Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?

#141

Post by kirse » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 4:59 PM UTC

alphamale wrote: post #126

phirephly wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://kennethfinnegan.blogspot.com/ Text ads, top banner and bottom of right bar. $300 a year; as a college student, yeah, that's worth it.

Damn bro, Looks like you just stepped out of the 1970's Microsoft pic. Bro hit up my site for a makeover at alphamal.es

I never understood this, what sort of "alpha" male goes on the internet and looks for advice from other people on how to be a man?

The first step in being a real man is not looking to others on how to be a man. (Or at least finding a mentor with true character, not Maxim magazine articles and other garbage)

I still think your site has a great potential for an audience though, I fell for the same sort of BS when I was a freshman in college. Took me a couple years to undo the stupidity I had come to believe about what being a "man" really meant.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?

#142

Post by MortenK » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 4:59 PM UTC

biot wrote: post #82

MortenK wrote: post #57

Not entirely sure this fits the bill, but I've leased out one of my former lead developer to a client, when our consulting business got rammed. He's is offshore, and the client is in Europe. Right now I do individual consultancy, and then get a form of passive income from leasing the developer out. I make around 700 USD a month, with effort limited to sending out the invoice.

Former lead developer? Do you bill on his behalf (similar to an agent) and the $700 is the markup? I'm curious as to how you're able to keep billing for a former developer.

No, he is still paid a monthly salary by my company. The client that he works for, is then billed monthly for his salary plus the markup.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?

#143

Post by MortenK » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 5:03 PM UTC

zrgiu wrote: post #70

MortenK wrote: post #57

Not entirely sure this fits the bill, but I've leased out one of my former lead developer to a client, when our consulting business got rammed. He's is offshore, and the client is in Europe. Right now I do individual consultancy, and then get a form of passive income from leasing the developer out. I make around 700 USD a month, with effort limited to sending out the invoice.

so basically, you're a pimp

Sans the feathers and hat

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?

#144

Post by singer » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 5:17 PM UTC

edawerd wrote: post #37

As my Android apps started becoming more popular, I started seeing piracy of my apps skyrocket. At the time, Google didn't have their application licensing system in place, so I built my own. With the licensing system in place for my apps, I was also free to distribute and sell my application binary on my own, without fear of it being pirated. After seeing piracy drop dramatically and talking with other Android devel…

What happens if someone bypasses your client library in the APK file? Also, will the application fail to launch if it cannot reach androidlicenser.com (or wherever it goes) to verify the user when the app is launched?

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?

#145

Post by gohat » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

acangiano wrote: post #88

At the moment I make most of my non-day-job income from my two blogs [1][2], and Any New Books? [3]. All together they make me over $5000 on a good month. The two blogs didn't make money initially because I wasn't interested in monetizing them when I started years ago. ANB made its first dollar on day one. [1] http://programmingzen.com [2] http://math-blog.com [3] http://anynewbooks.com

if you don't mind my asking, how did you go about promoting anynewbooks? looks very interesting.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?

#146

Post by gohat » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 5:23 PM UTC

atgm wrote: post #8

I published an ebook ( http://www.branchrock.com ) and it's been selling. Since I'll never run out of stock and it's priced as an impulse buy, I expect that it'll continue to earn passively. I got my first dollar on the first day I started selling. I plan to continue writing books, both non-fiction and fiction, and I expect that they'll all help bring in passive income.

have you considered listing in the Amazon kindle? it's not too hard to do.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?

#147

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 5:42 PM UTC

Hardware. I have a small device that reads digital sensors and outputs data via RS232 serial. Made first dollar (actually about $100 of them) with first sale.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?

#148

Post by acangiano » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 5:44 PM UTC

gohat wrote: post #145

acangiano wrote: post #88

At the moment I make most of my non-day-job income from my two blogs [1][2], and Any New Books? [3]. All together they make me over $5000 on a good month. The two blogs didn't make money initially because I wasn't interested in monetizing them when I started years ago. ANB made its first dollar on day one. [1] http://programmingzen.com [2] http://math-blog.com [3] http://anynewbooks.com

if you don't mind my asking, how did you go about promoting anynewbooks? looks very interesting.

It was mostly word of mouth and inbound marketing. I also reached out to plenty of book bloggers in the early days of the site.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?

#149

Post by goo » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 6:31 PM UTC

I have a network of several crowdsourced humor sites that make a decent profit (~2k) every month between them-- they include unrelatedcaptions.com, mylifeisbro.com, and averagetextsfromlastnight.com. I sold the flagship site - mylifeisaverage.com - since it demanded too much time and I had other projects I wanted to focus on.

Licensing for the paid iPhone application for mylifeisbro.com (I didn't develop it) also brings in about a grand each month.

It took about a month or so to make my first dollar from the first site I launched "mylifeisg.com" (now defunct)

Once there was a user base to pitch new projects to, the other dollars became easier to make.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make "small/passive" income?

#150

Post by sdrinf » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 6:42 PM UTC

astrofinch wrote: post #14

In 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…

> 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?

Um, now that you've asked, the most important part of any secret is knowing the existence of a secret (or phrased otherwise: you don't ask questions about stuff you don't know the existence of).

So: no, you can't really control for this sampling bias.

But thanks for asking, we're fine :)