Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#51

Post by jsingleton » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

Confiks wrote: post #41

edent wrote: post #17

* Apps with ads in them. Easy enough to churn out, but decreasing revenues and most of the high earning adverts are the scummiest. Low value and of low moral usefulness. * Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar * Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial inves…

> Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment (...) It also required upfront confidence in the sustainability of the government subsidy. In The Netherlands a lot of now-solar panel owners decided to invest because of subsidies, but last year the government decided to stop the subsidy for 2016. Especially with the low energy prices, that makes it a net loss for a lot…

The UK Conservative government has also just cut solar feed-in tariffs. The new scheme starts on Monday.

http://keepfits.org/news/so-we-have-our-response

https://www.gov.uk/feed-in-tariffs

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#52

Post by moistgorilla » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

elcapitan wrote: post #19

33a wrote: post #4

Save money and invest it.

But invested money is not really something that creates an income, unless it is really really much, right? Income in the sense of money that you can freely dispose.

Dividends but you are essentially right

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#53

Post by nsxwolf » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:26 PM UTC

Sounds like it's just really, really hard to get people to hand you money. If you already have a paying job, you're way ahead of the game. Maybe the best strategy is to just look for higher paying jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#54

Post by lfx » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:26 PM UTC

gt565k wrote: post #12

nns wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give examples of what kind of low-touch reasonable-return investments you've benefited from?

https://www.wealthfront.com Haven't tried this myself, but Tim Ferriss seems to advertise it a lot and I have a few coworkers that use it. Minimum is $500 with no management fees (up to 10k I think)

P.S. Only for USA citizens. This pretty sad.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#55

Post by jacalata » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:27 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #40

[deleted]

>I presume by passive income you mean any amount of money > 0 that comes in with regularity

That definition would include 'a job' so it seems incomplete.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#56

Post by elwell » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:28 PM UTC

Addons / Plugins for existing platforms that have an appropriate marketplace for this (e.g., Concrete5).

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#57

Post by cyogee » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:28 PM UTC

ThanksGiving season. I bought lots of YNAB codes (www.ynab.com) at 50% off and sold them at 25% off on eBAY. Win Win for everyone.

Now they moved to cloud and didn't do any 50% off this year.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#58

Post by owyn » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

mcshicks wrote: post #23

jstanley wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any low-fees index fund.

Vanguard had very low fee reit index funds. If you want to generate income it is a good option (as opposed to stock index funds) because reits are required to pay 90% of their income as dividends. You can look at all the historical dividend data on the website

I parked some money in a vanguard reit a year ago as an experiment, and to create more of a balanced portfolio. Yes, it has paid quarterly dividends but it's also down -11% in total. So as usual, it all depends...

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#59

Post by SilasX » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

33a wrote: post #4

Save money and invest it.

The question is about passive income, and, given interest rates, there aren't really any good options. If you're able to generate significant passive income at the ~2-3% rates[1], well, you probably already have a lot of money already, and should just focus on whatever you were doing to get that much.

Way too many comments in the thread branching off yours are answering the wrong question -- "how to grow your money in general" -- which is not the same as passive income.

[1] See Vanguard's bond fund yield https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0084&...

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#60

Post by codinghabit » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

cddotdotslash wrote: post #44

I write eBooks for developers interested in using semi-new technologies. Previously, I wrote about developing websites to work with the Chromecast. Most recently, I published an eBook about AWS Lambda[1]. The income is not terribly good, but enough to make it worthwhile. I've been approached by publishing companies who want to raise the price to $50+ per copy, but I prefer keeping them at $2-$4 so they're more access…

As soon as I read your post I wondered if it was the 'AWS Lambda' book that keeps showing up in my recommendations. I clicked the link and sure enough there it was! Of course, now I HAVE to buy it. :D