What was your best passive income in 2014? • Hacker News Board

Re: What was your best passive income in 2014?

#51

Post by cageface » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 1:19 PM UTC

MobileAppVault wrote: post #43

cageface wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations! Sad though that even a featured app only pulls in $90/month. My own iPhone photo app, Liquid Lens: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/liquid-lens-real-time-psyche... actually briefly cracked the top 200 photo apps this month and pulls in more than $90 but is still only in the coffee money income bracket. After four years of the indie iOS thing I'm tooling back up to do web dev again.

Yes, I guessed it will be more. :( How much do you get with the free version of Liquid Lens?

I was hoping that the free version + IAP would generate significantly more revenue than the paid version, since I've read so many articles claiming that freemium is the future of the app store.

So far this hasn't been true though. Currently IAP revenue from the free version tends to be about 1/3 the revenue of the paid version even though free app downloads outnumber paid by at least 10 to 1 on most days. It does seem like IAP has been ticking up a bit over the last few weeks though. Maybe people have to play with the app for a while before they're willing to pay for it?

Personally I'd prefer to just do paid apps, since adding IAP + store transactions adds a fair bit of work.

Re: What was your best passive income in 2014?

#52

Post by chatmasta » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 1:19 PM UTC

johnward wrote: post #36

vilius wrote: post #34

$5k per month for 18 months in a row. Made a portfolio website for my girlfriend. Got positive feedback, refactored into Wordpress theme and published on ThemeForest. Not 100% passive as I spend 3-4 hours per week for answering support emails. ThemeForest is a perfect place for passive income if you are a website developer. At first it challenges your skills as you need to create the concept, design it and code it. T…

Is this all from a single theme? What percentage are you at? I've contemplated converting some of my custom WP themes to sell on ThemeForest but I didn't think it would be worth the time. edit: I often wonder if it would be worth it to try to compete with theme clubs. They seem to make a killing on recurring revenue and release a couple of themes a year.

Theme clubs? Are those the places where you pay a subscription fee to be in a limited club of people that get a new theme every couple weeks?

In general people spend a lot of money on themes. I think you might be better off competing with themeforest or more likely, any of the number of bootstrap theme website popping up.

Re: What was your best passive income in 2014?

#53

Post by johnward » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 1:19 PM UTC

maxlamb81 wrote: post #42

fabiendem wrote: post #24

Not proud of it, but around $500/mo thanks to 3 white label dating websites. Easy money, no maintenance needed for 2 years now... Could make much more with some time invested in it!

What dating niches did you come up with? Why do you say you are not proud of it?

I'd imagine it's more about the stigma behind these dating sites. Fake profiles etc.

Re: What was your best passive income in 2014?

#54

Post by sdernley » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 1:20 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #20

MobileAppVault wrote: post #16

Built an iPhone app which is still featured by Apple in the new selfie category. 90$/mo with no marketing costs. :) The app called Picr. https://itunes.apple.com/app/picr-everyday-photo-reminder/id...

Congratulations! Sad though that even a featured app only pulls in $90/month. My own iPhone photo app, Liquid Lens: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/liquid-lens-real-time-psyche... actually briefly cracked the top 200 photo apps this month and pulls in more than $90 but is still only in the coffee money income bracket. After four years of the indie iOS thing I'm tooling back up to do web dev again.

I have an app that floats around the top 200 in the travel section but it doesn't really bring in much (i'm only using iAD and not charging for the app). I guess the travel section is probably a little easier to crack than some sections though.

Re: What was your best passive income in 2014?

#55

Post by rachelandrew » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 1:20 PM UTC

I keep meaning to write up complete figures but I launched my self-published ebook The Profitable Side Project Handbook in January http://rachelandrew.co.uk/books/the-profitable-side-project

Sales from that are well over 10K USD at this point. A lot of that was over the launch week, I've not had a huge amount of time to devote to marketing it over the last couple of months as our main business (which was a side project until it took off) has kept me busy, so it really is passive income at this point.

Re: What was your best passive income in 2014?

#56

Post by andreash » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 1:21 PM UTC

vilius wrote: post #34

$5k per month for 18 months in a row. Made a portfolio website for my girlfriend. Got positive feedback, refactored into Wordpress theme and published on ThemeForest. Not 100% passive as I spend 3-4 hours per week for answering support emails. ThemeForest is a perfect place for passive income if you are a website developer. At first it challenges your skills as you need to create the concept, design it and code it. T…

Impressive. Link to the theme? curious.

Re: What was your best passive income in 2014?

#57

Post by mikemac » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 1:21 PM UTC

easyname wrote: post #47

johnward wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a special insurance for this (I confess I have no idea how India works)? What are you going to do when someone totals it?

I have insurance like that of any private vehicle. I am not prepared for the other question you have asked, its a risk.

I'm also ignorant of how the legal and insurance system works in India, but that seems like far too large of a liability if someone is injured while using your equipment.

Re: What was your best passive income in 2014?

#58

Post by ph4 » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 1:22 PM UTC

About $75-$100 a month from a simple AdSense site that ranks highly for some key terms. Pretty lame.

Re: What was your best passive income in 2014?

#59

Post by MobileAppVault » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 1:22 PM UTC

dpweb wrote: post #18

mikaelj wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of websites?

Blogs mostly, and ideas I come up with like http://codeht.ml although I don't put ads on all of em. Would love any marketing ideas, as I don't know how to spread the word quickly and effectively.

Can you post a link from some of your blogs? thx :)

Re: What was your best passive income in 2014?

#60

Post by johnward » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 1:22 PM UTC

dpweb wrote: post #22

ernopp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just from ads?

yea, adsense only

I used to do a few hundred a month from adsense on my tutorial site. Google penalties and lack of updates and now I only see a few dollars a month. My traffic went from ~70k uniques per month to 5-10k, so it's not that shocking that the earnings went down.

Sadly the spammy made for adsense sites I had did much better than the one legit site I poured most of my time into. I think this is part of the reason so much crap exists.