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

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

#201

Post by greglim81 »

mnky9800n wrote: post #167
simonjgreen wrote: post #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". (W…

working in church ministry i wonder how much time the OP actually commits to work. My guess is they think they works 40 hours a week but actually doesn't.

i make sure not to take a lot of time to write a book. I don't write everyday. Perhaps just 3-4 days in a week? And at most 45 min per day.

whenever i am busy with church, family, i will put writing down. Won't ever compromise them.

And, its just a hobby i enjoy doing.

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

#202

Post by d--b »

pc86 wrote: post #186

The thing that always bothers me about these articles, and I completely accept it may just me reading into it what I want to see, is I immediately assume the dollar figure is annual. $160k/yr sounds like great passive income. You could certainly stop working a 9-5 and build out a really great lifestyle business. But then I look at the article. Oh, it's over six years ? Okay, $26k/yr is a lot less and all of a sudden…

Yes, but at least, he's not selling you the version that says "I hired a bunch of people in {enter 3rd world country} to write books on random subjects, then hired another bunch of people in {other 3rd world country} to write fake reviews about them", and made it into a business.

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

#203

Post by swatcoder »

lelanthran wrote: post #193
swatcoder wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the successful authors who spoke about their experience all expressed similar struggles. Definitely not true. Some people really don’t have those sorts of struggles. It doesn’t mean that those who do need to push themselves shouldn’t write/paint/code/swim/whatever, or that the results of their effort are of any lesser quality, or that they’re not in highly esteemed company. It just means that people have differ…

> > all the successful authors who spoke about their experience all expressed similar struggles. > Definitely not true. You're saying that all the successful authors who spoke about their experience did not all express similar struggles? You have a quote from a successful author, who said that they did not express similar struggles? Because I am only making the claim about what successful authors said, not whether th…

Indeed, there are even several examples discussed elsewhere on this page already!

Some successful authors have shared their struggles with motivation and perseverance, and others have shared their lack of such.

For some people, writing is a refuge from the stresses of the world, for others it’s a compulsion, for others it’s a surge of inspiration that moves through them now and then, etc

This variety of process is common to all traditionally creative endeavors, and even things like athletics or coding. There’s no shortage of “successful” people sharing their experience of such.

I can’t know, but you may be blinding yourself through some kind of confirmation bias.

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

#204

Post by emteycz »

pjc50 wrote: post #180
emteycz wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can hear my author friends gathering to beat you with hardbacks at the suggestion they're wage-slaving, too! More seriously, I agree it's hard to write a book - but I don't think you can claim it's just like normal job when you wrote it in 3 months and it keeps earning you money for years and it's more than a full-time job would earn you.

> I don't think you can claim it's just like normal job when you wrote it in 3 months and it keeps earning you money for years and it's more than a full-time job would earn you. No, but that definitely puts you in the 1% of authors!

Not me, unfortunately... And I live in a low CoL area, so my friends aren't rich either

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

#205

Post by mprovost »

astonex wrote: post #12

Is anyone able to suggest software for writing technical books?

I write in Google Docs mostly for the collaboration features. It's super easy to invite someone to leave comments. I use the Code Blocks add-on to format code. When it's time to publish I use the DocsFlow plug-in to import the doc into InDesign for typesetting.

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

#206

Post by 35mm »

bemmu wrote: post #149
35mm wrote: post #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 fair…

What topic has a CPM this high? I never saw anything like this when I played around with AdSense on some small websites I had in the past. Or maybe things have changed in the past few years?

This in the home improvements space. I’m also using Ezoic which in my experience and from what I’ve heard from others pays a lot better than Adsense.

Once you get over 50k or 100k uniques per month, you can qualify for Mediavine and AdThrive respectively, and they pay more than Ezoic.

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

#207

Post by xrd »

latexr wrote: post #184
xrd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a book for O'Reilly. It was grueling and I really struggled with it. The only thing that worked was following the Jerry Seinfeld "Don't break the chain" rule: promise yourself you will write every day, and mark it on your calendar each time you do, and never let there be a gap. It doesn't matter from where you start. If you do this, you'll accomplish more than you ever thought you could. You aren't built diff…

> the Jerry Seinfeld "Don't break the chain" rule Jerry Seinfeld, by his own admission, didn’t invent that: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ujvrg/jerry_seinfeld...

I'm so excited to learn this. And, that he thinks it is a terrible idea.

Maybe the takeaway is that you have to trick (or lie to) your brain somehow when you want to do something bigger than you can imagine.

Maybe this is why some really nutty people have done amazing things.

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

#208

Post by pbronez »

lostmsu wrote: post #190
pc86 wrote: post #186

The thing that always bothers me about these articles, and I completely accept it may just me reading into it what I want to see, is I immediately assume the dollar figure is annual. $160k/yr sounds like great passive income. You could certainly stop working a 9-5 and build out a really great lifestyle business. But then I look at the article. Oh, it's over six years ? Okay, $26k/yr is a lot less and all of a sudden…

To summarize a bit further, the income is not passive at all.

"I have a moderately remunerative writing side hustle" just doesn't have the same ring to it

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

#209

Post by vidarh »

sokoloff wrote: post #119
vidarh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, then you've leveraged too highly. Estate agents here take a fairly small percentage of the rent to manage all of this, so it takes a fairly small deposit before your rental income less management fees can't cover the remaining mortgage.

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

#210

Post by vmception »

greglim81 wrote: post #38
vmception wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just clickbait for engagement, this is the author's new job in writing the ebooks. Better title: Earned $26,000 per year writing 20,000–30,000 word books and selling them for $9.99. Subtitle: Split book into another $9.99 book if there is more to say. Here's why.

Gotta sell it right? =)

I actually like the low 5-figure reality more because it seems more achievable and motivational for a side hustle
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