Passive income starts wars on the internet.
I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s misunderstood. I’m going to clear it up for you with a dash of inspiration. It’ll help you get started (hat tilt to Jon Brosio for the term passive income badasses.).
Let’s go.
The life to chase to the ends of the Earth
I can’t talk about passive income without talking about money first.
You have to know what life you’re trying to create with passive income. There are two to choose from.
1. The rich life
- Luxury cars
- Models in the hot tub
- Huge house in a fancy suburb
- Clothes made by fake-rich brands like Gucci
- Huge debt, no cash in the bank
2. The wealthy life
- Time freedom
- Great friends by your side
- A resilient mindset
- Healthy doses of optimism about the future
- Creating a tiny online empire from home
- Cash invested in a mixture of assets — stocks, crypto, real estate, gold
The rich life leads to ruin. You’ll likely treat people like crap and destroy the Earth to boost your ego.
The second life is the life of a passive income badass — quiet, humble, alone, online, and with the goal to help and inspire.
“Passive income” is a dangerous and misleading term
(Josh Spector)
I agree with Josh. It is. Obviously, everything good in life starts as hard work. Someone asked me about marriage the other day.
“It’s bloody hard.”
A student in my academy asked if writing online is hard.
“It’s bloody hard.”
A guy at the gym asked me if it’s hard to learn about finance.
“It’s bloody hard.”
Choose your hard.
Passive income starts as active work. Dah. You don’t magically click a passive income button and a day later money is overflowing out of your wallet. It takes work to get started.
So the term passive income is misleading if you apply lottery thinking to the phrase and hope to get lucky. Badasses just get to work.
Passive Income Versus Active Income
Active income sources:
- Salary
- Consulting
- Freelancing
- Side hustles
- Hourly work
- Commissions
- Certain types of business income
Passive income sources:
- Dividends
- Crowdfunding
- Interest income
- Peer-to-peer lending
- Real estate rental income
- Defi yield farming
- Crypto mining
- Royalties
Here’s what is freaking stupid about this list.
Many of them break the rules of the category they fall under.
Side hustles are active income. But they can easily become passive income. Crowdfunding is passive income but it takes a ton of work upfront to find the right opportunities, which makes it active.
Once again … labels are stupid. Leave them to the critics and fact-checkers who don’t get paid and waste their lives.
Badasses move beyond labels and focus on making money online.
Jobs pay you 40 hours a week. Passive income pays you 24/7 — Joshua George
Do these things and smile like a badass
Let’s get on with the show. There’s some basic stuff you can do to build passive income streams. Pick one and experiment.
Sell a template
Can’t believe this is a thing. You go into Canva and make templates for software. The best example is Easlo.
The guy is 19 years old. Read that again.
Don’t tell me you can’t do it. This stuff is child’s play.
Here’s what Easlo does: he creates templates for Notion, a note-taking app. That’s it. He builds it once and then ships it forever. The guy is making upwards of $10,000. At 19.
Motto: build once, ship forever.
PDFs
I purposely chose a cheeky label. If I say eBooks I get pies thrown at my face.
Write a PDF about something you know about. Whack it on Gumroad. Write a Twitter Thread about it. Make the last tweet a link to your PDF on Gumroad. That’s how anyone can get passive income in the next two weeks.
Blogger Niharikaa Sodhi did it. She made a few thousand dollars. Then she added an online course. Now she’s a passive income badass.
Put your future customers in a Discord
Running an online community is old news even my grandpa would understand. Let’s go to the next level.
Most software used to run communities sucks.
You can use Mark Zuck-Who-Gives-No-Slucks’ WhatsApp or Facebook groups, although I wouldn’t. People get a bad user experience and new users will protest against supporting a privacy-exploiting dictatorship.
I use Slack. It’s okay but a lot of it is manual. You could use Telegram but people will think you also run an underground hacking firm that steals crypto.
The passive income badasses I know all use Discord. Why?
Discord allows automation.
Some of it is easy to set up, other parts will need a developer. Discord enables you to make alert bots, manage welcome messages, moderate content, and send push notifications for pretty much anything.
When I get 5 minutes of free time I’m moving everything to Discord. Plus it’s dead-easy to use, looks sexy, and your community will love it.
Once your community is humming in Discord you can make it a passive income stream by being helpful.
Offer:
- Paid workshops
- Masterclasses
- Online courses
- Coaching
- eCommerce
- Merchandise
- A premium tier separate to the main Discord Channel
- Investment products (seek professional advice)
- Affiliate marketing opportunities
Honestly, I could go on all day. You can put any idea in a Discord and turn it into a little online business that generates passive income.
Become the wizard from Twitter
Any online passive income stream you can think of will involve email. The problem? Most people suck at sending emails. Why?
The temptation to ask for something every time we send an email is high. Even if you ask a person in an email to follow you on Instagram, you’re selling. Sell too much, and they unsubscribe.
Passive income badasses learn how to send emails without self-interest.
The guy I follow is Cold Email Wizard on Twitter. He made $1.1M last year from sending emails. Most of that income is passive once the active work of doing the setup is complete.
Go back to high school and high-five your teacher
As a young pup in high school, I thought teachers had the worst job in the world. Now I disagree.
Teaching online is one of the best passive income streams there is. Passive Income Badasses do it because it makes sense.
We’re working from home forever, dealing with a tidal wave of new software every day, keen to learn, convinced to stack skills to get ahead in our life/career, and used to online learning thanks to our jobs. This industry is just getting started.
Teach what you know.
Build the course (active). Sell the course multiple times (passive).
Get some Dickie
Until I discovered Dickie Bush, I didn’t understand accountability products.
Dickie and his mate Nicolas Cole figured out that people struggle with execution, so they created Ship 30 for 30. Writers who want to transition to online writers join their program and become shippers.
Shippers ship. They ship together. They have a ship emoji on all their profiles.
This thing’s a cult, I tell ya. Now, this mostly passive income stream can get applied to other niches.
What if you got people to build eCommerce businesses in real-time together? What if you got people to start Twitter accounts in real-time and tweet?
What if you helped motorbike riders learn how to ride together? Participants could even ride their motorbike with cameras on their helmets to make it a virtual ride.
Take people in your niche from lazy and full of excuses … to on fire, full of inspiration, and executing daily on their goal.
Passive income will become your prize when you do.
Learn the best strategy of all
My favorite form of passive income is money you get from buying financial assets. Matt Huang is who I like to learn from.
Once you understand this often misunderstood world, a percentage of every dollar you make will automatically go into this passive income machine.
Closing Thought
Passive income taught me this:
Hard work isn’t the answer. Leverage is. Leverage is amplification for whatever active income you’re already earning.
Become a badass.
This article is for informational purposes only, it should not be considered financial, tax or legal advice. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.
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