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

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#181

Post by SomeCallMeTim » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 4:13 PM 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.

Betting on yourself is ALSO a gamble. Not because of any trait of any particular person, but because things fail sometimes.

IMO, the best approach is to spread your bets. Obviously getting rid of debt is the easiest first step, and 401k plans are less-than-ideal because of the restricted investment options, but you can minimize the gambler's influence by choosing index funds (if you have the option).

The stock market itself is a gamble, of course, but so is just about everything else, so minimizing your exposure to any one risk is the best you can do. I've been in dividend stocks for years and making $500/month or so with minimal exposure.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#182

Post by suresk » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 4:26 PM UTC

ExcitedByNoise wrote: post #164

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.

I use this tool as well. Comes in handy. Any chance I can put in a feature request to reduce the minimum window size? About 960*600 would be perfect.

Glad to hear it is useful to you.

I'll look into making the minimum window size smaller for the next release - thanks for the feedback.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#183

Post by aw3c2 » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 4:31 PM UTC

ryangilbert wrote: post #63

nflbyeweeks.com - gets over 1,000 uniques each day and generates between $2 and $5 each day with Adsense. Not overly impressive but it's still nice.

I don't understand that site. Is it just the table with the teams on the right? No links, nothing? Or am I missing some plugin? Really amazed that a page like that could attract any useful traffic.

I guess people are lured onto the site by your meta description and then, searching for links, click on the ads. Evil!

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#184

Post by shanecleveland » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 4:32 PM UTC

klawed wrote: post #152

Vivtek wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A word of caution: unless you have the personal skills to deal with tenants, do not make the mistake of thinking that real estate is passive income. Like any earning occupation, landlording takes attention to detail, the ability not to procrastinate, and people skills. Unlike most occupations, landlording will bring you into contact with some of the worst people the planet has to offer, under what has to be the worst…

>Unlike most occupations, landlording will bring you into contact with some of the worst people the planet has to offer, under what has to be the worst possible set of circumstances. I suggest rephrasing to >Unlike most occupations, landlording may bring you into... I've had a rental property now for many years. It's in an evolving, urban Boston neighborhood and the property generates ~$1000 more than the mortgage, t…

Nice touch offering the December rent break. I guess it's just like offering incentives to good employees to generate loyalty and keep them around for the longterm. I am sure there is great worth in offering this small incentive to a tenant you want to keep, even if you could be charging more to a new tenant. Aside from the cost and effort of finding a new tenant, knowing that you have a consistent, paying renter that will take care of your investment is ideal.

My parents have a small, older rental house that they charge less than market rate for, as they have never increased the rent for the current tenant who has lived there for several years. They have had renters trash the place before, and they know getting a little less from a good renter is a preferred scenario.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#185

Post by pkamb » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 4:36 PM UTC

bravoyankee wrote: post #166

w1ntermute wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Come on, lets be serious. Hardly anyone is going to pay $25 for an app they will use only once. And it's an app. Most people flinch at any price over $2.99. Pricing it at $25 would be a disaster. You can bet the barn on that.

> Hardly anyone is going to pay $25 for an app they will use only once.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say_Yes_to_the_Dress

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#186

Post by pkamb » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 4:44 PM UTC

The Mac App Store. Consistent sales of my $8 app EdgeCase and the $3 Reddit Notifier. Plus the more expensive One-Hand Keyboard.

In my experience it's much easier to price higher on the Mac App Store compared to iOS. Especially when you're selling a constantly-running notifier/utility. Feels more worth it when the app is passively used every time you use your Mac, as opposed to whenever you happen to find and use the random app on your 3rd home screen in iOS.

- EdgeCase http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/edgecase/id513826860?mt=12

- Reddit Notifier https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reddit-notifier/id468366517?...

- One-Hand Keyboard http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/one-hand-keyboard-one-hand/id...

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#187

Post by hodder » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 4:57 PM UTC

Stocks work the best for me so far. Specifically Graham style net-nets.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#188

Post by kaisdavis » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 4:58 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #49

hiddenfeatures wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question remains unanswered whether a "more professional" video would not have turned out cheesy. IMHO success proves Patrick right.

> The question remains unanswered whether a "more professional" video would not have turned out cheesy. I don't see how it would have. The whole point of making it more professional would have been to make it less cheesy. If you fail to do that, then you've failed to make it "more professional". > IMHO success proves Patrick right. Patrick's success has primarily been in the written word. This is his first foray into…

You don't know if those tactics would have improved his sales. They're ideas that would make have made the sales page appeal more to you.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#189

Post by Jemaclus » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 4:59 PM UTC

For a long time I refused to sign up for Amazon Prime, and I'd order things that cost $19 or $23, and I'd hunt around for something that would bring in that additional $6 or $3 to meet the minimum price for free Super Saver Shipping (USD $25). I got tired of hunting around for that, so I built http://finishmyorder.com/.

I get like $6/mo in affiliate fees, but I don't really advertise it so I'm lucky I get even that.

Re: Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?

#190

Post by kevinrpope » Thu, Oct 11, 2012, 5:13 PM UTC

brianwillis wrote: post #76

rjurney wrote: post #27

In California, selling cannibas to a co-op you belong to as a patient could be a nice supplemental income. An Aerogrow makes it easy, and with six legal plants, you can grow at least 1.5 pounds every 90 days. I think it works out that you can make $10-15k/year for not much work. And no, my wife would not let me do this :)

I think you win the prize for the most creative idea in this thread.

I'd say it's probably the most unique idea in this thread, given that most HNers likely wouldn't normally think of dealing/selling drugs as being particularly creative.