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Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#81

Post by patrickgordon »

luhn wrote: post #34
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #18

I've got a savings account. Interest on that baby is getting me upwards of 30 cents a month.

I know you're being facetious and your real-life investment portfolio likely looks much different but I need to say: Savings accounts are a terrible place to put your savings. If you have anything more than a couple thousand dollars, you can put it in a mutual fund and see several percent return on average, versus the fraction of the percent you can get from a savings account. In certain situations savings accounts c…

This may be the case in some countries (US?)

I'm currently getting ~3% on my savings account which is pulling in about $200 AUD a month.

That said, I am in the process of putting some of that in to a index fund (Vanguard).

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#82

Post by patrickgordon »

protomok wrote: post #40

Portfolio of index funds based on http://canadiancouchpotato.com 25% TSX (Canadian market) 25% S&P500 (US market) 25% MSCI EAFE (Developed market excluding Canada/US) 25% Fixed Income - cash,bonds,'high' interest savings account, etc. Requires about 4-5 hours of time once per year to rebalance portfolio and update some partially automated Google Docs files to track performance. Works for me...also planning to get a r…

If you don't mind answering, how long have you been doing this for and roughly how has your rate of return been?

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#83

Post by shantyDot »

whiplashoo wrote: post #44

I run https://mapchart.net which is a map chart creation tool. You can quickly create a map chart of World, USA, UK, Europe and more with custom colors and descriptions. It is completely free to use and my only source of income are Adsense ads on the homepage and some sparse donations. Since May, when the site was featured on the front page of Reddit, my audience has increased with a steady rate, along with my ad rev…

Great site, I have used it in the past to create a USA states map for a presentation. Did you run any Ad campaigns to get it high places in SERP?

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#84

Post by Rustydave »

whiplashoo wrote: post #44

I run https://mapchart.net which is a map chart creation tool. You can quickly create a map chart of World, USA, UK, Europe and more with custom colors and descriptions. It is completely free to use and my only source of income are Adsense ads on the homepage and some sparse donations. Since May, when the site was featured on the front page of Reddit, my audience has increased with a steady rate, along with my ad rev…

Neat. How did you come up with the idea for this?

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#85

Post by tiatia »

morgante wrote: post #80
chad_strategic wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to laugh at "well-managed" portfolio. That's hysterical, in fact I'm still laughing. I might even wake up in the middle of the night and laugh. Silly, active managed portfolios never beat their benchmarks over the long run. Anybody in the financial industry knows that... and index fund are only good till that strategy doesn't work anymore.

Err, what? I'm not sure where you got the idea that I'm actively managing my portfolio. The vast majority of my money is in index funds. In my view, a well-managed portfolio is one which aims to perform at market and no better or worse. > index fund are only good till that strategy doesn't work anymore. The day that index funds cease to be the optimal investment strategy (for most individuals) is the day that stocks…

>> index fund are only good till that strategy doesn't work anymore. > The day that index funds cease to be the optimal > investment strategy (for most individuals) is the day > that stocks overall have stopped being a viable > investment strategy.

I believe that Index funds are a very good investment strategy. But before you make condescending remarks about the previous poster, you should read up a little bit. Index funds HAVE problems, especially if too many people use them to invest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/business/mutfund/the-ease-...

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#86

Post by whiplashoo »

shanecleveland wrote: post #74
whiplashoo wrote: post #44

I run https://mapchart.net which is a map chart creation tool. You can quickly create a map chart of World, USA, UK, Europe and more with custom colors and descriptions. It is completely free to use and my only source of income are Adsense ads on the homepage and some sparse donations. Since May, when the site was featured on the front page of Reddit, my audience has increased with a steady rate, along with my ad rev…

Great example. How long have you been running it? How did you get on the front page of Reddit?

I started it on December 2014, with a pretty ugly interface and only three maps available (World, USA and Europe).

I already had some success on Reddit, where I created interesting map charts with it (like religiosity by US state, most popular browser by country,etc.) and shared the link to the site in the comment. This got me many users that would either come directly from the Reddit post or see another map somewhere and google my site.

The big spike came last May, when I shared it on /r/InternetIsBeautiful (https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/4jcadt...) , which is a specific subreddit for internet tools and single-purpose website, and it propelled to the front page.

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#87

Post by shanecleveland »

morgante wrote: post #75
shanecleveland wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Not very passive.

I never contended that the consulting part is passive. It absolutely takes consistent time every month. It's the dividend revenue which is passive.

Ecactly. You had to work first. Work I've put in on projects now earns passive income, too. So there are other ways.

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#88

Post by shanecleveland »

whiplashoo wrote: post #86
shanecleveland wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great example. How long have you been running it? How did you get on the front page of Reddit?

I started it on December 2014, with a pretty ugly interface and only three maps available (World, USA and Europe). I already had some success on Reddit, where I created interesting map charts with it (like religiosity by US state, most popular browser by country,etc.) and shared the link to the site in the comment. This got me many users that would either come directly from the Reddit post or see another map somewher…

Awesome. I love your "dogfooding" marketing strategy. Very smart.

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#89

Post by whiplashoo »

Rustydave wrote: post #84
whiplashoo wrote: post #44

I run https://mapchart.net which is a map chart creation tool. You can quickly create a map chart of World, USA, UK, Europe and more with custom colors and descriptions. It is completely free to use and my only source of income are Adsense ads on the homepage and some sparse donations. Since May, when the site was featured on the front page of Reddit, my audience has increased with a steady rate, along with my ad rev…

Neat. How did you come up with the idea for this?

I was hooked up with front end development at the time (simple things, the site is still plain HTML/CSS and jQuery) and I wanted to create a simple webpage as a final project. At the same time, I saw an election prediction map for my country, Greece, and tried to find a way to make one for myself, but could not find any tool for it. Thus, I spent some time creating the first map chart page for Greece and then extended it to the World, USA and Europe maps (and more; there are now almost 22 different maps).

The competition in this niche is either stale (old sites that don't have a modern interface and/or many options) or premium services (whole suites of applications that cover a range of options), so it is currently the #1 Google Search result for queries like 'create my own map', 'make a world map', 'custom USA map' etc.

Re: Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?

#90

Post by whiplashoo »

shanecleveland wrote: post #88
whiplashoo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started it on December 2014, with a pretty ugly interface and only three maps available (World, USA and Europe). I already had some success on Reddit, where I created interesting map charts with it (like religiosity by US state, most popular browser by country,etc.) and shared the link to the site in the comment. This got me many users that would either come directly from the Reddit post or see another map somewher…

Awesome. I love your "dogfooding" marketing strategy. Very smart.

I had to google that, but yes, spot-on!
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