Earn money doing nothing

[lorraineb]

OK, here is my rant on people who claim that you can earn money doing nothing. I have a number of friends who say that this is their goal because they have heard that other people are able to do it o the Internet. My assumption is that they are referring to passive income, but I may be wrong and they may actually think that they can earn money for doing nothing. Either way, I am going to focus on passive income for my rant.

Blogging isn't passive income. Owning any website isn't passive income. You have to work maintaining the website at the very least, and adding content regularly if you have a blog. That takes both time and effort and is anything but passive. What you can do is possibly earn money 24/7 even when you aren't on the Internet working on the site/blog, but that still isn't close to passive income.

To create passive income take either already having a lot of money (which you can then invest to earn more money), or working your ass off so that you build something so big and successful that you can pay others to do all of the work. I call BS on all the people that claim that there are easy ways to earn passive income on the Internet and I challenge anyone to show me a system that is truly passive that anyone can do.

[The Pragamatist]

Congratulations! This is the best post I have seen on this website. Of course I am new so it may not count for much.

You cannot earn money by doing nothing. You can invest and let it accumulate over time which is on par with doing nothing after a while, but a smart person would monitor their money and ensure that it is in the most optimum situation.

Even on the internet the rules apply. Like you say it takes work to make money off of a website or blog. Just because you don't punch in and out like traditional jobs doesn't mean that it is any easier or efficient. I guess people think working 9-5 is for suckers, and that magical entities will shroud them with wealth one day if they continue to purchase lottery tickets and fill out online e-surveys.

It is possible to make good money being smart. It's less likely but still possible to get money by being lucky. It's impossible to get money by being stupid.

Keep that in mind and you'll go far. At least that's what my dad used to say. Then again he was pretty conservative. Not saying it's a bad thing, but just saying.

[riverwed070707]

I agree that things like blogging, etc are not passive income -- in fact its quite time consuming and more often than not pays far less than an 8-5. Passive income generally referrs to investing (yes you might monitor, trade, etc but that doesn't need to be done daily or even weekly). Aside from the stock market, rental properties are a great example of this. Again these require maintenance, etc but its typically not full time and you're earning money because of your investment in the property not because of physical labor or time spent at the property. Same goes for owninig a business but not playing an active role (you've essentially invested in the company but don't take a role in maintaining it).

[moneymaker23]

OK, here is my rant on people who claim that you can earn money doing nothing. I have a number of friends who say that this is their goal because they have heard that other people are able to do it o the Internet. My assumption is that they are referring to passive income, but I may be wrong and they may actually think that they can earn money for doing nothing. Either way, I am going to focus on passive income for my rant.

Blogging isn't passive income. Owning any website isn't passive income. You have to work maintaining the website at the very least, and adding content regularly if you have a blog. That takes both time and effort and is anything but passive. What you can do is possibly earn money 24/7 even when you aren't on the Internet working on the site/blog, but that still isn't close to passive income.

To create passive income take either already having a lot of money (which you can then invest to earn more money), or working your ass off so that you build something so big and successful that you can pay others to do all of the work. I call BS on all the people that claim that there are easy ways to earn passive income on the Internet and I challenge anyone to show me a system that is truly passive that anyone can do.

I have my own website too and im earning money from it. but i havent updated it already so the it didnt increase already.

[DenisD]

Most people are mistaken when they talk about passive income. A blog or website like you said is anything but passive. Passive income is where you work 0 hours and make an X amount of money. I can actually write a whole post about it, but I just recently did on my own blog (million dollar income blog) talking about passive, active, and semi-active income sources. I don't want to be promoting this here, but if you are interested check out my profile for a link, the title of the blog is called To Be or Not To Be Passive, which goes over exactly what each income source means. And I seriously doubt that there is a such thing as doing nothing and getting paid; perhaps if you are a trust fund baby like Paris Hilton.

[TheKayla]

Right, for the people who truly earn passive income and maybe work a few hours a week to earn a lot of money, those people worked really, really hard to get to that point. And good for them. I'm sure a lot of it is luck too. I've earned passive income in the past with a web dev blog that got pretty popuular, but I needed to work not-so-passively to maintain and to grow a blog that could sustain me with a reasonable income, even if the income I was making I was 'making in my sleep' through advertisements/paid posts other people wrote, etc. I needed to do other types of work to maintain the blog's popularity, mostly being management of the quality of posts.

[Jerry91]

I don't think there is anything called passive income. Moreover, you cannot earn money without doing anything. When you earn money online or offline, you will have to devote your time, patience and intelligence to it. Whether you go for blogging or sell things online, you will have to work harder to gain your ground.

[Dr.donor]

I don't think it's passive income either, Passive income is an income received on a regular basis, with little effort required to maintain it while for blogging you have keep your blog posted everyday.

[jackiemach]

I have never heard or read such type of question. how can you earn money without working?

[jdom07]

I don't think it's passive income either, Passive income is an income received on a regular basis, with little effort required to maintain it while for blogging you have keep your blog posted everyday.

For me, passive income does exist, but it's the fruit of a TON... A TOOOOOON!!!! of prior labor.

Write a book and collect royalties on it for the rest of your life? Passive income. But only after you've spent COUNTLESS hours of work to get it there.

It is absolutely impossible to make consistent money without putting ANY effort into it. Prove the OP (original poster) wrong if you disagree, and then tell everyone here how you did it so we can all get paid.

[jdom07]

It reminds me of a song by Britney Spears, of all people. I love it for the fact that it actually delivers a decent message.

Explicit lyrics warning!

It's called "Work B***h" (I put a * so as not to spell it out)

Lyrics:

"You wanna hot body
You wanna Bugatti
You wanna Maserati
You better work b***h

You wanna Lamborghini
Sip Martinis
Look hot in a bikini
You better work b***h

You wanna live fancy
Live in a big mansion
Party in France
You better work b***h

Now get to work b***h!"

Far from a perfect song, definitely... but a far better message than most crap on the radio!

[Leraldo]

I believe passive income is reality but you need work hard to build such sources of income. For example I have one source of passive income (i really do 0 for this) but it's just 20$ per month and it's about affiliate commissions from one of hosting companies. If you like to get something comparable to monthly salary you need to be creative, hard worker and highly motivated...

[danthecashbackman]

There is passive income!

Of course there is passive income. I am working to build it up. It does not happen by itself, it must be unleashed. In doing so there is a need for a healthy combination of dedication, ethics, persistence, patience, skill, a solid understanding of your "whys" (and possibly other requirements). Success is not for everybody. Success is never a result of carelessness, laziness, doing nothing and getting everything just because. Hard work is always helpful but will not guarantee success.

[Sunganani]

It's all in the definition of "passive income". From what I have seen passive income entails that you do the initial hard work and feed it into a system which will take you less time to maintain. So for instance, on my blog I capture people's emails with an offer for an email course. They are fed into my autoresponder. I blog at least once a week and keep up the interactions with my list members at least twice a week.

Same thing if you own real estate and on and on. Make no mistake, it takes work and it does exist.

[danielhermann]

I agree completely. There is no thing as a free lunch. You cannot create something from nothing. You have to employ a resource to get a reward. The resource could be a physical resource like real estate or labour/ technological idea or creative idea which enables you to draw continuing income in the form of royalties or financial resources whereby you earn interest income on capital employed. People often confuse work-from-home opportunities as passive income especially if it on a part-time basis but that is not true. You have to employ a resource to do any kind of work. Secondly the income stream is often erratic and just bread-and-butter stuff.