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Your best passive income? (2014)

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Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#361
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$5 is not cheap by app store standards. It's a fair price for an app in that class. As to whether you're entitled to support or feature requests, you can make an argument both ways. One could generate some word of mouth by following up on (simple) feature requests. In one of the apps, Fourier, the reviewers say that the horizontal frequency scale is off by a factor of 2 (but the frequency display elsewhere is accurat…

First, wow, I didn't expect any HN readers to actually know about, much less have bought, my work! Thanks. Second, I understand your frustration. I love building things, and sometimes I wish I could do that full time, but grad school is a 70 hr/wk commitment for me. If the app is not useful for you without the missing feature, Apple does allow returns. I'm not quite sure how it works, but I see a few returns a year o…

Novocaine is wonderful, thank you.

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#362

I have been working on my Google Map Gps Cell Phone Tracker for several years now. Recently, I updated the project to include tracking for Android, IOS, Windows Phone and Java Me/J2ME phones. The project allows you to track a phone periodically (every 1, 5 or however number of minutes) and display them in real time on Google maps. You can also save routes and display them later. I use google adsense on my website and…

Congrats on the brave move to launching your own projects.

On a side note, if I were you I would move the project from SourceForge to github. There is barely anyone using sf.net these days and github social features might also help your project to get noticed.

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#363
I've had www.rickshawart.org for a now.. two years. Not making a lot of money, still a no-loss project, and a ethical, profit-sharing one =)

The structure is a tad special in that we have no fixed costs (apart from the hosting part).

Any feedback of course is appreciated - that's really niche, and we're wondering how to move forward when our product is that special.

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#364

I'll try to start an ecommerce for France, following the other ones who specialize themselves in just one kind of well made product, like socks (www.archiduchesse.com), or underpants (www.leslipfrancais.fr). Coming soon ;)

Excellent, I had heard about leslipfrancais, but not the socks one =)

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#365

I've had www.rickshawart.org for a now.. two years. Not making a lot of money, still a no-loss project, and a ethical, profit-sharing one =) The structure is a tad special in that we have no fixed costs (apart from the hosting part). Any feedback of course is appreciated - that's really niche, and we're wondering how to move forward when our product is that special.

This is really cool idea. Kudos to you.

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#366

I've had www.rickshawart.org for a now.. two years. Not making a lot of money, still a no-loss project, and a ethical, profit-sharing one =) The structure is a tad special in that we have no fixed costs (apart from the hosting part). Any feedback of course is appreciated - that's really niche, and we're wondering how to move forward when our product is that special.

This is really cool idea. Kudos to you.

Thanks !

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#367
post #61

I created the app 3dweapons for Android about 2 1/2 years ago. ( http://www.3dweapons.net ) The free version was downloaded >1.7 million times. The paid version around 8k times. I added adds from multiple sources (mopub, admob etc) and in app purchases. For the paid app: In the top months (2 years ago) I made around 800 euro. But it dropped to 90 euro per month currently. For in app purchases: I am making 30 euro per…

Do you have a way to tell how many of your paid installs are legitimate?

You are referring to the pirated versions of my app? Actually i dont have hard figures.

Initially I was not aware of pirated versions. I even had my app translated to chinese because I thought it would be a huge market. But after I did that, i noticed Google Play is not active there, and all paid apps are free in china.... Pirated versions.

I tried to prevent pirated versions of my app by performing code obfuscation, but probably it was still easy to crack.

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#368
post #61

I created the app 3dweapons for Android about 2 1/2 years ago. ( http://www.3dweapons.net ) The free version was downloaded >1.7 million times. The paid version around 8k times. I added adds from multiple sources (mopub, admob etc) and in app purchases. For the paid app: In the top months (2 years ago) I made around 800 euro. But it dropped to 90 euro per month currently. For in app purchases: I am making 30 euro per…

So another 3 months to buy a Motorola Xoom ;-) Are you planning an iOS version?

Hahaha Emiel! (I worked with him for over 2 years). I can give you a link to the source so you can implement it in objective-c. I'll buy you a beer!

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#369
post #66
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell me which site it is?

Sure, but the site is in Swedish: http://rakna.net

Wow, funny that a local version can make so much money... Maybe I should be creating somthing simple but usefull too... Sometimes we software devs think we have to create something complex in order to get money... But you just have to solve a simple problem people have. Thanks for the insights!

Re: Your best passive income? (2014)

#370
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mined a bunch of coins two years ago but now I mine scrypt altcoins which turn a better profit with GPUs than btc. I also run day trading bots which trade with my cryptocurrency portfolio in general, including bitcoin, litecoin, ad et al. So at least one person is definitely getting passive income this way, and I'm almost sure I'm not alone.

Please forgive my ignorance, but how do alternative coins work? Who uses them? I've only recently noticed Bitcoins being relatively widely usable, so how does the process work with alternative mineable coins? Do you convert them to dollars at some point or just mine and trade them for good/services?

Altcoins are just another blockchain that uses the basic bitcoin idea of proof of work or stake to validate a distributed ledger, there are dozens to hundreds of them by now and they're all effectively just different distributed ledgers with some modified rules (total coins, rewards per block, demurrage, things of this nature) that are traded on cryptocurrency exchanges like cryptsy with bitcoin.

Because they're liquid with bitcoin they're effectively liquid with all the other currencies in the world, including each other. So you can do things like gauge the profitability of a given altcoin with code and switch your mining based on the current highest daily return, and you can do things like run trade bots that trade into and out of bitcoin and that altcoin depending on various market indicators etc to get the best return on top of that base return, and last of all you can do the same trading strategies with bitcoin and fiat currencies themselves, so it becomes a three layered freelance trading strategy.

To summarise;

* Miners pull down altcoins with raw GPU horsepower.

* Bots trade between the altcoins and bitcoin on market indicators that work best.

* Other bots trade between bitcoins and fiat on market indicators that work best.

I used to just be a coder working for employers directly but this makes me accountable to nobody but the effectiveness of my algorithms. I'm still open to the freelancing side and looking at other opportunities because it is largely passive, but it's the first opportunity I've ever had where I become completely unaccountable to other human beings, and I must admit that has a lot of attraction to me.

I'm a global roaming digital nomad and have been for the past five years or so, but I have always had to worry about being contactable by my clients and timezone shifts and things of this nature, now that doesn't matter so much as I don't even need to talk to anyone at all if I don't want to. After finally achieving absolute complete communication disconnection with the entire rest of humanity though I am starting to feel the slightest inkling of what I have constantly heard other people talking about with feeling something missing in not being in the office and interacting with others all the time.

It's a crazy world, and I'm a crazy person.

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