Below are the methods normally considered "passive income" and heavily recommended online. Let us demolish them, shall we?
1. Write and sell books and eBooks
I was in the top 10 of the entrepreneurship category on Amazon for many weeks with a marketing book. And in the top 30 for months with a book on stock investing. A statistically improbable result for 99% of first-time authors.
For a few months I earned some interesting money. For a few months. And while sitting in an absolutely improbable zone of the chart. It took me months and months to write the two books. They cost me years of study.
So what can we say about my return on investment considering all the effort? Medium. And if it was medium for me, imagine for almost everyone else.
NOBODY who advises you to write a book for passive income has ever actually done it. Otherwise they would know the real economics. So is a book passive income? NO.
2. Affiliation and banner ads
Doing this means driving people to your site to sell them someone else's stuff for commissions. Does that sound passive to you? Do you know how much work it takes for meager percentages? Do you know how much online advertising costs TODAY?
Is affiliation and blogging with banners passive income? NO.
3. Investments and speculation
Passive income in this case basically means speculation. A constant activity of buying and selling financial assets. If you think that is passive, you are delusional or have never done it. It is an exhausting activity that consumes your nights in analysis.
Or it means buying houses and renting them out. Easy, right? Sure, go tell my landlord that. How much bureaucracy, tenant searching, property management, taxes, and a depreciating asset.
Stock investments are brilliant for the long term. Not short term. Not as income. They are a future asset.
4. Network marketing
This is one of the scams of the century and requires enormous effort. We all have dozens of friends who do it.
5. Automated marketing for online sales
Very fashionable today in the era of atrocious funnels, yet another insanity that promises 1000 and delivers 1.
Seriously: if marketing were easily automatable and scalable, why do automated marketing gurus make money only by teaching and not by selling directly? Why?
The cursed plateau effect whereby any advertising flow eventually saturates potential reach. The absurd cost of advertising. The impossibility in real life of creating funnels the way these gurus tell you.
Does automated passive marketing exist? NO.
