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Your best passive income? (2014)

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Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#301
post #88

A few years ago, I wanted to build an oscilloscope in my pocket, so I went ahead and did it. Then I wanted a spectrum analyzer, and then an equalizer. 1) oScope — an oscilloscope in your pocket. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oscope/id344345859?mt=8 2) Octave — a real-time audio analyzer. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/octave-an-rta-for-the-iphone... 3) Fourier — a spectrum analyzer. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app…

I built a dozen or so educational apps. I started each on iOS then have ported a few to Android and Windows Phone. It hasn't yet been a great financial success, but it is almost entirely passive income now. Updating apps for UI changes like iOS 7, the iPhone 5 screen size, Holo, etc. are kind of a pain but not bad at all compared to constantly selling myself on new consulting gigs or chasing down non-paying customers.

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#302

Hipster CEO - a tech startup sim. 6.5k downloads at $2.99 in the past 3 months. www.hipsterCEO.com

Awesome I'm glad you're making OK money for this. Bought it and thought it was fun to have a laugh at myself for a bit and the stereotypes in the industry. Went through a phase of constantly crashing though but seems OK now

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#303

I'm going to toss this out there - I've considered building an affiliate site in the porn space. I've looked at a couple API's and it looks easy. However, I have never built anything in this space - I just hear that there's money to be made so have been tempted. Let the flogging begin!

Was easy money around 2002-2004. You'd get like 200:1 conversion of an OK paysite with either a 35% lifetime revshare of sometimes random promotions (usually to kickstart a new site) would offer $250 upfront PPS. Niche sites (gay, extreme fetish) would convert TGP traffic as good as 75:1 and honestly were the best place to be (to many fanboy affiliates saturating the market with mainstream "teen amateur" sites).

2005-2008, TGP's totally died to Tubes. And Tubes generally killed the value in hosted galleries (a key marketing tool for affiliates alongside TGPs). Last I heard of old contacts, they'd either tried to move up the food chain intro production (which mostly moved to eastern europe), moved into niche tube sites, or sold up (as I did) and went into mainstream web. Actually, probably the most money I made was from sale of site network and domain portfolio.

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#305
post #219

I'm making negative 15 USD/month hosting two side projects: http://srctree.net - A pastebin with version control http://blocksim.net - A poor man's online simulink-like thingy I am aware that there is a _lot_ of room for improvement in both services, but the fact that nobody uses it at all is not very motivational.

Enjoyed playing with blocksim. Have you considered aiming for a different market than matlab/simulink? One thing that simulink cannot do well is dynamic, reconfigurable networks of components (for example, UAVs or autonomous vehicles, but also game sprites). For this purpose, some smart people (not me) at UC Berkeley developed a language called SHIFT and applied it to platoons of automated cars and trucks back in the mid 1990s. I rewrote it as a ruby DSL that generates C code: https://github.com/vjoel/redshift. It would be fun to have something like that in a browser, with animations.

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#306

I wrote a book on adult ADHD. I published it 3.5 years ago, and it brought in $75 last month. It used to bring in more, but some people wrote very negative reviews which were upvoted, so its sales dropped. I don't feel too bad because many people who read it say it is unusually helpful and accessible.

link?

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#307
post #239

I made 10.35 BTC from mining dogecoins for the last month.

That's impressive... What was the hardware cost?

I am using my gaming PC that I built years ago and a $1079/mo dual hexacore dual Tesla M2090 server from Softlayer.

Fortunately I have a $1k/mo Softlayer credit, so my hardware costs were approximately $79. My rent includes electricity, so my electricity costs were $0.

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m genuinely interested: do you have any example of a GIF/LOL website which owns the rights on the published content?

No. I just think it's unethical to make money from someone else's work without compensating them. "But everyone else is doing it" is the kind of reasoning small children use.

That was not my reasoning, I thought you had some examples in mind.

I think the only solution to respect the copyright for this kind of content (amateur content with no identified author) would be to stop publishing it: you can’t sue Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter etc.

Just to be sure: are we talking about the original authors, or the websites who add their watermarks on it?

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#309
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced this is the best type of passive income. A job with minimal work (perhaps some kind of security guard or IT support) sitting at a desk. I would use the opportunity to work on my own projects that would actually make me money, all the while getting paid.

Yeah I want this.

I work for a big company where there is a lot of down time. It may sound appealing - good pay with minimal to no work, along with minimal supervision - but it get boring real fast and can be demoralizing.

I would rather be actively working on something that challenges me, than have my brain rot away.

I've even tried working on side projects while at my day job and it doesn't work out because it's difficult to really devote focus to something that isn't related to your job.

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#310
post #232

I created a web game called Pit of War ( http://www.pitofwar.com ) about three years ago and it has been generating enough monthly income to pay all my bills and affords me the ability to travel and live anywhere I like. It isn't completely passive but that is because I choose to add new features and updates. It is a niche game but the Internet is a big place with lots of people. :) Books like The Long Tail and The C…

How do monetize? Selling in game items? Advertising?
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