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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?

#361

Post by breckenedge »

shostack wrote: post #351
jrheard wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, I forgot to mention that. I think that it's possible for a lot of young people in our industry to save significantly more than 15% of their income, and so I should have said: max out your contributions to retirement accounts every year and then set things up such that you're automatically saving as much of your remaining salary as is comfortable (e.g. if you're a recent college grad working in SF, and you…

I was on the "max out retirement accounts" train when I was younger. When I got older and home prices got massively inflated, I wished I kept more of that in non retirement accounts to be made more easily liquid for a home without steep penalties. Saving tax while something grows is great, unless you need that cash sooner. Then it is not too helpful. I wish there were a tax advantaged vehicle to use for setting aside…

You can avoid the 10% tax penalty for early withdrawal for your first home if it's in a Roth IRA, up to $10k. It's not very tax advantaged though.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/publications/p590b/ch02.html

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

#362

Post by countryqt30 »

Tharkun wrote: post #108

My passive income has mostly dried up this year. Years ago I built an automated webshop deployment system for a bloke who makes hundreds of small websites a year, and dozens of webshops a year. The deal was that I'd build it for free, but I'd get a fee per shop he deployed. This worked out pretty well for a couple of years, but now he's swimming in money and is retiring, and my passive income source has dried up. Of…

What kind of shops were these? Can you give some examples, please? Where those his OWN shops?

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

#365

Post by onlyfortoday2 »

djaychela wrote: post #313

I've written a book on using Cubase with a general grounding in music, recording and music technology [1]. Income has been very patchy, and never what I'd hoped for at any point. Best month has been around £450, but that's only happened a couple of times (I don't know why, either, unfortunately), usually it's more like £40. Made about £2000 in total, so definitely not something to retire on. Unsure as to whether it's…

Unsure as to whether it's the market for the book, the quality of the book (I hope not and don't think so given the positive feedback I have had from those who have bought it), or a !total lack of marketing! that's at fault.

i dont think your unsure you know :)

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

#366

Post by gottebp »

shostack wrote: post #355
gottebp wrote: post #312

Breville coffee grinders are impossible to get internal parts for. I designed a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-part in their BCG800XL SmartGrinder. The storefront is through ShapeWays[1] and I use ifixit[2] to drive the traffic. It's passively making ~$425/mo with about 10 minutes of work per week on my end. This all happened because my grinder failed and I couldn't get parts. [1] https://www.shapeways.com/prod…

What's the legality of that?

Hmm, it's my own custom design and not a copy of Breville's. The blade geometry is especially different. Is that the angle you were thinking of?

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

#367

Post by omegote »

andersthue wrote: post #185

Still my 5 year old watermarking tool making around 3-5k$ a month. My only new product this year was a 6 weeks video course [1] in productivity, it makes around $5000 every time I fill a class. 1. http://timeblock.com TimeBlock course

What's that watermarking tool of yours?

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

#368

Post by countryqt30 »

77yy77yy wrote: post #215

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.

Which were those domains sold?

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

#369

Post by awongh »

herbst wrote: post #253
daveguy wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I am relatively new to this myself, but so far Thailand was wonderful for this. Next will be ether nepal (shitty internet tho) or Vietnam.

Vietnam internet can be quite quick. It's also cheap there.

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

#370

Post by BorisMelnik »

Started a hosting company: its very small and only offers shared hosting right now, but it is almost making money. I never wanted to get into hosting, but so many of my clients were using Godaddy etc I just had to get them away from that chaos.

Note: I'm also looking for a partner in this if anyone has any experience let me know.

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