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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?

#201

Post by gajjanag »

s3nnyy wrote: post #132
jrheard wrote: post #13

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…

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ is a bit nicer to read and goes a bit deeper than mrmoneymustache.

I would also add that the author's book http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ere-book is great, and lets one get the essential points of what he has to say without trawling through numerous posts.

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

#202

Post by soft_dev_person »

I made some silly fan designs on CafePress many years ago. Haven't really touched it since then, but it still generates $50 per year. Provisions have been going down. though.

That being said, it's mostly 2 designs out of ~35 that sells anything at all.

I'm sure there's some potential in there, but it's kind of hit and miss.

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

#203

Post by thinkloop »

mathgeek wrote: post #196
thinkloop wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One also could say that in traditional investing, the upfront work is the research work to find right index funds or buying property in real estate investing This is the key point. In absolutes there is no such thing as passive income. Anything will take at least 1s of effort, and $0.001 of capital. The spirit of the term, is income that is heavily skewed towards being generated from assets rather than effort. A ne…

> Until the "nothing" gets filled in with the equivalent of a salaried wage, I'm not a fan of calling it "passive income". Would you also consider creating a static "how to" site that generates revenue from ads to not be passive income? I think that's the most basic example of what HN considers passive.

I think it depends where you are in the cycle. If you just finished putting in 50hrs of work, and have so far made $100, I wouldn't consider that true passive income. Fast-forward a year, and your income from the site has surpassed $2500 (the equivalent of your salaried wage for those hours), with minimal additional effort - now you are making passive income.

We're just defining words here anyway. I think a core component of what people think of when they think "passive income" is making a disproportional amount of income relative to effort put in. Until those proportions get dis'ed, you're just working at a sub-optimal job.

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

#204

Post by Coding_Cat »

austenallred wrote: post #11

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 d…

>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.

I hope the startup didn't fail because it couldn't attract users?

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

#205

Post by mxschumacher »

azatris wrote: post #159
forgetsusername wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do I have any rational expectations to beat inflation by having well diversified index funds? You should get inflation + some economic growth + risk premium for holding equity.

How confident can I be of this? Why are banks struggling to get even 2% return on their investment if I can just go on and get 7% on average?

banks are heavily regulated and cannot just put deposits (the money you put into a bank constitute a loan to the bank) into stocks. They have to invest more conservatively, e.g give money to solid companies or hold low risk bonds. See Basel-rules to learn more about risk weighted assets (RWA): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_III

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

#206

Post by limedaring »

I wrote Hello Web App and Hello Web App: Intermediate Concepts (http://hellowebapp.com, they're learn-to-build-a-web-app books using Django) and self-published both in 2015.

Just checked and this year I've made about $13,000 in profit. It's mostly passive — this year I started using a fulfillment company so the majority of my work is sending them orders (and answering questions about the book.)

Hoping to continue the trend next year by launching a book on teaching design for engineers (http://hellowebdesignbook.com).

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

#207

Post by mxschumacher »

mFixman wrote: post #176
aninhumer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vanguard is index funds, so the returns are as good (or bad) as the market.

Wouldn't it be a better idea to invest in bonds or more stable sources of investment for the next few years until we can make sure of the impact of Brexit-Trump? I wouldn't be surprised if AAPL and other giant third sector companies fall in value right now.

while coupons (e.g. the regular payout) might be stable, bonds, too, can fall in value. One interest rate hike by the FED or ECB would send bond prices tumbling.

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

#208

Post by ukoki »

cesarb wrote: post #145
ukoki wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12% sounds great but that's about how much the BRL has decreased against the dollar over the last five years. Just holding USD cash would have gotten you about the same returns. https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/USDBRL:CUR

In my experience, holding actual physical USD cash is a bad investment; older bills are worth less (exchanges will give you something like 10%-30% less for older bills, if they are accepted at all), so the longer you hold it, the less it's worth. On the other hand, there are funds which track the USD; see for instance http://www.bb.com.br/docs/pub/siteEsp/dtvm/dwn/inf04128893.p... . That fund had a return of 150% in…

You buy food in BRL yes, but when the BRL has a massive swing up or down food prices can swing the opposite way to compensate. If BRL drops 30% and food prices rise 30% you're going to be in a bad situation — dollars are likely to be far more stable

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

#209

Post by mxschumacher »

lorenzhs wrote: post #102
azatris wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do I have any rational expectations to beat inflation by having well diversified index funds?

Historically, as a guideline, you'd have made about 7% p.a. on average, well above inflation. The question is whether you can handle the drawdown (can you keep your nerves during a crash?)

then again: beware of averages. Historical PE ratios are quite high (though EV/FCC would be more instructive) - so it is unlikely that the next couple of years will bring 7%. We're living in a world of free money: if central banks change interest rates the party could come to an end.
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