Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

* Apps with ads in them. Easy enough to churn out, but decreasing revenues and most of the high earning adverts are the scummiest. Low value and of low moral usefulness.<p>* Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shkspr.mobi&#x2F;blog&#x2F;tag&#x2F;solar" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shkspr.mobi&#x2F;blog&#x2F;tag&#x2F;solar</a><p>* Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial investment, and requires ongoing maintenance. On a good month I only hear from the managing agent once per month with details of how much rent is being paid.<p>* Stoozing. Find a credit card with 0% interest on balance transfers. Stick the money into a savings account. Or, if you like risk, on a horse. Need a good credit rating and decent savings rate to make more than a few hundred a year though.<p>* Affiliate marketing. If you can find a good theme (e.g. Halloween) and a decent place to put the links (somewhere that wants them - not spamming them everywhere) it&#x27;s possible to get a moderate passive income. Well... not quite passive, requires upfront time commitment of selecting links and locations.<p>* Hosting &#x2F; simple websites. Again, little bit of up-front commitment. Works best if you can find a local niche of people who want a friendly face to host their websites. Usually as simple as buying a domain, setting up WordPress, and turning on automatic updates.<p>In general, the best passive schemes require a large initial outlay and&#x2F;or a dubious moral outlook. A better way to enhance your income is to eat out less, stop buying stuff you don&#x27;t need, and shop around for deals. Boring but true!

Here&#x27;s my experiences for last year in passive income:<p>Total Gross Revenues: $20,000 or so.<p>Mostly from a single high-traffic niche site which I promote almost exclusively through social media. My site offers a free version of what a few other websites in the same niche offer as a SaaS service.<p>From that same site, most of the revenue (~80%) is from ads (ad revenue increased when switching to responsive units). Next, Amazon associate makes up about 15% of the revenue. And about 5% from donations.<p>The downside is that ad rates are DROPPING pretty quickly, ad-block usage rates are increasing rapidly, some browsers block ads by default now, etc. So I&#x27;m trying to get off of ad dependency.<p>I&#x27;m thinking in the future a Patreon funded project or project with additional SaaS component will probably fare better if you traffic is at least medium size (~50k&#x2F;mo+), and comprised of repeat visitors.<p>I also have eBooks, which despite the rapid increase in popularity of Amazon authors, seem to be doing well. My most popular eBook is bringing in ~40$ &#x2F; mo on the 35% plan (I can&#x27;t use the 70% plan because someone stole it and uploaded it elsewhere). The rest of my eBooks are bringing in ~$20 total. If you have expertise, and strong communication skills - eBooks may be a good route to go down. Leanpub offers higher % rate, and I&#x27;ve seen some technical authors make a killing there - might be a better option.<p>As far as stocks go, I&#x27;m all invested in Vanguard which seems to like tech stocks - so not so great this year. The high-dividend yield funds are probably the way to go in 2016 since growth growth isn&#x27;t so hot right now.<p>I would stay away from IoS &amp; Android because app discovery is messed up, and you need a marketing budget in most scenarios to make it big.

I write eBooks for developers interested in using semi-new technologies. Previously, I wrote about developing websites to work with the Chromecast. Most recently, I published an eBook about AWS Lambda[1]. The income is not terribly good, but enough to make it worthwhile. I&#x27;ve been approached by publishing companies who want to raise the price to $50+ per copy, but I prefer keeping them at $2-$4 so they&#x27;re more accessible for everyone.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;B016JOMAEE" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;B016JOMAEE</a>?

Some overarching takeaways:<p>- niche sites with Google ads is a fading path, but still can work if you hit a good market or produce evergreen content<p>- selling niche e-books through Amazon or direct seems to be a decent option, but is a lot of work unless you can produce quickly and have a feel for the topic<p>- apps are dangerous because discover is nearly impossible. If you want to make apps, make quick little ones because the likelihood is that you will make $0 on any one app<p>My personal opinion is to make niche B2B tools. There are a million little inconveniences that small businesses deal with. If you find the right niche you can charge way more than a B2C product, deal with way fewer customers and charge extra for &quot;custom&quot; features and things like that. The trick is to find a business problem worth solving. The best way to do this is to find someone working a job and drilling them about their work flow. It&#x27;s amazing the stuff that can be automated that people still don&#x27;t recognize.<p>There is one guy who was blogging about a simple scheduling app that let 1 man operations (like barbers or chiropractors) simply text the app appointment details and it would automate putting them in the calendar. It&#x27;s a great little business because scheduling is a big pain point for these tiny businesses but no one addresses it in a humane way. A good way to make $ and while also producing useful things for the world.

Amazon recently launched a new app store that pays developers by the minute in lieu of all other monetization techniques, it&#x27;s great if you can come up with engaging apps.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.amazon.com&#x2F;public&#x2F;solutions&#x2F;underground" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.amazon.com&#x2F;public&#x2F;solutions&#x2F;underground</a>

This is not completely passive income, but after 1 ~ 2 months of some committed work, it can become passive income. This is assuming you know what you are doing and you have experience with e-commerce. (I was losing money for the first 3 months)<p>-Private labeling on Amazon using FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon)<p>I currently earn some passive income (~$1000&#x2F;month) by selling products on Amazon. Amazon FBA is great because you just send all the products to Amazon warehouse and they will do the packaging and shipping for you. If you shipped out all the items yourself, it wouldn&#x27;t be so passive. But since all my items are currently at Amazon warehouse and everything&#x27;s being shipped by Amazon, I spend little time at the moment.<p>A summarized process will be 1. Sign-up for Amazon seller account 2. Find an item to sell on Alibaba 3. Purchase the item, receive, check, and send to Amazon. 4. Perform SEO for your product page 5. Repeat 2 - 4 6. After some success, switch to Amazon Seller Merchant Pro.<p>The most difficult part wasn&#x27;t finding the right item, but rather promoting the page. Ranking my product will involve tons of keyword research, pinning everything relevant on Pinterest, and revising copy-writing.<p>Once I start selling about 10 products&#x2F;day for a single item, I&#x27;d move on to a new product. The best time to start probably is NOT at 3rd or 4th quarter. You want to have steady sales by 3rd quarter. Because if you do, you will experience some shockingly crazy sales starting November lasting until early January. If I now sell 10 units&#x2F;day for product X, I was selling 100 units&#x2F;day starting late November. I regret not stocking more items, but it was my first year doing this and it&#x27;s a lesson learned.

eBooks worked for me in 2014 &amp; 15. I am the author of an ebook Trello Dojo (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leanpub.com&#x2F;trellodojo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leanpub.com&#x2F;trellodojo</a>). I update it periodically and earn a couple hundred dollars a month. Lots of people from all over the world tell me it has helped them, which feels like I&#x27;m doing honest, good work with it. I&#x27;m not going to retire early from just that, but really want to do a few more, and possibly expand that concept into niche sites&#x2F;training&#x2F;etc.<p>niche sites and blogging have not panned out for me (yet). I feel that&#x27;s more a lack of time&#x2F;effort on my part. A test effort showed me my niche could work, but I just haven&#x27;t committed to really getting it rolling.<p>I&#x27;m also a software developer and have a few service type sites up my sleeve. My thinking (as yet unproven in my own life) is that relatively simple subscription services that &quot;do one thing well&quot; and can be marketed to businesses and government agencies can earn well with minimal ongoing investment. The trick there would be to automate as much as possible- especially support- without sacrificing quality, and periodically dedicate resources to keeping the technology current (easier said than done, I know)<p>It&#x27;s hard to balance a current &quot;non-passive&quot; job, family, and side passive gigs, but it _can be done_.

Peer-to-peer lending can potentially be a great source of passive income. For example, if you invested $100,000 in lower grade (C-G) notes on Lending Club with an aggregate 12.0% net annualized return, you&#x27;d receive approximately $6,000 in cash payments each month.

There were a couple of posts with answers to this a month ago, you might find good suggestions there:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10879529" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10879529</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10726489" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10726489</a>

Sounds like it&#x27;s just really, really hard to get people to hand you money. If you already have a paying job, you&#x27;re way ahead of the game. Maybe the best strategy is to just look for higher paying jobs.

Paint pictures of people&#x27;s dogs. Yep, a little bit of painting is involved, but painting is fun, right?<p>There is an inexhaustible supply of middle class people wanting pictures of their dogs painted and they are prepared to pay proper art prices for competent or in-style renditions of their dog in some picturesque scene. Since we are not dogs* and are people, poor painting is not so obvious and efforts get well received.<p>On the back of paintings-of-dogs it is possible to also paint your own stuff. May not be entirely &#x27;passive income&#x27; but holding a brush isn&#x27;t hard and you don&#x27;t have to work in an office from 9 to 5 for the man.<p>*on the internets nobody knows you are a dog.

This was mine: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thingsunder15.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thingsunder15.com</a>

Borrow $1 million from a Japanese bank.

I made a command generator for Minecraft. It earns somewhere between $300 - $500 $NZD per month (adsense). It&#x27;s a passive income because even when I go months without working on it, I still get paid. But what I would like to know is how to make it earn about 10x more. So I can quit my main job and then just make more cool stuff for the web.<p>I believe it&#x27;s at the peak of what it can earn. Also about 25% of users have adblocker.

Niche website. I built Casting Call Club (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.castingcall.club&#x2F;homepage" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.castingcall.club&#x2F;homepage</a>) for the voice acting community. Roughly 13,000 voice actors currently use the site, but it only breaks even with all the costs associated with it, so I couldn&#x27;t call it income.

Save money and invest it.

On-demand proxies that you spin up in 1 second.<p>I can spin out cloud servers in an instant.. but I have to wait days for my proxies to be activated.

ThanksGiving season. I bought lots of YNAB codes (www.ynab.com) at 50% off and sold them at 25% off on eBAY. Win Win for everyone.<p>Now they moved to cloud and didn&#x27;t do any 50% off this year.

There is one person (Rob Percival - google him) who is making <i>millions</i> on udemy teaching people how to program. Not sure if it works for everyone, but lots of people seem to be trying. There are literally thousands and thousands of courses on udemy.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bestoftheinternets.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bestoftheinternets.com</a> This worked for a while until google shutdown my adsense, becuasue I had developed auto generated content.

After reading all of this, my conclusion is: There ain&#x27;t no such thing as a free lunch. You may find some stuff with a more or less optimal f(risk, initial investment, running cost, return) function, but no no brainer. I wish someone had mentioned a blog a YouTube channel, I always been curious to know how much moderately successful guys are making.

Built <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wholesaleorderform.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wholesaleorderform.com</a> - Has 2 customers - Brings in $50 a month with zero maintenance. Still haven&#x27;t even finished the homepage :) No idea how to find customers... Anyone want to partner up!

What does passive mean to you? 99% hands-off income that just shows up magically without any significant work?<p>Most schemes I see here and elsewhere require a lot of investment (of time mostly) upfront, and then often also ongoing attention so the scheme keeps working.

- i&#x27;ve tried and failed many times at this. Finally, I started an outsourcing company 5group.co. My growth model is to get business from field partners like your self and pay them 20% of the life time of profits from that customer. For example, if someone refers a chat support outsourcing customer and the customer spends 10k usd in a year, we pay out about $1400. We manage the labor&#x2F;office space etc so the is no capex like in real estate. You do need to have the savvy to generate business though. -- Prosper marketplace...lend money on prosper and receive 7-8 % - tough if you dont have capital

I made a website with a free exercise to learn to type faster: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.learn-2-type.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.learn-2-type.com</a> ...sadly a lot of people are using ad blockers

A service that people want to use :)<p>Just started <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wormhole.network" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wormhole.network</a> and still putting some more money and time to add an API (coming very, very soon!), but I&#x27;m pretty sure it will take off if I manage to promote it properly. The product itself is pretty awesome, probably unrivalled and the possibilities endless. I have a lot of features in the backlog and will be adding those based on user feedback.<p>This is not fully passive, but the income is not a linear function with the invested time, which ain&#x27;t bad either.

I used my good income job to rent a three room bedroom apartment, and rent out 2 of the rooms. I pay &lt; $100 a week on bills and housing, and I live in a city where the median house price is &gt; $1m.

Bookmarked this post and thanks for asking! My plan, which may&#x2F;may-not work out - Start consulting, work like crazy to get _high quality_ clients, find common needs among them, build products from these common needs. I&#x27;m hoping I can find specific things between multiple clients that I might be able to sell as an actual product, alongside the consulting. Anyway I just started indepedent contracting on evenings&#x2F;weekends about a month ago.. so far it&#x27;s working quite nicely for me :)

Start a company. Hire a hardworking and dependable general manager on a salary and give him&#x2F;her great autonomy.<p>Sit back and enjoy the dividends.

I run an product (clothing, tech, home-wares) curation site [1]. It primarily uses affiliate marketing to generate an income. Lots of effort at the moment, but hopefully will pay off in time.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;iwantdis.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;iwantdis.com</a>

I recently created <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;filepiper.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;filepiper.com</a>, still busy validating the idea, then get someone to pay :)<p>I always wonder if software products are really the way to go. Getting initial traction is seriously hard

Bitcoin arbitrage.

Steam games, granted if you can get Greenlight which really isn&#x27;t that hard to be honest. I have a game on there that isn&#x27;t exactly the best, but it generates some beer money.

Allocate part of your wealth in riskier assets. If you think you&#x27;re able to do it on your own, play around with some ETFs.<p>Alternatively, ask around for a good hedge fund.

Addons &#x2F; Plugins for existing platforms that have an appropriate marketplace for this (e.g., Concrete5).

-Build a BTC gumroad version.<p>-AI stuff like <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;predictor.ai" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;predictor.ai</a>

We are looking for investors...

I built a education platform and plan to charge monthly once I get more students.. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thinkacademy.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thinkacademy.io&#x2F;</a> <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thinkacademy.io&#x2F;courses&#x2F;1&#x2F;learn-ruby-on-rails-in-4-weeks" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thinkacademy.io&#x2F;courses&#x2F;1&#x2F;learn-ruby-on-rails-in-4-we...</a>

Some people have successfully bought cars just to rent out via Turo (formerly RelayRides). It&#x27;s not hard to make well over the monthly payment if you live near a major airport. Most insurers don&#x27;t like this though and I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised by an Airbnb-esque crackdown in the coming years. Until then though, it&#x27;s the good times.