Blogs require constant care and feeding, and the larger they become, the more care and feeding they require in ways that are not apparent on the surface.

It’s not just the writing. Writing is only a fraction of the time. As a site gets bigger you increase the time spent on technology, on marketing, on interacting with your community, on relations with advertisers, on adjusting your business model — the list goes on.

It grows exponentially in some ways. The maintenance and growth are not linear.

Anita

I still agree with everything, you are correct, passion and hard work will get you the results and is the path everyone should choose.

I was only referring to the dark side, the spammers, scammers and thieves who do not create, but steal and profit off others hard work.

I just didn’t want to give anyone ideas on starting a splog network

But we look at the process of revenue creation and business through a different lense.

If you can create something from a foundation of passion that then, later on, allows you to scale back your work, while maintaining your income, great. But, there are two challenges with this.

One, nearly all efforts start active and require substantial amounts of energy to get to a point, if ever, where you can scale back. Most businesses will never reach that…ever. And, as a general rule, long before your vehicle gets to a point where you can step back and make a solid chunk more passive, you will go through a number of trials, some small, some gargantuan. If your prime motivator is to set up a passive stream of income, with little passion for the pursuit beyond that, the likelihood of you making it through those trials, without chucking th towel is slim.

While, if you started a business as a manifestation of a deeply held passion, even with full knowledge that it could very well end up more passive down the road, that incumbent passion will serve as a source of of strength that will carry you through the bumps and make it more likely that any business will both succeed and, if desired, get to a level of maturity that allows a certain amount of pulling back.

My yoga studio in NYC is a perfect example. O only work on that business about 508 hours a week and it provides a substantial income to me. BUT, it took me YEARS of working both hard and smart to get it to a place where I could do that. And, here’s where I get to my second point…

Even once you’ve gotten as close to the set-it-and forget as possible, I do not believe that, in business there is any such thing as being able to passively sustain a sideways trend. You move up, through innovation or work or down, through abandoment.

Write a bestselling book and it may stay on the list for a year, but if you stop promoting it or yourself, over time it doesn’t stay there. Time Ferriss’ book hasn’t done what it’s done because he walked away. It’s because he’s worked his butt of to keep the momentum going.

Internet marketing driven businesses, like membership sites, product launches, all have lifespans. They take a giant effort to launch, go largely passive and then, eventually either require new content, marketing or a whole new product…which means fresh work.

Are there the rare exceptions to the rule? Sure. Guy’s like Steve Pavlina, who finished college in 3 semester with a double-degree in I believe computer science and mathematics created a library that is so evergreen, he could stop writing tomorrow and his traffic would stay up for a while.

BUT, Steve is a rare bird, in fact, he tells you, straight up, that most people cannot do what he’s done. And, if he stopped writing, his traffic would stay up for a period, but then start to slide. The fact that he continues to write is testament to that.

So, where does this leave me? Is it possible to set up a business that allows you to eventually pull back and invest less time? Yes. I’ve done it myself a number of times. But, not completely passive. And, to get it to a level that lets you do that, you’d better be riding a wave of passion.

Work smart? Absolutely. If there is a way to systematize or innovate that makes life easier, I am all for it.

But, point me to a hugely successful person, barring anyone who started by inheriting a big fat pile of money, who hasn’t also worked extremely hard to get to a point where they can scale back and I’ll point you to a jelly donut with negative calories!

While I agree 100% blogging is not a form of passive income, there are in fact dozens of forms of online passive incomes and there certainly are “set-it-and-forget online content-driven revenue.”

Although I’m hesitant to mention them as to give anyone ideas…