Daring Adventures with Passive Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Daring Adventures with Passive Income

#41

Post by kposehn » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 4:08 PM UTC

ashray wrote: post #39

kposehn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it were a website/webapp you'd still run into issues with bugs, security fixes. This was really true a few years ago, but changed as of late. Right now we are running all of our sites on a Sinatra-based engine on Heroku. It has no admin backend, no security fixes to make, nothing. There isn't even a database! The whole thing is compiled and cached. Any changes made on a live basis come through git or via a uniqu…

That's interesting but definitely not a global use case. Most apps will require some sort of bug fixes and security updates. Even the linux kernel requires security updates and I do think that's some tight code right there =) Not every app can be compiled-cached-served. I think 99% of them can't go that route.. Would love to see how you can run relatively dynamic code/functionality by the method you're suggesting.

Ah, I think I didn't make it as clear.

I'm talking about the typical affiliate site that is SEO'd or run with PPC. Many of those don't require much and you can often do dynamic functionality without requiring a database.

I have one site where you can look up physical locations of the merchant. Instead of a database, there is a YAML file that is dumped into MemCache - doing a search hits that and I don't need to maintain any Postgres instances.

Re: Daring Adventures with Passive Income

#42

Post by ashray » Fri, Aug 03, 2012, 6:40 PM UTC

kposehn wrote: post #41

ashray wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting but definitely not a global use case. Most apps will require some sort of bug fixes and security updates. Even the linux kernel requires security updates and I do think that's some tight code right there =) Not every app can be compiled-cached-served. I think 99% of them can't go that route.. Would love to see how you can run relatively dynamic code/functionality by the method you're suggesting.

Ah, I think I didn't make it as clear. I'm talking about the typical affiliate site that is SEO'd or run with PPC. Many of those don't require much and you can often do dynamic functionality without requiring a database. I have one site where you can look up physical locations of the merchant. Instead of a database, there is a YAML file that is dumped into MemCache - doing a search hits that and I don't need to maint…

I see. So you do have a database (it's the YAML file) but I see how you're talking about keeping costs and maintenance on the lower side. Nice! So I guess the only thing you're worried about is if google algorithms change. Still, that won't happen to PPC.

I would love to find some good niches for PPC affiliate commissions. Do you have any examples ? ( don't have to be your sites..)

Re: Daring Adventures with Passive Income

#43

Post by anovikov » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 2:38 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #22

barryfandango wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want the second thing. Where do I get that?

Luck? Honestly, I've found the return I've gotten on various endeavors to be pretty baffling. Wholly dominated by external factors as far as I can tell, many of which are themselves dominated by random contacts. My most profitable projects have been totally random things I put very little work into, and I could not have predicted they'd be the ones to take off.

I used to have that i couple times in my life. Related to SEO and online betting. But those holes are usually closed in 1-2 years. It's not a startup, not even a lifestyle business, just a sort of an intellectual game.

Re: Daring Adventures with Passive Income

#44

Post by markyc » Mon, Aug 06, 2012, 11:41 AM UTC

steveplace wrote: post #18

kposehn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hit the nail on the head there. Affiliate marketing is intensely competitive - the reason I can make a fair amount of money in the field is because we pursue every advantage at our disposal. The plethora of competitive intelligence tools in the field and the low barrier to entry make it extremely tough. However, there is a high barrier to success as well.

Yup. That's why I moved to my own products and have affiliates work for me, as the stuff I create can't be replicated.

of course it can :)