What Is Passive income?

The critical part of this is the word "PASSIVE". It means of course, the opposite of ACTIVE. In other words something that happens without a specific action at the time to make it happen. That doesn't mean that a passive income can somehow 'happen' without anyone doing anything to make it happen. Even an inheritance is the result of someone dying (I suppose that's an action!!!).

What we usually mean by 'passive income' in business is an income that is received, not as a result of the recipient taking action at the time but because of actions previously taken to set up the process that will generate future passive income.

These previous actions, in the field of internet marketing usually take the form of setting up web sites, generating traffic to them and building lists from that traffic. The members of those lists become the recipients of marketing messages by automated means resulting in some of them taking some action which generates the income for the initiator. So, it can be passive for the person who does all the work in the first place but someone, somewhere does usually have to take action at the time for that income to flow.