The good, the bad, and the ugly income.
4 09 2007(Well the good and the bad anyway 
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Ask yourself what your definition of income is.
Your right now probably thinking of going to work every day, receiving that paycheck, and going to work (again!) the next day.
This is certainly one type of income, however its not the only way! There are multiple types of income, and as someone looking to gain wealth in your life, you should definitely be familiar with them.
Active Income
This is the income described above, and in most cases this will be your main source of income at the moment. It involves you working (hard) for money. Each month, you get money deposited in your bank account, for turning up to work each day.
This may seem perfectly acceptable to you. And in reality this is what most people do. The problem is that it costs you a lot more than you think, in time. Time is your most valuable asset, and you should be spending as much of it as possible doing what you want to do. Just think, if your working a 9 – 5 job at the moment, that’s around %22 of your entire life spent at work! That may not seem like a lot, but if your getting 10 hours of sleep per night, it’s around %40 of your waking hours spent at work!
Surely there has to be a better way?
Passive Income
Well if you can start making passive income, your certainly well on the way to reclaiming some of your life. Would’t it be nice if you could open a bank account, and have $500 appear in it every month, without you having to do anything for it?
Well that’s exactly what passive income is. It is a regular income, without regular effort.
So why don’t we all do this! Money problems solved yes?
Unfortunately no. Passive income is definitely where we would all like to be, and it is a much smarter form of income than a salary (active income). However it is a bit harder to come by. Passive income mainly occurs after some amount of ‘active’ work has been put in to set it up. For a purely money based example, you could put a million dollars in a high interest bank account, and get $70,000 a year to live off for the rest of your life. The problem of course is finding the million dollars to start with.
That’s not to say that passive incomes on a smaller scale aren’t possible. There are opportunities everywhere for those of you have a bit of an entrepreneur inside of you. And even for those of you who don’t want the risk, just put as much as you can from your active income into a passive income generating source (such as a savings account, or blue chip stocks on the sharemarket). You’ll be surprised how fast your money can grow when you don’t spend it right away!
Check back soon, i’ll be talking more about passive income and passive income opportunities in the future 
This piece on passive income is very informative, and I would like to thank the author for putting in the time. The chart is a real wake up call. However, the suggestion of putting money in a high interest account, or, into securities like blue chip stocks, as passive income sources is wrong. According to the IRS all money that derives from securities is portfolio, not passive income. Better ideas for passive income are as follows: Web sales, multi level marketing, income machines( buble gum machines, arcade machines, laundermats), rental property (apartments, intellectual, and c notes), small business (in which you are removed from day to day operations), and large businesses.
Thankyou for the comment Jamiel. I agree that by definition the IRS may not class this as passive income, however i still believe that it is passive income in the sense that it is income produced with no input effort
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Understood! Casually speaking, any money that comes without you having to work is passive. But your readers should be informed that it is only passive income by the IRS standards that will qualify for the tax exemptions, and defferments that allow the rich to get really rich with less and less efforts. Thanks for responding!
Thus, knowing the distinction between passive income, and income that arrives passively is cruicial for success.