Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 65 posts

Re: How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing

#11

Post by bloopalert »

chii wrote: post #10
matt4077 wrote: post #6

I couldn't find any numbers, but I get the distinct impression that so far, the authors job at google probably pays better than the book. Sure, most of the work is done now and if continues for another two years or so things change. But it's hard to predict how non-fiction books age.

It doesn't matter how much a book ages, as long as it was written in the off time (I.e., evenings or weekends). The sales made from that book is a net productivity gain.

You could freelance $400 in a few hours at most. Probably less. You have to consider opportunity cost, for which books are poor.

Re: How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing

#12

Post by Rumudiez »

bloopalert wrote: post #11
chii wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter how much a book ages, as long as it was written in the off time (I.e., evenings or weekends). The sales made from that book is a net productivity gain.

You could freelance $400 in a few hours at most. Probably less. You have to consider opportunity cost, for which books are poor.

You also have to consider personal cost. Do you enjoy writing, and do you have a strong interest in a field worth writing about? Then great, this could be a productive use of time for you both personally and financially. There's nothing wrong with doing things that make your life worth living.

Re: How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing

#13

Post by greglindahl »

chii wrote: post #10
matt4077 wrote: post #6

I couldn't find any numbers, but I get the distinct impression that so far, the authors job at google probably pays better than the book. Sure, most of the work is done now and if continues for another two years or so things change. But it's hard to predict how non-fiction books age.

It doesn't matter how much a book ages, as long as it was written in the off time (I.e., evenings or weekends). The sales made from that book is a net productivity gain.

This post is about "passive income". If a book ages into $0 sales after 3 months, that's not passive income.

Re: How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing

#14

Post by mojoe »

I always enjoy seeing stuff like this. While it may not make a ton of economic sense for a guy working at Google, I'm happy to see people fill niche knowledge spaces because they can.

It's interesting that the paperback copies sold the best -- I would guess it's because these books are given as gifts (and bought by parents). If anyone has data on this behavior for fiction I'd be interested to hear it (I publish an online science fiction magazine, compellingsciencefiction.com).

Re: How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing

#15

Post by neilsharma »

SN76477 wrote: post #8
boyter wrote: post #4

Its quite amazing how much money you can make with self-published books. For example I wrote a book about Decoding CAPTCHA's. I have the top ranking post on most search engines for this which is the only marketing channel. I collect about $35 a month from it without spending any additional time marketing. Not very much but such a small niche it really surprised me. Oddly enough the main reason for writing the book wa…

I work in digital marketing. There is a whole scene of guys that do nothing but create simple digitally published ebooks. They will research the market for the niche. Research the topic in depth (something like frying chicken can be deciphered and recipe and method variations can be collected in 20 hours) Then create content on the niche and sell it. Even a $3 ebook can make several thousand dollars a year.

How do they get traffic to it? I'd imagine the vast majority of time is spent on marketing and not on content creation.

Re: How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing

#16

Post by boyter »

neilsharma wrote: post #15
SN76477 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in digital marketing. There is a whole scene of guys that do nothing but create simple digitally published ebooks. They will research the market for the niche. Research the topic in depth (something like frying chicken can be deciphered and recipe and method variations can be collected in 20 hours) Then create content on the niche and sell it. Even a $3 ebook can make several thousand dollars a year.

How do they get traffic to it? I'd imagine the vast majority of time is spent on marketing and not on content creation.

I just checked then. Say you write a book with the title "Cooking with Buttermilk" and built a unique book page you are likely to rank on the first page pretty easily for the search "cooking with buttermilk book".

With a book you can always pull out excerpts for SEO value too.

I would image if you could churn reasonable content for a low price this might be a sustainable business model, assuming you can pick the right topics.

Re: How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing

#18

Post by GarrisonPrime »

boyter wrote: post #16
neilsharma wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they get traffic to it? I'd imagine the vast majority of time is spent on marketing and not on content creation.

I just checked then. Say you write a book with the title "Cooking with Buttermilk" and built a unique book page you are likely to rank on the first page pretty easily for the search "cooking with buttermilk book". With a book you can always pull out excerpts for SEO value too. I would image if you could churn reasonable content for a low price this might be a sustainable business model, assuming you can pick the righ…

>buttermilk

>churn

I see what you did there.

Re: How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing

#19

Post by wingerlang »

boyter wrote: post #7
kasey_junk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long did it take to write?

The book itself took about 10 hours or so and was mostly just a collection of writings I already had and email responses.

I just checked it on Amazon, and there's not a whole lot of concrete information of what I will find in the book. I guess it is a niche indeed and people who are looking for it will know already. Maybe image algorithms?

If you had to take a picture of the most interesting / telling page of the book (to try to sell the rest of it) which page would it be? And do you mind doing it.

Re: How I make $400 a month in Passive Income by Self-Publishing

#20

Post by cryoshon »

SN76477 wrote: post #8
boyter wrote: post #4

Its quite amazing how much money you can make with self-published books. For example I wrote a book about Decoding CAPTCHA's. I have the top ranking post on most search engines for this which is the only marketing channel. I collect about $35 a month from it without spending any additional time marketing. Not very much but such a small niche it really surprised me. Oddly enough the main reason for writing the book wa…

I work in digital marketing. There is a whole scene of guys that do nothing but create simple digitally published ebooks. They will research the market for the niche. Research the topic in depth (something like frying chicken can be deciphered and recipe and method variations can be collected in 20 hours) Then create content on the niche and sell it. Even a $3 ebook can make several thousand dollars a year.

as always, the question is how to locate the niche...
Post reply on HN