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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?

#101

Post by neil_s »

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…

The Indian goodies subscription service might be a great startup idea (a la Graze, Pact Coffee, Dollar Shave Club...), but its hardly a passive income? Its a high involvement logistics business with a small technology involvement.

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

#102

Post by hluska »

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…

A monthly delivery of Indian spices would be incredible. If you could get it past the Canadian food inspection agency, I'd definitely subscribe (and possibly get your logo tattooed on my arm)...:)

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

#103

Post by Kiro »

simonhamp wrote: post #62

I run Built With Bootstrap ( http://builtwithbootstrap.com ) that brings close to $2,000 on average each month in "mostly passive" income. How? Here are a few things that have helped: 1) I got lucky - I jumped on something early and got picked up quickly and rode on the back of a giant gorilla as it kept getting higher and higher - right place, right time 2) I keep costs low - I use Tumblr (free) and cheap, pluggable…

How do you earn money?

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

#104

Post by revorad »

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 based in Belgaum and it wouldn't matter, as long as you had a good internet connection.

You can make more money while doing work you enjoy, instead of trying so hard looking for passive income. And you can save up, invest that money and buy solid chunks of time to totally focus on your crazy startup ideas.

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

#106

Post by IgorPartola »

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…

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.

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

#107

Post by untilHellbanned »

zura wrote: post #55
vittore wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aren't they taking 50% of your sales?

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

Onarbor takes code and only 10%, https://onarbor.com

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

#109

Post by shellerik »

silver1 wrote: post #26

Either you can sell your own product/services or sell someone else's product/services ... - Take advantage of growing e-commerce in India - sell other peoples product ... buy directly from manufacturer and sell it to consumers thru platforms like Flipkart, Snapdeal, etc. ... most of the manufacturer in tier-2 and 3 cities dont have a clue about e-comm selling so help them out and make a good return... - Start affilia…

I recently started an affiliate business. I'm not sure if it will make $500 per month but it just made $60 in its second month so I'm cautiously optimistic.

For some types of purchase I do a lot of research to find the right item for me. I actually enjoy the researching process so an affiliate site is a good match for me. A big part of the work is providing useful content which you can only do after performing good research.

My site is a huge searchable catalog of products with affiliate links to Amazon if they're for sale on Amazon, otherwise I provide non-affiliate links to wherever they are for sale. Most affiliate sites are based on product reviews but my site's approach is to provide more search options with more accurate data (data that is often incorrect on Amazon).

If I estimate the hours I've put into it so far I'm surely making less than $1 per hour for my time but as the earnings increase and my new hours decrease it might eventually be a wise investment.

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

#110

Post by njloof »

zo1 wrote: post #72
csomar wrote: post #16

You don't want to earn a passive income. You want to leave your job. Fine. Except that looking for passive income stream is not the best idea out there. If you can contract for $80/hour for US/EU clients (really possible), you'll need to work only 40 hours to cover a 6 month expenses. But that won't probably be enough for one month, once you start earning it. You've been warned ;)

" If you can contract for $80/hour for US/EU clients (really possible) " Do you have more info/advice about that? I've often flirted with the idea of online freelancing for overseas companies... But a lot of the freelancing sites either seem too dodgy/cheap, or elitist about "github" commits and the like.

What does "elitist about 'GitHub' commits" mean?
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