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Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

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31–40 of 180 posts

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#31

Passive income isn't. Lots of little projects may look like passive income but almost all of them (not saying it can't be done but I just have not seen any) have some kind of overhead. It may be better to search for something that can be started small but that you can eventually scale.

When people say they want "passive income", I take it to mean "I want to start a tiny business and then neglect it and hope it dies slowly".

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#32
post #22

1. Identify a very niche pain for businesses. 2. Make phone calls every day to the people making buying decisions for that pain. Try to close the deal, even without a product. 3. Start building after your first deal closes. 4. As you build, keep calling and closing. 5. Script out common support issues as you encounter them, and offload to VA. My previous startup generates many times more passive income than $1k/mo, a…

Businesses are way better than Joe Consumer, they need less support and pay more.

On that subject, stay away from "free" plans, unless you really need freemium marketing - the support for free users is usually the most.

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#33
post #15

Save $200k and buy a 33% leveraged muni bond closed end fund, which are currently yielding approx 6% tax free at a 10% discount due to the recent bond selloff. Disclaimer: if interest rates rise you will be unable to reclaim your principal but, generally speaking, this income stream should be pretty safe for the foreseeable future. And of course, $1000 a month today is not going to be as much in the future if inflati…

Can you give an example of funds like this? Maybe instructions on how you would search for them?

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#34
post #25

I made a lot of passive income by coding trading bots for bitcoin. Its a steep learning curve but if you are willing to learn, it can be very profitable. Like you, I can code confidently so during my morning commute I would read books about trading and economics. In the evening I would play with bits of code interfacing with broker API's. Within 3 months I had a working bot that automatically traded away as I slept a…

What did your bitcoin bots trade?

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#35

If there was some method of turning a skill into passive income with any reliability, people would replicate the idea again and again and so get 1,000,000/month eventually. You're asking for the impossible.

False. Imagine you had a magic formula to create businesses that make $5,000/month and only take up 10 hours/week of your time. Wave that wand once and you have a $60k salary and a thoroughly leisure class lifestyle. Wave it twice and you're living quite nicely without really breaking a sweat. Most of us stopped there. Notice that every time you use your magic formula, you take away another chunk of your free time. B…

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Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#36
No such thing as "passive income" except maybe buying securitized debt (bonds, etc. but then you got inflation to worry about).

A business is a business; the amount of labor you'll have to put into it will be proportional to the supply and demand that exists in that specific market.

Sorry, but there's no free lunch.

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#37
If you think there is such thing as passive income, you have anything thing coming.

If you want to be sold a "passive income mega business", go and have a look at Blackhat World, the scummiest place on the internet.

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#38
post #34
post #25

I made a lot of passive income by coding trading bots for bitcoin. Its a steep learning curve but if you are willing to learn, it can be very profitable. Like you, I can code confidently so during my morning commute I would read books about trading and economics. In the evening I would play with bits of code interfacing with broker API's. Within 3 months I had a working bot that automatically traded away as I slept a…

What did your bitcoin bots trade?

Uhm... Bitcoins?

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#39

No such thing as "passive income" except maybe buying securitized debt (bonds, etc. but then you got inflation to worry about). A business is a business; the amount of labor you'll have to put into it will be proportional to the supply and demand that exists in that specific market. Sorry, but there's no free lunch.

He's not looking for a free lunch -- he's looking for specific market ideas.

Also, while I sort of agree about the "no such thing as passive income" point, I think he just means 1-2 hours a week level passive.

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#40
If you have 1 - 2 hours per day and you're willing to learn anything, learn to write and build an audience.

An audience is a more valuable asset than a product. Once you have an audience you can launch anything you want.

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