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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 713 posts

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

#211

Post by inovica »

I run a number of side projects and have done since the mid 1990's. I started in business when I was 21 and I'm now 47, so definitely considered 'old' to some of you on here! I've been o reader of HN since it came out, but rarely a contributor. A few comments from me and a link to some of what I've done and how they have done in 2016:

- Rich Dad, Poor Dad got me into the idea of 'passive' income. Nothing is truly passive of course, but it makes me think about what I do

- SourceGuardian. This is encryption software I set up in 2002 as I had a need myself and the nearest product was $6000 at the time. It has generated a great passive income since then. Enough to pay all my bills. 2016 was no different. I work with 2 other people on it, one of whom I've never met (he's in Russia) and it works well

- Competitor Monitor. This used to be a side-project 5 years ago, but it has grown significantly and in the past year we are up by 35% and we have grown our team. Strangely this has now become passive in the sense that I have created a structure and systemised the business (read The Emyth Revisited book) and that has allowed me to step out. I am not more of an investor than a day-to-day contributor

- UKscrap.com. This one died in 2016. The site is still there, but competition and my lack of interest killed it

As I said, nothing is truly passive, but you need to have a passion for whatever you do and I would try to create a 'passive index' for your ideas. How much time will they take to get off the ground, how much to run monthly, what is the product life cycle (if you can work that out!). From when I started there are a HUGE number of resources to help you also. Feel free to ask for help or advice, for what it's worth!

EDIT: I actually met my SourceGuardian partner once in Prague for 2 days. Forgot that when I wrote the above!

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

#212

Post by icebraining »

logicallee wrote: post #192
fsloth wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us bring in value by developing existing software packages which amplify the work effort of some critical sector or another. The renumeration for this work is in the form of regular pay. A portion of which should probably be invested smartly. As software systems grow they turn into complex systems. They become embedded in the processes of the end users, while requiring constant boring work to remain alive. I…

"The remuneration[1] for this work is in the form of regular pay. A portion of which should probably be invested smartly." I guess my objection was to the idea of saving "as much as possible." I don't mean to imply that you shouldn't work for a salary: but you should take some of that salary and spend it on actively building or backing businesses, not just passively. Based on your background I think you would be amaz…

Active investment is essentially a second job. Not everyone has the ability or desire to spend even more hours working.

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

#214

Post by codecamper »

azatris wrote: post #101
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…

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

bond etfs have been sold off, so they are cheap and yields are up.

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

#215

Post by 77yy77yy »

Domain sales, over US$ 2M/yr that could have been mid 7 figures easily but still holding onto those other gems. With all the new extensions valuable .com domains is where it is. Brokers managing sales. Also not sure if falls into passive or not, sold a business few years ago and did the financing, still getting paid monthly for few more years.

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

#218

Post by matwood »

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.

You're talking about market timing which is incredibly hard (some say impossible) to do over a long period of time. Sure, you might miss the down here (if there is one), but then you also might miss the move back up. There is a saying that time in market is much better than timing the market. If you consistently put money in, you'll naturally also buy the downs. At that point, you just need to periodically rebalance, and with age start to shift to less risky investments.

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

#219

Post by codecamper »

I want to be able to invest in solar projects. These projects often have internal rates of return of 10%+.

However, this involves 20 or 30 year contracts to buy power from you after you have made the initial investment to purchase /rent land and install the panels.

Wish there were a way to securitize those deals & allow us to trade them like bonds.

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

#220

Post by anthonyherron »

davidwihl wrote: post #127
nkkollaw wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average..? Ex., 1%-5%/yr

It depends on the fund. I just did a report on this for one of my classes. https://github.com/wihl/stats107-project/blob/master/writeup... All the code is in the same repository as R Markdown.

MOOC or are you at Harvard? Was the course worthwhile?
Post reply on HN