Live data from Hacker News

I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

greglim81.medium.com

111–120 of 229 posts

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#111

I'm pulling a late-nighter decommissioning stuff and I stumble across your post. Thank you for the inspiration I needed for a new income stream! Please inbox me I believe we have a few commonalities. Or don't I won't be offended. I needed a little kick in the zen.

Not OP but you don't have contact info in your profile

Thanks! I just put my email there. I'm new at this.

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive is the opposite of active, I get the definition. Something you're no longer really actively working on that keeps making money. I'm jealous, I'd love to have such an idea. But this seems different -so far-. This is more akin to building 80 money printing machines that each print a certain amount of money. They may work forever, or die in 6 months, or not work at all. I guess my entire point is that this is a…

Its mainly jsut about eight books that bring in majority of the income. Amazon doesn't allow authors to delete unpublished books, thus showing 80. you can check out the active books here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=greg+lim&ref=nb_sb_noss

Useful clarification!

Would also be interesting to see what your sales tail is like… are some of your books still selling decently several years after publishing?

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#113

This doesn't sound like passive income as I understand the term. Writing a book is a ton of hard work, compared to, say, buying and renting out a house.

It is though cause once it is published you get the income passively. However the topics of these books are perishable, so, have a end date

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#114
I know a lot of people on HN are not a fan of monetising with ads.

That said, an alternative to writing a whole book before seeing if people will pay, is to write a blog.

You’ll get validation in smaller chunks and can iterate.

Currently the display ads on my blog pay between $15 - $30 per thousand visitors, and many blogs earn a lot more than that.

If you’re writing a non fiction book in a technical niche, it’s fairly easy to get traffic from Google if you write in depth posts around 1,500 words each.

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#115
Writing (from a quick skim check) at least 16 books over a period of 6 years, and earning money from that, is not exactly what I'd call "passive income". And given the topics are mostly (all?) about niches in current technologies they also won't continue to deliver passively forever.

A more appropriate title and angle might be "How I've earned $10k/book and manage to keep writing more while maintaining a day job". (Which is in itself impressive!)

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#116
post #53
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is LaTeX still a good choice for "modern" ebooks? Do folks still want PDFs?

if i don't see a pdf, i don't buy it

Why is that, if I may ask? Do you print all your e-books? I find PDF to be an inferior format for consumption on a screen.

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#117

Writing (from a quick skim check) at least 16 books over a period of 6 years, and earning money from that, is not exactly what I'd call "passive income". And given the topics are mostly (all?) about niches in current technologies they also won't continue to deliver passively forever. A more appropriate title and angle might be "How I've earned $10k/book and manage to keep writing more while maintaining a day job". (W…

The image near the top of the post suggests that he's written 78 books!

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#118

> I wake up daily excited to write. When work is a dread, or when something unhappy pops up, some writing will always bring in positive energy into me. I don’t dread writing. In fact, I can’t stop myself from writing! I fear we are built different.

See also where Brandon Sanderson's (an author) guilty pleasure and stress reliever is writing more (in the form of things he wasn't intending to write)

That's the name I think of every time someone talks about constant writing. He admits that he is emotionally very stable and doesn't suffer of ups and downs as most of the other writers.

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#119
post #72
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone that thinks renting houses is passive income has never done it. Repairs, collections, advertising, evictions, etc.

But all of this is something you can contract out to an agency for a cut of the rent.

That cut of the rent ends up being around all of the cash flow for a newly bought property, and in many markets ends up being more than the initial cash flow. It’s a second job with irregular on-call.

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Passive income can initially take work to build the income source. Most people consider rent to be passive income, yet people don't just magically own houses, they more often than not work to buy them.

People do magically own houses. It's called inheritance.

Do you think houses are most commonly inherited or worked for?
Post reply on HN