Here we found something: https://twitter.com/rouyashamsai/status/676504438182293504/p...
Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?
51–60 of 79 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?
#52The reason you are getting down voted is because of the wording in your title. "Sure-fire" invokes bullshit get rich quick schemes, the opposite of what the "entrepreneurial spirit" is about. If there was a sure fire way to generate $5k profit monthly, everyone would do it, and then it would not be profitable anymore. That's just basic market equilibrium. If you really just want some ideas, don't use the "sure-fire"…
I misused the word "sure-fire," I stand corrected. My philosophy in a sure-fire way of creating a profitable SaaS or even a simple software is to find an inefficiency in the way businesses are run. However, seldom get to hear the needs of small business owners whom most likely do not have the budgets to invest in a new system. It's usually the "big gun" corporations that have the ability to spend sacks of money to fix their inefficiencies.
TL;DR: Small business/startup owners, what is one simple software/service which would seem to be 1) cheap to implement; 2) easy to implement, that you wish you had?
Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?
#53You sound naive but hopefully well intentioned.
You need an edge, I do not think your skills in making a modern website are enough of an edge (when eBay and Amazon already make purchasing very easy) when it comes to selling products.
If you do not have an edge you need to find a rising tide (from rising tide lifts all boats). At this stage Justin Bieber or phone cases are not a rising tide.
Let me give you an example of an edge:
In 2000 before the first internet bubble popped my Japanese-American friend made $3k net monthly selling hentai DVD boxes on Yahoo Japan.
How did he do it? I hooked him up with a distributor in Florida who was dumping a large quantity of $49.95 retail price 3DVD hentai boxes for $7-8ea if taken in quantity 100+.
My friend sold them for $90 each on Yahoo Japan and he sold about one a day.
So why did this arbitrage work so well?
Because of 2-punch, my access to the liquidator and my friend's access to Yahoo Japan and realization that $90 for average hentai series without pixelation would be a good deal in Japan (surely breaking a few decency laws in Japan).
It was the realization that the Japanese release of the DVD was censored and the American was not was what gave the extra pricing power.
By comparison my US based anime store sold only a few copies at $20-30 in US because it was a very average series.
So theoretically my Japanese friend could have made money even buying at American retail and selling in Japan albeit the risks would have been greater.
I think Yahoo Japan cracked down on this and also the low price DVDs also dissappeared.
Another story: There was a kid from Australia here on HN a few years ago who made very good money in mid 2005-6 selling imitation iPods (buying wholesale in China) on eBay. He was not misrepresenting them as iPods but people though they were. Eventually Apple enforcement got stronger + Chinese sellers started selling them themselves and the business dried up.
His edge was the rising boat of people still clamoring for iPods pre smart phones + average buyers confusion that iPod was not a generic term.
This is Economics 101 whenever there is a huge value capture, there will be new entrants in the market.
The darker side is tha often the value capture comes from breaking a law somewhere. You need to ask yourself whether you can live with this.
Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't mind me asking, what is wrong with Tucker Max? I was, perfectly honestly, hurt by your harsh words. I'm trying to search to figure out what I've done to wrong you, and I'm struggling. Can you help me understand what our shared goal is in this conversation so I have the right frame of reference to continue this conversation, if we are to have it? EDIT: added comma for clarity
Damn sealion... http://wondermark.com/1k62/
That's hilarious. :) I'll continue to play my sea lion role as necessary though. As the manatee was born to be gentle and kind, so shall I kindly respond to close minded internet commenters. Like an Internet Amish, I shall turn the other cheek.
Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?
#55-please put up an email address in your profile if you want people to contact you. And trust me--if you're starting a business, email just became your new best friend. -read everything @patio11 has ever written. Use your brain and research ability to understand his wisdom. Ignore this advice at your own peril. -start high end markets first. Better margins, better customers. -think about what products suck! Talk to af…
Thanks for sharing, some really useful resources here that are new to me.
You're welcome! Thank you for the appreciation! So glad I wrote it out and posted--always a risk of getting shouted at by negative nellies when it comes to HN. :)
Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
actually there's a lot of money just begging to be given to people who solve the simplest stuff in fields where the computing skill is very very low but the expectations of computing and value from it is very high. This is true...but dentistry is not one of those fields. There are many companies that already do IT for dentistry. Source: my uncle is a dentist. He has been with the same company since 2004.
The last time I was in my local dentist I was the first patient of the day and the Windows machine needed rebooting as it didn't see the USB dongle. We got chatting about the fact that it was Windows XP, and her fear that the machine would die but she couldn't upgrade as that specific X-Ray machine was only supported by Win XP (and wasn't purchased too many years ago - the company selling the X-Ray dongle provided th…
X-Ray machines are probably heavily regulated, would it even be legal for a third party to change that hardware setup?
Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?
#57If you want a sure fire way..
Put 3 million in an stock market index fund. In most years you will get at least a 2% increase, which is $60K (or $5K a month).
Getting the initial capital for this is easier said than done.
Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
8% is very generous, I thought 7% was the commonly used figure which gets you 800k in 40 years. When you acount for inflation that is not anything you should consider retiring on.
I can't believe people on a forum such as this are completely financially illiterate. The 7% rate is already inflation adjusted. The nominal rate is about 10%. So plug in a 7% real return. The result will be in 2015 dollars.
Your comment would've conveyed the same information had you omitted the first sentence.
Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
actually there's a lot of money just begging to be given to people who solve the simplest stuff in fields where the computing skill is very very low but the expectations of computing and value from it is very high. This is true...but dentistry is not one of those fields. There are many companies that already do IT for dentistry. Source: my uncle is a dentist. He has been with the same company since 2004.
The last time I was in my local dentist I was the first patient of the day and the Windows machine needed rebooting as it didn't see the USB dongle. We got chatting about the fact that it was Windows XP, and her fear that the machine would die but she couldn't upgrade as that specific X-Ray machine was only supported by Win XP (and wasn't purchased too many years ago - the company selling the X-Ray dongle provided th…
My impression is that dentists are a lot like other sole proprietors, you will find some that keep up with technology and others that don't. I have visited fairly high-tech dentistry offices, with technology that appears to have been developed within the last 5 years at most. I also have a few friends who are (recently graduated) dentists and they are driving adoption of newer technology in their offices. Your local dentist may just not be informed of what's available. A quick search shows that Dentistry SAAS does exist (http://www.curvedental.com/).
Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?
#60At the start of every month, buy $350 of the S&P500. At year 40, you should have over $1M and at year 50 over $2M. https://vestu.com/articles/how_to_make_1m/
That doesn't take into account inflation. Presuming you do keep paying $350/month and not increasing that with inflation, that gives you $1,229,998.43 for 40 years. If you apply the same U.S inflation rate as seen from 1965 > 2015 to cover a 40 year period, that gives you a cumulative inflation rate of -86.7%, leaving you with the equivalent value in todays money of $163,249.36 You might be a millionaire in 40 years,…
Inflation 1926-2014 was 2.93% annualized
Inflation 1970-2014 was 4.15% annualized
Via IA-SBBI in Morningstar.
You are correct that inflation plays a big role, it always has, it always will. One argument for equites is in their ability to digest inflation (raising prices and returning ever higher earnings). There are many choices here, some simple (S&P500) and some more advanced. End of the day, if you are not making a return ahead of inflation, you are falling behind.
Here is a snapshot of annualized returns from IA-SBBI: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l7gmcynm3tggnrw/Screenshot%202015-...
https://VestU.com provides investment courses, model portfolios, webinars for individual investors. We launch in Jan 2016 and are finishing up the courses now. The material is based on our co-founders experience managing investments at the B level for endowments (University of Texas System), Boards (BHI,CAM), and foundations (Meadows Foundation, Others) for over 40+ years.