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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?

#241

Post by hackerboos »

yonibot wrote: post #115
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…

This book taught me the fundamentals of passive investing ( https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/03933... ) and this website is THE online community for Bogle-style, passive investors ( https://www.bogleheads.org/ ), once you understand the basics.

I read that book this year. The entire book can be summarised as.

Don't attempt to beat the market. The market cannot be beat (many examples in the book). Invest in index funds long term which is the right mix of risk/reward for most people.

It does have a chart in the back which tracks your age and situation. For example as you approach retirement you should start to liquidate your funds and buy government bonds so you aren't hit by a bad year when you have to start drawing on your investments.

It did convince me. I opened accounts with Wealthsimple and Questrade the next day.

A great site for fellow Canadians is http://canadiancouchpotato.com/ - you can skip the book.

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

#242

Post by caseysoftware »

Previously, as a developer evangelist with Twilio, I had to know the tech events and tech leaders in my local community. While I didn't figure out a repeatable approach then, in late 2015, it hit me.

I built a bot network that reads tech events - mostly meetups, some conferences and workshops - for a given city from a variety of sources and tweets them. I use machine learning to determine hashtags, time of day to tweet, and new data sources. When I launched Austin - https://twitter.com/ATXTechEvents - in September 2015, I got 900 followers the first month. I suspected it was a fluke so launched Dallas FW and Houston to test. It wasn't a fluke.

In 2016, I've launched 45 different cities in the US and the network has 100k followers collectively, has its own automated weekly mailing list, and is generating 1.4M+ impressions/month. Revenue is affiliate fees for conferences (we are a media partner for O'Reilly) and workshops and selling the ad blocks in the newsletter. Almost all of that is automated. The revenue is pretty minor right now but growing and I spend 1-2 hours on it a week.

The landing page is here: https://techeventsnetwork.com/ (only some of the cities) and the full list of cities is here: https://twitter.com/TechEventsNet/following

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

#243

Post by pimlottc »

bootloop wrote: post #12

Unfortunately not 2016, but two years ago when the Samsung Gear Watch came out a friend of mine got it right away. We went out drinking the same day and when we came back at night we put together a watch face while still being drunk. We uploaded it, set the lowest possible price 1$, and... Nothing happened. Everywhere in the admin panel it showed 0. 0 downloads, not a single dime earned, even after a few days. We wer…

So roughly how much did you make overall? A few hundred, a few thousand?

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

#244

Post by thewhitetulip »

After being encouraged by folks on HN

I published my tutorial on writing webapps with Go without a framework,

http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook

There isn't much income because I want the book to be free, I'm writing another tutorial migrating the same app taught in the book to use VueJS library.

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

#245

Post by dorfsmay »

bootloop wrote: post #12

Unfortunately not 2016, but two years ago when the Samsung Gear Watch came out a friend of mine got it right away. We went out drinking the same day and when we came back at night we put together a watch face while still being drunk. We uploaded it, set the lowest possible price 1$, and... Nothing happened. Everywhere in the admin panel it showed 0. 0 downloads, not a single dime earned, even after a few days. We wer…

You created an apps in a few hours while drunk, set the price to the lowest possible, and when you thought you had no sale after a few days, you were "devastated"?

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

#246

Post by wvlia5 »

inovica wrote: post #211

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 pas…

Hi! I would like to know the language and LOC of both SourceGuardian and Competitor Monitor, to see the what's the complexity of code people are selling. Thanks

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

#247

Post by daveguy »

herbst wrote: post #92
erikb wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does your life cost a year?

Well since i quit my job in switzerland and moved around the globe to work on my own stuff (I dont only do stupid content sites) about $1000/month + Some plane tickets here and there.

Which countries/cities have been the best to you for quality of life vs cost of living?

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

#248

Post by hackerboos »

nchrys wrote: post #226
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…

I have read a lot about passive investing (The Intelligent Investor, Mr Money Mustache etc.) but I live in France and it does not seem as simple as in the US to invest in a SP500 index fund for example. Especially if you want something that is quite tax efficient. Does anyone have any advice?

France doesn't have an ISA/Roth IRA/TFSA equivalent? Google tells me - PEA (Plan d'Epargne en Actions) - but this info was from 2006.

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

#249

Post by inovica »

wvlia5 wrote: post #246
inovica wrote: post #211

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 pas…

Hi! I would like to know the language and LOC of both SourceGuardian and Competitor Monitor, to see the what's the complexity of code people are selling. Thanks

Both are relatively complex now and I don't have a precise answer for 'lines of code' for you. Competitor Monitor has evolved for 5-6 years and has various subsystems including image matching, crawling, proxy management and much more. Both started out as MVP's and have evolved. Competitor Monitor is built in Python and Go predominantly, however that shouldn't mean anything. The language, platform and complexity of someone elses product should not be any guide for you on your own. Looks also like you created a throw-away account purely to write the request
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