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”
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.
No it’s not. It’s “definitionally” income that’s passive, i.e. you’re not actively doing anything for it (any more). In other words, you can put a some or a lot of work in advance and then receive income over time, passively. A short list of examples:
- royalties from intellectual property, like books, music, acting, patents etc.
- automated business, where it’s developed to the point that requires almost no input
- ad revenue from online content, like websites, blogs, vlogs etc
As a software dev I know what it entails. It can be your job AND your passive income.