Ask HN: What are the some passive income strategies you do beside your IT job?

Are Amazon FBA or drop shipping still passive? Both of those still require significant time dealing with exceptions.

Mostly Passive: Real estate rental

Not as passive:

Amazon FBA: Run a side business selling products on Amazon. I have hired 1 part time employee now that works tasks I have outlined during the week. I work 1 to 1.5 days per week organizing the warehouse and custom orders. In the green after 3 years. It's also fun for me.

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.

Do you sell products you're making, or are you buying and selling?

No, not usually, that's more like "part time job" or "side hustle." Just like nobody (hopefully) will say driving for Uber is passive. People often don't know what "passive" means, this question gets posted here a lot and most of the responses are not at all passive. A lot of people mean passive = non-wage income, not so. If it requires ongoing time and effort to make money, its not passive.

There's some grey/in between area though, real estate can be passive (1 unit with long term tenants) or a full time job (multiple properties, distressed properties in need of significant repairs, or something like AirBnB - unless you've got employees doing all the work). Same with stuff like writing, if the effort is already done and you just sit back and collect ad revenue or referrals, that's passive. If you're actively writing blog posts regularly, its not passive.

As far as the FBA case, if you've hired someone to do all the finding deals, packing and shipping, it is pretty much passive; if you've got a white label product and you've set up your suppliers to ship regular shipments from China direct to Amazon's warehouse, its probably pretty passive at that point.