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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?

#171

Post by revorad »

purringmeow wrote: post #163
revorad wrote: post #104

There is a strange obsession here on HN with passive income. Yet I haven't seen any good examples of passive income, which were built without significant effort or time. Income is anything but passive. Here's a better way to look at it: You want to earn $500/month? As a good Ruby developer, you can earn that much in two days doing contract work. And no, it doesn't matter if you're based in Bangalore, you could be bas…

There is also a strange obsession with consulting. How do you find customers that aren't mom and pop shops looking for someone to build their site for $200?

Write online, ask your friends to refer clients, ask people for work at meetups/conferences, cold call and email companies, look up the dozen remote job boards that crop up every other week, subscribe to every industry mailing list you can.

There are about a 1000 ways to do it. But you have to actually do it.

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

#172

Post by revorad »

danneu wrote: post #158
revorad wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that if it takes so much effort, it's better to spend it on doing something you're not trying to avoid doing. You make more money and it's more satisfying, when the goal is not to stop doing it. But I think people get a kick out of chasing passive income, because it gives them a sense of having "hacked" the system.

Trading time for money is already how it works. It's the default. There's nothing more satisfying about it. We've been doing it since we got our first job sacking groceries or folding sweaters. You're paid a fixed rate because you're not the one risking anything. This isn't "The System". It's just the labor market. > My point is that if it takes so much effort... So what? It takes effort. Everything does. Building so…

Chill out, danneu. You misunderstood me.

I'd be the last person to say don't build a business! I'm saying the opposite. Selling time does suck and selling a product or service is much better.

All I'm saying is that if that's what you want to do, then do it properly. Don't waste time on "passive" stuff. Actively build a business.

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

#173

Post by lunixbochs »

fillskills wrote: post #54
Red_Tarsius wrote: post #12

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.

I actually built this a while back with things I learned while building Flockdraw. Never released it for various reasons. Trolls are definitely a problem.

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

#174

Post by dalacv »

Bahamut wrote: post #154
paul9290 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a builtwithangular.com site yet? If not that might be a good ship to jump on now, as it's the buzzword for tech recruiters. Most of whom have no clue what it is.

https://builtwith.angularjs.org This is actually on a public repo on GitHub I believe & curated by the Angular team iirc.

BuiltwithLaravel?

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

#175

Post by sitkack »

revorad wrote: post #112
IgorPartola wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive income does not mean no effort. It means initial investment that pays off over time. For example, book sales or a portfolio of stock photos would be passive income.

My point is that if it takes so much effort, it's better to spend it on doing something you're not trying to avoid doing. You make more money and it's more satisfying, when the goal is not to stop doing it. But I think people get a kick out of chasing passive income, because it gives them a sense of having "hacked" the system.

From my perspective, passive income is about having enough cushion, esp in the US where we have no safety net, so that we can work on stuff that is value over just money. I have lots of stuff I want to work on that other people would like, but is risky from an income standpoint. Passive income is our own version of "basic income" so we can pursue other things. Not winning or hacking the system.

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

#176

Post by jnbiche »

revorad wrote: post #171
purringmeow wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a strange obsession with consulting. How do you find customers that aren't mom and pop shops looking for someone to build their site for $200?

Write online, ask your friends to refer clients, ask people for work at meetups/conferences, cold call and email companies, look up the dozen remote job boards that crop up every other week, subscribe to every industry mailing list you can. There are about a 1000 ways to do it. But you have to actually do it.

Here's a business plan: someone build a site for us developers who despise marketing and/or who suck at it.

(I mean, if I loved marketing, I would have become a marketer).

Pair us with someone who loves marketing. S/he finds high-paying consulting jobs, I build awesome sites and/or mobile apps, and we split all the income 50%/50%, minus fees for the company.

Have some kind of rating system, where both your peers and customers rate your work. The higher that you are rated, the better marketer you can get paired with. I imagine the top marketing experts could find clients willing to pay $1000/hr rates for the top developers.

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

#177

Post by iurisilvio »

dmos62 wrote: post #135
IgorPartola wrote: post #28

Meta: if you respond with "I run a small project and it is generating X per month for me", would you please provide links? I know it seems self-promoting but in reality in discussions like this it is very interesting.

I find people in these discussions rarely want to share their actual products/sites. If I had to speculate as to why, I'd say that many of them profit from having found a micro-niche with minimal competition, so it makes sense for them to keep it to themselves.

In my case, it is a niche with some competitors. I don't share because I don't want to relate the project with me (I'm not worried if someone find it). I don't share it even with friends.

Also it is an SEO experiment, all my traffic (97%) is Google organic.

It's ~4 months old, has 75k hits/month and generate USD 60. It still growth 100% month over month.

I need some months to return the money I invested (designer, domain, ...), but I don't even count my time. I'm learning more from this project than with anything else I already did.

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

#178

Post by sitkack »

iopq wrote: post #134
tim333 wrote: post #86

Sell Indian pharmaceuticals by post? There's some margin there I'm sure.

Already a huge amount of competitors out there.

Take bitcoin, have a nice minimal site and decent package tracking.

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

#179

Post by imaginenore »

silver1 wrote: post #99
imaginenore wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drop-shipping is a still-born idea. 99.9% of the time you will not make money, and will spend time advertising someone else's product. Same with "buy from the manufacturer" - unless you have a lot of storage space, and enough money to hold a lot of inventory, you can't even get into that business. That's assuming the product can even be stored for long periods of time without depreciating (pretty much all of electron…

Dropship: In india its an untapped opportunity ... someone can just create a fortune by even tapping 1% of the market - of course its a little bit of work. Buying from Manufacturer: again its a haven if you can find a niche product ... there are millions of manufacturers in small cities in india who create fantastic products ... you do little bit of research about what is selling or trending and start with small inve…

> there are millions of manufacturers in small cities in india who create fantastic products

Such as?

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

#180

Post by rubiquity »

zo1 wrote: post #65
santhoshr wrote: post #43

From Bangalore too. Amateur programmer, but have a ton of experience and networks in a niche sector. I pull in decent amount of money in passive income. (1) I would say focus first on value rather than money. I delivered my service for free or on trial basis for almost 6 months before clients signed up to pay. (2) As a freelancer, focus on long-term retainer relationships, built on your value-proposition. And work wi…

What is "B2B"?

Beef to Bun. It's a ratio used by burger connoisseurs to decide whether the burger maker is delivering decent value.
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