2025 Year-End Passive Income Playbook Review: Real Numbers and Real Lessons

Following our tradition every year, it’s time again for our annual “Real Numbers, Real Lessons” at year-end — sharing the actual state of our assets with real profit and loss numbers behind the different strategies we tried this year.

📍 All Followers across all platforms: 40,000+ fans

📍 Total subscribers to our weekly passive income newsletter: 9,700+

📍 This year, we published 80+ pieces of new content across platforms, and for the first time, total annual reads of in-depth content exceeded 250,000

📍 Highest single-article read count this year: still “The Complete Guide to Passive Income Strategies”, with 60,335 reads

📍 In 2025, based on the results we can directly observe from people using our information, the average passive income earned per person: $17,800+

📍 The lowest passive income earned (that we can see): $1,450+

📍 The highest passive income earned (that we can see): $374,600+

📍 The most popular strategy in 2025 is still Legal Lending 😂

Next, let’s go through our own numbers and experiences across all strategies.

Before 2025, we shared 6 passive income strategies:

• My Journey on Passive Income that 99% Population Don’t Hear About
• Litigation Financing – 30% ROl Anyone?
• How You Profit from Beyoncé and Bieber?
• Private Lending
• Tax Lien & Tax Deed in US
• IPO Hopeful

In 2025, we shared 7 new strategies：

• An Enjoyable Hobby That Appreciates Too?
• You Can Still Get Bitcoin for $50K???
• A New Strategy with 40%-90% ROI in Year 1
• IPO Under 90 Days!
• Unicorn Potential?
• Microlending in Africa
• The Closest I’ve Ever Been to Changing the World

As always, for all the strategies above, the vast majority were ones we tested first using our own money, and only then shared our own numbers and experience with everyone.

Below are the actual results from our own testing as of now:

🏷️ Legal Lending:

This is the asset we plan to keep doubling down next year in 2026 again. Using my “catch all” formula for both investing and life: small amounts/small commitment to start with, fast iterations, then let time reveal the winners and losers; then cut my loss fast, and double down on winners as long as it continues to be winners. For winners, I hold them long term with increasing allocation every 12 months; With losers, I cut it right away. We made money again this year on legal lending, so we’re continuing to add more.

🏷️ Patent Litigation:

At the moment, we are very, very unhappy with the communication. The asset itself feels okay, but now it really comes down to whether I will get the money back or not in 2026 as it comes due😂. Because communication has been poor and feedback from everyone hasn’t been great either, there’s a real chance this one could end up losing money.

That said, we’re already working on running this asset through a different model. There might be a new approach in 2026 — if it works, we’ll share it with everyone then.

I’m Interested in the Patent Litigation Strategy

If you’re interested in this asset class, you can click the button above to join our waitlist. It’s still early, but hey — what if it works in 2026? 😂

🏷️ Tablet / Hotel–related Startup:

There’s also the Tablet / Hotel–related startup we invested in earlier. Year-end has been really busy, but they just held a shareholder meeting, completed a series of milestones, and the board approved a new valuation round. The share price increased roughly 45% 😂.

🏷️ Audio Drama / Music Royalties:

As for audio dramas, this one looks like it’s going to lose money — returns are only around 2% per month, which pretty much guarantees a loss. We won’t be investing in this again.

Music royalties are similar. Annual returns are only around 7%, also a loss in real terms, so we won’t be investing in those either going forward.

Because of this, I didn’t even invest in a deal involving a top-tier K-pop idol group this year — one of the top five groups, with rights to some of their classic soundtracks. After reviewing the data, it really changed my perspective: even though K-pop is hot right now, the data shows you need to lock up capital for 5–7 years, and even for a top-five group with their hit songs, expected returns are only around 12%, with a long lock-up. Unless there’s a new model, I won’t be investing in this type of asset anymore 😂.

🏷️ Car Arbitrage:

Year-end is a magical time. Long-time followers probably know I’ve been testing “cars” for almost two years now as I hadn’t found a suitable model for a long time. This asset class is niche, vertical, and high-margin, but most deals in the market require holding for 5–7 years, which doesn’t fit our long-standing preference for fast turnover, short cycles, and quick execution — not long holds 😂.

As always, I tested various models using my own money for almost two years now, and this time it finally seems like one model worked. We completed the full cycle — from purchase to sale of a vintage sports car — in 14 days, with a 14-day return of 5.8%.

There are still a few more to test going into 2026. Same rule as always: my own money first. If we can consistently run short-cycle, fast-turn models across different car types and model years and actually see the money, then we can finally write the details out and share it with everyone. Really looking forward to 2026!

I’m Interested in the Car Arbitrage Strategy

If you’re interested in this asset class, you can click the button above to join our waitlist. It’s still early, but hey — what if it works out in 2026? 😂

🏷️ International Film Distribution Rights:

Another one is international film distribution rights — a new strategy I’ve just started testing. We don’t even know yet whether we’ll win the bid, and even if we do, returns and timelines still need to be tested with my own money first. Only after getting real data can I share it.

I’m hoping to run this model through in 2026 and bring a new series. This is an extremely niche and vertical asset — globally, fewer than five companies do this. What I like is the fast turnover: films are released and screened within a few months, and the data is all trackable. We’ll share once my first investment results come out in 2026.

🏷️ Film Bridge Loans:

The profit in this asset class has been growing fast, but there hasn’t been any new allocation. That could change in 2026. I’m currently testing a new model with my own money — same asset, fast cycle, alpha returns. I’ll run a few deals myself first, and only if it truly works and makes real money will I share the details.

In the films we financed this year, some familiar faces include:

Next year, we may also see the following two:

I’m Interested in the Film Bridge Loans

If you’re interested in this asset class, you can click the button above to join our waitlist. It’s still early, but hey — what if it works in 2026? 😂

🏷️ Startups:

On the startup side, there’s one AI startup whose metrics are already strong enough to raise a Series A. On paper, the valuation is up about 100% this year. If the Series A succeeds in 2026, the paper valuation could potentially double again.

The only issue is that the founder’s communication is honestly not great 😂. Other than that, the data looks okay.

At the same time, we also received news this year that three startups completely shut down, so those three investments went straight to zero.

Alright, that wraps up the real number section. Let’s end on a lighter note.

This year, we successfully completed our websites, where all strategy videos and written content are now available anytime:

• English: mspassiveincome.com
• Chinese: cindyshares.com

We also launched dedicated portals for legal lending:

• English: lend2lawyers.com
• Chinese: lend2lawyers.com/chinese

Looking ahead, 2026 feels like it’s going to be even busier than 2025.

Last but not least, as always, thank you for your continued support and feedbacks this year. We hope more people can draw from what we share to build their own passive-income philosophy and framework — gaining more time to spend with family and to do what they truly love.

See you all next year!