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Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

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Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://bonusbagging.co.uk looks like a scam website, but I know a few people who have done it, myself included. There is an upfront time element needed, and then to keep it rolling you'll need to take advantage of reload offers if you want a trickle, but if you're prepared to put the work in and use a site like this that does most of the "thinking" for you, it can work.

That website reminded me of parrotsecrets.com made & written about by cringely [1]. It is designed to slowly increase excitement in the reader as they progress through the page (that's why it repeatedly insists you slowly read the whole thing instead of skimming) as it leads them towards a sale. [1] http://www.cringely.com/2009/03/14/parrot-secrets/

a guy I know very well does websites like this. He uses a bit more tech behind it with bandit algos etc and nets 1 to 2 million a month. He has been at it a good number of years now.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#222
post #17

* Apps with ads in them. Easy enough to churn out, but decreasing revenues and most of the high earning adverts are the scummiest. Low value and of low moral usefulness. * Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar * Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial inves…

Regarding your closing statement: http://slickdeals.net/ is awesome.

http://hotdealsclub.com/ is another one but without the pictures. It is done by a friend of a friend. I still check it out for black Friday and Monday to see what tech deals are out there.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#224
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not against your lease?

I was upfront about it with the landlord. She could lease to a double income family, who're going to bargain with the rent at every opportunity, and complain about every issue that comes up that could possibly be the landlord's responsibility, with 3 kids, who with their parents working will have lots of time home alone, or she could lease to me, a mid-twenties young man, with high income and stability, and the kind…

So you basically injected yourself as a pseudo-landlord, paying yourself with a free room. Makes sense - since you are living there it would be fairly easy to turn down a family (or conversely no family would likely want to share the house with you) whereas it would be tougher for the landlord to turn down a family in preference to a group of 3 unrelated people (discrimination laws and such). It's just that typically young families present themselves as better, more stable tenants than groups of people :)

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#225
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had some success in affiliate marketing using an approach that I think many on Hacker News could duplicate. I launched my Amazon affiliate site about a year-and-a-half ago and its earnings have increased by about $100 per month with December being the first time I earned over $2,000 in a month. The approach is to find a type of product where Amazon has thousands of listing but the specifications are not very a…

what is the typical commission that you earn on a single purchase through a link clicked on your site?

Currently my average commission is about $5.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#226

This is not completely passive income, but after 1 ~ 2 months of some committed work, it can become passive income. This is assuming you know what you are doing and you have experience with e-commerce. (I was losing money for the first 3 months) -Private labeling on Amazon using FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) I currently earn some passive income (~$1000/month) by selling products on Amazon. Amazon FBA is great because y…

A few questions, if you don't mind: How do you figure out how much stock to order from Alibaba? Is it just based on the maximum financial risk you want to undertake, or something else? Do you ever replenish stock, or do you continuously rotate the items you sell? How do you pick the items to sell? Just popular items within certain categories that don't have a current Prime option? Or some other method? What % of sale…

I have very similar questions...

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#227

Here's my experiences for last year in passive income: Total Gross Revenues: $20,000 or so. Mostly from a single high-traffic niche site which I promote almost exclusively through social media. My site offers a free version of what a few other websites in the same niche offer as a SaaS service. From that same site, most of the revenue (~80%) is from ads (ad revenue increased when switching to responsive units). Next,…

Could you talk about how you're promoting on social media?

Are you building relationships with influencers and getting promoted to their audiences, or have you found tactics / channels to drive traffic directly that works well for you?

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#228
post #143

Some overarching takeaways: - niche sites with Google ads is a fading path, but still can work if you hit a good market or produce evergreen content - selling niche e-books through Amazon or direct seems to be a decent option, but is a lot of work unless you can produce quickly and have a feel for the topic - apps are dangerous because discover is nearly impossible. If you want to make apps, make quick little ones be…

My personal opinion is to make niche B2B tools. How does one find what to make? That is actually a harder problem to solve than making the tool itself

Listen to what problems people have. I had lunch with a friend today that has a niche need. He owns a 2 truck garbage truck company. He has a few hundred customers, and he wanted some way to document the route. He tried using Google maps but it didn't work easily enough, the industry specific software that is already out there is sized for 50 truck fleets not 2 truck fleets, etc.

If anyone has already built that app, please let me know.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#229
post #17

* Apps with ads in them. Easy enough to churn out, but decreasing revenues and most of the high earning adverts are the scummiest. Low value and of low moral usefulness. * Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar * Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial inves…

Renting out property is a lot more than a large initial financial investment. Most people I know who do well in that space do so after several years. Once they learn how to be a landlord, learn the quirks of the market they invest in, etc, it can be pretty low stress, although not necessarily hands off. But if you're just starting out, you should expect to make some mistakes and run into some headaches as you figure…

You can hire landlords to do the work for you though.
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