Ask HN: Your best passive income sources? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#81

Post by reillyse » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 5:43 AM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #71

kaptain wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are willing to pay a lot for wedding-related /services/. A lot of people that want to save money on a wedding would buy this because they DON'T want to pay for a wedding planner who will ensure that the music is 100% perfect. If you price this at $25, you'll lose that group of people that were looking to save money, (you could argue that at $25 it's still cheaper than a wedding planner). Not every bride is foo…

> you could argue that at $25 it's still cheaper than a wedding planner That's exactly my point, when your competition isn't even anywhere in the neighborhood, you might as well raise your prices. A bride-to-be isn't going to see a $25 wedding DJ app as being expensive; she's going to see it as being 1/10th of what an actual wedding DJ would cause. You said people are only willing to pay for wedding-related services…

Just test it, create three different apps and see which one makes the most money (you could skin them differently or perhaps you might just need to have a different icon).. of course there are other issues such as a reduction in virality (if you depend on it) however you will be in a much better position to estimate once you actually know how much people are willing to pay.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#82

Post by suresk » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 5:44 AM UTC

krickle wrote: post #77

suresk wrote: post #58

I really like building developer tools and kind of miss doing it full time. I built a tool for testing/playing with REST services last year and sell it on the OS X app store: http://www.uresk.net/httpclient/ I'm not getting rich off it, but it usually brings in a few hundred bucks per month and I like hearing from fellow developers who benefit from using it.

Did you do any market testing to see if there was a need, or was this scratching your own itch?

It was just something I needed at the time - I was doing a lot with REST services at the time and thought a simple tool for interacting with them would be handy.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#83

Post by evanlong » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 5:44 AM UTC

By posting links to Google. I currently make about $7000 a month doing it. If you are interested send me a message. And if you are interested in learning more check out my site for the details: http://bit.ly/bxhogZ

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#84

Post by apike » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 5:45 AM UTC

lessnonymous wrote: post #45

apike wrote: post #18

Two years ago, when we started Steamclock, we spent our first two months building a niche iPhone app. We've done point releases but not added much, yet today it pays our rent. http://www.steamclocksw.com/weddingdj/ We haven't done any serious research or marketing for it. We simply focused down and built the highest quality app we could build, and it worked.

This app is an AWESOME idea. I wonder if there's any other verticals that it could be adapted to. Maybe conferences? Funerals? Religious services? How about fitness? I do fun-runs and I would KILL to have playlists for warm up, first 1km, middle run, last 500m, victory and warm down.

Thanks a lot! We have two projects in the lab:

- Party Monster, a general casual DJ app with crossfade, queueing, etc.

- Event DJ, a more generalized and pro version of WeddingDJ that could be marketed to conferences, small theatres, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#85

Post by khet » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 5:45 AM UTC

sprobertson wrote: post #29

JoeCortopassi wrote: post #7

[Related]Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what? (1 month ago) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4467603

[Related] Ask HN: How do you generate passive income? (3 years ago) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387789

I am glad this (and similar) questions gets asked. As a community of makers, we can get very good at making things but just making things is not enough. We need to prove to our customers that we created something of value and then charge them for that value.

This topic cannot be talked about enough.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#86

Post by nja » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 5:48 AM UTC

suresk wrote: post #58

I really like building developer tools and kind of miss doing it full time. I built a tool for testing/playing with REST services last year and sell it on the OS X app store: http://www.uresk.net/httpclient/ I'm not getting rich off it, but it usually brings in a few hundred bucks per month and I like hearing from fellow developers who benefit from using it.

That's pretty cool, actually. I would never have thought of selling an app for that, as most everybody I know uses Advanced REST Client ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/advanced-rest-clie... ). It must be really neat to know people are choosing to pay you for your product over using a similar free app.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#87

Post by interg12 » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 5:49 AM UTC

apike wrote: post #18

Two years ago, when we started Steamclock, we spent our first two months building a niche iPhone app. We've done point releases but not added much, yet today it pays our rent. http://www.steamclocksw.com/weddingdj/ We haven't done any serious research or marketing for it. We simply focused down and built the highest quality app we could build, and it worked.

great app idea. Would you be offended if someone made a bar mitzvah version?

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#88

Post by nja » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 5:49 AM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #52

I launched http://www.improvely.com/ in August, and it's already eclipsed my other sites in recurring revenue.

I've been hearing more and more that B2B is the way to go. Sounds like it has worked well for you.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#89

Post by wikwocket » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 5:50 AM UTC

jfolkins wrote: post #44

choxi wrote: post #11

This might not be the kind of answer you're looking for, but the best way to truly passively increase your wealth is to take care of your personal finances (e.g. pay off your student loans, pay off your credit card balance, invest in a lifecycle fund, see if your employer offers a 401(k)) I personally really liked the book I Will Teach You To Be Rich -- it has a poor name but it's dense with incredibly practical advi…

I support the idea of paying off debt. 401k (investment groups) however, is essentially giving your money to a gambler, and having him play your hand. Bet on yourself. Always.

If your employer matches, you are literally earning 100% on your investment immediately. Few other investments can promise the hope of that, let a lone deliver.

If your employer doesn't match, then it can be a bit of a gamble. But you have the option to buy the market (index funds, etc) instead of a particular stock/fund, so you can bet on the entire economy.

And remember that both cases use pre-tax dollars, costing you less for the same investment amount.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#90

Post by patio11 » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 5:50 AM UTC

tylermauthe wrote: post #75

patio11 wrote: post #12

Halloweenbingocards.net will probably hit about $6k this October (BCC will hit maybe $10k). Not bad for $250 paid in like 2009 or so. I did a course on lifecycle emails for SaaS businesses recently. That did pretty well - a few hundred sales.

How are you monetizing Halloweenbingocards.net ??

The site encourages people to sign up for the free trial of Bingo Card Creator. Some of them will pay $29.95 to print more than 8 cards. Trial signup rates and conversion to purchase are both low but the volume is enormous.