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Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

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Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#91

Post by kangman »

ryan-c wrote: post #65
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…

> Stoozing. Find a credit card with 0% interest on balance transfers. Stick the money into a savings account. Or, if you like risk, on a horse. Need a good credit rating and decent savings rate to make more than a few hundred a year though. I remember doing this in 2007. I wasn't aware there was a specific name for it.

also called arbitrage

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#92

Post by winter_blue »

CryoLogic wrote: post #24

Here's my experiences for last year in passive income: Total Gross Revenues: $20,000 or so. Mostly from a single high-traffic niche site which I promote almost exclusively through social media. My site offers a free version of what a few other websites in the same niche offer as a SaaS service. From that same site, most of the revenue (~80%) is from ads (ad revenue increased when switching to responsive units). Next,…

So all your eBooks are bringing in $60 / month in total? For the incredible time investment required to write books, that is quite discouragingly low.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#94

Post by Theodores »

Paint pictures of people's dogs. Yep, a little bit of painting is involved, but painting is fun, right?

There is an inexhaustible supply of middle class people wanting pictures of their dogs painted and they are prepared to pay proper art prices for competent or in-style renditions of their dog in some picturesque scene. Since we are not dogs* and are people, poor painting is not so obvious and efforts get well received.

On the back of paintings-of-dogs it is possible to also paint your own stuff. May not be entirely 'passive income' but holding a brush isn't hard and you don't have to work in an office from 9 to 5 for the man.

*on the internets nobody knows you are a dog.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#95

Post by chad_strategic »

chad_strategic wrote: post #82

http://www.bestoftheinternets.com This worked for a while until google shutdown my adsense, becuasue I had developed auto generated content.

The only good news, believe it or not, it actually got me my first programming job. So I guess it was worth it.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#96

Post by benmanns »

pitchups wrote: post #35
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…

>Stoozing. Find a credit card with 0% interest on balance >transfers. Doesn't really work anymore : Most balance transfer credit cards charge a minimum fee of 1% to 3% on the transfer amount AFAIK. Savings account pay less than 1%.

True. You're better off shifting 100% of your spending to the card and keeping what you'd otherwise be spending in savings/investments.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#97

Post by benmanns »

scardine wrote: post #36
elcapitan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on how much risk you are willing to accept. For example, the baseline interest rate of Brazilian Government Bonds are paying 14.25%/year.

Often this means the market is expecting ~13-14% inflation against the USD.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#98

Post by beering »

Theodores wrote: post #94

Paint pictures of people's dogs. Yep, a little bit of painting is involved, but painting is fun, right? There is an inexhaustible supply of middle class people wanting pictures of their dogs painted and they are prepared to pay proper art prices for competent or in-style renditions of their dog in some picturesque scene. Since we are not dogs* and are people, poor painting is not so obvious and efforts get well recei…

While I like painting and I like dogs, this is quite literally the opposite of "passive income".

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#99

Post by shellerik »

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…

I have had some success in affiliate marketing using an approach that I think many on Hacker News could duplicate. I launched my Amazon affiliate site about a year-and-a-half ago and its earnings have increased by about $100 per month with December being the first time I earned over $2,000 in a month.

The approach is to find a type of product where Amazon has thousands of listing but the specifications are not very accurate and the filtering criteria are limited, and where there are highly active forums with people talking about and asking about these products. Then you build a proper searchable catalog for the products. Include lots of search criteria, sorting criteria, side-by-side comparison, recommended accessories, anything that would be useful for people looking to buy them.

Once my catalog contained over 1,000 models I started replying to posts on forums with a link to my site that provided what they were looking for. People loved the site and it wasn't long before they were posting links to it to answer each others questions. That's all it took to start ranking on Google which is now responsible for 3/4 of my traffic.

Initially this is not passive income. The first few months are a lot of work for very little money. Eventually the balances shifts to the point where additional work is only needed if you want to keep growing. Amazon's product advertising API allows you to get current prices, availability and popularity (sales ranking) to keep everything fresh.

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