Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

news.ycombinator.com

61–70 of 266 posts

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#61

Publish books on Amazon. I've published 4 and make about $3k in profit per month, after paying for ads on amazon. Don't write them yourself, that's a lot of work. Instead, do key word research about what books sell in non-fiction categories (fiction is a whole different ballgame). Look for keywords that 1) auto complete in the amazon search bar, and 2) have less than 4,000 matching books, and 3) have an average Amazo…

Incredible. Do you publish under a ghost name?

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#62

Publish books on Amazon. I've published 4 and make about $3k in profit per month, after paying for ads on amazon. Don't write them yourself, that's a lot of work. Instead, do key word research about what books sell in non-fiction categories (fiction is a whole different ballgame). Look for keywords that 1) auto complete in the amazon search bar, and 2) have less than 4,000 matching books, and 3) have an average Amazo…

Wouldn't the author have to be knowledgeable about the subject? 30k words for $1000 sounds pretty low for an expert.

Seriously, whatever happened to being an expert on a certain domain of knowledge? This sounds like a disgusting startup-esque approach to writing a book.

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#63

Publish books on Amazon. I've published 4 and make about $3k in profit per month, after paying for ads on amazon. Don't write them yourself, that's a lot of work. Instead, do key word research about what books sell in non-fiction categories (fiction is a whole different ballgame). Look for keywords that 1) auto complete in the amazon search bar, and 2) have less than 4,000 matching books, and 3) have an average Amazo…

Incredible. Do you publish under a ghost name?

Yes, several. Each pen name has their own "personality" and focuses on different aspects.

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that can quickly disappear for those who end up with tenants that don't pay and can't be evicted.

That's my fear. But can you tell me in what situations I cannot evict my tenants. (Honest question).

Even when you can evict your tenants, it can take a long time, since you have to go to court. Had a friend have a property get absolutely destroyed by tenants that took a while to evict - 10s of thousands of dollars of damages. Of course, you could sue to recover your losses but these sort of tenants are usually an empty bag - you can't collect money they dont have and a small security deposit wont cover much. These situations are uncommon, but hardly unheard of.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-eviction-process...

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#65
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's his point; that 5% returns aren't actually that great.

Diversity is useful though. Stocks have crashed in the past, and they will in the future. As has real estate and every other investment. You thus need a backup plan in case your investment fails. I make no attempt to predict WHEN these crashes will happen, or how big they will be.

A single property is not diversification, if anything it further concentrates your money into a single asset.

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#67
post #35

Other say how landlord ON USA are not that passive, but maybe do it in other countries? Here in Colombia being landlord is very good, because most use an agency that manage the property (collect the money and do some basic fixes). I probably have called the actual owner 1 or 2 times in a decade for approval for some fixes.

I assume you're talking about being landlord of an apartment in a larger apartment complex where a property manager takes care of many apartments at the same time? I'm asking because my impression is that this scales better and should therefore be significantly cheaper than paying someone to manage a single apartment or house somewhere. (Besides, with a house or I'd imagine a lot more fixes being necessary over time.)

Also, how many tenants has this apartment (have these apartments) that you're managing(?) had in those ten years?

PS: Since I've actually been dabbling with the idea of buying property in Colombia, may I ask in which city you are? :)

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#68
post #2

I would point out that renting out a condo is not a passive investment; keeping up with tenants, doing cleaning and maintenance, etc. can be a full-time job (maybe less so for a condo than a house, but still). And as we here probably know, maintaining a website is not necessarily passive either, and I would imagine the same is true of a vending machine. These are projects, and at some point they become businesses; no…

some businesses take care of that work for 15% on rent
Post reply on HN