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Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

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

#141

Post by Rainymood »

usgroup wrote: post #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 ren…

>Property is an appreciating asset

Isn't this the cause of the housing bubble? If everyone thinks this? Why wouldn't profits be driven out if everyone thinks like this? Simply curious.

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

#142

Post by usgroup »

Rainymood wrote: post #141
usgroup wrote: post #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 ren…

>Property is an appreciating asset Isn't this the cause of the housing bubble? If everyone thinks this? Why wouldn't profits be driven out if everyone thinks like this? Simply curious.

Over-valuation causes bubbles as opposed to appreciating assets. E.g. the common wisdom says equity is a generally appreciating asset class because the expected return over a long horizon is positive. Similar is true of property except that no-one will give you a 40 year loan of 400k for peanuts to go trade the S&P.

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

#143

Post by mofeeta »

usgroup wrote: post #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 ren…

Are you willing to field some questions via email?

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

#144

Post by eswat »

mylons wrote: post #127
eswat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might sound hokey, but think of getting into consulting as phases of software releases. During alpha get to know people and the problems they face that you can potentially help out with (at this point you haven’t started consulting yet), in beta you drop whatever you were doing before, or cut down your time commitment enough, and getting into consulting (or more likely freelancing, where you’re doing more grunt…

reasonable answer! thanks. during the "alpha" phase, are you potentially offering your services to prospective clients?

> are you potentially offering your services to prospective clients?

Yes. If you’ve really understood the problems these potential clients have and they haven’t already asked you if you could be the person to solve it, offer your services.

Depending on your employer and your comfort level you may even be able to hit to beta earlier and do your freelancing on the side. I didn’t have the energy to work on other projects outside of my dayjob when I started. So I had to make a clean break before I started working with clients. You may be different.

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

#145

Post by marktangotango »

tones411 wrote: post #137

I have made several small mobile apps. ( http://anthonytietjen.blogspot.com/p/my-portfolio.html ) I charge for some of them, but my White Screen Flashlight has ads. ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anthonytie... ) If you are into programming, and are considering an app, make something super simple (like my Cost Per Sq Foot Calculator), and you might be surprised that people actually pay for it.

Ha I tried this (trivial app, get paid) and no one paid!

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

#146

Post by sundarurfriend »

DanHulton wrote: post #73

I created http://www.ipaidthemost.com over a year ago, and I can proudly say it's earned enough to buy a couple coffees. Well, if you ignore hosting. And the few times I dropped $50 onto it to try to advertise it. It's odd. Most people who see it think it's clever and neat, and a few will buy, but when advertised, people bounce right off.

Suggestion: since it's a vanity-based project, allowing people to add a photo - either through gravatar, or via an upload - would probably increase conversion.

Also, the actual paid-for message being in such tiny text is pretty odd given that's the (user-side) purpose of the site. And that part is somehow the hardest to read part of the page for me, perhaps because of the double background (image + black background) interaction.

IMO, it's a lot of such small nudges that's reducing the effectiveness of the site.

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

#147

Post by tones411 »

marktangotango wrote: post #145
tones411 wrote: post #137

I have made several small mobile apps. ( http://anthonytietjen.blogspot.com/p/my-portfolio.html ) I charge for some of them, but my White Screen Flashlight has ads. ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anthonytie... ) If you are into programming, and are considering an app, make something super simple (like my Cost Per Sq Foot Calculator), and you might be surprised that people actually pay for it.

Ha I tried this (trivial app, get paid) and no one paid!

Was your app for iOS, or Android?

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

#148

Post by usgroup »

mofeeta wrote: post #143
usgroup wrote: post #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 ren…

Are you willing to field some questions via email?

Sure. Leave your email and Ill reach out.

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

#149

Post by dllthomas »

charlesdm wrote: post #135
dllthomas wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Start with the stuff you understand well (i.e. probably tech). I worry about diversification. Tech is what I know, but I am already heavily invested: by far my biggest asset is my career, skills and experience.

Diversification isn't all people make it out to be. As an example: if you had to pick one stock would you be more likely to pick a great tech, mining or industrial stock? If you know tech and you work within tech, the answer will likely be tech. Also, people have different risk levels. My personal opinion is that you need to make sure that, if you make a bet (by picking a stock) and you win, you win big (at least 15-…

Analysis of this style is going to be tremendously subject to survivorship bias. It's obvious that amongst the biggest winners will be some who took too much risk - with extreme variance the lucky few will wind up winning biggest. But there's no reason I should expect to be so lucky.

Meanwhile, I am most able to put away the most money when tech stocks are doing well, and most likely to have trouble finding work (and possibly need to tap my investments prematurely) in an environment where tech stocks are likely to be at their lowest. "Buy high and sell low" is a poor strategy.

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

#150

Post by chillee »

chad_strategic wrote: post #78
morgante wrote: 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…

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.

Are you saying that a company like Renaissance Technologies won't beat benchmarks over the long run?

According to Wikipedia, "Renaissance's flagship Medallion fund, which is run mostly for fund employees,[7] "is famed for one of the best records in investing history, returning more than 35 percent annualized over a 20-year span."[4] From 1994 through mid-2014 it averaged a 71.8% annual return."

If so, I would have to disagree with you.

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