Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#171

Post by enos_feedler » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 4:43 AM UTC

doopy1 wrote: post #138

enos_feedler wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given this is a very strange year, extending into the markets, it is a very legit question to ask about sustainability. As I think about converting to full time trading in 2021, I ask myself this same question. Let me clarify my situation first. I didn't have a bunch of cash to buy stocks in March. I worked at Google for 4 years and had all my cash sitting in GOOG stock via RSU vests. I didn't hold any other position…

Thanks for sharing that. Please don't get me wrong by the way, I do wish you luck and success in your new endeavor. I posed my question above, because a lot of people lose their hats by making some gains buying low during market crashes and then thinking they've got this thing figured out.

Sure! Yes, the one thing I am trying not to do is fall into this trap. Constantly telling myself I have nothing figured out and I need to figure it out the right way. Attributing everything to luck.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#172

Post by JacobSuperslav » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 8:46 AM UTC

xcubic wrote: post #168

JacobSuperslav wrote: post #132

me and my partner own several "niche sites". over 100k income in 2020. monetized with Mediavine and Amazon affiliate, but we're moving in the direction of pure ads slowly - Amazon is getting worse every year. these are pretty much passive(in my case), my assistant handles all the content outsourcing, and I just check the analytics and make decisions once in a while. I also sell premade specialized turnkey niche sites…

Would you go into more detail about this? How much do you invest in content? How do you pick niches? What those the turnkey niches site have in terms of content, custom theme, domain?

Niches - We work in some pretty broad major niches like "yoga". We just identify ones where the players are a few years behind and try to produce better content. My wife's main yoga blog is outranking yogajournal.com for many keywords, a major publication with a print magazine and a team of writers. You just need to be really good with SEO and know how to create great content -- and that's the really difficult part.

There's also not a whole lot of places you can learn that from :/ All the crap SEO gurus are selling is outdated as heck. Also they all sell you shortcuts - because shortcuts are sexy, but the reality is shortcuts don't work for marketing/content creation. I have literally never seen an SEO course/blog that I would approve of... In my case the knowledge came from working at a digital agency, and then building my own sites. The first 2 years were tough.

The turnkey sites offer a great .com domain in a niche that I think is good, a special theme created by me that is designed for speed/caching and displaying ads well. The content is just starter/filler so the site gets some traction in Google (we age the sites 1+ year before selling them). Unfortunately all sites are currently sold out (fortunately for me, I guess).

Ever want to talk/brainstorm, and I'm not looking to charge anything, send me an email to jacob@superslav.com

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#173

Post by winrid » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 3:08 AM UTC

XCSme wrote: post #159

winrid wrote: post #6

https://fastcomments.com Started Jan 2020, looks like will be at 4.5k ARR by end of year.

Doesn't $350 per month for a basic comment section sound pretty insane?

How many thousands do you think Disqus charges its enterprise customers? Also, remember marketing, some tiers exist to get you to buy others.

Still, I have had companies on that tier. :)

And it's not basic, FastComments has a lot more features than the competition, like live commenting and such. I provide direct development and customization support, we support automated migrations from major providers, and it's reliable, covered with around a hundred E2E test suites that run periodically in production. It also has an "enterprise" multi-user/role system and SSO integration.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#174

Post by jakecopp » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:11 AM UTC

larrykubin wrote: post #26

I started a niche YouTube channel on Python for Stock and Crypto Trading, very beginner level: https://youtube.com/parttimelarry Over $2K/month as of November from a combination of YouTube ad revenue, Buy Me a Coffee donations, and affiliate links (TradingView Pro Subscriptions, Tradier, Amazon books etc). Should hit 10,000 subscribers in the next couple of weeks. Plan is to grow this to 100,000 subscribers over the…

What is the revenue split between YouTube ad revenue, donations and affiliate links if I may ask?

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#175

Post by jakecopp » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:17 AM UTC

atestu wrote: post #57

https://www.satelliteframes.com/ - Affordable framed satellite photos I just started this site a couple months ago and made my first sale last week (from an unknown customer). It's just a matter of finding public domain, high quality satellite photos!

Your site is wonderful, congrats on the sale!

I'm thinking of setting up a site for selling some prints of photos I've taken. How did you implement the billing/manufacturing/shipping? Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#176

Post by senorsmile » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

natchy wrote: post #5

I have a cookie delivery company[1] that I started with my sister. It’s doing well but I personally only take out $50k/yr. completely supplemental to my main job. [1]: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/166-sam-eaton-of-crave-...

My wife has been in recipe development for a couple of years to start something very similar. We are just in the cottage license approval phase. I can only hope we will have a fraction of your success.

Would you be willing to answer a couple of questions?

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#177

Post by gmgarrison » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

enos_feedler wrote: post #112

GGfpc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you learn? I do index funds, but I'd like to trade a bit for fun

I am the kind of person that just learns by doing. I hear the word "call option" and I start chasing down what it means. I start buying them just to touch and feel the mechanics of how they work. I am a hands on learner who just plays with things. I want to build intuition. If I get stuck or having recurring thoughts/pains about something I will look on Google/youtube to get to the bottom of it, but it takes time and…

Just want to add for anyone who comes after reading this, I think these types of recommendations are tied strongly to personality. If you have a similar personality, then take this advice. If you're more risk adverse, more anxious, more prone to depression, then it's possible that this advice is harmful. Obviously poster didn't intend any harm but it's hard to caveat everything with "this may not apply to you." Just be careful - some people have the resources and personality to learn "hands on" and some people would do much better with a lot more intellectual understanding or with a supportive community or with some other available resource. Know yourself.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#178

Post by topicseed » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

mtlynch wrote: post #60

topicseed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you interested in selling your Keto site?

Not really. I find it fun to own it and watch what happens to it, so I likely value it much higher than its real market value. I have considered finding someone who wants to manage it under some sort of revenue-sharing agreement. I don't know if that's a common practice or if there are existing precedents for that, but I feel like the numbers are too small for it to be worthwhile for anyone.

Happy to chat if you change your mind!