A lot of people dream of making passive income. I can honestly tell ya that I dream about it all the time. As I mentioned in the Screw a New Years Resolution post, this year I want to create more of a passive income stream.

It’s truly the only way to have the time and freedom to do whatever you want in life.

Now let me tell ya, when I first heard about it, my reply was: “Passive income doesn’t exist.”

My idea about passive income was that it would be totally passive. A “push-button” thingy that would make me money, while I was traveling the country, enjoying life with my wife and kid.

I was wrong. Passive income is just the opposite of exchanging your time for money. It’s a work hard now, and enjoy the money later type of thing. Not necessarily a bad thing, if you’re up for it ;-)

Fact: Passive income definitely exists.

What’s Great About Passive Income?

There’s no doubt about it for me. Although passive income sometimes sucks, I prefer that to driving to a job every day, slaving over boring projects with a whip-swinging boss, always hanging over my damn shoulder.

Here are some of the things I find great about passive income.

You Work Now to Make The Easy Money Later

Doesn’t this one sound nice? You spend maybe 10 hours creating a report or eBook, put a little bit of elbow grease into some marketing, and it’ll be making you income year after year?

Or you write a blog post with a review of a product, or a simple how to tutorial of a product or service you’re using with your affiliate link, (here’s a perfect example) – and then – even after you’ve forgotten that you ever wrote that post, you still notice affiliate revenues turning up at your PayPal, Clickbank or whatever affiliate account you have.

You Don’t Exchange Your Time For Money

How many hours do you have per day? If you’re like most of us, you have only 24 hours. You need to spend between 6 to 8 of those sleeping. Such a waste of time, but that’s how it is. Nothing you can do about it. You’re body needs rest.

You probably also have to go shopping, cook, wash your clothes, walk the dog, say hello to your spouse, etc. A lot of hours go into that account. You can outsource some of it, of course, if you have the money, but it’s not healthy to only work and sleep.

So this probably leaves you with about 8 and 12 hours to work.

In stead of working 8 hours per day for a boss and getting paid for those 8 hours once, you can work 8 hours on your own projects, and money keeps streaming in.

When you stop exchanging your valuable and limited hours for money, that’s when life really changes for you.

Freedom, Freedom, Freedom

The idea here is to work hard now and make the easy money later which will give you the freedom to do whatever the hell you want. And Yeah! Passive Income means a lot of freedom.

Sure, you have to actually do some kind of work. But you decide when you want to work, and when you don’t want to.

You can take time off to go to the beach on a sunny day. Or bring your family on a picnic. Or go shopping when everybody else is not doing it, so you don’t have to stand in line.

There are so much you can do when you have the time and freedom to be able to do it. That’s the part of passive income I love the most.

Why Passive Income Sometimes Sucks?

Let’s be realistic. Sometimes passive income sucks. No, not the money. That’s always cool, but there are things related to passive income that can go wrong. And they do, once in a while.

Good Ideas Are Sometimes Bad

• Maybe the great project idea you came up with and spent hours and hours working on never took off…

• Maybe you marketed to the wrong crowd…

• Maybe nobody cared about it…

• Who knows why…

…And That SUCKS!

And there’s only one way to go about. Move on to the next. Keep moving forward. Get started on your next brilliant idea.

You Have To Work, Before You Can Earn

Yes, you have to work. And sometimes, it’s just plain boring, or you prefer to spend time on facebook, twitter, or forums.

You have a bad feeling, because you’re procrastinating while you should have been working. And let me tell ya, procrastination is a son of a bitch!

That happens to everyone, even me.

Learn to focus. You’ll probably never become a champion at this task, but over time you get better and better.

Automated Processes Sometimes Break

Passive income means that you don’t have to send a file by email every time somebody purchases your eBook. So you’ve probably set up some kind of system to deliver the file, and to add your client to your auto-responder.

Sometimes, those automated processes break. It can be PayPal which is a bit slow on releasing their digital information, so your system believes that the client didn’t pay. Clickbank payment processor may be down. Or it can be the file that wasn’t totally uploaded to your server.

Then comes angry customers. Maybe even refund demands. THAT always sucks! And again, nothing you can do about it. Just give them their money and move on. Not worth the headache.

To avoid it, you should set up some kind of support system (yes, that too can break), but the more you do to protect yourself and deliver on your promise, the fewer problems you’ll encounter, when you earn passive income.

Final Thoughts

To me, Passive Income means Time and Freedom to be able to enjoy life with my wife and kids. The only way to accomplish that is to do everything necessary to get that time and freedom I need to be able to do just that.

I work my ass off now to make the easy money later.

Don’t be afraid of hard work. Chances are you’re already working you tail off for someone else, so you might as well do it for yourself.

There will be a learning curve or two. But like anything in life, whether it be a new job, new car, new computer, whatever, you have to go through the learning curve to get good at it.

Work hard now to have the lifestyle you deserve later…

Are You Creating a Passive Income?

Would love to know what you’re doing or what ideas you have for creating a true passive income for yourself. Jot them down below ;-)