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Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

#41
post #19

During my day job I run a full-time startup, but, as a weekend hack a couple years ago, I built an automated email sales tool called Autopest ( https://autopest.com ). I've never done any promotion for it, but it keeps growing on its own organically via word-of-mouth. About a year and a half ago I mentioned Autopest in an HN thread titled "Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months…

Hope not to make this become non-passive, but: on iOS the demo video loads, goes full screen, then immediately exits for me.

Dang... maybe I'll get that fixed in a couple months :)

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

#42

Is anyone doing old-fashion landlording these days? I'm trying to break into that space, but I have no idea what I'm doing and could use some advice from someone who's done it before.

Yup. I was renting one unit in a duplex. My landlord put it on the market at a way-too-high price. Fast-forward nine months of having to get out of the way when the real estate agent wanted to show the property, and the price steadily dropping into my range, and I realized it would be a real PITA to have to move all my stuff out and find another apartment if someone bought it and hiked the rent or wanted to move into my unit. Went to one bank, was told that I'd need to put down 20-25% on a commercial loan. Went to another bank, and the loan officer worked out that I could get an FHA first-time owner-occupant loan, since I was planning on staying in my unit, and renting out the other one. Stockpiled cash for a few months by only paying minimums on my credit cards and cutting back on anything extra, plus a little help from my folks, for the down payment(FHA was only about 3.5% down), and bought the building.

Now I'm collecting $1300 a month rent from the other tenant, which covers almost all of the mortgage and taxes. Upkeep isn't that big a deal, since the way my lease was written, I was already responsible for all of the groundskeeping and snow removal when I was renting anyway. Also, it's worth it to make sure you have good tenants, that pay on time, and don't make a mess.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

#43
post #19

During my day job I run a full-time startup, but, as a weekend hack a couple years ago, I built an automated email sales tool called Autopest ( https://autopest.com ). I've never done any promotion for it, but it keeps growing on its own organically via word-of-mouth. About a year and a half ago I mentioned Autopest in an HN thread titled "Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months…

This is very cool. If there was a way for autopest to automatically stop when the other party responds to your "pests" (maybe via an email client plugin) I would sign up for sure.

That's actually my next big update. I've got a Gmail plugin about 80% complete that will auto-stop the messages, too.

I still kind of count it as "passive" work because I had to learn to develop Gmail plugins for my startup. I was able to transfer that experience to Autopest.

FYI to anyone reading this... InboxSDK is amazing for Gmail plugins.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

#44
I have been running http://aminosoftware.com for almost 10 years now with a partner. It's not huge money but we do zero promotion and support amounts to a handful of emails a year and pays for my kids private school. Our customers are government and enterprise so purchase through invoice/PO paperwork but that's just a few minutes using a google docs template.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

#45
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is with these artifacts in this image? Are these real watches? It looks like some image samples poorly photoshopped together. http://gardannewatches.com/products/gardanne-black-brown-wat...

Those artifacts look more from a badly cropped photo than a render, so I would venture a guess that was a real watch.

The watch case design is a render and the band is a photo of real bands. But as I said before, the watches are under production right now, finished very soon. So we're not able to have any real photos of the watch yet :)

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

#46

I released a small computer puzzle game based on finite state automata called The Cat Machine[0] back in August, which still steadily sells copies, accompanied with bigger spikes when a Steam sale comes around. From what I hear, the 'long tail' after release goes on for some years, which I believe since back in 2009/2010 I wrote a number of Flash games and I still get a monthly Paypal of about $5 from them. Steam is…

I haven't had much time for video games lately, but I love your game. Glad to hear it's still bringing in money for you.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

#47

My novel -- in English http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QPBYGFI and Spanish http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I1EU1Q0 Sells a couple Kindle copies per week. In terms of actual income, it's negligible. The feedback has been unanimously positive, so my problem is to get it in the hands of as many people as I can. Therefore, if you want the epub/mobi files, just message me (see bio) and I'll be happy to send them :)

You may consider pricing it higher. I have seen shorts i.e 40-50 page books at 2.99

Totally agree. Always consider increasing your price. If people find it valuable, they'll still buy it:)

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

#48
My passive income for 2015 was (http://kihi.io) a VPS / cloud server provider for coreos, atomic, shit like that.

Netted me enough income to pay for the data center hosting and a few starbucks coffees per month for myself.

It's not much, but it essentially gives me a free dev area with a ton of computing power for me to roam free.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

#49
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there potential liability issues arround this? Where you may have to take responsibility for a child. http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/justice/kansas-sperm-donation/

That was an issue because two people just hooked up and exchanged sperm. There was no doctor involved.

I doubt a child would be involved if sperm was the only thing exchanged.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

#50
I design logos for Bitcoins. Designing a graphic identity can take me weeks, but this particular project is for me an experiment. The logos I design are quickly made: it takes usually 1 to 2 hour per logo. They are totally adapted to the (really) small brief I receive by mail, from total strangers. My clients usually want something smart, quickly. The small economy of those projects are for me interesting and inspiring design constraints. I use only open source fonts. Sometimes, I draw the typeface myself when I feel inspired.

Total income this year: about 5 Bitcoins http://ecogex.com/logos/

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