Passive income is BS (but here’s how to get it)

We are the psychos in first class. People see me and my older son and wonder how we could afford tickets. They probably decide I’m the crazy wife whose husband is never home because he extends every business trip to include a mistress tryst and sends me his love via miles for upgrades.

My son asks for water: “Do you have a bottle? Um. Excuse me? Do you have four? Oh! Thank you very much. Thank you.”

I know. You’re waiting on the advice on creating a passive income. Okay. Here:

1. Be the annoying person in the room no matter where you go.
I get up to go to the bathroom. The flight attendant tells me to sit down. I pretend I’m deaf. Then I forget to flush. Sort of. It’s just too much noise in such a small space.

We have the violin in the overhead. People keep trying to squash it into the shape of a french horn so their roll-on bag will fit. If you are first class you can tap the flight attendant on the arm and say, “Can you make sure our violin is okay?” If you are not first class you have to defend the extra space like it’s a Stradivarius. Not that anyone on the plane would care.

Now the violin has an overhead bin to itself. And I pretend to be a disinterested party while I listen to the flight attendant telling people to check their bags.

2. Believe money will solve your problems.
I open my journal, which doubles as my music notebook. The first thing I have to do is copy cello and piano notes from today’s lessons into an email so my younger son can practice while my older son and I are in Los Angeles.

I have pages and pages of notes, not because I’m a good music parent, but because I write journal entries during music lessons. Last week the piano teacher asked to see my notes and I clutched my notebook to my chest and screamed no like I was Jan Brady avoiding Marcia’s prying eyes.

The page has blood spots all over it. If I could stop picking my cuticles when I’m anxious then I could use that same skill to stop eating when I’m anxious and I’d be so thin I’d be a bathing suit model. And a hand model.

When Amal Clooney gets nervous about flying, does she want to eat? Or pick her cuticles? Maybe she just goes shopping. I guess I could do that if I were married to George. I always tell people that money wouldn’t change any of their problems, but suddenly realize that I’m the exception to that rule.

3. Have a lot of crackpot ideas for what you can sell.
I have incredible anxiety now. I mean, I have anxiety medicine and I still think about how I need anxiety medicine for when the anxiety medicine doesn’t work. If only Xanax didn’t put me to sleep. I would be such a good drug addict—the kind that is high-functioning and could even handle an investor meeting under the influence. And I’d be the worker who’s great at selling off-label pharmaceuticals to unsuspecting co-workers to fund my habit. I would be the popular girl at the office. Finally.

Anyway, I’m the exception to the rule about how money can’t solve your problems because if I could just go shopping when I’m anxious then I wouldn’t eat or pick my cuticles. Also, I’m just telling you now, while I’m being gross about blood, that my editor almost always cuts parts about blood but he’ll never be able to cut all the blood out of this post.

4. Have an illogical sense of your importance to the world.
Is anyone making a movie about me? Because the opening shot should be a close up of me pulling at a cuticle, and it rips, and you see a pool of blood in the nail bed, and in the background is cello music. Maybe something from Suzuki Book 3. That book took us so long to finish. Boccherini is an exacting composer for a six-year-old cellist.

Then the camera pans back. Is that the right use of pans? I should know because my first husband was a UCLA film school guy but all I learned is that the director always casts women he wants to sleep with.

Anyway, the camera pans back and there I am. Wait. That’s the thing. I can’t see myself past that. Where would I be? I don’t know where I am. I am in a music lesson. (Three in one day, actually.) And I am on the airplane. And I am in the hotel.

5. Learn to live on zero dollars for days at a time.
But wait—I am not in a hotel. Because I thought I saved money for the hotel, but I didn’t, and then I had to make company payroll. So this morning I paid the last person and now I have to wait until money comes into my account.

6. Make a ten-year master plan, because that’s how long it takes.
This is what passive income is. I am doing my day while money comes into my account. Do you want to have a passive income like me? Here’s what you do:

a. Write a blog for eight years. Without making any money directly from posts. Almost make money directly from posts but sign up for ad revenue the year ad revenue disappears.

b. Create a mailing list. I built this list very un-passively by raising almost a million dollars in funding to create a specialized list of people and then figured out how to run the people through software and then customize the software and then fire three people who didn’t know how to do that and hire other people and then realize that I have to be an expert myself. Notice how the process is central to creating passive income, yet notice how un-passive it is.

c. Create a product to sell. Become a total nutcase and decide that there is not enough heart in the product and dump the product and start over. Then create a new product that is so fun and effective and customizable that it takes forever to build and it totally doesn’t scale so you have to make fifty of them.

d. Announce everything is for sale. Watch no one come because the world is not waiting for you to create passive income. In fact, the world pretty much does not give a crap about anyone except themselves. Adjust your sales pitch to reflect that.

e. Sit back and let the income pour into your bank account. For one day. Then make a new product. Make a new blog post. Talk with a customer who is not happy to make her happy. And again. And again. And then fix everything because the market is different. Then have one more minute of passive income. Write about it. Fast. Before you have to be active again.

7. Passive income is a mindset, but a quantifiable reality.
So yeah, my passive income comes today. Because you have to be crazy to create a supposedly-passive-income stream, because it’s such an insane amount of work, and I am just that crazy.

And then I don’t tell my son, or the Uber driver, that we don’t have a room when we pull up to the Hilton in Santa Monica. I want to tell you we went to Shutters and the hotel sponsored us and I put Shutters in this post twice because they gave me a $900 room for every mention. But that did not happen. But it might. So just in case. Shutters. Because we always need three nights when we go to LA.

Do you know what I love about being in First Class? It’s passive—there is someone who seems to be taking care of things: Feeding me. Cleaning the toilet. Making sure no one crushes the violin. I don’t mind that my income is not passive. I want a passive life instead.

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  1. Jim Grey
    Jim Grey says:

    I’ve been thinking lately about ways to make a little passive income through my blog and the audience I’ve built over the nine years I’ve written it. And I know it’s probably not going to work, but what the hell, I’ve started doing it anyway. I’ve signed up for Amazon Affiliates or whatever they call it now and will henceforth link using my new code, and look for reasons to link. And I’m thinking about making self-published-on-demand books out of my photography and selling them through my blog. I don’t know if it will work. But I didn’t know whether blogging would work when I tried it either and here I am nine years later and holy cow people actually read the thing and look forward to my posts. Not hordes of people, but, well, probably hundreds. If some of them buy from Amazon or maybe buy a book, I might make enough money to buy more film (yes, I still shoot film) to take more photographs. I’d like my photography to pay for itself. That feels like a reasonable goal.

    • Maria
      Maria says:

      Jim Grey,

      Amazon Affiliates fired me for not sending them enough traffic. Just a heads up. But we have similar goals.

      Penelope, it’s amazing how much work it takes to be broke..ummm make passive income.

      I just started doing youtube videos, first really crappy selfie videos about the rv lifestye. I called it Miss Adventures (a pun on misadventures) calling myself the “Selfie Whisperer” because I hate being in front of the camera. I made $7.38 in 3 weeks. To my surprise, nobody fat shamed me. They did complain I spoke too slow and it was boring. I blocked them. Now when I release another video, they don’t know about it.

      Then I turned 50 on Valentine’s day at McD …alone..and did a less crappy video for a series called 50 For 50. I didn’t make any money but I figured, I’m improving and it was fun. Beats crying in my free coffee refill.

      While I was spending the night at the 24 hour McD on my 3rd cup of free coffee refill I was writing articles for LinkedIn because it felt good deluding myself someone actually read it on purpose. It felt so good that by the 20th sleepless hour, I wrote another one. It went viral. OMG! 20,000 people in 24 hours I didn’t know paying me nothing for my time to actually read what I had to say could feel so good! The haters were vocal, insulting me personally…I felt like I was at a family reunion. I told my friends it felt like I thought I looked good until it was pointed out my skirt was tucked in my pantyhose and I had toilet paper hanging out of it. THAT one went viral?

      I made zero dollars. No job offer came from it either.

      So I got braver, made 2 videos, actual film videos for a Japanese Film competition based on a couple of poems. I even posted it on my fundraising site. Total amount made… Zero.

      I’m trying to convince my welfare aid worker that to be self employed, you need 2 things. A business license I can’t afford and people who will not stand you up, who will return phone calls, and emails and actually GIVE YOU MONEY.

      Then I tell my case worker to give me their job and they can stand on my side of the desk. Better yet, hire me so I can make an app to replace them. I make them nervous and then they send the funds I need to survive.

      So if anyone needs a video editor, a web designer, or a ghost writer, I have plenty of experience.

      • Jeremy
        Jeremy says:

        “Amazon Affiliates fired me for not sending them enough traffic.”

        I find this hard to believe, honestly. I send them a fair bit of traffic now, but when I first started I was sending them almost none for a long time. In fact I’d bet a large majority of their affiliates send them little or no traffic at all, because they get all ambitious and sign up and then find out it’s harder than they thought. But I doubt they ban all those people for it.

    • Dave Gordon
      Dave Gordon says:

      After six years of blogging about project management and growing a rather substantial weekly audience, Amazon doesn’t owe me enough money to send me a check, due to their minimum. It’s a minimal minimum, but my commissions on a few book purchases is even less. You can monetize your blog if you’re willing to write about sex, mental illness, or cooking (maybe), but being an Amazon partner doesn’t even rise to the level of a hobby.

  2. Tom
    Tom says:

    Great post.

    By the way, Xanax won’t put you to sleep if you cut each pill into eighths. At 1/8th, it’s the greatest anxiolytic ever.

    Otherwise it’s just a sleeping pill, and your day is over.

  3. David Villalva
    David Villalva says:

    You crack me up.

    You’re also a gifted writer and I love the honesty in your words. Straight up, you (and James Altucher) helped me be brave enough to be honest in my own writing. So thank you!

    Also, does that mean you have an INTJ course coming? ;)

        • Randa
          Randa says:

          True passive income usually involves an inheritance or a marriage to someone who is an active wealth-creator. Sure, passive income streams exist and lots of people make a decent income from them. But even those “passive” streams require some effort. I love working, so a passive income never appealed to me outside of the idea that there would be more money in my bank account.

          On the other hand, I would *love* a passive life – one where both minutiae and crises are handled, smoothly, by someone who is not me. If only I could outsource emotional demands. XOXO, an INTJ

  4. Teach By Type
    Teach By Type says:

    Sigh. I have a blog, and through dumb luck I started getting a ton of traffic and email addresses. I wasn’t ready for that. I have very little content and what is up has’t been edited yet, by my slacking sister.

    I was super excited. At first. Now I’m sad. It was a wasted opportunity. I know the stats will go down from this day forward.

    Unless dumb luck strikes again. But what are the odds of being struck by dumb luck multiple times in one’s lifetime?

    -Sue

  5. Jennifa
    Jennifa says:

    I always assumed everyone in first class is a little psycho, or at least they have enough money to let it show in public.

    • Tom
      Tom says:

      It’s true that Zoloft won’t sedate you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t reduce anxiety either. :-)

      (And it’s useless as a quick-acting solution to transient nerves.)

      Other than that, it’s awesome.

  6. Grace
    Grace says:

    Penelope, your course about making passive income from blogging will be about all the ways you could squeeze in five seconds of passiveness between being obsessed with blogging. Is this post a new course announcement?

  7. A-ron
    A-ron says:

    Aren’t you supposed to crush the Xanax and snort them then chase with Whiskey? That’s how my buddy does it. Seems to work, except he’s getting fat, and he’s always drunk.

    You know what a great passive income scheme would be? Slot machines.

  8. xxx
    xxx says:

    Yeesh, Penelope is so self-important that she doesn’t even flush the toilet, but leaves that for her peons. Disgusting.

    It is obvious to any reader that this woman clearly needs mental help. This blog is just sad to read now.

    • Pearl Red Moon
      Pearl Red Moon says:

      Then you obviously have nothing to gain from reading this blog (other than perhaps compassion?) since your life is so organised, rational, upbeat, fun and you never succumb to doing anything disgusting. For the rest of us mere mortals who regularly suffer the same kind of “bad head” days as Penelope, we read this with sense of recognition, sympathy and gratitude at her searing honesty .
      It gives me a feeling of connection to understand that this is what life is really like some days for my fellow travellers….

    • maria
      maria says:

      I actually really related to that one. The noise of the plane flushing is so loud that even half way flushing is painful. Makes me shudder just thinking about that sound.

  9. Melenia
    Melenia says:

    Dear Penelope,

    Thank you for sharing the diary of your hectic life with the rest of us. I can relate to many of the things you mention in your post, apart from the fact that I have never been in business (and much more). It seems like you are overwhelmed and under an incredible amount of stress right now, which leads to bloody notes and the need for medication. Apparently, you need to do more than that, because the drugs are only a temporary solution to your problem. You are numbing yourself so that you will be able to strain it a bit more. This is most likely not going to get you a long way. The prolonged periods of stress can cause a lot of damage to your mental and physical health, like adrenal fatigue syndrome. I know you are a fighter and you think that this is not going to happen to you, and I hope it doesn’t. You need to stop covering the symptoms the same way you need to stop hiding your bloody notes from the piano teacher or from yourself to see. The best way to go would be to nip this problem in the bud. You can do this by taking some time to relax, which I suppose is a word that you have long forgotten. Set ten minutes aside in the morning and try meditating, just focus on your breath (breath in and count to four, hold for four, exhale for four) and this will help you clear your mind and get it back to the present. Also you could try joining a yoga class once a week. It will only take you an hour but it will make a huge difference on your stress and happiness levels and on your physical condition. Live your life a bit more mindfully, because right now it seems like a marathon run. You are creating all these things, you are making money and this is remarkable, but what is the point in that if you are not able to enjoy in the end? Or do you think that you will finally get the chance to enjoy when you will be retired? This is in a long time from now. Your children will have grown up by then. I am not a mother or a wife myself yet, but I suppose that your family would be grateful if you made a small effort to be present for yourself and for them. You are worthy for them and they love you because you are yourself and not because are a successful business woman. We also love you and don’t wish anything bad to happen to you because you neglect to take care of yourself.
    I hope I have been somehow helpful.

    Kind regards,

    M.

    • Dana
      Dana says:

      You are very wise, Melenia.

      Penelope, my heart really goes out to you. I am a wife and a homeschool mom — a little ahead of you on the journey. I have graduated 2 so far and 1 to go. I have also struggled with anxiety and depression in the past due to circumstances I couldn’t control.

      You are a very devoted mom and I commend you. But what would your life look like if you just stop all the traveling — and let your boys practice and study without your input? Do they enjoy this frantic pace? If so, you can still pick it up again in a few months or a year. They won’t be ruined — but they will be ruined if you destroy yourself and your marriage in the process. Life is too short — yes, a cliche, but true! I have done a lot of things wrong, but I hope that my children remember a happy home, snuggling on the couch with a readaloud and dinners together every night. Being a good wife and mom is a lot of hard work — and add in homeschooling on top of it — but the blessing that comes in the end is worth all the money in the world. You and I both want to look back and know we did the best we could — but sometimes the best, is taking care of yourself first.

    • Bridget
      Bridget says:

      Memenia,
      Droll is what I have to say about your comment. I am sorry you have struggled with addiction as evidenced by that being the only part of the blog post you picked up on. However, your advice is rudimentary and canned. I think Women’s Day magazine would be interested in your writing. Perhaps you should submit you comments to them and then you will have created what no one else commenting or Penelope herself has been able to accomplish-a passive income.

      • Rebecca Stafford
        Rebecca Stafford says:

        Hi Bridget,
        I think you’re being a bit hard on Melenia.
        I agree with you that her comments may not be of much practical use to Penelope, and to your credit I suspect you are defending Penelope from “rudimentary and canned advice”. But you’d be hard pushed to say that Melenia’s comments aren’t well-intentioned.

        “Road to hell” puns aside, I don’t think Penelope needs you to defend her. She doesn’t seem fazed by abusive comments, and I suspect she copes equally well with well-intentioned ones.

        I’ve noticed that people who are hard on other people are even harder on themselves. I first noticed this in myself, but there’s a lot of it around.

        Best wishes

  10. Rebecca Stafford
    Rebecca Stafford says:

    Dear Penelope,
    You rock.
    You -and only you – may come and not flush my toilet anytime. Unfortunately New Zealand is a long flight from the US. There will be a few mile-high toilet non-flushings to navigate on the way here.

    But I wish you weren’t taking the benzodiazepine Xanex. There is a much cheaper, more humane, anti-anxiety prescription than amphetamines (Ritalin, methamphetamine [P] etc.) and benzodiazepines.

    There’s not a lot in favor of ‘benzo’s’. Tolerance tends to develop notoriously quickly. This means you need to take more and more of the drug to get the same effects. Eventually you get no benefits at all, and need to take them to stop the effects of withdrawal.

    Benzo withdrawal symptoms are much like the anxiety symptoms that benzo’s are supposed to reduce in the first place – anxiety, insomnia etc. BTW it can be very dangerous to come off benzodiazepines – ensure you only do this under medical supervision.

    The more I learn about psychotropic drugs the more I realize that at best they are only tranquilizers. As Penelope points out, they often aren’t even very good at that. At worst they have nasty side-effects.

    THERE IS MORE HUMANE AND CHEAPER OPTION THAN XANEX AND SHOPPING (UNLESS YOU CAN GO SHOPPING WITH GEORGE CLOONEY’S CREDIT CARD.)

    Penelope is quite right. If she could go shopping with G.C’s credit card she would not be picking her nail cuticles ’til bleeding (the self-harm of choice for those born before 1985) nor need Xanex.

    Here’s the thing: chronic elevated cortisol – a stress hormone – is bad news. It impairs the immune system, and is associated with obesity, a range of inflammatory health conditions, and increased risk of infection.

    (If you are interested in psychoneuroimmunology [PNI] this text by Sheldon Cohen, Carnegie Mellon, is a great introduction http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1259&context=psychology%5D

    So, lots of cortisol is bad for your health. Alpha animals, including humans, tend to be low in cortisol. Conversely, subordinate animals, tend to be high in cortisol. Subordinate animals tend to be healthier than alpha animals.

    After a victory – whether a physical fight or a game of poker – we have decreased cortisol. Victors have the hormonal profile of an alpha animal.

    And, you guessed it. After a loss, losers have elevated cortisol. Losers have the hormonal profile of subordinate animals.

    BUT researchers found an unusual sub-group of subordinate male primates. Unlike their subordinate peers, this sub-group had unexpectedly low cortisol – they had the hormonal profile of alpha males.

    The researchers found this sub-group of low-cortisol subordinate males behaved differently from their high-cortisol subordinate peers. What this sub-group did differently was, after they had been beaten up by an alpha male, they went and beat up another monkey.

    This subgroup of subordinates appeared to be passing on their immunosuppressant cortisol by, essentially, kicking the dog after coming home from a tough day at the office.

    Or shouting at their kids. Or snapping at their partner. Or worse.

    In other words, they are bullies.

    ‘The bullied’ are physiologically motivated to reduce their harmful cortisol by bullying others.

    However, researchers have found that ‘displacement activities’ don’t need to be overtly aggressive to reduce cortisol. You don’t need to beat up a monkey. Or shout at the kids.

    Shopping until you drop, or picking your nail cuticles until they bleed, will also do the trick.

    But what if we don’t want blood on our notes, and we don’t have Gorge Clooney’s credit card?

    The most effective and humane way of getting our cortisol down is to stop bullying ourselves.

    If you’re lucky you’ll be aware of your internal “I’m not good enough’s”, and the “they will leave me’s”, and the “I’m too fat’s”, and the “I’m going to fail’s”, etc. etc.

    If you’re unlucky you’ll be like me. I was so defensive that it wasn’t until I was 40 that I became aware of how brutally hard I was on myself. And that my seven years of ‘teasing’ a school friend was actually bullying. (I’ve recently apologized after 22 years of no contact). And how the relentless bullying of my immediate family has made my life so effing painful.

    I keep some of my immediate family away from me – the ones who can’t stop bullying. I don’t blame them for this. They have been severely bullied by life and their immediate families. But I do keep them away.

    HOW DO YOU STOP BULLYING YOURSELF?
    Basically the anti-bullying prescription is a combination of the incredibly useful belief in your unconditional worthiness of love & belonging (Check out Brene Brown’s work) and self-compassion (check out Kristin Neff’s work).

    It’s hard to succeed when you are not willing to fail. It’s hard to love when you are terrified of rejection.

    Since cutting down on bullying myself, it’s easier not to bully others (control freak, anyone?), success has come a whole lot easier, and love has become a reality.

    Bonus: Unlike cutting down on Xanex, cutting down on bullying yourself doesn’t need to be done under medical supervision.

  11. Alyce Vayle
    Alyce Vayle says:

    Yup – hitched my cart to the dream, still waitin’ for the pay day.

    I too have just monetised my blog with Adsense and I have had a few hiccups with getting it installed and approved. Now, after a couple of weeks, I have made the princely sum of $5.27 – but I have to say that it feels good.

  12. Markus Magnus
    Markus Magnus says:

    That’s brilliant! But please forgive me for thinking it would be a very bad idea to try it out in RL.

  13. SF
    SF says:

    Wow, there is a lot of advice in the comments. I love the research and concern. But, over all I really disagree with the advice.

    Penelope you are doing great. It’s OK to be the psychos in first class. When you are weird and sitting in first class you are called eccentric, not crazy. Crazy people are poor and eccentric people are rich.

    The main issue with adrenal advice/relaxing is it seems to have removed the aspergers from the equation. Most people start the day with their stress levels at 1/8 full, and end the day around 1/2 full. Aspergers start the day with stress levels 2/3 the way full. If you were to do cortisol tests you would find their levels are higher than normal.

    So to fly, which elevate’s almost everyone’s levels, it is not surprising it sends her into a bit of a melt down. Heck it sends me and I start off with cortisol blocking pills.

    Second, aspergers people are sensitive to sound so the flushing is excused.

    The picking of cuticles goes along with anxiety, which is in higher levels than normal. Unless a person with aspergers can live a life without being in a stressful situation I think it’s perfectly normal to have bloody cuticles.

    What I loved was Penelope’s point. She paid her peopleyes first, and hoped she would have money, because in a passive income life style nothing is guaranteed. Unlike a job, that gives a steady pay check. Penelope maybe able to set her own hours, but she pays another price in uncertainty of continuing income. And that is what makes a passive income BS.

    • Joyce
      Joyce says:

      True, I wish Penelope can post her the value of her passive income per month or a range so that we can figure out the benefits versus the costs of building passive income streams. And if we are better off building a business or working for another.

      But we can estimate her revenue from Quistic, which has 35 courses. If each course had 100 enrollees who paid a discounted price of US$145 each, her revenue was US$507,500.

      Let’s assume Melissa works for 4 hours per webinar and a guest like Jay appears for 1 hour in each webinar for a total of 5 hours. Let us say Penelope pays them US$200 per hour. Let us also say that building and maintaining the website cost her US$2,500. That still leaves her with an income of US$470,000.

      35 x 100 x 145 – (5 x 200 x 35) – 2,500 = 470,000

      That’s great money! Of course, it’s not passive income at first.

  14. Brooke
    Brooke says:

    You could buy that little tube of lip balm from Kiehl’s and rub it into your cuticles instead of tearing at them. I keep it in the console of my car and moisturize my cuticles in traffic.

  15. Chris
    Chris says:

    I stopped reading after you said you were headed to LA. You could stay at my house for free.

  16. hans
    hans says:

    Passive income all starts with a good product, and creating happy customers. Customers who, after the initial sale/setup, do not need any support, because the product works as intended.

  17. MC
    MC says:

    “I always tell people that money wouldn’t change any of their problems, but suddenly realize that I’m the exception to that rule.”

    Not likely.

  18. Michelle
    Michelle says:

    I’m a top YouTube creator. This story sounds familiar except that our issues is having a massive influx of money followed by huge paranoia about using it, for fear that next month’s ad revenue will fall off a cliff.

    I used to get so stressed out about major business decisions that I hit myself in the head. I solved the problem with money by buying ridiculously expensive bath products and writing all my emails in the bathtub. I’ve slowed my stress eating by buying a FitBit, which I thought was for people with no self control, but I realize now is for people who want their eating to be less decision-based (more passive).

    Good luck. :)

  19. Joyce
    Joyce says:

    Passive income means we do the work first before we earn big time in the long run. We either invest a lot of money in sources that pay dividends, create an invention or write a book that earns royalties, make a website that brings in clients, etc. A period of ten years is sufficient time to make enough passive income that we can survive on.

    It took us ten years of investing to have a million pesos ($25,000). Americans can earn that money in a year. That’s why a lot of our people work overseas where the income is bigger. If any of you want to live like a king on whatever you income you now have, you can always retire in a safe area of a developing country. :)

  20. xxx
    xxx says:

    all the time i used to read smaller articles that as well clear their motive, and that is also happening with this article which I am reading here.

  21. Alanna
    Alanna says:

    I have been struggling with the passive income idea for years. It is genuinely lovely to see someone point out what bullshit it is.

  22. Keith
    Keith says:

    Loving your usual frankness Penelope ;-)
    What a breath of fresh air amongst all the ‘get-rich-quick’ talk out there. If there really was so much free money out there to be made (and you could get it all in just 4 hours/week) sure we’d all be multi-millionaires.

  23. Pierre
    Pierre says:

    I love the way you wrote this. There is plenty of humor in your honesty. I was never really one to get caught up in the whole passive income thing but this has to be the least bull crap from a post about passive income that I’ve ever come across.

    Thanks for sharing!

  24. Anna
    Anna says:

    What an amazingly candid view, and honest as well. It is true indeed, there is no such thing as a free lunch–or a free first-class airline ticket. “Passive” income, and entrepreneurship, come at the high expense of long hours and hard work, nothing less. Deep down I know that; it is how I was raised. Nevertheless, I have just begun a blog out of a need to express myself and the hope for even a minute income.
    I just resigned from working as a behavioral professional at a middle school because I could not seem to get my point across to mainstream educators about the importance of working with (as opposed to against) SPED students. How’s that for the life of a middle-age Aspergeree (referring to your post on Asberger’s and careers.)
    I would like to expound on my interests and passions in creating some kind of income, but I’m not sure what…
    Thank you so much for your post and for the other comments included.

  25. casero
    casero says:

    Exceptional post however , I was wondering if you could write a litfe more on this post! I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit further. Kudos!

  26. Samanta Dias
    Samanta Dias says:

    Exceptional post however , I was wondering if you could write a litfe more on this post! I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit further. Kudos!

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