

Jobs vs Passive Income - fjordan
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2012/05/jobs-vs-passive-income/

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sneakers
This website is junk. I just skimmed several of his articles and the only
example of passive income he gives is maintaining his website--on how to make
passive income.

He does though like to say things like you have to "create value". That's
useful advice. Thanks Steve.

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jrs235
I understand everyone's sentiment about Steve's blogs on earning passive
income. If you look around his site he does have some interesting blog posts
on things like Polyphasic Sleep.

HN readers for the most part are probably not in need of his
motivational/inspirational "speeches" and articles. And most understand the
desirability of passive income but understand its challenges, obstacles, and
reality.

Someone similar who shares Mr. Pavlina's strong beliefs and desires for
everyone to achieve their life's goals and live every day to its fullest is
Ramit Sethi (<http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/>) with his own book and
numerous other "programs" like Earn 1K. Ramit recognizes and addresses the
reality of passive income and recommends not going after it at first.

Both Ramit and Steve are excellent reminders and motivators to keep working
towards your goals similar to 21times.org's daily email newsletters for
startups.

UPDATE: I like what someone else said in another comment here. Paraphrasing
it: Don't think of it as passive income, think of it as delayed income.

UPDATE: Let's clarify what we all really mean by "passive". It's not really
passive as in "you don't have to do anything". What we mean is that we are no
longer trading straight time for income. Our income potential is no longer
limited to the number of hours we are awake trading our time for money.

UPDATE: The delayed income relies upon a long tail return. Often the amount of
energy consumed to setup the long term tail is very similar to the amount of
time and energy early (and bootstrapping) startups invest in hopes of
recouping their time and money investment at a later date (and in hopes of
that return being many times greater than what a hourly rated "job" would
pay).

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outside2344
i think we all agree passive income is the bomb.

the difficulty comes in building the passive income while having to be
realistic about health insurance, and well, having food to eat.

i wish these sorts of articles would spend more time on the bootstrapping
portion of this journey instead of the "glorious future" when everything is
all running smoothly.

i mean its just as easy to write a article about Facebook and say "just build
one of those" but obviously the devil is in the startup, so to speak.

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ctdonath
"Suppose you were already very comfortable with passive income, just like I
am. Imagine that you had many thousands of dollars coming in every month, more
than enough to cover all your expenses. Whether you work or not, fresh income
keeps flowing to you month after month and year after year, _based on streams
you set up years ago_."

Aye, _there_ 's the rub.

Not sure what his point is after that supposition. The verbose fictitious
conversation is rather ... absurd.

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unreal37
He once posted that he has calculated every article he writes earns him $2400
in revenue[1]. From that, he can calculate that if he wants to increase his
annual income by $5,000, he just needs to write 21 more blog posts.

So from that perspective, this article is just another $20 per month in his
pocket. That's the point.

[1] [http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/how-much-is-a-
blog-...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/how-much-is-a-blog-post-
worth-would-you-believe-2400-dollars-each/)

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tluyben2
Pff there is that passive income crap again. Passive income is not passive
income. You have to work hard to GET to 'passive' income and when you have it,
you have to grow it to make it realistic to live on. Earn so much that you can
pay taxes, healthcare, mortgage, kids, pension and future (you know, when your
very passive income suddenly ends). So during your first passive income you'll
be working your ass off to add more streams. And, unless you hit it big with
at least one of your streams, it is very likely you'll be in this loop the
rest of your life; hence actually working hard. And usually harder than an
actual job with more risk.

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droob
How is it that "keep a blog about passive income" is such a common path to
living off passive income?

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ebiester
To be fair, Pavlina started as a mid-level Indie game developer and moved into
the self-help world. I think the first buzz he received was on thirty day
trials and (in particular) polyphasic sleep.

He's always been a bit unorthodox, but he wrote a book that I found to have
quite a bit of value, and was quite a bit more challenging in its exercises
than the standard self-help book.

I still read him, but more for the occasional nuggets now - for where I am in
life, I don't receive much value from his current set of posts because it
isn't where I am right now in life. That's okay.

As for the passive income bit, I'm hoping the series gets better, but I fear
it is going to be a repackaging of what he's said before.

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jaxn
tldr; Once you have substantial passive income, you will not want a job
working for someone else.

How did this long, uninformative dribble make it to the front page?

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sritch
Why don't we book a phone consult with Steve to find out? Only 997$ USD

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SatvikBeri
It's a little weird to post this out of context. This article is part of a
long (planned) series about passive income. And this particular article is
focused more on convincing the people who want to go that path but have mental
barriers holding them back.

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JackC
In case it's not clear -- you know all those people who want to have passive
income but have mental barriers to the concept of passive income? They are
_imaginary_. There is no one saying, "why would I want money coming in every
month for something I did years ago, instead of going to work?" Not being
comfortable with the "passive income mindset," as the author describes the
problem, is not a mental barrier human beings have.

The purpose of setting up a fictional person who _doesn't_ like money coming
in every month is so the author can explain at length how great his life
supposedly is, and implicitly how great _your_ life will be if you reject the
stupid Friend character and instead give the author some money. This is not
ambiguous. It's about as subtle as those Axe Body Spray commercials.

What real people have concerns about is whether the particular strategies
available to them for generating ongoing income will be reliable, lasting, or
lucrative enough to be worth the effort. That's an interesting question. But
this article is an elaborate pitch not to address those concerns but to make
you ignore them long enough to give the author some cash. If you're
considering it, here's a hint: the small percentage of people who manage to
start successful businesses are the ones who don't fall for this kind of pitch
when they're spending their money.

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skizm
I'm not sure what kind of friends OP has but I don't know a single person who
would argue that a day job making the same amount is better than passive
income.

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qhfgva
I always read Steve's articles with a mix of fascination and horror. If I ever
find myself taking him too seriously I just look at the bottom right of the
page and remember that he believes that the number 11:11 has magic properties
and is evidence that the universe is sending him secret messages. (Really,
look at the bottom right of the page).

~~~
fourspace
He's right. Link for the lazy:

<http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2009/02/1111/>

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koeselitz
Some people are talking about how the point of this essay was to convince
those who don't understand "the desirability of passive income." But is there
really anybody in the whole world who doesn't understand the desirability of
setting things up so you can get money while you are doing nothing? It's not
that people think that's not _desirable_ ; it's that they think that's not
_possible_. And that is almost always true, from widget factories to startups.
Anybody who says otherwise is trying to sell you something by deceiving you.

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tluyben2
It's definitely possible. But not as many say it is. And it's usually not a
substitute for regular income from a job. It's a nice extra, that's for sure.

And doing nothing (which all people seem to think they like...) => by far most
people I have ever met would have no clue what to do with their time if they
didn't have to work. You'll do 'fun' things the first year or two and then
you'll start feeling worthless about yourself and get all kinds of cool mental
and physical issues.

Anecdotes a-plenty: my grandfathers (who are both smart and both were
managers) were bored out of their skulls after pension as is my father. A few
fathers of friends of mine literally dropped dead months to a year after they
started with their pension. A friend of mine (smart guy, age 40) got
'independently wealthy' so did a lot of 'fun' stuff for a few years, then he
began to get ailments like pain in his stomach, back pain, headaches
(migraine) and started to get depressed. Went to tons of doctors; nothing
wrong physically. Recently (few months ago) he took a 9-5 job and everything
disappeared; he is happy and no more vague ailments.

There are plenty of exceptions to this obviously, but a lot of people I know,
poor or rich, cannot live with themselves if they would have to manage their
own time. They need the pressure, the fulfillment etc of a job or career. I
have passive income sounds great at parties, but mostly these people are
actually working twice+ as hard as people in 'normal jobs' or they are
actually not happy at all. I built a lot of sites / apps for internet
marketers and have been with them in clubs in Monaco or on boats somewhere
tropical; not very happy campers, almost all of them; making millions /year on
auto-pilot (just mail the good 'ol 'list' and plok, another $200k) but being
utterly depressed, paranoid, weird and usually having 10s of small ailments
(allergies etc) which they magically acquired after years of doing almost
nothing. And having full days to feel every ache in your body, analyzing the
type of pain and location in detail and talking about it on cancer forums
doesn't help either :)

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jiggy2011
Amusing dialogue but the phrase "passive income" always strikes me as
disingenuous. I know a few people who technically have "passive income" in the
way that this article suggests, but in reality they work harder than most
other people that I know.

If you really have got yourself into a situation where you could literally
take as much time as you wanted off without worrying about your income level
because all your work has been delegated then congratulations; you're a
parasite.

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jrs235
Yes, people need to realize passive income doesn't mean boatloads of income,
or a better rate of dollars to hours put in. It just means, income isn't tied
directly to trading time for money. So you can make income while sleeping or
not actively "working" trading time directly for money.

You're absolutely correct, most people that have some passive income have
invested lots of time into their endeavors and the ratio of time/$$$ is a
large number (IOW, if they broke down their hourly wage it's really crappy,
sometimes and often less than minimum wage). Few achieve the opposite and the
end goals relies on a long tail return.

Passive income might be $2.54 per month revenue due to affiliate links (i.e.
Amazon)... which might not redeemable until you accumulate a minimum dollar
amount to withdraw the money...

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debacle
This is a great read. From someone who was recently on the entrepreneur train
and had to make a stop at jobville, it's giving me some serious yearnings to
get back on the train.

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anusinha
Note that there are many industries in which passive income is simply
impossible. Yes, this is _Hacker_ News, but fields outside of software
engineering do exist.

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mjwalshe
Doddgy as all fuck any site that has a header dripping with faux iliminati
symbols and appears to be punting MLM and make monney fast should not be on
hacker news.

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yashchandra
I have been thinking hard about passive income lately. The more I think, the
more I realize that there is no such thing. Yes, there is something called
"actively working hard on your own thing using your own resources/time that
helps you being able to generate the most important thing in life :Time for
yourself and your family/friends". And that for me means to bootstrap
something and make it profitable enough that it takes care of _your_ needs
(whatever that is in your definition). Of course, that could take years of
active/hard work.

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yashchandra
How about another category of income called "My needs income". An income where
you set the work, the ideas, the amount of hours you put in (vs. amount of
hours you spend with your loved ones/leisure etc.) and the amount of money you
can make out of it. Some people are ok with maintaining a blog and making few
hundred bucks a month (maintaining a day job perhaps) while some people want
to take the full entrepreneurial plunge risking everything they got but hoping
for a huge payout in terms of time, money and personal gratification.

