up.
All told over the course of three years I made about $250, mostly from one or two promotional TikTok's going semi-viral. It wasn't a ton, and it wasn't passive.
Again, It was more like a Side Hustle.
Which brings me back around to my main point.
Passive Income Is Possible. But only after a ton, and I do mean a ton of work has gone into something to make it self sustaining. It's not going to be done in an afternoon, a weekend, or a month. It's going to take 1000's of hours working on your method to get you to that point.
And that doesn't sound very passive to me.
In reality, most of the methods these influencers are pushing are either scams to get you to buy their courses, or legitimate side hustles that aren't truly passive.
And a Side Hustle is a great thing to have! They're great ways to make some extra money on the side, and maybe if you're really lucky replace your real job.
But they are second jobs.
Active work. Not passive.
I'm not trying to dissuade people from trying out things they're passionate about, but I would like to stop you from dropping 100's of dollars on an influencer course that doesn't work.
There's an adage that fits here well.
"If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it."
Use your head and common sense. If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.
Anyways I hope you've enjoyed this post.
Cause on that note, I think I'll sign off. If you have any questions feel free to message me, I'll get to them if I can.
You should check out My Course (click the link, trust me), and I'll see you next time.
Until then.
-Chris
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