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Your best passive income? (2014)

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81–90 of 437 posts

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#81
Bought the app Sleep Cycle Calculator from its previous owner. Completely redid the interface for iOS 7, and I'm now finishing up a version with a custom UIView.

I paid a designer to completely redo the interface, but then iOS 7 happened. Lost a lot of customers with the transition, because I had to throw away the new design and start again.

http://appstore.com/sleepcyclecalculatorwakinguprefreshed

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#82

Not much has changed since the last thread. Improvely ( https://www.improvely.com ) is still in the 5-digit monthly RR range and growing, and I do no outbound marketing other than some PPC ads that don't need much active management. Everything that can be automated has been automated (onboarding, lifecycle mails, dunning mails for billing issues, etc), leaving me free to spend all my time on support and improving the…

Small typo on the bottom of the page here: https://www.improvely.com/features/click-fraud-detection Yo'uve Btw the product looks awesome.

Thanks, fixed it

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#84

My iOS app that teaches you what a tesseract is and lets you manipulate it in 3D and 4D. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fourth-dimension/id50420... It blows my mind that people still find out about this app and happily buy it every day even though it occupies such a small geeky niche.

Seems to violate the premise of "the dumber the app, the more popular it will be." Awesome.

"The dumber the app..." works almost everytime. I launched a conceptually great app which was a complete failure: https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/gravity-byte/id504372023?mt=...

Then launched a card game which is a decent success..

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#86
I wrote a book titled "Expert PHP Deployments" on how to deploy any PHP application using Vagrant, Capistrano, and Phing.

http://growingsoftware.org/expert-php-deployments/

It hasn't made me rich, but it usually sells about a copy a day. I love that it's entirely passive. I wrote it, published it, and it just sits there on my website making money.

It's also been a good way to build a list of people who would be interested in other things I make.

PS. Use coupon code "hn" for $2 off if you're interested.

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#88
A few years ago, I wanted to build an oscilloscope in my pocket, so I went ahead and did it. Then I wanted a spectrum analyzer, and then an equalizer.

1) oScope — an oscilloscope in your pocket. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oscope/id344345859?mt=8

2) Octave — a real-time audio analyzer. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/octave-an-rta-for-the-iphone...

3) Fourier — a spectrum analyzer. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fourier/id386084557?mt=8

I built all of these for fun in college, and I've occasionally updated them afterwards. The only thing I do now is answer a few emails a week. I've since gone back to grad school, but the yearly income has not changed, and approaches my stipend (low 5-digit).

What's been really neat is how people have found unexpected ways to use the apps. Sound engineers for halls and communities use Octave to set up the sound for concerts. Teachers use oScope to help kids understand how sound is composed of moving pressure waves of air, and how pitch is the frequency of these waves. Also, oScope had a tiny cameo in the show Homeland, as a "fancy science-looking analyzer tool for spying on people" (uncredited, unfortunately).

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#89
post #16

If you're looking for some dropshipping insights (which the OP's link suggests), here's a nice story: http://www.ecommercefuel.com/selling-an-ecommerce-store/

That one's interesting, but leans more towards the "part-time small business" side than the "passive" side imo. Manning a phone line 4 hours/day M-F in particular makes it at least a part-time job, since you can't do that and also be traveling, holding another job, or studying full-time.
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