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Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

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101–110 of 150 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#101
Odd how few seem to mention property (real estate)? Even those alleging actual returns worth a damn on stock portfolios. Surely the most obvious route on the planet is property. For two reasons:

1. It's leveraged. I.e. a bank will usually give you a 4:1 loan (mortgage) to buy property. Interest will usually be close to the central bank rate, so it's about as cheap as a loan gets, especially right now. If you then rent the property you are receiving a monthly return on the leveraged sum having only invested the deposit...

2. Property is an appreciating asset (US,UK,China,FR,etc). It's a systemic matter in many countries because it ties in a large part of an individuals net worth and retirement expectations.

Your 200k leveraged with a mortgage will net you more than most stock portfolios unless either you're Renaissance Capital or you just like a gamble.

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#102

Odd how few seem to mention property (real estate)? Even those alleging actual returns worth a damn on stock portfolios. Surely the most obvious route on the planet is property. For two reasons: 1. It's leveraged. I.e. a bank will usually give you a 4:1 loan (mortgage) to buy property. Interest will usually be close to the central bank rate, so it's about as cheap as a loan gets, especially right now. If you then ren…

To put this another way. It's really not difficult to find mom & pop who made 300k on a small property portfolio with no special skills because of systemic capital appreciation, a liquid rental market and leverage(loan/mortgage). You'd struggle to find such a high success rate in any other asset class.

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#103
post #5

A stock portfolio that I've built through consulting profits is my main passive income source. Anything else is not really "passive." This probably isn't the answer you're looking for, but in my view the average developer is much better off simply selling their time at the maximum rate and funneling the profits into a well-managed portfolio. The median outcome for this is much better than the story on most passive-in…

Can you recommend advice or resources to being building a financial portfolio?

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#104
post #103
post #5

A stock portfolio that I've built through consulting profits is my main passive income source. Anything else is not really "passive." This probably isn't the answer you're looking for, but in my view the average developer is much better off simply selling their time at the maximum rate and funneling the profits into a well-managed portfolio. The median outcome for this is much better than the story on most passive-in…

Can you recommend advice or resources to being building a financial portfolio?

Check out Bogleheads and Vanguard index funds. In general, the people who spend more time thinking about and managing their portfolio get worse returns.

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#106
absolutely nothing. Turns out its pretty hard to monetize open source developer tools. Really wish there was other stuff I enjoyed working on in my free time.

If anyone wants to start paying me for the JsFormat sublime plugin, let me know, I'll gladly take your money.

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#107
I created http://convertcsv.com and make about $750 a month off google ads. I also have one affiliate link but it isn't producing much. I spend a few hours a week answering emails, and another 2-10 hours a month working on enhancements. As a developer I work with data a lot, and noticed the lack of tools for converting delimited data - so I created my own tools online.

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to write a blog post on your site about how to make passive income, which you are doing by hosting your site about how to make passive income! I don't think it can get more meta than that!

I think that's an abuse of the term passive income - his site's product is the interviews he conducts. Unless he automates that away (which would be interesting), he's intrinsically tied up with it's success.

I agree it's not passive yet, but with a blog, he doesn't need to do much automation. Once the content is up, there will be a fairly long tail of visitors to whom the content is new.

When I applied for my professional engineering license in Canada a few years ago, I blogged about the process because I found a total lack of such content when I looked for it. I haven't touched the blog since I got the license (over a year ago) and traffic and "income" (I profit $5-$10 per month, it's a very niche topic) have increased steadily since then. Almost everyone finds it through organic search.

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#109

I created http://convertcsv.com and make about $750 a month off google ads. I also have one affiliate link but it isn't producing much. I spend a few hours a week answering emails, and another 2-10 hours a month working on enhancements. As a developer I work with data a lot, and noticed the lack of tools for converting delimited data - so I created my own tools online.

How did you spread the word in early days of your project?(Any platform in particluar helped or performed better for marketing?)

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to laugh at "well-managed" portfolio. That's hysterical, in fact I'm still laughing. I might even wake up in the middle of the night and laugh. Silly, active managed portfolios never beat their benchmarks over the long run. Anybody in the financial industry knows that... and index fund are only good till that strategy doesn't work anymore.

Err, what? I'm not sure where you got the idea that I'm actively managing my portfolio. The vast majority of my money is in index funds. In my view, a well-managed portfolio is one which aims to perform at market and no better or worse. > index fund are only good till that strategy doesn't work anymore. The day that index funds cease to be the optimal investment strategy (for most individuals) is the day that stocks…

>>> The day that index funds cease to be the optimal investment strategy (for most individuals) is the day that stocks overall have stopped being a viable investment strategy.

Don't worry the day will come. ;) It's called a black swan.

I'm not arrogant, I'm just well educated and a student of the market. If you study the market long enough you will learn it's nothing more than just a big casino run by the federal reserve and the big banks.

Yes, Index strategy was great when it was invented in the 70's and 80's and probably the 90's. But if you have everybody rushing into index funds, well that causes an imbalance in the market. Similar to 2008, the tech bubble and even all the way back to tulip bubble. (google it)

I'm really sorry that disturbed your investment strategy.

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