Currently putting together some adsense sites. Looks very promising.
Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?
11–20 of 177 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?
#12Does a blog reviewing music count? Though I started in 2008, I didn't really make any attempts at monetizing until late 2009 and started with Adsense, then linked all the albums reviewed to two online stores that sell the CDs in question. All told, it took me maybe 3 months to make my first dollar and even longer for affiliate commissions to come in. I didn't make my first sale until maybe February 2010. Obviously th…
Absolutely.
If you're using Wordpress, try one of the Twitter integration plugins. You can choose hashtags when creating a new blog entry and it will be auto-posted to a Twitter account. You should see a bump in traffic after each post.
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?
#13I run a e-commerce website, selling tools for grafting produced by a company my wifes family own:
http://www.grafting-tool.com/magento/index.php/
I started by buying a few samples to sell on e-bay to see if there was a market. So I guess you could say I started making money right away. The problem with trying to replicate my business, is finding the right product to sell. I was lucky that I saw they had this item, and I figured that there would be a market online for it. Trying to find a new product to sell and establishing links with the manufacturer would take some time. You would also need to contend with issues of minimum order size.
I guess you could call it a partial success. Currently its bringing in about $300 per month. I want to increase my revenue, but it hard to know what to focus on. The other problem is it has somewhat of a high overhead - we need to spend time shipping products, etc.
For my new side projects, I'm thinking of doing something digital, that can be handled entirely online.
I have tried selling photos to a stock photo service. I spent many hours tagging photos, waiting for them to work through the approval process, etc. After many months of letting my photos sit, I have yet to sell one.
Next I am looking at writing some Smartphone apps. We will see how that goes ...
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?
#14In case anyone is reading this thread and becoming pessimistic about their chances of achieving passive income, I'd like to note that there is a clear sampling bias: folks that have found profitable niches are less likely to share their projects for fear of attracting competition. I suspect that choosing a good niche is pretty important when it comes to passive-income type projects. It looks like the most profitable project so far in the thread is il's, and he sold his site on flippa, so competition is now someone else's problem.
Just to test this out, if anyone is staying quiet about their project for fear of attracting competition, could they please reply to this comment and say so? Don't worry, your silence is totally understandable :)
(The sampling bias will probably still remain somewhat due to folks have their projects linked to from their profiles and not wanting to remove them.)
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?
#153k dollar each month from 6 month advertising in nov. 2008 from a EU sms flirt page. (generated users still make me money)
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?
#16Does a blog reviewing music count? Though I started in 2008, I didn't really make any attempts at monetizing until late 2009 and started with Adsense, then linked all the albums reviewed to two online stores that sell the CDs in question. All told, it took me maybe 3 months to make my first dollar and even longer for affiliate commissions to come in. I didn't make my first sale until maybe February 2010. Obviously th…
Absolutely. If you're using Wordpress, try one of the Twitter integration plugins. You can choose hashtags when creating a new blog entry and it will be auto-posted to a Twitter account. You should see a bump in traffic after each post.
Thanks!
I've actually been doing manual updates to my personal twitter account after each post with a blurb about the latest article. Each tweet is customized rather than a generic auto-update message. I'm just not sure whether this is the best way of going about it or if I should take your suggestion and completely automate it. Maybe create a separate twitter account and do both?
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?
#17I was surprised that just putting an adsense unit on the side of my personal blog (4k hits/month) manages to generate $25/month. It's a highly technical blog, mainly documenting my personal electronics projects, but covers pretty much anything I want it to, which rather limits my readership. Having a more cohesive, single subject would certainly raise the glass ceiling on readership.
I don't know about you, but I don't think $25/mo is worth cheapening my blog by plastering tasteless ads on it. I'd have to be pulling significant income from it before I would even consider putting ads on my blog.
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?
#18Not typical HN fare, but the wife and I started a business together that has (almost) nothing to do with the interwebs. It's a photography business.. We started it about 3+ years ago, and in most senses it's done quite well. She's been able to quit her day-job. It's what HN folks would call a 'lifestyle' business, I guess. You know, cause we're not rich.
I have to say, it's pretty rad. Software startups don't have a monopoly on giving you experience in doing branding, marketing, sales, running ad-campaigns, taxes, and just all manner of things that go into running a business.
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?
#19Yes, I tried my hands on "hardware" stuff, specifically iPad cases.
http://millswyn.com/ http://worqbench.posterous.com/
Have a few sales. Not complaining.
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?
#20I actually live off the passive income (I've been an affiliate full-time for almost 4 years). While it has been quite a ride and I can't really share my most profitable sites/tools (without my wife - who is also my business partner - getting me back for it), I will say that it can be a good thing. That said, it is also an extremely competitive business. It is very easy to generate $50/month off a little blog, but generating $10,000/month takes a lot more out of you and carries far more risk.
If you've got something that is growing or doing well already, see if you can grow it - when there is little competition in whatever segment it is an opportunity not to be missed. They are rare.