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Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

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Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#91

Post by eik3_de »

drewcrawford wrote: post #55

Two ideas. 1. I desperately want to be able to send a link to somebody and have them be able to book a N-minute meeting on my calendar (CalDav) without any further interaction. I have spent probably several hours trying out products, all of which suck. I currently spend $30/month on a tool that really doesn't even work. 2. The enterprise IM (CampFire, HipChat, etc.) is pretty well done at this point, but the "group c…

http://webchat.freenode.net/?randomnick=1&channels=ubuntu&ui...

Is actually quite easy to use..

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#92

Post by contingencies »

greghinch wrote: post #43
contingencies wrote: post #5

Work someplace. Live frugally. Don't spend the money. Leave it in term deposits or other low risk, relatively high yield (ie. at least above inflation) locations. Rinse and repeat. (Recently, I heard that Vietnam offers solid rates on term deposits in foreign currencies.)

Having spent some time in Vietnam, and spoken with residents (expats and natives), I would not invest my money there. Or most SEA countries. Too many tales of foreigners getting screwed with little to no recourse.

Eggs and baskets!

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#93

Post by contingencies »

vacri wrote: post #65
contingencies wrote: post #5

Work someplace. Live frugally. Don't spend the money. Leave it in term deposits or other low risk, relatively high yield (ie. at least above inflation) locations. Rinse and repeat. (Recently, I heard that Vietnam offers solid rates on term deposits in foreign currencies.)

I went to Vietnam nearly two years ago, and the inflation rate at the time was 22%. I'm not a financial guy, but inherently that doesn't sound low-risk.

You missed the bit ...in foreign currencies. I'm not saying it's true, just that someone I met who was living there long term and sounded like he knew what he was talking about swore it was the best feature of the country, and was certainly no idiot.

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#94

Post by WalterBright »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #59
WalterBright wrote: post #49

Cut your spending so you have a few hundred extra per month. Invest it in SPY (an index stock for the S&P 500). Over time, you'll build up passive income. One reasonable way to cut spending is to sell your car if you have financed it, and buy a car you can afford to pay cash for. Financing is a huge drain on your cash.

That really depends on the overall situation. Financing a car that you could afford in cash might well be less risky than having too little cash on hand for emergencies.

The people I know who finance their car have no cash for emergencies, either, because their money goes to the finance company.

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#96

Post by aaron695 »

jasonkester wrote: post #24
mynameishere wrote: post #11

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…

I think you've miss read the question

> I have 1-2 hours daily that I can spend on any project/activity that will, after some work, generate $1000/per month net in passive income.

$1000/28days at lets say 1.5hours = $23 per hour.

So I'm guessing they are not wanting to do the 1-2 hours per day once it's up and running, because $23/hour is not passive income.

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#97

Post by WalterBright »

adventured wrote: post #63
WalterBright wrote: post #49

Cut your spending so you have a few hundred extra per month. Invest it in SPY (an index stock for the S&P 500). Over time, you'll build up passive income. One reasonable way to cut spending is to sell your car if you have financed it, and buy a car you can afford to pay cash for. Financing is a huge drain on your cash.

This isn't a good strategy. First of all the timing factor alone can hammer your principle (particularly with stocks sitting at all time highs). If you have a skill that is valuable, you're far better off leveraging into that, for the returns are massive by comparison to the puny returns in stock indices. If you can earn just 10% every year in stocks, you're a wizard that should be working on Wall Street earning mill…

You can say it's silly, but I know many people who live below their income and invest the difference in stocks. Over 20-30 years, yes they do build up enough to generate significant passive income, and many of them have become millionaires in the process.

It's not a quick way to wealth, but it works, and does not require any particular cleverness nor much of any work.

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#98

Post by aaron695 »

patio11 wrote: post #87
aaron695 wrote: post #27

I never get why these vague I want money posts get to the front page, how is this hacking? Wanting more money, for little work? That's status quo. Anyway stop wasting your life on stuff would be my tip. Or Learn to cook well(healthy and tasty) over a few months, it'll save you money and health costs. Great tax free not wasting money passive habit to pick up.

Consider it the creative application of computer code to systemic weaknesses in the global economy, with a clearly defined success function which is fairly difficult to fudge. That might help explain some of the attraction. (There's also the "If you only know W-2 employees, then making money by a legitimate means other than a day job feels like cheating", and for some reason a lot of hackers like winning by rules exp…

Good hack, yep that's a interesting question.

Edit: Weakness - language. Solution get a bi-lingual friend who can suggest a non English success story. This in reverse http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-02-29/the-germany-...

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#99

Post by drewcrawford »

PedroCandeias wrote: post #66
drewcrawford wrote: post #55

Two ideas. 1. I desperately want to be able to send a link to somebody and have them be able to book a N-minute meeting on my calendar (CalDav) without any further interaction. I have spent probably several hours trying out products, all of which suck. I currently spend $30/month on a tool that really doesn't even work. 2. The enterprise IM (CampFire, HipChat, etc.) is pretty well done at this point, but the "group c…

1. Just out of curiosity, could you please share what that tool is? 2. Like iffyuva said, I believe HipChat has that option. As does Campfire. The thing is maybe those groups aren't willing to pay for such a solution?

> The thing is maybe those groups aren't willing to pay for such a solution?

Actually I think they want to pay more. At least I do. HipChat charges $2/user; I would pay $5 or $10.

The real problem is that tools designed for companies consolidate the billing. If I start a chat for my local user group then I am on the hook socially to upgrade my plan to let new people join. If I am successful in cultivating a useful chat then essentially I am punished for it, and the punishment grows without bound. One of the groups I participate in has over a thousand members.

Meanwhile I would be happy to pay for a friend or three, with the understanding that the other 997 people who may want to join need to pay their own way. And with mostly individual accounts you can probably ask for significantly more per user than HipChat can.

And the effort to get people to sign up might be effectively free if you funnel part of the license fee back to the organization who no longer needs to pass the hat around for pizza money or whatever. This may create regulatory problems, but if we're just talking about the customer acquisition equation, there are a lot of awkward situations where somebody forgot to bring cash that I would very happily roll into a monthly debit to forget about.

Re: Ask HN: Passive income ideas?

#100

Post by hayksaakian »

tpsc wrote: post #62
hayksaakian wrote: post #9

If you have any kind of social media following, you could exploit it with affiliate links. Someone posted a good article about finding niches in the app store recently. Something simple that satisfies an unmet need could earn decent ad money.

http://www.trevormckendrick.com/how-to-choose-a-profitable-n...

Yeah that's the one. There's a follow up worth reading as well.
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