I’ve been noticing a trend among bloggers’ income reporting regarding the percentage of income derived from passive sources (YPN, Adsense, Text Link Ads, etc) and active sources (ReviewMe, PayPerPost, etc). In my opinion the best form of income to receive is passive because it just continues to come in even after you’ve done the work. Musicians, writers, actors and the like all receive a significant amount of passive income in the form of royalties on previous work. Bloggers earn this passive income from the pageviews and clicks of ads from previous days, months or years worth of posts on their blog.

However, what I am noticing is a good portion of income from several prominent bloggers is coming in as active income from ReviewMe, PayPerPost and other one-time forms of income. For instance, John Chow earned $2,600 from ReviewMe posts in July which is about 20% of his blog’s monthly income. Rob at The Million Dollar Experiment Down Under reported $246.60 in active income and only $120.67 in the form of Text Link Ads and Adsense. Kumiko from CashQuests also discloses that of her first $1000 in earnings, $158 came from PayPerPost, $80 from ReviewMe and $582 from direct sales.

So, is enough passive income from blogging to earn a living a reality or a fallacy? Sure you can rely on passive forms of income such as Adsense or YPN but it seems the percentage of income these bloggers are receiving from those sources is falling. As long as your blogging relies on active income, you’re chained to writing in it just as if it were a job. Even if you do generate a significant piece of your income passively on your blog, once you stop writing that income will drop significantly. So keep writing!

[tags]shaun carter, adsense, ypn, google, yahoo, blogging, john chow, kumiko, cashquests, active income, passive income, make money online, royalties, text link ads, reviewme, payperpost[/tags]