Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 344 posts

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

#161

Post by mgarfias »

tmuir wrote: post #147
jmnicolas wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been several years now that I'd like to launch a few side projects. But contrary to the crowd here I'm just a normal human : when I come home I'm just exhausted and / or want to do something else than coding. I could use the extra cash though. This month I even tried placing bets on soccer and tennis and failed miserably.

I've found that you have to work on something that you're passionate about, something you want to use. I don't have the magic formula for finding these things, but after trying several side projects and having them fizzle out, I've finally found something that I want to spend almost all of my free time on, and I do. I do hope to sell the product, but what keeps me working on it 40 hrs a week, in addition to my full t…

If only I could figure out how to make $ working on my car or playing with my kids.

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

#162

Post by hwswfun »

ssharp wrote: post #150
hwswfun wrote: post #142

$0.00 from my free game "Barnyard Politics" on Android. Immeasurable wealth realizing I could make the game in 4 days with a game sdk verses the whole summer I spent chasing an idea that I never released but used OpenGL, Android NDK, OpenCV. All the technologies I learned led to the next couple years of my work innovating for my employer so it was a good thing. Time well spent. Long live SDKs, APIs and other ways to…

What SDK did you use?

For Barnyard Politics, I used AndEngine. Since then, I have used and loved Unity3D for hard core conceptual prototypes and am in love with Construct 2 now for my current side project though. I am walking my kids through developing and I needed something less complicated than Unity3D. Construct 2's dev environment is fairly easy to use and it exports to html,css, js. Better than that is that I can make my own plugins in js and make them available to people that will create content for my future website / app. I have extremely limited non-corporate time so I plan to author the first content to get started but then make tutorials and allow others to create.

Note: My opinions on game SDKs or anything else here are entirely my own and have nothing to do with my role in the corporate world. The experiences I mention here stem from the fact that I cannot stop programming or thinking about apps when I come home. I love this stuff. And yes, I deeply desire to get to MRR at some point.

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

#163

Post by asah »

jliptzin wrote: post #48

Around $2k / month from real estate rentals after expenses. It'd be a little less if I hired a property manager to make it fully passive, but I actually enjoy doing the property management myself as it gets me away from the computer and exposes me to things I would never otherwise be involved with.

Done the same over the years. Although slum lords can do better, I prefer the higher end, where appreciation is part of the equation. Property management headaches typically go down at the high end because there's more $ per unit, and the things that break tend to be per unit/person. You also have more $ to fix things and can do it "right". Finally, you can enjoy the places yourself.

Typically, I shoot for ~5% rent to value ratio, e.g. $100k/yr income on $2mm worth of property. With appreciation, I can see why old people do this.

I used the time to bootstrap a company to 40 employees, and profitability-- boy, that wad hard work.

bbf.io/snacks -- killer food for bay area offices and startups

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

#164

Post by raphinou »

moron4hire wrote: post #69
websitescenes wrote: post #34

I make a nice chunk of money every two weeks working full time at a steady Rails job. I'm sure that's not what you meant but to be fair your question is very ambiguous.

It's not really ambiguous at all. Between the general entrepreneurial nature of this site, the phrasing of the question, and certainly the backlinks, OP clearly means passive income streams.

I think he is absolutely right in that the question is ambiguous. The linked questions are phrased exactly the same and don't mention passive income. It is not because everybody, myself included, interpreted that passive income is meant without it being mentioned that the question is not ambiguous. It is just our interpretation due to what we expect to see on this site.

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

#165

Post by goshx »

derwiki wrote: post #141
goshx wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is doable, but still not legal :)

It's not legal to launch a web service in your home country that makes money from people in your home country? How do other businesses operate?

It is legal to open the business abroad, but technically you can't work for this business from the US on a H1B.

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

#166

Post by abrugsch »

breischl wrote: post #126
markyc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

been looking into real estate investment lately, what do you consider a good roi?

Rule of thumb is that the monthly rent should be at least 1% of the purchase price. More specific ROI calculations are good, but people typically forget a lot of expenses (repairs, vacancy, time spent managing, etc) and end up calculating an unrealistic ROI. After accounting for all that stuff, at least 8% cash-on-cash, plus more in debt repayment.

wow... that rule of thumb makes it virtually impossible to buy-to-let in my neighbourhood. a "Cheap" 2-bed apartment is £150,000 and MAX rent for that kind of place here would peg somewhere about £600, but definitely nowhere near £1500. Even at a liquidation auction or lowballing a desperate seller, there's no way to buy anything habitable for under 60K

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

#167

Post by charlesdm »

asah wrote: post #163
jliptzin wrote: post #48

Around $2k / month from real estate rentals after expenses. It'd be a little less if I hired a property manager to make it fully passive, but I actually enjoy doing the property management myself as it gets me away from the computer and exposes me to things I would never otherwise be involved with.

Done the same over the years. Although slum lords can do better, I prefer the higher end, where appreciation is part of the equation. Property management headaches typically go down at the high end because there's more $ per unit, and the things that break tend to be per unit/person. You also have more $ to fix things and can do it "right". Finally, you can enjoy the places yourself. Typically, I shoot for ~5% rent t…

Sort of similar questions I asked the OP:

How much capital did you invest, and how much debt did you use?

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

#168

Post by bdunn »

I have an email course (autoresponder) -> course sales funnel setup for Double Your Freelancing Rate which nets about $1-1.5k a day in sales, mostly on autopilot. This is by far the most successful funnel I've created for any of my products, and is performing really stinkin' well.

Product: http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/rate/

Email course: http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/free-pricing-course/

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

#169

Post by jdawg77 »

I've never participated in one of these before...deep breath.

* Ebooks - I publish under four different names; the big alias I've been making $100-$400 dollars per month for several years. A few months I made over a thousand, but I haven't published anything new in months, thus the drop. Sales via Amazon (90%), Smashwords, BN, etc - I'm not on Google Play yet but on Apple, which is about 5x bigger than BN now.

* Adsense - back in the day I co-founded a niche social network, peaked at nearly $60K per month in adsense, despite being 11 years old, the site still gets a few hundred thousand visitors per month - I sold my stake in 2012.

* I'd like to add a 3rd here, but there isn't at present. Hopefully soon, keep posting these, they are hugely inspiring for all of us who mostly lurk.

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

#170

Post by sweettea »

mgarfias wrote: post #161
tmuir wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that you have to work on something that you're passionate about, something you want to use. I don't have the magic formula for finding these things, but after trying several side projects and having them fizzle out, I've finally found something that I want to spend almost all of my free time on, and I do. I do hope to sell the product, but what keeps me working on it 40 hrs a week, in addition to my full t…

If only I could figure out how to make $ working on my car or playing with my kids.

Mechanics are people who enjoy working on cars; and beyond that, cars provide lots of space to tinker --- I remember being inspired by old Mother Earth News articles on converting your pickup to be wood-burning, or vegetable-oil-burning, or any sort of alternative fuel. Farming/gardening is a great way to play with your kids, and make a little money on the side too; the money is likely to not be significant, but the pleasure at making money from the work of your hands is personally palpable, since I normally am a knowledge-worker.
Post reply on HN