How I understand passive income is letting your money work for you. Examples: investing in government securities (treasury bills/bonds), mutual funds, etc. So you get a small percentage for investing your money. This is not a foreign idea as it applies to holding steempower.

Like you said, to make sufficient passive income you need huge capital. So it would not be advisable to seek making passive income early when you dont have huge income to forgo for a long period of time. Investment has to do with trade-offs.

I have also explored many ways of earning on the internet, never really made any until steem and I won't consider those means are passive streams of income. Like you mentioned a lot of effort is put into making anything tangible from these schemes. So they are not passive in anyway

I am not a fan of any get-rich scheme, so I am usually skeptical of anyone trying to sell me an idea that seems too good to be true.

For people looking to make passive steem for me is a safe bet. I know its price is volatile but you can cover your losses over time.