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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?

#81

Post by vram22 »

mherrmann wrote: post #74
vram22 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Had an EU grant covering our costs during that period. In 2015, I invested about 200h into it (mostly answering support emails and dealing with taxes) and made about 20k€ this year. How is it that the EU gives grants to for-profit companies? Is it to encourage business growth so the GDP goes up? I'm talking about a "grant" which seems to imply gratis, free money, as opposed to a loan that has to be paid back, which…

Yes, it is to encourage growth. The grant was gratis (ie. we didn't have to pay it back) but did come with a lot of administrative bullshit (maybe a third of one man lower over the course of two years).

Got it, thanks. Surprising that the admin stuff takes so much time. I guess they want to make sure that the money is being well spent, i.e. you are running the business "properly".

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

#82

Post by Shorel »

ggambetta wrote: post #33

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 :)

Which version of the novel do you prefer ?

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

#83

Post by mkaroumi »

ethbro wrote: post #68
mkaroumi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could, but that would cost $300 for that sample. I got a sample of another watch to feel the quality. And I can tell you - it felt good!

Out of interest, strongly assuming that you've contracted manufacture to a foreign country from the price point (and assuming your profit in there), could you speak at all about how your contract goes with regards to quality control? What happens if what you get doesn't match what you're expecting, without an approved sample? Also, any ballpark on the setup? Or is it per-unit? (Feel free to demure if you don't want t…

Great questions. I can't answer as detailed as I would like to do.

But, I can't be 100% sure that these watches will be of the same quality, but I'm 99% sure. I've dealed with these manufacturers for a while and we have a tight partnership.

I don't want to misinterpret and give you wrong info, so what do you mean with ballpark? Not sure what you mean :)

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

#84

Post by thegabez »

The first website I started was [SynbioSwag](http://www.synbioswag.com). My hail mary marketing strategy was to get Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory to wear one on the show, but that never happened. I usually sell a couple of shirts around Christmas though. It pays for hosting of the other sites I've built. About a year after launching SBS I learned to make web apps and built [TheMuse-Seek](http://www.themuse-seek.com) haven't made any money yet but slowly growing in users. So heres to 2016, hopefully Sheldon reads this.

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

#85

Post by someotheridiot »

https://rebrickable.com - A LEGO database that shows you which sets you can build from your existing collection, also includes thousands of fan-submitted designs.

Although at the moment it is far from passive (probably spend more time on it than my full time job), but it can be left alone for a little while and still generate income.

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

#86

Post by lukestevens »

dangrossman wrote: post #71

Improvely ( https://www.improvely.com ) and W3Counter ( https://www.w3counter.com ) have grown to $45,000 MRR. W3Counter is completely passive -- no new code or features in over a year, no customer support load, autoscaling frontend (EC2) and backend (Aurora). Improvely gets feature updates a few times a year and has some light e-mail support load. I also added a single banner ad to each of my open source projects' d…

Incredible. You're the unsung, bootstrap SaaS success story of HN imo :)

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

#87

Post by pauljohncleary »

I have a chrome extension and service at http://tab.bz which has around 25k users.

It nets a tiny amount of revenue per month, I'm using it as a testing ground to keep my coding skills sharp, learn meteor and as a case study for growth hacking/product Dev

I run it off a couple of digital ocean droplets at around $10/month

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

#88

Post by turley »

tedmiston wrote: post #79
turley wrote: post #51

https://www.ottopost.com/ - a simple Instagram postcard printing service. I created it as an alternative to the many printing services that require a dedicated app. OttoPost doesn't require an app since it just searches for your new Instagram photos and prints automatically (that's configurable). Not exactly world-changing, but definitely something hands-off at this point and better than nothing :)

Heavy Instagram user here. This is cool. I really like the price point, but for a 99¢ postcard including postage, do you actually make any money?

Thanks! The margins are pretty tight at the moment, but I still make a little. Margins would improve with more volume as I can get better bulk rates.

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

#89

Post by reboog711 »

I wrote and self published a training course on AngularJS for Flex Developers. ( https://www.lifeafterflex.com/AngularJSForFlexDevelopers/ ). I think I released it in early 2014.

It never made the splash I had hoped; but it's staying power was lots more than any of my previous books and it still gets a bunch of downloads each month.

The series also works great as a way to convinced consulting clients I have the chops to build applications for them.

For those that want to check out the books at the lowest tier; they are pay what you want--even if it is nothing. You can use the code 'hackernews' to get 50% off the higher tiers--I think the real value of the series is in the screencasts.

I'm told the Angular pieces will work independently of the Flex parts.

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

#90

Post by ethbro »

mkaroumi wrote: post #83
ethbro wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, strongly assuming that you've contracted manufacture to a foreign country from the price point (and assuming your profit in there), could you speak at all about how your contract goes with regards to quality control? What happens if what you get doesn't match what you're expecting, without an approved sample? Also, any ballpark on the setup? Or is it per-unit? (Feel free to demure if you don't want t…

Great questions. I can't answer as detailed as I would like to do. But, I can't be 100% sure that these watches will be of the same quality, but I'm 99% sure. I've dealed with these manufacturers for a while and we have a tight partnership. I don't want to misinterpret and give you wrong info, so what do you mean with ballpark? Not sure what you mean :)

Understand there are contractual (and business!) limitations to what can be said, so thanks for any answers. :)

By ballpark, I meant could you give round numbers (ie number of figures) on the up-front investment to get something like this off the ground? Or whether it's a back end per-item partnership?

Also, kudos to you and best of luck. It is a nice design, and you're right -- the watch community is under-served by reasonably priced but simple designs. Some of Seiko, Citizen, Orient, and especially Skagen's stuff is nice, but it's amazing how terrible other pieces are.

Some of my favorites are still vintage from the 60s!

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