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Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

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Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#121

Post by rompic »

shellerik wrote: post #99
edent wrote: post #17

* Apps with ads in them. Easy enough to churn out, but decreasing revenues and most of the high earning adverts are the scummiest. Low value and of low moral usefulness. * Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar * Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial inves…

I have had some success in affiliate marketing using an approach that I think many on Hacker News could duplicate. I launched my Amazon affiliate site about a year-and-a-half ago and its earnings have increased by about $100 per month with December being the first time I earned over $2,000 in a month. The approach is to find a type of product where Amazon has thousands of listing but the specifications are not very a…

Did something similar for gifts. was a little hacky, but fun to build.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#122

Post by tolas »

buf wrote: post #93

Niche website. I built Casting Call Club ( https://www.castingcall.club/homepage ) for the voice acting community. Roughly 13,000 voice actors currently use the site, but it only breaks even with all the costs associated with it, so I couldn't call it income.

What have been your most successful channels for reaching voice actors?

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#123

Post by lubujackson »

Some overarching takeaways:

- niche sites with Google ads is a fading path, but still can work if you hit a good market or produce evergreen content

- selling niche e-books through Amazon or direct seems to be a decent option, but is a lot of work unless you can produce quickly and have a feel for the topic

- apps are dangerous because discover is nearly impossible. If you want to make apps, make quick little ones because the likelihood is that you will make $0 on any one app

My personal opinion is to make niche B2B tools. There are a million little inconveniences that small businesses deal with. If you find the right niche you can charge way more than a B2C product, deal with way fewer customers and charge extra for "custom" features and things like that. The trick is to find a business problem worth solving. The best way to do this is to find someone working a job and drilling them about their work flow. It's amazing the stuff that can be automated that people still don't recognize.

There is one guy who was blogging about a simple scheduling app that let 1 man operations (like barbers or chiropractors) simply text the app appointment details and it would automate putting them in the calendar. It's a great little business because scheduling is a big pain point for these tiny businesses but no one addresses it in a humane way. A good way to make $ and while also producing useful things for the world.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#125

Post by AJay17 »

marilyn wrote: post #73
AJay17 wrote: post #32

This was mine: http://www.thingsunder15.com

I see you've got lots of auto-posting going on social media... have these efforts proven to be worth your while? Did you build up your followings organically?

None of the ones that Wordpress auto-posts have really done anything for me. Pinterest and Stumble Upon have to be submitted manually, but they seem to work out well.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#126

Post by greggarious »

edent wrote: post #17

* Apps with ads in them. Easy enough to churn out, but decreasing revenues and most of the high earning adverts are the scummiest. Low value and of low moral usefulness. * Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar * Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial inves…

About how much qualifies as "moderate" passive income?

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#127

Post by swah »

benologist wrote: post #78
slig wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One success story of a small company on Amazon Underground - https://medium.com/@PuzzleBoss/actionable-steps-to-make-mone... TL;DR: they have a Jigsaw Puzzle Android App and make shitloads of money on Amazon Underground.

That's me. I now have a Sudoku app launched too, and a new 1200 piece jigsaw to launch this month, and a word search next month.

Thanks for writing that post!

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#128

Post by AJay17 »

nnq wrote: post #108
AJay17 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! It's anywhere from $100 to $200 a month, more around Christmas time.

I'm also interested about how you curate the list of products. Do you have some kind of semi-automatic system or something? Or you just add them by hand?

When I first built it I tried to automate that part of it, but had mixed results, nothing that grabbed attention. I just post things I find cool now.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#129

Post by buf »

tolas wrote: post #122
buf wrote: post #93

Niche website. I built Casting Call Club ( https://www.castingcall.club/homepage ) for the voice acting community. Roughly 13,000 voice actors currently use the site, but it only breaks even with all the costs associated with it, so I couldn't call it income.

What have been your most successful channels for reaching voice actors?

Word of mouth. I've done zero marketing, except that I was a member of various online voice acting communities, where I announced that I made the site.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#130

Post by nether »

Some people have successfully bought cars just to rent out via Turo (formerly RelayRides). It's not hard to make well over the monthly payment if you live near a major airport. Most insurers don't like this though and I wouldn't be surprised by an Airbnb-esque crackdown in the coming years. Until then though, it's the good times.
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