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Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#11

Post by austenallred »

I co-wrote a book on user acquisition and co-created an accompanying video course to climb out of debt left over from a failed startup.

Made $104,000 in revenue since June (turns out the user acquisition stuff actually works), about 87k of which is profit, so we'll say ~$11,000/month part-time. It still makes me a solid $2,000/month now with zero work, and hopefully more once the book is officially published. (It's done and delivered to backers, but won't be on bookshelves and Amazon until after it's typeset.)

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-ultimate-growth-hacki...

I know the marketing will be over-the-top for HN. Just know it sells because the content is really, really good.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#12

Post by bootloop »

Unfortunately not 2016, but two years ago when the Samsung Gear Watch came out a friend of mine got it right away. We went out drinking the same day and when we came back at night we put together a watch face while still being drunk. We uploaded it, set the lowest possible price 1$, and... Nothing happened. Everywhere in the admin panel it showed 0. 0 downloads, not a single dime earned, even after a few days. We were devastated.

But than I found another tab in the utterly shitty admin panel and it hit me like a rock. The numbers on the dashboard were a monthly overview and in fact we earned already hundreds of dollars and downloads in just a few days. I went back to the computer, but together an even better watch face, set it to 1$ again and watched it selling like hotcakes.

However it tried out quite quickly after that. People started to copy stuff and giving it away for free and I never bought the watch myself, I just used the emulator to test my apps. So I took them out of the store at the end because dealing with taxes and sharing the income does not make it worth it if you get support requests like "how can I change the time on my watch", "what do I care, its your shitty watch and Samsung's shitty interface"... So yea. That's my best story about unexpected passive income. Selling stuff fast on a new platform seem to work!

Edit: Found some screens. First one: https://i.imgur.com/TIVsPKO.png Best selling one: https://i.imgur.com/9L8TetO.png

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#13

Post by jrheard »

Young hackers who have a surplus of income and have funds to spare that aren't being channeled toward debt / family / donations, heed me: save as much of your salary as you can, and put it in boring investments (index funds / etc), probably through vanguard.com (no affiliation, I just use them and have heard nothing but good things from people I trust). You can pretty easily set up your job's direct-deposit system so that a portion of your salary goes directly into your investments without you ever seeing it, it's a good set-it-and-forget-it system. It adds up over time!

[Somewhat related: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim... ]

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#14

Post by buf »

https://www.castingcall.club Social network for amateur voice actors. I wrote about it here: https://medium.com/@buf/accidentally-built-a-successful-soci... Brings in about $2k/mo.

p2p lending is hit or miss for me: 3-10%

Index funds pull in the rest.

I've also moved temporarily to a very cheap COL country so that I can focus on some more side projects to pull in extra sources of income before I return to the work force.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#15

Post by wfunction »

buf wrote: post #14

https://www.castingcall.club Social network for amateur voice actors. I wrote about it here: https://medium.com/@buf/accidentally-built-a-successful-soci... Brings in about $2k/mo. p2p lending is hit or miss for me: 3-10% Index funds pull in the rest. I've also moved temporarily to a very cheap COL country so that I can focus on some more side projects to pull in extra sources of income before I return to the work fo…

Question: how do index funds (or any kind of stock, really... in fact this question isn't really about index funds) "pull in the rest"? Do you actually manage to sell them when they're high and buy when they're low again? Or do you get stocks with dividends and just make money using the dividends? Obviously merely possessing stock of high value is kind of moot if it doesn't turn into cash somehow, so I'm curious how people usually do this. (I don't know much/anything about finance.)

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#16

Post by cmadan »

Nilzor wrote: post #7

This is my portfolio : http://www.nilsenlabs.com None of them have made a lot of money, but one is still generating a small amount. Guess which. Hint: Income is not proportional with the shinyness of the technology stack

GogTasks? It seems to solve a real problem.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#17

Post by buf »

wfunction wrote: post #15
buf wrote: post #14

https://www.castingcall.club Social network for amateur voice actors. I wrote about it here: https://medium.com/@buf/accidentally-built-a-successful-soci... Brings in about $2k/mo. p2p lending is hit or miss for me: 3-10% Index funds pull in the rest. I've also moved temporarily to a very cheap COL country so that I can focus on some more side projects to pull in extra sources of income before I return to the work fo…

Question: how do index funds (or any kind of stock, really... in fact this question isn't really about index funds) "pull in the rest"? Do you actually manage to sell them when they're high and buy when they're low again? Or do you get stocks with dividends and just make money using the dividends? Obviously merely possessing stock of high value is kind of moot if it doesn't turn into cash somehow, so I'm curious how…

Sorry for the confusion. It's just a set it and forget it robo investment for now. I go in and adjust every quarter.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#18

Post by IAmEveryone »

210,000 Euro, divided between me and a friend.

We started a small online shop about 10 years ago, and it's mostly automated. About 5 minutes/day + one week / year of work.

Before that, I had spent a few years (trying to) run rather big software projects (for me – I was 18 or 19). They had cost me so many sleepless nights that I swore to never again take on customers paying me more than 100 Euro each. Now, if anybody complains, or gets on my nerves, they get their money back and are never heard from again.

My friends joke I'm the living example for an unconditional basic income. They haven't decided on the outcome yet, though.

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