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Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

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Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#31

Post by orthoganol »

will_pseudonym wrote: post #14

-please put up an email address in your profile if you want people to contact you. And trust me--if you're starting a business, email just became your new best friend. -read everything @patio11 has ever written. Use your brain and research ability to understand his wisdom. Ignore this advice at your own peril. -start high end markets first. Better margins, better customers. -think about what products suck! Talk to af…

There is probably some valuable information there but anyone who recommends Tucker Max seriously should be taken with a grain of salt (if not simply disregarded).

People love to posture like they know it all (usually not the tech founders that HN funds)... Look for little things like recommending Tucker Max that suggest maybe they are in fact posturing, because they're trying to grow their brand here or whatever reason. Sorry to sound so harsh.

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#32

Post by Symbiote »

julius wrote: post #11
olivierduval wrote: post #3

- "invest $1K in inventory" => no, start with orders THEN buy what's ordered... - "Justin Beiber case" => warning: you can't use people (or pictures or cartoon or...) images like that... and the rights can be pretty high - "$1 cases for ~$10" => didn't you forget taxes, delivery, lost,... business is not: sell $10 - buy $1 = profit $9 Well... I think you should take a look at the business side

In this case you need to buy inventory first. Buying from China means shipping takes weeks. And you need to get some samples shipped first, to choose your manufacturer. Your customers will not want to wait for their phone case for 8 weeks. Shipping phone cases one-by-one from China is obviously out of the question as well. You also need to buy the Justin Bieber rights, before taking orders. Also do not forget to setu…

On eBay, for $1.49 including delivery from Hong Kong, one Justin Bieber phone case [1]. There's an even cheaper one for $1.39, but Bieber looks younger, so I guess that's old stock.

I buy stuff this way, typically when I don't need it urgently. I've bought phone cases, memory cards, small electronics — they have to be under €10, so they don't incur a customs charge. [3] Delivery often takes a month (by ship), but sometimes I'm lucky and it's just a few days, presumably there was space on a plane.

The competition is the 95% of sellers based in the US, who are selling the same cases for $10 with much faster delivery. [2]

The idea seems to rely on people not shopping around, since

[1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/Justin-Bieber-Cute-Hard-Phone-Cover-...

[2] http://www.ebay.com/bhp/justin-bieber-phone-case

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-value_consignment_relief

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#33

Post by schmrz »

julius wrote: post #11
olivierduval wrote: post #3

- "invest $1K in inventory" => no, start with orders THEN buy what's ordered... - "Justin Beiber case" => warning: you can't use people (or pictures or cartoon or...) images like that... and the rights can be pretty high - "$1 cases for ~$10" => didn't you forget taxes, delivery, lost,... business is not: sell $10 - buy $1 = profit $9 Well... I think you should take a look at the business side

In this case you need to buy inventory first. Buying from China means shipping takes weeks. And you need to get some samples shipped first, to choose your manufacturer. Your customers will not want to wait for their phone case for 8 weeks. Shipping phone cases one-by-one from China is obviously out of the question as well. You also need to buy the Justin Bieber rights, before taking orders. Also do not forget to setu…

While it may not be "right", you don't need an inventory, not even a payment system. You will not be charging the potential customers. The point is that you test the market, just to see if anyone would be interested in buying. Once they get to the checkout, simply say that it will be "available soon" and optionally ask for email so you can actually sell to them later.

For anything you want to build and sell, you need to make sure that you (a) have a market, (b) can reach the market (marketing).

Again, it may not be completely right, as you may feel (as I do) that you are misleading customers a bit.

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#34

Post by buro9 »

ryaniscool wrote: post #27
buro9 wrote: post #20

Go to a local dentist, look at how they do things like X-Rays. What you will find is that they pay GBP 20k+ for an X-Ray machine that connects via USB Dongle to an old Windows machine... really old. You'll also find that all of their equipment is old copies of Windows, in dusty long-unsupported equipment. Sell a service, that virtualises all of this and that you manage. Charge them GBP 250 per month for it, on top of…

actually there's a lot of money just begging to be given to people who solve the simplest stuff in fields where the computing skill is very very low but the expectations of computing and value from it is very high. This is true...but dentistry is not one of those fields. There are many companies that already do IT for dentistry. Source: my uncle is a dentist. He has been with the same company since 2004.

The last time I was in my local dentist I was the first patient of the day and the Windows machine needed rebooting as it didn't see the USB dongle. We got chatting about the fact that it was Windows XP, and her fear that the machine would die but she couldn't upgrade as that specific X-Ray machine was only supported by Win XP (and wasn't purchased too many years ago - the company selling the X-Ray dongle provided the whole solution).

I thought of the above solution whilst there, asked her if anyone did such a thing, and the answer was no-one she knew of. I'm happily employed, but she was fairly desperate to pay that much immediately if it could mitigate the risk of that equipment failing on her suddenly and with a very expensive bill.

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#36

Post by gcb0 »

biot wrote: post #22
Kiro wrote: post #6

What's up with the edit? You can't downvote submissions (afaik?) so what are you referring to?

Despite hanyoon being an HN user for ~5 years, it's apparently the first time they've noticed that all text submissions are displayed as low contrast, similar to a downvoted comment. Even the ever-popular "Who's Hiring?" posts display the text identically.

ha. i only browser with a stylish extension that turn every web sites white on black with decent contrast. never noticed that either.

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#37

Post by GFischer »

buro9 wrote: post #20

Go to a local dentist, look at how they do things like X-Rays. What you will find is that they pay GBP 20k+ for an X-Ray machine that connects via USB Dongle to an old Windows machine... really old. You'll also find that all of their equipment is old copies of Windows, in dusty long-unsupported equipment. Sell a service, that virtualises all of this and that you manage. Charge them GBP 250 per month for it, on top of…

I've seen startups addressing all of those fields (example: http://www.rockerhair.com/ for beauty salon booking systems), but, quoting William Gibson, "the future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed"

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#38

Post by canicode »

lumberjack wrote: post #23
diverted247 wrote: post #10

At the start of every month, buy $350 of the S&P500. At year 40, you should have over $1M and at year 50 over $2M. https://vestu.com/articles/how_to_make_1m/

8% is very generous, I thought 7% was the commonly used figure which gets you 800k in 40 years. When you acount for inflation that is not anything you should consider retiring on.

I can't believe people on a forum such as this are completely financially illiterate. The 7% rate is already inflation adjusted. The nominal rate is about 10%. So plug in a 7% real return. The result will be in 2015 dollars.

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#40

Post by will_pseudonym »

orthoganol wrote: post #31
will_pseudonym wrote: post #14

-please put up an email address in your profile if you want people to contact you. And trust me--if you're starting a business, email just became your new best friend. -read everything @patio11 has ever written. Use your brain and research ability to understand his wisdom. Ignore this advice at your own peril. -start high end markets first. Better margins, better customers. -think about what products suck! Talk to af…

There is probably some valuable information there but anyone who recommends Tucker Max seriously should be taken with a grain of salt (if not simply disregarded). People love to posture like they know it all (usually not the tech founders that HN funds)... Look for little things like recommending Tucker Max that suggest maybe they are in fact posturing, because they're trying to grow their brand here or whatever reas…

If you don't mind me asking, what is wrong with Tucker Max?

I was, perfectly honestly, hurt by your harsh words. I'm trying to search to figure out what I've done to wrong you, and I'm struggling. Can you help me understand what our shared goal is in this conversation so I have the right frame of reference to continue this conversation, if we are to have it?

EDIT: added comma for clarity

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