[maaaats]

Last time I read about passive income here on HN it was mostly non-passive side hustles being shown.

Or stuff like ad revenue from apps or sales of books. Maybe passive now, but probably took quite some effort getting to there. It may be passive if the long tail is much bigger than the initial investment, but for most people I guess it's not.

[closeparen]

Well yes, there is generally no free lunch. Any “passive” income scheme requires either capital or an upfront labor investment.

[pietroglyph]

By that definition, no income is passive, because everything takes some effort to set up.

[motohagiography]

Passive tends to mean earning money on rents from capital instead of your time/labor. The grey area is brokerage and arbitrage where you are earning money from risk.