Earn Money Passivity is shades of gray, not an on/off switch

[breadeditor]

Whenever the topic of passive income comes up on the interwebs, I see purists shut it down saying interest and equity are the only truly passive incomes.

Sure, maybe.

However, that is missing the whole point of passive income mindset. Hence this rant.

I see passivity as a spectrum, a relative factor rather than an objective factor. It is not a question of whether an income source is passive, but a question of how passive it is relative to something else.

For example:

• Working in exchange for a wage is not passive at all, completely active.
• You go up in the scale of passivity for example by creating goods that get sold for money, especially digital goods.
  • Like you write a book. Not passive at all. But if units of the book sold increase, you don't work linearly more. So it is relatively more passive than working in exchange for money.
• You buy and sell goods. There is work, a lot of work, involved in sourcing, buying, listing, advertising, fulfilling, supporting and so on. But as you sell more and more, it gets more and more passive especially as you set up people and structures for all those processes.
  • The amount of work you put in to sell 1 unit = let's say X
  • The amount of work you put in to sell 100 unit = is not 100x! Hence this mechanism is more passive than working for a wage.
• Highly qualified professions, especially ones where you are paid for your opinion, are quite passive to some extent. Remember the joke: "Pushing the button costs $1, knowing which button to push costs $999".
• Owning a business, owning an ATM, owning a rental property etc all fall at various levels of passivity on this spectrum.

On a high level what this really means is, in terms of hierarchy:

1. You get paid to do work
2. You get paid more to know stuff, less to do work with that knowledge
3. You get paid more to own stuff, less to do work for that ownership

.... and so on.

With this perspective, the art of passive income, or what I call passive income mindset, is the art of using existing resources and acquiring resources to go up this chain. Resources like:

• Money
• Skills
• Network
• Opportunity
• Vision

So... don't shut down that post about affiliate marketing, don't shut down that topic about real-estate, about owning a restaurant, all those things. They all have a place on passive-income forums.

Just an opinion, that's all.