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Ask HN: Best Passive Income Method?

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Re: Ask HN: Best Passive Income Method?

#31

Post by blevin »

pastor_elm wrote: post #10

SP 500 ETF

Keep in mind that SPY yield today is 1.9% — below CPI — so you are losing value even before paying tax on that income. If you are hoping for capital gains / equity risk premium to provide extra return, you owe yourself to read a bit about where we are in the economic cycle, current corporate debt levels compared to history, and to look at what happened in 2000, 2008, and last December and visualize going through that. To get passive income beyond the dividend yield you’ll need to be selling shares, not buying them. Consider the scenario, hopefully unlikely but historically demonstrated, that it goes down 50% at some point, or spends an entire decade with zero total return. US equities have been a powerhouse but it’s worth some careful research if you are looking for passive income.

Re: Ask HN: Best Passive Income Method?

#32

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

There are many thousands of indie developers and companies who have tried and failed. Even the world class gaming companies have had an extremely hard time producing games that make money, these days. Sure, there was a time when making money in games was easy: that was before 2011. If you have a time machine and can go back to that time, then you could make a lot of money. Barring that, I would say it's nearly impossible.

Stick to SaaS, go into a field that's completely unsexy and solve a problem. It's still insanely difficult, but your odds might be slightly better than winning the lottery.

Re: Ask HN: Best Passive Income Method?

#33

Post by joss82 »

As a moderately successful saas founder, I'd advise you to take a series of increasingly better paid freelance gigs, then invest the surplus into dividend stocks.

A successful saas is a lot of work and not passive at all.

Good luck! It's lots of fun either way :)

Re: Ask HN: Best Passive Income Method?

#34

Post by DVassallo »

For me, the best form of passive income is income you get from an activity you would do anyway (on your own terms) even if you didn’t have to work anymore. I know, this does not exactly satisfy the passive definition, but it is probably the most attainable form.

Re: Ask HN: Best Passive Income Method?

#35

Post by cellis »

I think there's only one way to earn passive income reliably at this point. And it's not going to be easy ( otherwise, everyone on HN would already be doing it! ). Here it is:

  1) Learn how to interview for top tier companies in your free time. 
  2) Interview at those companies. 
  3) Work at those companies really hard, make $300k/yr. 
  4) Work for 10 years, save 200k/yr. 
  5) Invest in ? 
  6) You've now achieved purely passive income on a $2million principle.
I haven't done it, but I know people who have.

Re: Ask HN: Best Passive Income Method?

#36

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

blevin wrote: post #31
pastor_elm wrote: post #10

SP 500 ETF

Keep in mind that SPY yield today is 1.9% — below CPI — so you are losing value even before paying tax on that income. If you are hoping for capital gains / equity risk premium to provide extra return, you owe yourself to read a bit about where we are in the economic cycle, current corporate debt levels compared to history, and to look at what happened in 2000, 2008, and last December and visualize going through that…

Yup and the frustrating thing about equities is, there's no telling when those sky high PE ratios will revert to their mean.

Re: Ask HN: Best Passive Income Method?

#37

Post by [deleted] »

cellis wrote: post #35

I think there's only one way to earn passive income reliably at this point. And it's not going to be easy ( otherwise, everyone on HN would already be doing it! ). Here it is: 1) Learn how to interview for top tier companies in your free time. 2) Interview at those companies. 3) Work at those companies really hard, make $300k/yr. 4) Work for 10 years, save 200k/yr. 5) Invest in ? 6) You've now achieved purely passive…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Best Passive Income Method?

#38

Post by lhorie »

ineedasername wrote: post #19
napsterbr wrote: post #12

> web based game I'll share my own experience here, which is: compared to SaaS products, games are easily 100x more work for 100x less guarantees of income. Maybe it has the potential of going viral and earning you 100x more income, but still does not make up for the risk. Of course this is just my personal experience on the topic. If income were my main motivator, I'd focus on SaaS instead of games. Good luck!

Sure, all else being equal this may be true. But as with most things, it depends on quality & implementation of the idea. If the OP has a solid game idea that they're even a little passionate about, that may count for a lot more than grasping for a niche SaaS product that might have an audience. Although if the SaaS projecy were itself to go viral, there's probably a much larger upside than viral indie game.

Advice along the lines of "Follow your passion" is dangerously misleading.

Plenty of people have what seem like solid game ideas and are passionate about them, but don't get anywhere because making solo indie games requires a decent level of proficiency at a ton of vastly different skills (coding, design, growth hacking, etc). Plus, the gaming sector is extremely crowded and competition often employs unethical tricks (psychology manipulation, etc)

It's much easier to focus on the wrong things when developing a game, because there's so much to do, and there's always yaks to shave. And while one's "following their passion" of coding, they might be neglecting other crucial aspects of the project.

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