I think reality is more like the startup world: there exist a people who pull it off, but there are a lot of people who also end up with a living room full of h

I think reality is more like the startup world: there exist a people who pull it off, but there are a lot of people who also end up with a living room full of half-finished crummy web apps. What most of these Passive Income blogs and podcasts seem to be selling is really a process: whereupon you start with analyzing a market with google's search insight tools, build a simple utility for that market, purchase adwords for it, and then ab test it. While a process like this might work some of the time, it still doesn't guarantee anything. I love the idea of being a Passive Income Hacker, mostly because I love the idea of "financial freedom" to pursue interests independent of a stable job and stable income. But the two things that make me wary of it are: (1) isn't it still a lot of work up front? work that you could be putting into something with much bigger impact on society into? (2) I wonder how stable the income is over time without maintenance.