Does Passive Income Truly Exist?

Does Passive Income Truly Exist

It seems everyone these days is searching for passive income streams, but does passive income truly exist? The answer to that question is both yes and no.

There are income streams which are completely passive, however that said as you let that stream go passive revenues are going to decline. An example of this is kindle publishing. You can essentially write an eBook, throw it up on Amazon, and forever that book will remain on Amazon. If someone buys the book you do get paid, so it is passive in that sense. That said, as anyone who's ever published on Amazon knows, as soon as you stop promoting a book the sales will slump. The more sales slump the more sales rank you lose and that will hurt sales even more. You may have a few sales comming through a month and without any effort that is passive, but to truly maintain a good revenue stream you do have to continue to promote the book.

That's what I mean by 100% truly passive income streams not existing. The same could be said of a blog, you can write a blog, run banner ads and get paid. Again though, similar to ebooks as soon as you stop promoting the site traffic will slowly die down. Also, as soon as you stop publishing fresh content your Google ranking will suffer. Yes you'll always have some level of traffic but the income and traffic will decline with your effort.

There are income streams which are more passive than others and there's other income streams that require more attention and more work than others but in my experience you won't find a large income stream that's completely passive.

What are your thoughts? Are you seeking that holy grail of passive income or have you given up on that idea and realized that real money requires real work?