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Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

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Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#271

Post by mapster »

philip1209 wrote: post #231
matznerd wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you have 4 cities, you can test different prices in each. $100 sounds a bit steep for a food truck unless you can guarantee ROI for them. I think it would be smarter to just add more cities and keep the price lower. I would try something like $25 a spot and try to make them sign a 3-month advertising contract. If they balk, just remember you have 30 other food trucks and only 3 spots. This makes more sense if y…

Multivariate testing? Now you're talking. I am considering a lower pricing tier for a menu. Currently only St. Louis has a couple menus, because curating and formatting the menus is a pain.

thinking the paid version would depend on local competition. Pay more to get more if you have a lot of competition. if low competition, they would pay less for the ad. You can determine which truck should pay how much based on geospatial statistics if you have a location for each truck (let me know if you have any questions about this). also, my brother in law has 2 food trucks on a Hawaiian island - and there are plenty here in California, so I hope you will add more locations.

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#273

Post by robbiemitchell »

Over $100k last year from educationalrap.com

- ~45 educational rap songs, divided into middle school subject areas, that include PDF worksheets and multiple versions of each song

- One-time purchases via song/album downloads and shipped CDs; recurring subscriptions to rrr.fm, a streaming music service for schools we contracted out (built on Rails)

- rrr.fm signup happens via Formstack, which drops the data into Campaign Monitor, PayPal, and our app

- $0 spent on advertising

- Sells mostly to teachers directly, but also to schools, libraries, etc.

- Part-time help to handle support and ship the CDs

- Still paying off debt from production and high burns 2007-2008, but comfortably cash-flow positive for a while now

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#274

Post by kerryfalk »

cmaxwell wrote: post #129
patio11 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I appreciate the sentiment, I would appreciate it even more if you that that I was impressive for shipping stuff and gradually doing process tweaks targeted at things that actually matter. People jump directly from "X is a god" to "I am mortal, and therefore, cannot be like X." Pretty much all HNers capable of shipping product are equally capable of doing the sort of things I do to tweak those products' success…

Now that I have your attention.. my site: http://www.golfingstat.com Should I quit it (brokeback style), spend some time making it mobile + setting a annual fee and trying to find the magic adwords amount to grow my userbase without losing money or keep on keeping on (trying to make some ad revenue with my current userbase of 150ish)

If you're not already familiar with them: www.golfshot.com

It's the best app I have ever purchased, and the most expensive. It does pretty much everything the amateur needs. They'd be tough to compete with.

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#275

Post by ffumarola »

philip1209 wrote: post #188
alanfalcon wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegas has a great and growing food truck culture, and I'd dig a site like this for the area. Not sure what's involved in expanding to new cities, but I figure I'll throw this out there anyway.

Awesome, I'll do Vegas next! Kansas City is set for release this week - the data is already loaded, just need to do some aesthetic tweaks.

Philly has a lot of food trucks, too.

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#277

Post by tachibana »

Sorry, no hard numbers for privacy reasons.

The basic living needs of my family (food, clothing, mortgage, utilities, cars, etc.) has been covered by my investment portfolio for several years by now. Any additional income goes straight towards increasing said portfolio.

Rough estimates for the source of the principal for the investment income:

- 50% - savings from worked income

- 30% - earnings from real estate investments

- 20% - earnings from outside consulting / freelance software projects.

I personally believe that anybody who exercises a fair amount of discipline to save away their income and spend reasonably can become financially independent within 15-20 years. Thanks to what I learned from my accounting classes, I was able to accomplish this in less than 10 years.

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#278

Post by arohner »

philip1209 wrote: post #232
arohner wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've wanted exactly this site. Please add SF and Austin as locations.

The problem is the twitter API - I'm currently rendering with JQuery clientside, and the number of trucks in SF would exceed an IP's call limit. I've been working on a cached serverside implementation that uses multiple IPs to overcome this, but it's too much of a pain. In addition, I would have to completely redo the UI to accommodate that many trucks. I think that the current site will stay for mid-sized cities (30…

49% is a whole lot. For that much, you should find a co-founder who will work full time.

Also, to reiterate what other people in this thread have said, find better ways to monetize this. Think about bigger ads, charging trucks to send email to your subscribers, etc. Traffic solves one of the bigger risks for a food truck.

Having a real business plan here means you can give away a much smaller chunk of the company, or pay cash, and give away no equity.

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#279

Post by robflynn »

bdunn wrote: post #29

A little over $2700/mo with Planscope ( https://planscope.io ), my SaaS product that's been out since February. I'm averaging about a 8% growth rate month to month, so very excited about how things are going. * Bootstrapped * Raised my consulting rates to free up more time for products (= same amount of consulting income) * Most new customers come via referrals from existing users and organic traffic (via targeted bl…

This looks great! I'll be checking this out. I've been in the market for something new/different/some kind of change with my freelancing project management.

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#280

Post by mattm »

mapster wrote: post #263
codex wrote: post #27

I generate about $1K-$2K a month in passive income. I spend approximately zero hours on maintenance every week, and I bootstrapped it while holding down a full-time job. It took an extra 5-10 hours per week for about a year. Here's what I did: a) Got a job at a major software company for very high comp. b) Spent an extra 5-10 hours a week working intelligently at my full time job; got promoted. c) Invested the salary…

It's less about the money and ALL about creating and building and changing. In other words, I don't want to build someone else's Lego set - I want to create my own.

I think you're missing the point. The point is to spend just a few years building passive income through investments such that the dividends/distributions it throws off are enough to cover your living expenses. At that point you're free to do whatever you want and you can work on your startup or ideas without having to worry about running out of money or fragmenting your time with consulting.
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