I got like $10 for the whole year selling books with literally only the poop and alien emoji in them. Pretty sure it's just book reselling bots though, but I can't be sure.
I made an Adsense plugin for Angular and if you copy and paste the doc's use example with my ad code (it says to replace) it shows you my ads (duh). Several people have for some reason used it in production, maybe hoping to get their own adsense account/code later. It earned $140 last month.
100-200/mo from YouTube this year. Down from nearly a grand at it's peak. Algorithm is worse, ad rates are terrible and demonetization for no real reason is very rampant.<p>So I guess mutual funds is the answer this year.
Bought a couple cheap condos near the biggest university in a flyover state, got a property management company to take care of everything (finding tenants, collecting payments, handling service calls, etc). It's a few hundred bucks a month on top of other people basically buying houses for me.
Truly passive: Stock gains<p>Mostly passive: Managing rental properties. There is some work involved occasionally when things break or new tenants need to be found, but for the most part I just collect my fee each month.
I make ~$200-250/month with Find-me[1]. Essentially a database with statistics and contact information for content creators actively looking for advertisers/sponsorship opportunities.<p>Had a lot on the road map (creating more of a platform) but have pivoted to other projects since this doesn't seem to be getting the traction I was hoping for.<p>[1] www.find-me.co<p>Also make ~$1.5k/year from old Udemy courses on pretty basic topics (beginner-level SQL, Google Sheets, etc).
Public market stocks.
I know this isn't exactly what you're asking but I mention because it's worth considering in your personal decisioning framework (and is my honest answer)
$1000/year for hosting.<p>Got a cheap HostGator shared hosting and host low traffic websites for some clients (static/WordPress).<p>As a designer with no advanced knowledge in hosting/IT/domains/backend, it was pretty easy and no complications, I can't complain.<p>Now planning to move from HostGator to DreamHost because HTTPS is expensive in HG and free in DH (also using the free Netlify plan for static sites, HTTPS free).
A game that had 2mm++ downloads free / paid since 2012. It's an online game with players still playing although well beyond it's peak.
Since 2013 we pivoted from making games to it services and had not much time to make significant changes other than updating to newer iOS.
It still generates about 2-3k yearly revenue which is a good bonus in central Europe.<p>soctics.com
Checks if a website is mining crypto currency
<a href="http://whoismining.com" rel="nofollow">http://whoismining.com</a><p>Donations/Affiliates 10/month
I offer up a weekly printable office football pool sheet for the NFL season. I've had it running for a few years now, and I find that it ends up doing better each year. It's mostly automated/passive, but I spend about 15 minutes each Monday night updating it for the next week.<p>I mention this one because it's one of those things that I just did, mainly for my own needs, and put out there. And it mainly just sits there but does better year-over-year.
Got lucky with a Kickstarter project that has evolved into a business which finances my life/interest in programming+design. It was definitely the most lucky thing to happen to me in my entire life.
I'd consider spending time organizing and planning my finances a "side project" since I'm a spreadsheet geek and enjoy doing that sort of thing.<p>As a result, I realized I was an idiot and had let too much accumulate in my checking account that gets abysmal interest. Moved it to a savings account with slightly better interest and I get a little more money from it. Nothing worth writing home about, but definitely worth the few minutes it took me to make that change.
I make ~300/mo off of a peer-to-peer loan management software I created for lenders off of 0 marketing (just word of mouth sales). I have some residual revenue along those same lines for a book I wrote in 2015 on helping junior developers get hired at their first job (link in bio if interested).
100 bucks about every 2 months from Youtube ads. Aboot 10 bucks a month from adsense. Can't be arsed to do more aboot my Youtube and webpage. 's fine for now. Maybe down the road sometimes in the future. There's definitely potential, definitely an audience with need tho.
I feel like this recent article "Don't give away historic details about yourself" is relevant: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793636" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793636</a>
Made <a href="http://historio.us" rel="nofollow">http://historio.us</a>, a full text search engine for bookmarks, nine years ago. It's been making a few hundred dollars a month with zero marketing ever since.
Releasing the Landing Page Cookbook[1] and making Product of the Day on ProductHunt worked pretty well.<p>[1] <a href="http://yourlandingpagesucks.com/cookbook" rel="nofollow">http://yourlandingpagesucks.com/cookbook</a>
Interesting answers. I expected Bitcoin owners to be a big part, 2017 was crazy.<p>Wondering if,
a) there are not too many people owning bitcoin in the hn community.
b) everybody is a HODLER.
c) nobody counts this as passive income.
In 2017, I made a net profit of $11,000 from 3 niche websites + my blog about said websites<p>I also have other investments I keep for retirement but I really do not track how much I get there. It is for the distant future.
iOS app “Leap Second” made about 2k a month last year this year 5-10k. Required some initial upfront work to create the app but since then Ive been putting in about 2h per week.