Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#1

Post by imsky » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

Side projects, games, open source.

Previous threads:

2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18906094

2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18479588

2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16815842

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#2

Post by yboris » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

I released Video Hub App almost 3 years ago and have been adding features over time. It's a project of love, and I give $3.50 of every purchase ($5) to charity, so the income isn't the main point. This year I averaged about 100 sales per month.

https://videohubapp.com/ - browse, search, and organize your videos (PC, Mac, Linux)

GitHub: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#3

Post by dhruvkar » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

I invested in 4 industrial real estate projects over the last 1 year. They currently net me ~2500 a month.

Total investment: ~250K Property values: 3-10M

I don't own these properties myself. I own a part. This is similar to Fundrise, except it's with a local investment group.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#4

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#5

Post by natchy » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

I have a cookie delivery company[1] that I started with my sister. It’s doing well but I personally only take out $50k/yr. completely supplemental to my main job.

[1]: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/166-sam-eaton-of-crave-...

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#6

Post by winrid » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

https://fastcomments.com

Started Jan 2020, looks like will be at 4.5k ARR by end of year.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#7

Post by twillin » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

A few years ago I started a niche healthcare case management SaaS. While I sometimes add new features, upgrade software, or fix bugs, it mostly runs itself. There's currently a handful of clients each paying ~$8k annually.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#8

Post by philshem » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

Before the pandemic I wrote a scraper for web-based data related to crowds and put the code on GitHub with a permissive license. At the start of the pandemic here in Europe I posted a Tweet with an interesting dataviz based on the scraped data - and someone who saw that Tweet is paying me to run a customized scraper for the past 9 months.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#9

Post by k__ » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

Wrote a book a few years ago.

Still make between $10 and $50 a month.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?

#10

Post by mtlynch » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

https://isitketo.org

It's just a content site about the keto diet. It runs in the background and earns money from Google AdSense and Amazon Affiliate links, the latter of which are dwindling because I haven't had time to fix dead product links. It's a plain static site, so it doesn't need any server maintenance or software upgrades.

Not totally passive because I actively tried to grow it for three months when I had to cancel my main business due to COVID.[0]

Jan: $786.71

Feb: $682.62

Mar: $362.28 (Amazon slashes affiliate payouts + drop in traffic due to COVID)

Apr: $220.48

May: $221.53

Jun: $180.66

Jul: $369.91

Aug: $486.22

Sep: $362.18

Oct: $510.86

Nov: $431.52

Total: $4,614.97

If you're interested in the details, I write retrospectives every month sharing stats and thinking through strategy.[1]

[0] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2020/04/

[1] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2020/07/