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There Is No Such Thing As “Passive” Income

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Most of my grandparents were born in the 30s or 40s. When I try to explain to them how I make my income, they can’t even come to fathom it. I’ve accepted the fact that they seem to think there are secret, dark holes of the internet where someone with technical skills can conjure money out of thin air.

While the internet has a wealth of new ways and tools to make money as an entrepreneur, there is one term that is always thrown around—passive income.

And I’m here to say it loud and clear—I absolutely fucking hate the term. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there is even no such thing. It simply does not exist, both from a startup and maintenance standpoint.

That’s not to confuse passive with “satisfying”. The longer I go on outside of my former office career, the more I think that the life of cubicles is just never going to give many men any sort of fulfillment. After all, we’ve been laboring outside and building things for our tribes as “work” for thousands of years.

You don’t undo thousands of years of biological programming in the last few years since florescent lights and plastic walls and windows became stylish.

So yes, internet business and passive income are superior to this (but not totally feasible, especially if you are a family men). But the term “passive income” needs to be debunked, once and for all. This is why.

The Upfront Work Is Enormous

Part of the reason the term has become popular is because it’s sexy. Who doesn’t want to make money while they sleep, or while taking a dump? Who wouldn’t want to see the dollars roll in while you’re sitting on a picturesque beach in Bali versus one of the aforementioned cubicles.

Now, those things are possible. But the upfront work to get to that point is enormous. Let’s face it, most people start internet businesses because they want (or at least want the possibility) of being able to move abroad or travel with their newfound freedom.

And the “starting off” points of passive income aren’t pretty. You don’t see any digital nomads going to live in Switzerland or London. Instead, they’re flocking to Chiang Mai, Thailand to find the best one bedroom apartment they can rent for somewhere between $200 and $225 a month.

Trying to make an internet business (for most people) and have enough to sustain living in the United States just isn’t feasible right off the bat. There’s a reason they have to escape to foreign lands. It’s not just the thinner and hotter women. It’s because it’s impossible to live (in most places) in the US without having a “real job” income. That’s a discussion for another day.

The point is, passive income only becomes passive after you’ve put in a tremendous amount of work up front. Think writing a book or creating an online course isn’t time-intensive? Think again.

It’s Hard To “Turn Off” Work

When your income (and therefore well-being) is directly tied to your own business and its results, it’s a lot harder to ever step away from it. It’s easy to go home and forget the drudgery of office work with a 6-pack of crap beer. You don’t give a damn about that job. It’s someone else’s dream, even if it’s tied to your own well-being.

Generally speaking, the attitude is not to succeed and prosper in work, but to do just enough to get by without being fired. The masses need those 6-packs of Bud, after all.

Even when passive income is working for you, after the up front work, it’s really hard to ignore it. If you’re in affiliate marketing or paid traffic, you’re constantly watching for the next dry spell so you can react. It’s hard to resist checking stats every waking minute. The point is, you can and will drive yourself mad. Every internet entrepreneur does at some point.

It’s easy to say that you will retire after you have passive income, but nothing could be further than the truth. I like to joke with my family that sometimes I am—there are days I wake up with tons of new money in the bank and am a bit unmotivated to create anything new that day.

But there are rarely hours that go by where I am not thinking about work at some level or another.

Nothing Good Ever Comes To Men Who Are Passive

Simply put, we live in a society full of pussies. Plenty of men do nothing to keep up their self-appearance, marry over-the-hill-whores, and generally have no backbone to them.

All of these men are passive by nature. They are unable to muster the confidence to go after what they truly want in life. Instead, they allow society to impose beliefs on them. These beliefs manifest themselves in results that are mediocre, at best.

By being passive, they let the good things in life pass them by. Instead of dating hot and young girls, they date broken sluts. Instead of building a business, they build someone else’s. Instead of doing everything they want to in the world, they go on cookie-cutter vacations where they’ve shoved on to a boat with a bunch of other fat people.

The term passive income needs to go away forever—because no person who is passive will ever truly be able to make money while they sleep. Internet marketing gurus sell the dream of making a million bucks while you sleep within a month of taking their $5,000 course.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Start with making $100 and go from there. Allow yourself to make the mistakes, to learn and grow from them. Needless to say there is always going to be a lot of pain in achieving something that’s worthwhile.

So while making money while you sleep sounds great, don’t kid yourself. Eventually it will come, and you can achieve that. But there are a lot of sleepless nights that come before it.

The feeling when you do hit that point is worth the loss of sleep.

To learn how to make “passive income” from a small website, check out my free 6-part video workshop. Check out This Is Trouble for more business articles.

Read More: 5 Thoughts On Publishing Your First eBook

94 thoughts on “There Is No Such Thing As “Passive” Income”

  1. The dressing style of the last photo makes me punch them all. What are those, pajamas, surgery clothes?

    2. Those, my friend, are Romphims….rompers for “men”

        3. I don’t think this needs defense. He is in Miami at the Fountainbleu in the afternoon. I would totally rock the man romper over my bathingsuit as cabana wear at a 5 star miami hotel even today.

        4. That just oozes upper-crust sleaziness. There is a man that is going straight for the A.

        5. Of all the different types of sleaze I prefer the upper-crust type

        7. Oof — deep terry cloth and all. Such a travesty, but what a hilarious find…at least with SC we can blame the director and wardrobe… otherwise it would be 1 retroactive demerit, even for a legend (heh-heh).

        8. Ha! No way. I will totally rock the term cloth jumper!

        11. Good God!
          I wouldn’t be caught dead in that…
          BTW, in the photo in the article – is that an “after party”? I have heard of these things from the escorts I bang, but was never sure if they are just pulling my leg.
          Do these things really exist? Is that how people act at them? If so, I think I am not missing much.

    3. Almost same feeling here ! That clothing is normally worn by kids. Guess those MEN are pussifying themselves !!

    5. The faggot clothe is called “romper”.
      It symbolizes the new level of faggotry the west has reached.

  2. Kyle, what you are describing is active income. Dividends, rental incomes, interest, royalties, etc.. are passive incomes.

    1. But the point is that these passive incomes come from action and work. If you belong to that 00,1% that has been a member of a band that still sells a lot you’re lucky but that is an outlier. Rental incomes stems from hard work to find those damn apartments (a person close to me does that in Sweden) and one often has to work more or less with maintenance, paperwork and personal contact with the renters.

      1. It’s clarity of what passive income actually is. If you are actively particpating in setting up and maintaining revenue streams, than any cash generated from that is not passive income.
        Passive income is the interest generating in a saving account or CD or the dividend check received on that 100,000 shares of inherited stock that is NOT utiilzed in your business. Of course, it is all taxable.

    2. Well said. It is becoming a fashion to elaborate, extend, grill and to write “articles” on something that’s quite obvious ! People are not fools to take “absolute” meaning of “passive” in “passive income” !! You gave PERFECT examples.
      One will be active to earn & save money/resources to build/buy a Home and arranging whatever needed to start “renting”; and that income is indeed passive (if not absolute),
      when compared to “actively” earning money !! I don’t know how some people come to the conclusion that other people don’t have common sense !
      What’s next !? Are we going to see articles like “there-is-no-such-thing-as-divorce-rape” !!

      1. Many guys who live “abroad” actually spend about 3-6 months working in the US or UK and living on bare minimum living conditions just so they can save enough money to spend the rest of the year work free living in a poorer country (although with more sexy women).
        If a guy chooses that lifestyle, then more power to him. But there is much unspoken value into making, as you say, absolute income and building the foundation from the ground up. Very few men make money without actually earning it.

  3. The only truly passive incomes that one could possibly get before age 40 that are achievable by non-elites are retirements from the military or law enforcement.
    Enlist as young as 17, do your 20 and probably retire as an E-7.
    However, doing 20 years in the Army is still putting in quite a bit of work. And they can call you out of retirement until your early 60s.

    1. Don’t guys who join at 18 generally make E-7 by the time they are 25? Sitting on that rank until you are 38 and can semi-retire seems a bit much

      1. E-7 requires at least 9 years Time-in-Service. The youngest an E-7 could be (without a waiver, which is rare but not unheard of) is 26.
        At 9 years in, you’d better be at least an E-5. The Army has an ‘up or out’ policy.
        I recalling hearing about a guy who was an E-9 (Sergeant Major) at age 29. He was probably a rockstar soldier or good at sucking dick.

        1. The type of people who get promoted first time, every time, are few and far between….

    3. And real estate if started early and in a lower-priced market. I’m 36.

  4. A successful E – book is definitely passive income worthy of the title. However, 90% of published E-books will never gross even $1000 in their lifetime. For every “Gorilla Mindset” there is 500 other books not getting any real traction on Amazon.
    A lengthy E-book takes HUNDREDS of hours and usually hiring out a graphic designer to make an attractive front cover. Is it all worth it? For most people, no.

    1. I finally broke $100 after several months with four books published (I only ever expected three of them to sell, honestly). Simple hundred-pagers on technical topics priced below $5/book.
      If they sell at this rate, they’ll probably have justified the time it took to write them in…ten years?

      1. What are the name of your books. From the coversations I see you having you are in a similar field I am about to go into so they could be helpful to me

  5. I’m not getting any passive income (or at least noteworthy passive income) until the olds croak and I get inheritance and rewire a big chunk of the bounty into mutual funds, structured notes, and the like.
    For those of us from middle class backgrounds (late 20th century) with middle class jobs (by the crappy modern variant which takes twice as long to pay off a house), that’s probably going to be the only way. We’ll probably be 50+ by that point too.

  6. I despise all the narcissistic youtube vloggers etc. Who keep peddling the passive income / 4 hour work week crap while doing backflips into the waters of El Nido, Philippines with their hot-ass girlfriend in tow.
    They are NEVER truly transparent about how they get their cash either.

    1. First rule of market diligence according to me: If I can’t describe where the value comes from in one 6th-grade-level sentence, I smell a rat.

    3. Very true. They always paint a nice picture, don’t they?
      I spent too many years in the mortgage business to know that most people inflate their incomes. You can cut the crap real quick by saying – “show me your 1040’s (all schedules) – if you earn more than me, maybe I’ll consider doing business with you.”
      The truth is: unless you’re a trust fund baby or you hit the lottery, it takes effort – Real Effort.

    5. if they have lots of followers they can present products it’s called influencer.
      There is a girl in Germany with a fashion blog. She gets more than 10000 Dollar for every picture she posts on instagram
      Another one has 4,5 Millio followers. They make money by influencing their young followers to spend money.
      I think if more people get this idea, it will be less easy to make money just with Beauty Advices or Gaming.
      I’m not sure if I should admire or despise people who become millionair this way

  8. Great article and cold, raw, red pill truth about the subject.
    I am weary of seeing the same Jeff Walker “Warm Launch” model enacted again and again; they show off their lifestyle, they give away cool info and invite feedback, and then they solicit sales for their expensive courses / products. Nothing wrong with that per se, but eventually you think that selling courses on how to make money online is the best way to make money online, which seems a bit… pyramid-esque.

    1. Ah, but you see, for $200 I’ll give you a four hour seminar on how to make money from rubes on the Internet. At the end, you’ll make a video praising my content and I’ll help you make it the absolute best you can, so you know the best ways to shill rubes (and, of course, I’ll make sure your video makes its way to YouTube).
      Armed with that knowledge, you’ll go out and sell your own course for $150 and kick me back $25 each time, because I’ll send you a newsletter full of platitudes every time I remember I promised you a newsletter.
      Not a pyramid scheme! This is a valuable stacked-learning tree that builds on our combined synergies to promote the qualities we all aspire to in the field of taking money from rubes.

      2. ” A valuable stacked-learning tree that builds on our combined synergies”… Brilliant – well done sir!

  9. There is such a thing as passive income, but it only comes as a reward of being a ruthless hunter. If you’re a killer in the daytime you can make money while you sleep.

  10. Sound reasoning, although I would argue that eventually the income can be truly passive if one accumulates enough capital. I invest in real estate, and at a relatively young age am financially independent–a perk of living in an economically distressed area (Rust Belt). I plan to hire a property manager as soon as I get a few more properties, which will make the income truly passive. The same is true of a stock portfolio that’s large enough to justify hiring a manager to keep an eye on it.

    1. Good on you. I invested in real estate, decades ago, and came out of that well. I have kept a bit of rental, and now mainly focus on my stocks portfolio. I try to make money by shifting around – selling on highs and buying in dips. There is good passive income from dividends, especially in stocks such as trustee companies and stock exchanges, which collect fees from everyday transactions. They always get paid first.
      I believe you will do well, with your sound property investments in distressed areas, over the next decade, because there is a risk we will be facing a wave of hyper inflation. This is my opinion. It is not shared by the big commentators. But if it happens, then property is one of the good ways of holding wealth.

  11. One could work in an Arabian peninsula shit hole for a six-figure, tax-free income for a year or two, then take a ‘sabbatical’.

    1. Yeah. I would strongly advice some person who needs money to go to a place like Oman and save as much as possible. English teacher is the best option. Not that it’s for retirement but a good cash inflow.

      1. I’ve wondered about teaching English in a foreign land. I hear that getting the coveted teaching certs cost around $3000 or more and the pay isn’t that good according to my friend in Romania. Still, it could be a good way to go expat for a while, but I have a mortgage to pay. (Buying a house was cheaper than renting an apartment.)

        1. That sounds more expensive than I know of. Anywah, they will pay about 3000 taxfree US dollar in Oman. 72 minus let’s say 20 000 for living costs – although one could easily cut down a bit more – is about 50 000.
          Could be something for someone who has financial problems back home and/or a younger person who want to collect money for future endeavors.

        2. I’m a bit confused. Is that $3000 per month or every two weeks? You mentioned 72, and I’m assuming $72,000 per annum. And from what I understand, Oman is a bit more relaxed than Saudi, although very conservative by Western standards.

        3. 3000 per month. 36 000 annually. Yes. Oman is more relaxed than Saudi but it’s not wise to criticise the religion of peace there.

  12. Really like this article. I work a real job. After work, I spend my holidays, weekends, vacations, and my birthday, on my side “hustle.” Been doing this for two months now.
    Plenty of gurus offer platitudes and instant work-at-home kits.
    “Be your own boss.”
    “Work for yourself.”
    “Make it big in real estate.”
    “Insider secrets on how to invest in gold.”
    “Top 5 things you can do to beat the stock market today.”
    Buying their pre-packaged programs and attending the seminars, makes people feel like they are doing something worthwhile. Like they are being pro-active. As if they are taking charge of their lives.
    They meet new people at the seminars. And they talk business with their new-found friends. Only, six months from now, 99% of them can’t show a dime they made off the new venture they invested hundreds or thousands of dollars into up-front.
    People seem to think by spending their valuable time at feel-good events, listening to heart warming stories of success, and handing over their hard earned money for seminars and quick-start kits, they are doing something pro-active. I have done this a couple of times in the nineties; it doesn’t work. That’s how I know.
    The bar to entry is too low. And if you knew how to beat the stock market, make a fortune selling real estate, or how to be your own boss, you would already be doing it. If you don’t know, you can learn without the poison platitudes of gurus.
    Want to start a new business and be your own boss?
    Let me tip you for free, right now, and may God be my witness.
    Eliminate distractions from your life and clutter from your mind.
    Become supremely focused on what you want to accomplish.
    Work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the first three years.
    Work harder and longer than anyone in your field.
    Eat, sleep, drink, and breathe it.
    Become an expert in your chosen field.
    And with a little luck, you might get to enjoy a day off someday.

    1. True enough that is the side of things that most people don’t want to hear. One of the downsides to modern society is that people want everything handed to them quickly. The reality is that only a few people are blessed with the circumstances to “get rich quick” most people that make it to the self made millionaires club had to work really hard and long hours ( haha dirty joke). It’s not easy and your business may end up failing but you should have the grit to learn from that failure and try again.

      1. Damn straight! You have to be willing to work 80-90 hours per week to avoid working 40!

        1. I work 50 hours a week + the commute, which is about 140 mins round trip. So out of the house 12+ hours a day. And that is exhausting. Yes, the really heavy hitters do 80+. Special genes, I think…

  14. There absolutely is such a thing as passive income. Just because designing pop up ads doesn’t create it doesn’t make passive income fictional.

  15. Ive done marketing for multiple millionaire CEOs in my day. They are miserable, and most of them work 80 plus hours a week. I wouldnt trade my life for any of theirs.

    1. I’m a sole-trader building up my business. I’m waking earlier now, working longer into the afternoon/ evening and have adopted the mindset that there’s not much I won’t do or change in order to get what I ultimately want from this…
      But I am also currently learning Spanish, doing martial arts training, attending a fortnightly men’s Bible study group, building a model railway in the garage, developing episode plots for a YouTube series I plan to create- while making time to spend with friends and family. I don’t see the point in being hell-bent on making it big at the expense of everything else life has to offer.
      If I die 5 years from now unexpectedly, who’s going to give a shit about the fact I made an extra 500k if I lost good people and missed out on new people/ experiences that made my life richer in the process?
      “A man can have all the treasures in the world but gain nothing if he forfeits his soul”.

  16. Fuggin right most people are passive. Just this past week I saw two decently muscled hipster bros get all intimidated n scared cause one guy just raised his voice and got “in their face”. These two probably had 50 lbs o’er him.

  18. I am sure there is some sort of passive income out there.
    And I am also very sure that I will never receive any of it.
    And how could I?
    It’s not like my name is Hymie Lipshitz or something…

  19. Gotta disagree.
    I own a modest amount of acreage in rural Ohio (50 acres, wanting to expand to 80 shortly). My income investment came from, obviously, actual hard work but once I purchased the lot(s), I basically lease it out to a local farming family on a cost per acre per year schedule. I get the taxes paid on the land and like $6,000.00 to use for “free” Christmas money. The land is long ago paid for (it didn’t used to be Christmas money we received) and now it’s just a yearly contract that takes us, oh, a day total time to re-sign. The land has long since paid for itself. If I were to sell it today, all in one parcel, my return would be through the roof.
    Mutual Funds and Retirement. Not counting the land, and if I had no house (with almost no mortgage), I am worth 7 digits, with no other assets mentioned. Why? Invest early, invest hard and as much as you can stomach to invest, and never sell during a downturn. Every time you get an itch to sell, double down on buying. The market crash of 2008 saw my portfolio double (and my wife paniced, for real, when I doubled the amount to invest at the time).
    I’m going to retire completely by age 54. 54. And when I die at 99, I will leave my kids millions (plural and I don’t mean 2, or 3 or 5 or 8) of dollars that will never decrease in principal if I never withdraw above $100k a year while I’m alive.
    Yes, there is passive income. But you have to plan it out. Day trading and penny stocks are not going to get you there.
    For details, see my previous posts on debt.

    3. Nice man. You have among the best posts on here. Didn’t see the one on debt, but it is the devil. No debt here, no mortgage, no cards, loans, etc, recently remodeled 3 br house in southern California worth $700k, $300k in retirement savings professionally managed by a large brokerage firm has now doubled. Didn’t sell during the downturn either although lost quite a bit between 2008-2010, but kept it all in place. Now self employed & live off the income from that. No more 6 figure salary getting robbed by taxes. Bought two vehicles this year both used with low mileage, 2014 Honda CRV, 2007 Corvette (always wanted one, not getting any younger). I have more collectible vintage guitars & amps than furniture. Never married, no kids, last girl I dated was 25 (I’m 50 but easily pass for 38-40…achieved by clean healthy living). No one to leave it all to but the best feeling is going to sleep every night not owing anyone anything. Always appreciate hearing about people doing well, thanks for sharing! cheers mate!

    4. Well, I do trust it to you that your kids are tough and can deal with wealth.

    5. “The market crash of 2008 saw my portfolio double”
      Ugh I actually tried Buffet’s mantra “when others are greedy be fearful, when others are fearful be greedy” and I’m still holding losing stocks for the perpetual term. I’ve never had any luck with the stock exchange. I’ve caught falling knives and I’ve bought at the absolute top. I always end up with something that I somehow buy high and would have to sell low (but keep).

      1. You buy at the absolute top?
        Doesn’t that go against being greedy when others are fearful?
        In a depression, when others are fearful to do anything, you should take action.
        That’s how it makes sense to me at least.

        1. I didn’t know it was the absolute top before the trend (another often touted mantra is “follow the trend” or “the trend is your friend”) reverted. What I mean is that every strategy I tried turned out bad, even totally opposite ones. I’m either just super unlucky or have the worst gut feelings ever.

        2. That makes more sense of course.
          I am new to this also, so it’s not in my place to say anything more beyond that.
          Hope you get what you need.

  20. I renovated my house so I have 5 tenants now (from 2) where I spend 6 months of every year in SE Asia/Eastern Europe! Took alot of cash to do where when I go back I keep my head down and just work and spend little money!

  21. Liar! Herbalife said if I buy 500$ worth of Aloe Vera and recruit all my friends and family I can make passive income from their sales and work just 2 hours a day!
    You just want all that sweet easy money for yourself!

  22. “Instead of dating hot and young girls, they date broken sluts.”
    LOL. Globetrotting Internet Entrepreneurs “dating” hot and young girls is how broken sluts are made.

    1. Broken sluts are made by absent fathers long before I ever find them.
      White knight much?

  23. You misunderstood what passive income means.
    It’s having a system, something that can make money while you sleep or that doesn’t immediately correlate with the hours you work (a lawyer can charge $500/ hour but there’s only so many hours in a 24h period he can work)
    Nobody says that Bill Gates or Tim Cooks don’t work hard but their revenue stream doesn’t stop the moment they take a day off.

  24. “I’d like to let you know about a great opportunity I have found where you have the potential to earn millions” says my former friends.

  25. I’ve found owning property and having others pay me to live on said property to be quite a nice passive income.

  26. Wait interest from the bank, dividends, rents, royalties from intellectual property aren’t passive income?
    From Joshua kennon:
    One of the hallmark traits of a good passive income portfolio is that the cash generators it holds, whether they are stocks, real estate, equity stakes in private businesses, intellectual property, mineral rights, or anything else you can imagine that throws off funds, grow each year so they are throwing off more money than they were the prior year. It is important that the growth rate in cash distributions exceed the inflation rate so your household income is always expanding, giving you more capital to give away, reinvest, save, or spend.
    Imagine you have $10,000.00 in savings that you want to invest for the long-term. You decide to buy 500 shares of General Electric at $20.00 per share. Let’s say, the current dividend is 17¢ per quarter. That is, every 90 days, you would get a check for $85.00. If you have the money directly deposited, at the end of the year, you’d have $340.00 in cash sitting in the account.
    Next year, you save an additional $10,000.00. You add the $340.00 in cash from your General Electric dividend, giving you $10,340.00 in fresh cash. This time, you want to diversify so you buy 159 shares of Johnson & Johnson at just under $65.00 per share. Let’s say their annual dividend is $2.44 per share.
    At the end of the second year, you are now generating $340.00 in passive income from your General Electric dividends and $387.96 in passive income from your Johnson & Johnson dividends for a grand total of $727.96. You ignore the fluctuations of the stock market entirely, focusing on one thing and one thing only: Whether you can get that passive income figure to grow faster than inflation as the years pass. You think like a long-term business owner, not a speculator.
    ——————–

    1. You need to subtract income taxes from that dividend payout each quarter April 15. I think they take out 15% which is much lower than an actual income tax rate if you are an employee. Plus as an employee, you also pay 7.5% for Social Security taxes.

      1. You don’t pay social security taxes on dividend income. You might pay medicare taxes. A 3.8% Medicare surtax is levied on the lesser of net investment income or the excess of modified adjusted gross income above $200,000 for individuals, $250,000 for couples filing jointly, and $125,000 for spouses filing separately.
        Thus if you are retiring with adjusted investment income under 200k you don’t pay any other taxes other than your 15% dividend income. You just have to remember to pay it quarterly otherwise you get penalized.

        1. Correct. I was making a comparison between dividend income vs an employee where the employee has FICA deducted from his gross pay in addition to state and Federal income tax.

  28. I’m beginning my own online-income journey. While there were good reasons listed in the article, my own personal desire is to make income without grinding my joints into powder.
    Never forget that it’s ‘male privilege’ to work in construction where the rates of death are high and suicide rates are exponentially higher.

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