Look, even Wikipedia admits it!
Passive income is a type of unearned income that is acquired with little to no labor to earn or maintain.
“I work very hard as a landlord”
“I am a leech on society”
You choose to ignore the key point of the comment. I also listed apps/games. Technically, I may choose not to maintain the API. It might not remain relevant or profitable for very long, but I can just ignore it.
Besides, being a landlord also requires constant maintenance. It’s just that the income is arguably disproportionate to the work done.
Technically, I may choose not to maintain the API. It might not remain relevant or profitable for very long, but I can just ignore it.
Wow damn that’s crazy it’s almost like it requires constant effort and is a job unlike owning a property deed and failing to hire a contractor when my AC breaks down again.
Regardless of your views on whether or not landlords deserve their income, it’s irrelevant to the point I’m making. The are other ways of having a passive income besides being a landlord; ways that are arguably “earned”.
Then it’s not clearly not passive income, “passive income” is definitionally simply reaping where one has not sown. If you’re doing work it’s not passive income, it’s a job. Software Dev work is not so easy.
Technically, I may choose not to maintain the API. It might not remain relevant or profitable for very long, but I can just ignore it.
But that’s the key difference: you actually are doing labor to maintain it, and you did all the labor of creating it in the first place. It’s not passive in the way you’re making it out to be, especially in contrast to income earned simply from owning assets and extracting interest or rent from it.
You just have a skewed definition of “passive income”. All passive income implies at least some* ammount of work in advance. Yes, even “being a landlord” passive income requires you to do some work in advance, depending on the circumstances. You need to save enough capital to purchase a property, then make it rentable and find tenants. Is it a lot of work? Depends on the landlord, but some is required.
Besides, being a landlord also requires constant maintenance
As if most landlords do that themselves.
Idk. All of my “landlords” did it themselves. But I’ve never lived in the US.
But again, it’s not my point. See my other comments for the explanation.
Let’s say I spend two years carefully hand-crafting 10,000 widgets, then decide not to make any more. I sell those widgets for $100 each, but will only sell one per day. Is the money I’m getting from widget sales passive income on your definition?
