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

371–380 of 713 posts

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

#371

Post by gragas »

chei0iaV wrote: post #358
Rainymood wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The market cannot be beat. I really would like to believe this, but please explain to me how then how firms like Renaissance can exist ... Not sure whether it's relevant but I'll add that I'm an economics PhD student.

Two decades ago you might have asked how firms like Long-Term Capital Management can exist https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/LTCM.png

That's a ridiculous argument. From that graph, LTCM lasted 4 years. Renaissance has lasted decades.

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

#372

Post by shostack »

shellerik wrote: post #298

$50k from investment earnings (index funds, mostly 401k - I'm in my 40s). $20k from a website I built a couple years ago (searchable product catalog with Amazon affiliate links).

Was that dividends or just unrealized gains in the fund price?

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

#373

Post by gragas »

xapata wrote: post #261
mxschumacher wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then again: beware of averages. Historical PE ratios are quite high (though EV/FCC would be more instructive) - so it is unlikely that the next couple of years will bring 7%. We're living in a world of free money: if central banks change interest rates the party could come to an end.

Not necessarily. If the interest rates are reduced because the economy improved, then the growth could stay similar.

Interest rates go up when the economy is improving.

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

#374

Post by gragas »

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.

I hope you do that. That way you'll be able to quantify your liberal hubris.

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

#375

Post by krakensden »

bb611 wrote: post #281
threeseed wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unemployment rate in the US is 4.9% which is basically full employment. Now sure there are a number of people who don't report and those who wish to work more. But I don't think it's going to be easy to get those people back into work. Most are either in industries that are disappearing due to automation. Or they lack the skills/training to re-educate themselves. And without tariffs (which will impact exports) th…

Unemployment is only 4.9% because the participation rate dropped 3% points in the last 10 years: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 That's close to 10 million people who have stopped looking for jobs who we would otherwise expect to have them.

Baby Boomers should be leaving the labor market though.

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

#376

Post by shostack »

eevilspock wrote: post #315

This post is what's wrong with Capitalism. Rent seeking. The Matthew Effect. Making money by making money.

Generally, the people interested in this are interested because time is the most valuable resource of all. If they can obtain enough passive income to be independently wealthy, they can contribute to humanity in whatever way they choose vs being forced to sell their time to a day job where they have limited control of their life.

Creating value and receiving some percent of that as rent is not inherently a bad behavior. But if you think you have a better, more "noble" answer, I'd love to hear it.

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

#377

Post by Huhty »

austenallred wrote: post #285
Coding_Cat wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I co-wrote a book on user acquisition and co-created an accompanying video course to climb out of debt left over from a failed startup. I hope the startup didn't fail because it couldn't attract users?

No, it failed because even with 500k users/month it couldn't make money

Grasswire? I used to go there sometimes (found it through your blog posts), and being in a similar space I'd agree that the news/article traffic is extremely tough to monetize. We've since slightly pivoted and are confident we're on the right track now. I'm also glad you found your thing!

Can you answer me a quick question? I notice you use the Twitter widget/embed on Grasswire. How do you like it?

I've always felt it was kind of redundant to show the same content that's already on the site. The reason why I'm asking is because while doing my "due diligence" about blogging/bloggers (our target market after the pivot), I've noticed that a solid 10-15% of all blogs use it (or a similar widget from Pinterest or FB). I can see how they CAN be useful, but the fact that they are mostly "consumption only" and mostly curated by one person, means that there is a lot of room to improve them, which is exactly what we're trying to do with our community platform. I'd love to partner up/work together and join forces in some way. Let me know!

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

#378

Post by AtticusTheGreat »

I just recently launched a statuspage aggregator at https://statusbeacon.io which has been pretty cool to work on.

I've also got an online multiplayer boggle game that has made me low 3 digits per month since about 2008, http://serpentinegame.com, mostly ad revenue but also paid memberships.

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

#379

Post by brettz »

Infinitesimus wrote: post #138
nonsince wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pornhub

To be fair porn sites do need all the video/image optimization they can get due to the sheer amount of data they hold

Yes, Pornhub uses a mix of JPEGmini and our own image optimization.

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

#380

Post by limedaring »

finspin wrote: post #311
limedaring wrote: post #206

I wrote Hello Web App and Hello Web App: Intermediate Concepts ( http://hellowebapp.com , they're learn-to-build-a-web-app books using Django) and self-published both in 2015. Just checked and this year I've made about $13,000 in profit. It's mostly passive — this year I started using a fulfillment company so the majority of my work is sending them orders (and answering questions about the book.) Hoping to continue t…

Congratulations! How did you promote the books? What would you say was your most effective promotion channel?

Through the Django and Python community, primarily -- they've been super supportive. The second book was aimed at folks who've completed the DjangoGirl's tutorial.
Post reply on HN