Photo by wannes deprez / ony one.

The idea of blogging as a source of passive income has always seemed a little off to me (and others). In fact, I’d suggest that most bloggers earning significant money from blogging devote as much time to it as a part-time or full-time job. That’s not as close as we can get, though: passive income should be just that, passive, meaning income for no hands-on work, or income that is hugely disproportionate to the hands-on work required.

If you’re writing blog posts each week, moderating comments, answering email and trying to propel your content forward on social media, you’re not earning passive income. You’re still exchanging time for money.

I’m also skeptical about people who claim to earn passive income from dozens of small niche, SEO and AdSense optimized blogs. Despite some question marks about the value being provided to visitors, I’m also not sure this is passive income, either. Most of those maintaining dozens of these blogs do seem to spend a lot of time on them! Darren Rowse has said it can be a full-time job and more.

The precedent

The above scenarios show bloggers running their blogs in a traditional small-business style: cutting costs by doing everything themselves. The only way to create genuinely passive income is to flip this model on its head and remove yourself from the equation.

Continue reading »