Why Passive Income Never Actually Feels Like Passive Income

Make money while you sleep, work whenever you want, and spend the rest of your time doing what you love.

That’s what every creator wants from selling digital products—passive income. But here’s the thing: there isn’t anything passive about it, especially in the beginning. It takes a lot of upfront work to get to the point where it starts to feel passive. And that’s because there’s so much to learn—systems to set up, funnels, marketing, landing pages, delivery systems, payment processors, design, etc.

But as you create these systems and set things up, you’ll notice you’re not as constrained to the business as you were in the beginning. Passive income depends on how well you can simplify your process.

Not many creators can walk away from their business for a year and still watch it grow. And one of the biggest issues I see is creators relying solely on social media as their main source of attention. The problem with that is social media posts have terrible lifespans—they might last a few hours or a couple of days at best before getting buried under hundreds of millions of new posts.

Because so much content is constantly flooding everyone’s feed, you’re forced to jump back on the hamster wheel, grinding out more content just to stay visible.

But if you create content on platforms like YouTube, or write articles for LinkedIn, Medium, or other platforms with high search rankings, your content lifespan goes from days to years. Personally, I prefer writing articles and then repurposing them into smaller content pieces for X and LinkedIn.

When you set up systems that work for you long-term, business starts to feel more passive. You spend less time on tasks, streamline the process, get faster at writing or designing, and become more organized.

But there are limits to how passive it can become. You’ll always need to spend some amount of time working on your business. Tim Ferriss talks about this in The 4-Hour Work Week—it’s all about minimizing the amount of time required to run a business to a handful of hours per week.

And that’s what should work for most creators. You don’t want to go from working a 40-60 hour week at a day job to working just as hard—or even harder—on your own business. But it’s okay if you put in that time at the beginning.

There’s a lot to learn and practice, and as you get better and spot patterns in your work, you’ll create systems that minimize the time spent. It won’t ever be fully passive, but you can get it pretty damn close.

And honestly, I’m fine with still working a few hours a week. I don’t love the idea of never working again. Vacation and relaxation feel great, but real satisfaction comes from balancing work and play.

A lot of the time you invest into the business is the beginning stages. Setting up your store, finding your niche, finding a product idea to make and sell, how to get people in your funnels, how to grow your audience, and how to get people to take your lead magnets to enter your sales funnels and start making sales.

If you’re ready to speed things up to start simplifying your business and bring you closer to “passive” income, check out my 7-in-1 Creator Starter Pack. It’s packed with tools and resources to help you set up your online business the right way in the fastest time possiibe. Whether it’s creating lead magnets, setting up funnels, or refining your product marketing, this starter pack covers everything you need to start working smarter and freeing up your time. Get started now and start building a business that works for you.

Here’s the link to the 7-in-1 Creator Starter Pack →