What a Passive Income really means

The term Passive Income has been bandied around constantly in recent times and it is one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted terms online.

Passive is defined as ‘accepting or allowing what happens or what others do, without active response or resistance’, combined with ‘income’ it portrays the possibility of an income with little or no activity. Perhaps put a different way, it implies the possibility of earning and having money without putting in any effort.

No one has popularised the term as much as Pat Flynn on his blog Smart Passive Income, and yet in his About page, he lays it out:

Earning any type of income online takes a lot of hard work, a lot of patience and a little bit of luck too, although I honestly believe we create our own luck.

Passive income should most accurately be termed residual or continual income. The fact is building a Passive Income online does take work, hard work even, however what working on building a Passive Income really means is

Constant Income

One of the most exciting and interesting things about building a continuous income stream is that you do not have to constantly and continually be working for an income to ‘flow in’. For example, with an online business, you are likely to be earning money even while you are sleeping as the great ability of the Internet leaves your ‘shop’ open 24 hours a day, every single day.

Define Your Work Hours

Our society typically defines that each person should go to ‘work’ usually between the hours of 8am and 5pm, however in working and building an online business, you choose when and the precise hours you wish to work.

This could be at 3am one day and 2 pm the next, you really are only bound to work hours by your own terms.

Personal Note: For us, the flexible work hours, was particularly important as we really wanted to spend time as a family and that meant that we could both drop off and pick up our daughter from school, take time off during school holidays and literally work when and how we choose to work.

Multiple Income Streams

While this may not be immediately obvious, the opportunities that abound once you start working online is enormous. As all the leading thought leaders from Bob Proctor to Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield all recommend building multiple income streams (or sources) is perhaps one of the most appealing and important aspects to working online. This is possible especially with working online.

Will it be easy?

The term passive income always implies ease, however as with all manner of things successful, ease is a relative statement.

As Earl Nightingale said,

“Success is not the result of making money, earning money is the result of success – and success is in direct proportion to our service.”

In other words, if you actually set out to build a passive income, then it will very well seem like hard, unrewarding work, if however you decide to work on something in which you are drawn to, or are passionate about, regardless of the long hours and sleepless nights it would be extremely satisfying. It may not always be easy, but you will always feel rewarded.

Over to you

Have you already built up a passive income stream?
Perhaps it’s something that you’re looking to build and work on, do share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

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