Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

Unfortunately you're probably going to get lots of old ideas anyway as no-one that has recurring (i'm guessing you mean Passive Income) will tell you their current stream. It's a Goose that laid the Golden Egg problem.

What I would recommend is reading up about different ways to make money, looking at things that other people have done in the past, then find ways to think up what niche you could fill.

After that its about getting it done.

Look up Patio11 and read his comments, that's a great start.

I wrote a simple android app which lets Virgin Mobile customers see how many minutes they have left on their account. [1] It is open-source [2], and I have optional ads. (I created the app without ads, and then added them in a later update with a note saying "hey, these ads are an experiment. You can disable them in the app's settings if you want, but otherwise, enjoy it!"

This generates between $60-$90 per month, depending on... well, I honestly have no idea what it depends on. Pizza money. And bragging rights.

This app is basically in maintenance mode though I have a lot of things I want to do with it. Android programming is so difficult, though (difficult documentation, impossible for me to figure out how to do anything gui-related) that it's been hard for me to really make big enhancements.

In fact, since going to Google IO this year, I'm no longer a VM customer! Might buy a cheap VM account to do maintenance on this app, which would still be profitable for me.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jaygoel.vi...

[2] https://github.com/poundifdef/VirginMobileMinutesChecker

A couple of years ago I started a food blog with my mom (www.theyummylife.com). She does all the writing, and I do programming, design, and monetization. I spent a lot of time setting it up originally, but now it only takes a few hours each week of my time. Right now we're making $5000-6000/month after expenses, and I get 40% of that.

My main business (a bootstrapped SaaS startup) generates more than that, but the profits are mostly being reinvested back into the company, so I don't think it qualifies as passive income.

Not to downplay your pain: I would love to get $934/month for SS! I've maxed out contributions for many decades but will probably get less than $500.

ChubbyBrain (www.chubbybrain.com) makes $500-$700/month via good old Google ads and some Amazon affiliate links. It's not our core business, but it covers happy hour for the team and some misc expenses so we happily take it.