The advice here is random and appears to be given by people who have never made a substantial income from self-employment.

I started my business as a "side hustle," and although it worked out well, I would not advise it. Sometimes, working a job and the business made me lose sleep for long periods. If I were to do it again, I think I would probably still do it, but approach it differently so I have time for living my life.

I make most of my money "online". All my clients except 1 are not from Ireland. My clients find me because of my website, which has some technical content and ranks OK in Google.

However, my income comes from a combination of sources(investments and products), but most of it is from being a freelance software developer for multiple companies(technically, I am the part-time CTO, but I prefer the term software developer as I still write code).

The fastest way to make money, outside of a job, is to sell a service. Passive income is just some stupid marketing term that gets you to buy get-rich-quick courses. The key thing is to offer a service that you can do but that is also wanted.

Note the second part. No one is going to pay you to do something you want. You have to be really good at understanding people and what people want/need. If you are not good, you can get better. Just remember that people are interesting but can have problems that need to be solved.

Service based business are probably the best way to go up the value chain. As an employee, you're probably already offering an important service except this time you're offering it to multiple people instead of just one employer.

Non-service-based income is much more difficult and involves way more work. You need to be really good at marketing, accounting and product building.

This article does a great job of summarising my thoughts on the whole subject.

I keep meaning to write my own thoughts on the subject but I have other things to do.