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Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?

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Re: Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?

#51
I have several passive income sources. I started a community websites since 2006 which generates me around $1500/mo in passive income.

Have you any ideas what tools might make your (dev) life easier? You can create a small productive/utility SaaS app. Use bootstrap if you don't have any design skills. Use PayPal/Stripe to setup a (recurring) payment system in a day.

Test using lean methodology, buy a domain, create landing page with bootstrap, pricing page, and a fake sign up page. Takes max a week. Then spend another one week driving some traffic from Google/Facebook ads to see if there's any interest. Usually Facebook, if targeted well, is way cheaper. Start using Google once you know your LTV (Life Time Value of customer) and conversion. Start by spending for example $20.

One tip: Don't target US customers in Facebook for polling interest, they are harder to convert, and from my experience around 10x/20x more expensive than Asian/Spanish speaking countries.

After you see interest, try to find a quick way to see if people are willing to pay. This might not as easy as most users want to use your product before paying. You might explain the product in better detail after the signup and ask what they want to pay for it.

After you are able to confirm if people are willing to pay for your service, only then spend serious time building.

You can apply the same tactic if you're selling an e-book, maybe the spices idea as someone mentioned before.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?

#52
post #6

$500 per month is $6000 per year. $100,000 in high dividend stocks may generate close to that much in dividends per year. So contract for $100 per hour for 1500 hours in the next 18 months. Then make a good investment.

Or you can buy an apartment in eastern Europe and rent it for $700-1000 per month.

Re: Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?

#53

I'd give a read to Start Small, Stay Small (www.startupbook.net) and other startup literature. Study Paul Graham's essays (www.paulgraham.com). Random ideas: - Start something like skoshbox.com, but with Indian goodies. You may not realize it, but foreign countries crave Indian tastes and flavors. I would probably pay for a monthly delivery of Indian spices and sweets. - Start a podcast on a passion of yours. Offer f…

- Indian spices idea sounds great. If anyone wants to work on it, I can transfer a domain I have: spicetsunami.com

Re: Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?

#54

I'd give a read to Start Small, Stay Small (www.startupbook.net) and other startup literature. Study Paul Graham's essays (www.paulgraham.com). Random ideas: - Start something like skoshbox.com, but with Indian goodies. You may not realize it, but foreign countries crave Indian tastes and flavors. I would probably pay for a monthly delivery of Indian spices and sweets. - Start a podcast on a passion of yours. Offer f…

- Also love the Omegle meets Paint idea. Easy to code, hard to market.

Re: Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?

#55
post #23
post #13

Since March this year, I have been able to build a semi-passive income of around $1500 per month (lowest around $1000 and highest $2000) by building/selling items on CodeCanyon. Granted it's not truly passive income, rather semi-passive. That said, with minimal monthly efforts, the money comes in each month.

aren't they taking 50% of your sales?

Huh, and here is another idea - build CodeCanyon clone but take 20% :)

Re: Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?

#57

I have several passive income sources. I started a community websites since 2006 which generates me around $1500/mo in passive income. Have you any ideas what tools might make your (dev) life easier? You can create a small productive/utility SaaS app. Use bootstrap if you don't have any design skills. Use PayPal/Stripe to setup a (recurring) payment system in a day. Test using lean methodology, buy a domain, create l…

And how long did it take until you make $1500 / mo ? And how many time you spend to build it up ?

Re: Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?

#59
post #39
post #38

[deleted]

I'm interested in training as well ... whats your area of expertise and how do you make your passive income?

I generate a passive income through options trading. It takes a small amount of my time each week.

I have built up a wealth of knowledge through years of study. I have experimented with most forms of passive income over 20 years and found that most of them don't meet the requirements of "passive income".

Re: Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?

#60
Build a pile of small (Ruby) applications. Small in terms that the prototype could be delivered in weeks, and only needs a few weeks till production. So first step is to fine "easy jobs" that you can solve faster then others, and sort out the bad customers. I offer 2% discount if they pay invoices within a week. Only two type of customers would pay late: Those with a cash flow problem, and those with an account problem. Drop them! Also drop any kind of toxic customers. Keep the good ones.

Offer a maintenance contract of $50 per month for the server and the software to the good customer. A year later you will have 4 or 5 contracts paying half of your bill, for doing backups once a week, installing security updates, writing invoices, and perhaps sometimes writing an email to the customer or even patching a bug.

You can play around with own ideas, once you have a semi passive income. I would try to solve a problem with a software as a service.

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