Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams

#21

Post by giantg2 » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

shoo wrote: post #5

baseline suggestion for truly passive income is invest in the stock market: do dev work for people in exchange for money --> invest the money in the stock market (e.g. low cost passive index funds) --> expect roughly 5% real return on capital invested for long term buy & hold stock investment

Historically you could count on 5-7%. The outlook for the market over the next 10 years is an annual return of 3-5% (Vanguard). Just wanted to throw that out there to elaborate on the 5% number you put out.

Re: Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams

#22

Post by giantg2 » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #20

Is selling something on Etsy ever a good idea? How to know if there is demand?

It can be. It's not passive income since you have to make and ship the items.

If you see other items similar to yours, then there is likely demand. If you don't, then you could experiment by making a few and listing them.

Re: Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams

#23

Post by giantg2 » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

holgersindbaek wrote: post #16

mettamage wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any tips on becoming a developer turned designer? I'd be interested in that.

That's a tough one. One suggestion would be "don't". Most companies want either one or the other. I'm not a brilliant developer or a brilliant designer, which makes it hard for me to find my role in bigger companies. On the other hand I can make things like https://online-solitaire.com/ and https://habitualapp.io/ as a one-man operation.

Me too. I wish I had a solid role.

Re: Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams

#24

Post by mrfusion » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #22

mrfusion wrote: post #20

Is selling something on Etsy ever a good idea? How to know if there is demand?

It can be. It's not passive income since you have to make and ship the items. If you see other items similar to yours, then there is likely demand. If you don't, then you could experiment by making a few and listing them.

Thanks. I was thinking of selling wooden benches but would the shipping be ridiculous? Are there any shipping hacks to keep it affordable?

Re: Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams

#25

Post by giantg2 » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #24

giantg2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be. It's not passive income since you have to make and ship the items. If you see other items similar to yours, then there is likely demand. If you don't, then you could experiment by making a few and listing them.

Thanks. I was thinking of selling wooden benches but would the shipping be ridiculous? Are there any shipping hacks to keep it affordable?

Not really. You can work with the shipping companies to get the rates lowered if you're shipping as a small business instead of an individual, but it won't help much.

You might be better off selling them at craft shows or selling on consignment through a local small business.

Re: Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams

#26

Post by scriptstar » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

I made a course on a small topic which is keyword research/SEO related and hosted on Udemy. It took me a week to create the whole thing since then I haven't done anything except answering a few questions of the students.

It's 99% passive. I am making around $150 per month.

This is the simple method I followed (CPSO)

Customer => Problem => Solution => Offer

1.) find a topic with enough interest (customer finding activity)

2.) identify a single problem in that topic (Problem finding activity)

3.) provide a clear cut solution to the problem Make sure they get a result by the end of it. Record your screen showing the solution without any fluff. (Solution providing activity)

4) Create a compelling offer and present to the customer (Make a compelling offer activity)

For the last part (offer), I created a video which is almost 45 minutes long and taught nearly 90% of the course. There's no need to buy if you watch the intro video which is free to preview on the course.

It's doing well.

Watch the preview video, and you are good to go—no need to buy it. But if you want to support an honest creator, then please consider purchasing the course using the following link. Many thanks.

https://www.udemy.com/course/keyword-golden-ratio-formula-fi...

Re: Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams

#27

Post by akudha » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 2:04 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #22

mrfusion wrote: post #20

Is selling something on Etsy ever a good idea? How to know if there is demand?

It can be. It's not passive income since you have to make and ship the items. If you see other items similar to yours, then there is likely demand. If you don't, then you could experiment by making a few and listing them.

Doesn't Etsy let you sell digital products too? That could be passive, isn't it?

Re: Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams

#28

Post by gitgud » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

alexmingoia wrote: post #4

What does passive income mean to you? Is it passive income when a YouTuber gets paid whenever someone views a video, but spends hundreds of hours making great content and building an audience? Is SaaS MRR passive income after you've spent hundreds or thousands of hours building a product and acquiring customers? Is it passive income when an author receives royalties after spending months writing, publishing, and mark…

> Create open source software that other people need, then sell training videos on how to use it.

Please don't do this, I personally hate this motivation for Open Source development.

The incentive of the project developer is not aligned with the user. The developer has the incentive to make the software complex and unintuitive, so that people require training to use it.

Any proposed changes to make the project easier to configure, threaten the income of the developer and will probably not be considered...

Monetisation is extremely hard to get right in open-source software.

Re: Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams

#29

Post by jthistle » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #24

giantg2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be. It's not passive income since you have to make and ship the items. If you see other items similar to yours, then there is likely demand. If you don't, then you could experiment by making a few and listing them.

Thanks. I was thinking of selling wooden benches but would the shipping be ridiculous? Are there any shipping hacks to keep it affordable?

This shipping hack may apply, or it may not.

Search for a local warehouse that provides order fulfillment services and see if you can have them ship your benches.

A place like that ships enough packages they can usually get lower shipping rates than other businesses. I own a company like that in Ohio. With my rates it costs perhaps $30 to ship a gaming PC to California... for an individual it might cost $75.

Re: Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams

#30

Post by NicoJuicy » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

holgersindbaek wrote: post #2

I'm a designer-turned-developer and created a nice-looking solitaire card game website: https://online-solitaire.com/ . It's making me around $1500 a month. My approach was to find a nice of apps that where already popular and then see if I could make it better.

How many visitors per month do you have?