Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2018?

news.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 171 posts

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2018?

#22

Alright. I'll be that guy. I look at your list of side projects and I see nothing that's remotely passive. They all look like tons of work! My best passive income this year is my index funds -- for instance, the S&P 500 is up 3.9% year-to-date, and I've cumulatively spent under an hour this year thinking about it. Hard to imagine what else besides investments qualifies as passive. Maybe real estate? But how passive t…

I think it's pretty well understood that passive means without requiring on-going work, support or maintenance.

Even investing takes up-front work in the form of research and to actually setup the investment.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2018?

#23
post #20

One small geography site, bringing "only" like 600-700$ a year, but it is passive. https://random.country/ I made few more similiar sites, but they all failed.

like the simplicity and ux. what is the business model?

There was no business model. It was just to learn code few years back. Then after a year I noticed there is some traffic on site. So I put ads there, and that is basically everything.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2018?

#24

I built https://dependabot.com to be passive, but ended up going full time on it (the startup I was working on feel through). Generates $9k/month passively, but I put my full-time energy into growing it (adding new languages / improving support for existing ones).

One of those things that make you jealous because they seem so obvious in hindsight.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2018?

#25

One small geography site, bringing "only" like 600-700$ a year, but it is passive. https://random.country/ I made few more similiar sites, but they all failed.

Nice. Did the domain cost you too much ?

.country domain is something like 20 to 30$ a year I think. It was free domain when I searched for it.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2018?

#26

I built https://dependabot.com to be passive, but ended up going full time on it (the startup I was working on feel through). Generates $9k/month passively, but I put my full-time energy into growing it (adding new languages / improving support for existing ones).

Love Dependabot! Worth every penny.

Happy you can work on it full time.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2018?

#28
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how did you start?

Came across some reddit posts saying there's good money to be made -- found a niche that seemed underserved and started banging out the stories. It's hard work but if you get a following and have a style your readers like it becomes easier.

I take it these are short stories? How long does it take you to write and publish each one?

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2018?

#29
post #16

One small geography site, bringing "only" like 600-700$ a year, but it is passive. https://random.country/ I made few more similiar sites, but they all failed.

From ads?

To be honest, I don't even know how to montize such small and simple site. This is not service where you return every day, or every few days. It's like you use this site for a minute, two, than you forget about it.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2018?

#30
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

like the simplicity and ux. what is the business model?

There was no business model. It was just to learn code few years back. Then after a year I noticed there is some traffic on site. So I put ads there, and that is basically everything.

thanks for the reply. didn't see the ads (blocker).

might also work to feature some amazon products (books, maps, globes, …).

i wonder how to drive more traffic. maybe a social (media) aspect like inviting friends/posting scores.

Post reply on HN