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Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

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61–70 of 79 posts

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#61
post #11

- "invest $1K in inventory" => no, start with orders THEN buy what's ordered... - "Justin Beiber case" => warning: you can't use people (or pictures or cartoon or...) images like that... and the rights can be pretty high - "$1 cases for ~$10" => didn't you forget taxes, delivery, lost,... business is not: sell $10 - buy $1 = profit $9 Well... I think you should take a look at the business side

In this case you need to buy inventory first. Buying from China means shipping takes weeks. And you need to get some samples shipped first, to choose your manufacturer. Your customers will not want to wait for their phone case for 8 weeks. Shipping phone cases one-by-one from China is obviously out of the question as well. You also need to buy the Justin Bieber rights, before taking orders. Also do not forget to setu…

Your last paragraph is where this all falls apart (assuming there is demand, a huge assumption of course). Paying $500 for 1000 clicks which results in 50 sales (given an optimistic 5% conversion) essentially just results in break even.

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#62

- "invest $1K in inventory" => no, start with orders THEN buy what's ordered... - "Justin Beiber case" => warning: you can't use people (or pictures or cartoon or...) images like that... and the rights can be pretty high - "$1 cases for ~$10" => didn't you forget taxes, delivery, lost,... business is not: sell $10 - buy $1 = profit $9 Well... I think you should take a look at the business side

import/export duties.

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#63
post #8

I'm a bit horrified at the naivety of this post. I think the best thing you can do is just try it, with the presumption it will fail. Then learn the lessons why it didn't work and try and try again. At some point you will realise that the notion there's a "sure-fire way to $5K" is completely absurd. Some random notes on your idea anyway: - No-one buys from independent websites, only Amazon, eBay, etsy etc - You will…

been there done that. Tried Facebook advertising with a service gave up after zero leads where google was 10x cheaper. Ebay good luck they blocked me for saying my cases worked with ipads. even though I tried to explain that's not trademark violation. bought sites on flippa traffic slowly degrades(and adsense revenue) unless you pump money into it. tried building an affiliate site that aggregates Chinese wholesale sites(aliexpress,dx.com etc) and ebay so I could find the cheapast price. Tried monetizing with viglink.com made no money from them and a little from ebay affiliate program. spent couple dollars a day at 10 cent clicks wasted $300. my next idea will work for sure though...lol...

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#64

If 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.

kinda like best way to make a million dollars in a restaurant ... start with 2m...

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#65
post #20

Go to a local dentist, look at how they do things like X-Rays. What you will find is that they pay GBP 20k+ for an X-Ray machine that connects via USB Dongle to an old Windows machine... really old. You'll also find that all of their equipment is old copies of Windows, in dusty long-unsupported equipment. Sell a service, that virtualises all of this and that you manage. Charge them GBP 250 per month for it, on top of…

This is a fantastic idea that I've often considered myself. I work for a dental school and regularly interact with faculty members that continue to maintain their own private practice offices. Some of the more tech savvy dentists manage their own systems, while others have "a guy" that takes care of it. Both of those scenarios scare the hell out of me.

Getting an EHR or imaging system up and running for a small office is for the most part straight forward. Getting those systems configured correctly is where things start to fall apart. Things like backups, disaster recovery, HIPAA and PCI compliance are easy to overlook or screw up.

Vendors aren't much better. I work with a number of systems that would be out of compliance had we followed the vendor's recommended method of deployment. Technical support from these companies are spotty at best.

That being said, there are only a few big names that are used by the majority of practices. If you can get in there and really learn the systems and make things "just work" then you'd be in a great position to sell your services.

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#66
post #20

Go to a local dentist, look at how they do things like X-Rays. What you will find is that they pay GBP 20k+ for an X-Ray machine that connects via USB Dongle to an old Windows machine... really old. You'll also find that all of their equipment is old copies of Windows, in dusty long-unsupported equipment. Sell a service, that virtualises all of this and that you manage. Charge them GBP 250 per month for it, on top of…

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Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#67
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Most of the machines that you'll find in a small office are actually two separate devices. There's the x-ray emitter and an x-ray sensor. The sensor replaces the x-ray film that had to be manually developed, and is often just a USB device that integrates with whatever imaging application is in place. The sensors can be installed by anyone for the most part.

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#69

If 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.

kinda like best way to make a million dollars in a restaurant ... start with 2m...

My favourite Branson quote, though it may well have been an old adage he repeated, of course.

"If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline."

Re: Ask HN: What is a way of making residual income with $5K a month?

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X-Ray machines are probably heavily regulated, would it even be legal for a third party to change that hardware setup?

Most of the machines that you'll find in a small office are actually two separate devices. There's the x-ray emitter and an x-ray sensor. The sensor replaces the x-ray film that had to be manually developed, and is often just a USB device that integrates with whatever imaging application is in place. The sensors can be installed by anyone for the most part.

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