Miranda over at bizia.com has a great post about generating passive income from your current job. Most of us work (well, I guess the lucky ones in this economy) a regular job and yet still pursue passive income in our spare time. Setting up a passive income stream isn’t easy, so it would be great if we could realize one from our regular job and use our spare time for other activities. Like killing two birds with one stone, as the old saying goes.

How long do you think it takes to create a profitable online business? Mike Edwards at Learn to Make Money Blogging has a good system set up and describes it in a recent post. It doesn’t take as long as you think …

Online money-making and work-at-home programs are designed so that those who purchase or buy into the programs will not achieve the advertised results. Think about it — why would the know-it-alls who are behind online money-making and work-at-home programs really share all the secrets of the systems behind their fortune and create their own competition? Here’s the real secret …

Massively multiplayer online (MMO) games are popular. More popular than you may think, and not all players are acne-ridden, pale teens in their parents’ basements. Many have real jobs and disposable income.  Take Mr. T , for example.

Many MMO players find their favorite game to be very engrossing and a great alternative to real life. In the game, their character can be all-powerful and have the best equipment (everything from clothing and costumes to magical, flying mounts) while the player’s real life is comprised of a mundane job and a subway commute. Regardless of the game, a player must commit a lot of time (hundreds of hours in some cases) to have the best of everything in-game. However, not everyone has that amount of time, although they still want to enjoy the game.

That’s where MMO games can be profitable . The most popular MMO game in America is World of Warcraft . Hence, World of Warcraft is the center of the MMO economy. Like the "real" economy, the MMO economy is based on the trade of goods and services for money, with the difference that the goods exist only within the games. Also like the real economy, the rarest and most difficult to attain in-game goods garner the highest prices. In MMO games, "rare" and "difficult to attain" translate directly into time: The more time a player puts into the game, the more likely they are to be able to possess such goods.

You probably do not have the time or interest in logging in to an MMO game and racking up hours and hours just to get some rare doodad to try to sell to more serious gamers. That is where the service side of the MMO game economy comes into play. Create a game account, hire a service provider to spend the time increasing the value of the game account by making the character represented by the account powerful and wealthy, then sell the account for real money to someone who is interested in the game but not the time required to gain in-game power and wealth.

Do you have a pleasant voice and demeanor? Are you well-organized and can keep track of details? Then you may have what it takes to be a virtual administrative assistant. Every company needs someone to answer the phone, take messages, and schedule appointments. And not just big companies — individual business people like realtors, salespeople, and freelances often have the greatest need. Since in most cases they are their company, these individuals have a lot on their plates. While taking calls and maintaining a schedule is important, these professionals are usually more focused on doing what makes money. That means they will pay you to answer their phone number, take messages, and maybe keep their schedule and do some minor office duties like faxing.

And you can do all of this with your computer, from your house. You just need a voice-over-Internet (VOIP) service and the software you already have (like a word processor and spreadsheet programs). The trick is finding professionals that can use your service. Place ads in local newspapers or online in places like craigslist.org. Create a small, simple Web site to attract customers. Is there demand for this work? See for yourself.

It feels good to be recognized. Trophies and awards give people a sense of accomplishment and something tangible to show for all of their hard work. People spend a lot of time on their Web sites and put a lot of hard work into them. So create an award and a fancy logo and give it to Web sites that you fancy. The following year, require the sites to pay a small fee ($5-$10) to keep the award. Tell them it’s a maintenance or administration fee. People will usually pay a little money to keep their egos up. Tie this idea together with the directory idea and create a directory of sites that have received your award and the award will be more valuable to the recipients (and they’ll be more likely to pay the fee to keep it).

If you read a lot of forum posts, eventually you’ll see “Just my 2 cents.” in someone’s post. That person obviously doesn’t know what you know now: You can get paid to post to forums, and more than 2 cents per post. Typically you can make 10 to 25 cents per post, depending on the length of your post, how many replies it receives, and the total number of posts you’ve made as an agent of one of the companies that pays people to post. Most pay through Paypal, so you’ll need an account there before you begin.

David Filo and Jerry Yang did it. So did Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Today, they’re millionaires (maybe even billionaires). Create a Web page with a list of links to other sites. But don’t try to link to every site on the Web (David, Jerry, Larry, and Sergey pretty much have that covered). Instead, create a directory of links to sites for a particular niche, something that you know well. A hobby or other interest. Fly fishing. Bundt cake recipes. Information on testicular cancer. Whatever your thing is, there are Web sites with information out there about it and someone with your knowledge and understanding can put together a better directory of those sites then the big search engines. When you do, you can place ads on your site or charge for membership and make money. Start out with a page from a free hosting company, then move up to a regular host when your directory becomes popular.

Feel like your opinion is worth more than two cents? Companies will pay you (more than two cents) to fill out surveys on the Web.

Get paid for not using your computer! Companies with too much work and not enough computers to do it will pay you to let them “borrow” yours when you’re not using it. Of course, in this situation, your computer never leaves your house or office. Instead, instructions and work are sent to it through the Internet and it crunches them when it’s not busy with you. Your computer works, you make money. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?