
Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what? - xjones
The last thread by the same name got a lot of attention, but seeing as it's over a year old it would be interesting to hear from new people and also get updates from some people who posted in the previous thread.<p>Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487
======
codex
I generate about $1K-$2K a month in passive income. I spend approximately zero
hours on maintenance every week, and I bootstrapped it while holding down a
full-time job. It took an extra 5-10 hours per week for about a year. Here's
what I did:

a) Got a job at a major software company for very high comp. b) Spent an extra
5-10 hours a week working intelligently at my full time job; got promoted. c)
Invested the salary, bonus, and stock from my high comp. corporate job in
real-estate and tech-heavy index funds, and reap the (literal) dividends
passively.

b) is optional; even without the promotion, I would still make enough money to
generate almost all of my passive income via investments. Not bad for zero
hours per week.

A stable income has allowed me to buy a house at the bottom of the housing
market, which will appreciate at about 1% over inflation; my other investments
typically do 2-8% over inflation (especially retirement funds, which grow tax-
deferred). All in all, at least $1K per month, spiking to much more. At the
rate I'm continuing to invest, I'll likely double that monthly return within
18 months.

Sure, this is all pretty volatile, but no more volatile than entrepreneurship,
and with much better worse and average case scenarios.

Best of all, these investments will, in the long term, outpace inflation,
which is more than can be said for selling software or tech stuff, which tends
to depreciate in price over time (after all, the marginal cost of software is
zero, which depresses prices due to competitive dynamics).

~~~
WickyNilliams
Very interesting! I've been wanting to investigate this kind of thing for a
while but just don't know where to start. Can you point me to any resources
that will give me a good grounding in investment? In what way did you invest
in real estate? How do you choose what to invest in? Would love for some
direction here, would be very much appreciated

~~~
codex
My aim is actually _not_ to spend very much time on investing. Investing is
not my area of specialization and I want to enjoy a high quality of life. I
take advantage of division of labor to monetize what I do best--software
development.

In a past life, I read many books on investing, primarily Jack Schwager's
Market Wizards and my personal favorite, Reminisces of a Stock Operator.
There's a lot of interesting stuff about the markets--game theory, behavioral
finance--but unless you're going to spend a lot of time on it, the markets can
be approximated as casinos for which you do not have an edge. Best to put your
money in small and mid-cap index funds.

Similarly, most consumer real estate investments take a lot of time to manage
(rental properties), so I've focused on my home, something which I would have
to maintain anyway. In this climate you can get a loan so cheap you're best
off putting as little down as possible and investing the rest. But you may
want to buy a house within the next year or so as a hedge against inflation
and to take advantage of the unholy combination of low interest rates and a
relatively cheap housing market. If the Euro cracks or the Fed ends up
printing money, we may find ourselves in an inflationary environment. If you
have a fixed rate loan, you're golden--your income will rise with inflation,
but your monthly payments will not, cheapening your debts.

Overall, my advice is to focus on setting up some compounding investments very
early in life. Many people dabble in all kinds of things, like
entrepreneurship, as a youth because they're fun. It's important to have
hobbies, but for things that really matter, you can't afford to fool around.
For example, I could join Y Combinator straight out of school and spend two
years at a startup eating Ramen, or I could join Google and eat Ramen. If I
did the latter, I'd have $50K in my 401Ks and up to $150K in other
investments. Invested wisely, proceeds from those two years will give you $4M
of today's dollars at retirement, even if you don't invest another penny--a
nice safety net which will allow you to do riskier things later on in life.
Entrepreneurship is a lottery ticket which is likely to fail. There are only
so many good businesses (born of confluences of macro trends) out there, and
it's hard to be in the right place at the right time. You could try to get
lucky and end up scratching a living out of hardscrabbble, or you could use
your talent to rise within the few companies which are actually printing
money, and then let your dollars work for you.

~~~
WickyNilliams
I completely missed this response until now, so I'd just like to thank you for
putting the time in to write this up.

    
    
        I'd have $50K in my 401Ks and up to $150K in other investments.
    

401k is a pension-type fund, right? I'm from the UK, so not entirely sure of
the terminology. What would you put the other 150k into though?

    
    
        or you could use your talent to rise within the few companies which 
        are actually printing money, and then let your dollars work for you
    

Those are very wise words.

------
bdunn
A little over $2700/mo with Planscope (<https://planscope.io>), my SaaS
product that's been out since February. I'm averaging about a 8% growth rate
month to month, so very excited about how things are going.

* Bootstrapped

* Raised my consulting rates to free up more time for products (= same amount of consulting income)

* Most new customers come via referrals from existing users and organic traffic (via targeted blog posts)

* Wrote a complementary book targeting people who aren't necessarily looking for PM software (<http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com>), and upselling Planscope through that. _Extremely_ successful so far.

~~~
brador
I love the layouts on these SAAS products. Is there a central resource you
guys all use for design? Any recommended reading? Websites/blogs?

~~~
bdunn
The winning formula: Headline that keeps people from clicking the back button;
subheadline that briefly describes the product; a few bullet points,
testimonials, or short blurbs of text describing the benefits of the product;
supporting imagery (screenshot); clear call to action (sign up!)

I did my own design, but there are plenty of themes out there that could
incorporate the above formula and do just as well (or better).

~~~
brador
Thanks, And how about for the Saas software itself? I note a lack of pure
black text, it's always a dark shade of gray...softens the look nicely. Little
touches like that, anywhere those tips come from? Any blogs, forums or such to
follow on the design of saas software, specifically webapp deaign?

~~~
TimJRobinson
Check out theme forest, as a coder with very little design skills I generally
grab a design from there Then once you are sure people want the product hire a
design er to overhaul and improve your design (or you can do it yourself)

------
patio11
Seems I commented on this last year, so what the heck:

<http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month>

Sales are up by about 40% year-to-date over last year, owing to a combination
of increased AdWords spend, organic growth in the business, and a successful
redesign (and related conversion optimization) right before summer.

Appointment Reminder is doing fairly decently -- monthly recurring revenues
(on the publicly available plans) are up about 4x versus the last thread. I've
recently gotten some time to actually work on it (my wedding kept me busy for
much of the earlier part of this year). My run rate is currently up about 50%
since, oh, two months ago? (Why? Interesting question -- re-did pricing,
tweaked my marketing knob to "slightly more than zero work", and started
getting a wee bit serious about e.g. my use of email to people in their trial
period.)

The enterprise pipeline, which is not tracked in those figures, is... well,
like all enterprise sales operations ever, I cry a lot and dry my tears on
stacks of money. Not terribly relevant to folks who like recurring revenue
because it feels like avoiding work, since Enterprise Sales is pretty much
exactly what work always felt like, but it is work you get to bank in the past
and then get a fairly motivational check from monthly for the present and
extending into the future.

I guess consulting doesn't count as recurring revenue, at least not on my
model, so I'll skip it. I'm productizing one of my consulting offerings and
should be releasing it later this month -- we'll see if that works out.

~~~
cageface
I'd like to hear your thoughts about mobile. Everybody seems to be stampeding
in that direction right now but you seem to have ignored it so far.

Is this a deliberate decision or just a question of sticking to
tools/platforms you're more familiar with?

~~~
patio11
I don't love the kingmaking economics of App Store distribution and don't know
how to work them to my advantage. Price points for mobile apps are two to
three orders of magnitude lower than software I routinely sell. The stores
seem to be dominated by design, something that I am not good at. I prefer
writing Rails to Java or Objective C. My consulting clients largely sell B2B
software, and fairly little of that is currently mobile.

That said, there is literally infinite software that I personally will never
write. That doesn't necessarily mean I would recommend against HNers looking
at those projects either.

~~~
cageface
Good answer.

I've been doing mobile for the last 18 months or so but I'm strongly
considering going back to my roots on the web for a lot of the reasons you
describe. The lack of insight into user behavior and acquisition is really
crippling.

It seems to me that people have gotten a little too caught up in the momentum
of mobile. Certainly it's a very important and rapidly growing platform but I
also think, as you say, there's still plenty of room for viable businesses on
the "traditional" web.

~~~
sycren
Do you feel that there is more value making a desktop web app and making it
responsive to work with mobile devices, rather than making a straight mobile
app?

~~~
cageface
I don't feel particularly qualified to answer this question, but my _opinion_
is that these questions should be secondary. The most important thing is
identifying your target market and figuring out how to most effectively meet
its needs and if you understand that well then that will probably dictate the
details of your strategy.

What I think is pretty overdone at this point though are approaches that
revolve entirely around a mobile app. Unless you're going for an aqui-hire or
your potential customers just happen to all be entirely on one mobile platform
I'd think twice about betting the farm on an app.

------
the_bear
A couple of years ago I started a food blog with my mom
(www.theyummylife.com). She does all the writing, and I do programming,
design, and monetization. I spent a lot of time setting it up originally, but
now it only takes a few hours each week of my time. Right now we're making
$5000-6000/month after expenses, and I get 40% of that.

My main business (a bootstrapped SaaS startup) generates more than that, but
the profits are mostly being reinvested back into the company, so I don't
think it qualifies as passive income.

~~~
noirman
The food blog is awesome! <http://www.theyummylife.com/Refrigerator_Oatmeal>

~~~
tedmiston
The detail and personal experience make it feel more adventurous than a normal
cookbook or recipe blog.

I have a few questions:

* Are you building on top of a blog platform, or is this mostly custom? (The BuiltWith page makes this site appear full of tech [1]).

* What % of the revenue comes from Amazon referral links?

* Are there other revenue sources?

* Can you discuss your visitor distribution (first time vs. repeat), and traffic sources?

1:
[http://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fwww.theyummylife.com%2fRe...](http://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fwww.theyummylife.com%2fRefrigerator_Oatmeal)

~~~
the_bear
The blog is entirely custom. Several years ago I made my own blogging software
just as a fun side-project, and I decided to use that code as the base for The
Yummy Life. It sucks missing out on all the great WordPress plugins, but it's
really nice having absolute control over the entire experience. I know you
technically have control with WordPress, but it's much harder to edit someone
else's code than your own (for me, anyway).

Until recently, Amazon made up almost all of our revenue. Now that we're doing
slightly better with advertising, Amazon makes up about 60-70%. We also sell a
$1 eBook, but we only sell about one per day, so that revenue isn't
significant. This information isn't up-to-date, but you can read a blog post
about our monetization:
[http://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/articles/259/How_I_monetized_...](http://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/articles/259/How_I_monetized_a_blog_in_30_days%3A_what_worked_and_what_didnt)

Visitor information:

-65% new, 35% returning

-1.7 pages per visit

-1.2 million page views last month

-Most traffic comes from Pinterest or direct. We get ~3000 visitors from search each day. My mom (understandably) hates link building, so we don't have many inbound links meaning there's not much referral traffic, and we also have weak SEO relative to other blogs our size.

-Almost all traffic comes from the U.S.

~~~
verganileonardo
Have you ever tried selling the book for $30+? Probably the user do not see
enough value in a $1 ebook to justify the effort to make the purchase...

------
ChrisNorstrom
I'm the proud Loser of the bunch, behold my magnificent FAILS. (The ironic
thing is, I do UI/UX consulting. So I make time to optimize other people's
sites but not my own)

<http://residentevilradio.com> = -$10/month in shoutcast server hosting (will
switch to HTML5/Flash jukebox soon)

<http://timeforzen.com> = $0 no monetization or affiliate links yet

<http://tasck.com/2> (NOT finished, PRE-ALPHA) = $0 no monetization or
affiliate links yet

===== Dead Links Below =====

<http://moviestop.info> (success, no income, now offline/sunsetted)

<http://humanchan.com> (failure, no income, now offline)

<http://humanchannel.net> (failure, no income, now offline)

<http://onenotes.com> (failure, never launched)

<http://businessgardening.com> (failure, no income, no traffic, now offline)

<http://extremephotoshopping.com> (failure, a little traffic, no income, now
offline)

As you can see, I'm a designer (markup, some php, some javascript, some
jquery), not a developer. I can hack things together, build original themes,
but can't code complex things from scratch. So I have to stick with small
projects that I can actually finish. It sucks but I'm working my way up. I've
got some really interesting sites, products, and services I want to experiment
with in the future as I learn to program as much as I can.

<http://chrisnorstrom.com> (the best site I ever launched, a small collection
of my ideas and inventions (the non-patentable ones anyway) )

 _BTW, We should start a fail thread where everyone posts all the failed
projects/startups they've worked on over the years._

~~~
npguy
Here is the fail thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4469081>

------
memset
I wrote a simple android app which lets Virgin Mobile customers see how many
minutes they have left on their account. [1] It is open-source [2], and I have
optional ads. (I created the app without ads, and then added them in a later
update with a note saying "hey, these ads are an experiment. You can disable
them in the app's settings if you want, but otherwise, enjoy it!"

This generates between $60-$90 per month, depending on... well, I honestly
have no idea what it depends on. Pizza money. And bragging rights.

This app is basically in maintenance mode though I have a lot of things I want
to do with it. Android programming is so difficult, though (difficult
documentation, impossible for me to figure out how to do anything gui-related)
that it's been hard for me to really make big enhancements.

In fact, since going to Google IO this year, I'm no longer a VM customer!
Might buy a cheap VM account to do maintenance on this app, which would still
be profitable for me.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jaygoel.vi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jaygoel.virginminuteschecker)

[2] <https://github.com/poundifdef/VirginMobileMinutesChecker>

~~~
badhairday
"Difficult documentation, impossible for me to figure out how to do anything
gui-related."

Why is this? Do you have much experience programming in Java? The Android
Developer [1] website is a fantastic resource for learning about both the
design and development standards on the platform. The User Interface Guide [2]
is particularly exceptional at explaining how to implement different UI
components on a technical level.

[1] <http://developer.android.com/> [2]
<http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/overview.html>

~~~
memset
Haha, fair question.

I'm really really proficient in Java. I used to teach it in school, I've done
it professionally, etc. So I had no trouble at all writing the actual "guts"
of the app, or even the android-specific APIs. And while I'm not great at
swing/awt, I can make it work if I need to.

But it really breaks down when I get to the Android gui+os-specific things. I
find myself having to memorize (and reference, and re-reference) words like
Activity, Intent, Bundle, View, etc. You have many kinds of menus and dialogs
- options menus, preferences menus, etc.

Of course, all of the information is _there_ , and perhaps it's worth reading
all of it, one page at a time, in order become a proficient android
programmer. But it's so specific to that one platform, and has has such a new
set of vocabulary which isn't common anywhere else in computing, that I
personally have found it really difficult.

It looks like the documentation has gotten much, much better over the past
couple of years, so maybe you've inspired me to give it a fair shake. But I
really wanted to "jump in and build" and that has a much larger learning curve
than I would have liked.

------
codypo
I have had a few interesting experiments here in the past year.

Experiment 0: I bought a hotel affiliate site off of flippa. It did pretty
well initially, but I didn't do enough investigation into how the previous
owner had been generating traffic. In short, there was a lot of untoward stuff
going on. As I was getting all of that straightened out, the site got
(deservedly) banned from Google's index for a few key terms. I made my money
back and learned a valuable lesson: don't buy sites off of flippa.

Experiment 1: I created a few different sites around a big product launch, and
monetized via product reviews and the Amazon Affiliate program. This worked
very well for a period of time; the site was grossing $100 a day for several
weeks with essentially 0 work. Slowly, my site dipped in the rankings for the
key terms as much bigger players got their act together. From this, I learned
that one-off sites can be valuable, but probably not in the long term. I
should've sold the sites at their peak.

Experiment 2: I wrote some algorithms to find underpriced stocks and then
examinate a few strategies around that security's options. This was actually a
lot of fun. Based on my program, I ended up buying out-of-the-money puts on 5
or 6 different stocks. I'm sitting on a small profit right now. The next step
is to exit my positions, finetune the algorithms based on a few key things I
learned, and put more money into action.

~~~
codypo
One note here: Experiment 2 isn't exactly passive income, not until I get a
lot more comfortable with the code. That's the goal, though, and I think it's
the likely choice for the greatest amount of income (and least amount of work)
in the long run.

~~~
thejerz
Are you willing to tell more about Experiment 2? What kind of strategy are you
using? What development platform (e.g. what language and libraries and what
OS)? What trading platform (e.g. what brokerage / API)? Where did you get your
test market data from / how much did you pay? What other strategies did you
try first that didn't work? What blogs or sites do you read on the subject?
What is your background in? Finance/Econ? Or programming? What other details
would you like to offer? Some of us are very interested in this field. :)

~~~
nickwoodhams
I am interested as well. I've studied something similar, the idea is to find
the underpriced option in a group. The premise is that the inefficiency in the
market will work its way out in hours/days. But it's pretty hard to find a
substantial price inefficiency based on my research. Needed a large amount of
money to trade.

------
dangrossman
I won't go into numbers, but I make a living running
<http://www.improvely.com> , <http://www.w3counter.com> , and
<http://www.dialshield.com>

Improvely is a monthly subscription with a free trial period, W3Counter is
freemium, and DialShield is pay-as-you-go. They are all bootstrapped and
profitable.

~~~
timurtamerlan
How do you compete with Google Analytics? From the first glance, most of the
features of Improvely might be implemented with GA as well... or am I getting
something wrong?

------
suresk
I make between $200 - $400 per month off my HTTP testing tool:
<http://www.uresk.net/httpclient/>

Not very impressive (who knew selling a niche tool in an environment where $5
is considered "expensive" wasn't the road to instant riches?), but it has been
fun to make and it is always cool to hear about how useful the tool has been
to fellow developers.

~~~
phil
That's kind of a strange attitude to have. Your competition (more or less)
charges $50: <http://www.charlesproxy.com/>

~~~
omgtehlion
compare this to $0 fiddler2.com (only windows though)

------
cageface
Was pulling ~$600/month from iOS apps but yanked them all off the market in
response to Apple's patent bullying. I plan to port the ones that make sense
to Android.

~~~
mkhalil
I appreciate the stand against the horrible lawsuit, but your hurting yourself
far more then your hurting Apple. Maybe take that 600 and use it to inform
people of how you feel about Apple, or FEED a bunch of families.

~~~
cageface
The problem is that $600/month, in its own small way, strengthens and
legitimizes Apple as a platform. Living in Vietnam I definitely appreciate the
dire needs of some people in the world but I also think that the stakes in
these cases are very high.

I expect to have a similar Android portfolio in the next six months anyway.

~~~
tomotomo
Do you happen to live in Saigon? If so I'd love to meet up.

------
mittermayr
I created FRUJI.com (Twitter Analytics service) and it keeps generating a
minimum of about $50 a day, sometimes (often) more. It's fully self-maintained
(unless the server or database crashes), which is just purely amazing. The
machines sell, process the orders, upgrade, and provide the customer
experience. All I did was programming it. I go for a run, my phone rings a
couple of times, I look, PRO account purchased, PRO account purchased, THIS IS
F* AWESOME.

I tried creating/selling other things to businesses. This time, it's mostly
you and me's, paying it out of their own wallets. Never expected this to work
so well.

~~~
sr3d
I think your pricing is really low. Even for the Pro plan, you're offering
quite a bit of benefits so you can definitely charge more. $25/year is too
low. It should be a monthly-recurring charge, something like $9.99/month for
the Pro plan would do.

------
anon_builder
In august I made about $122,000 from display ads, mostly Adsense. 5-10% of
that is spent on stuff like server space and freelance employees. I can
imagine that this will not be taken seriously due to lack of details, but for
anyone interested, I'm open to answering non-specific questions.

Edit: I see 'from what' is also the question; I have a bunch of entertainment
related sites.

~~~
timurtamerlan
Few questions, if you dont mind :)

1\. How long did it take to reach this level of income?

2\. What is the total monthly traffic that generates 122k?

3\. How much time does it take to manage the whole thing in its present state?

~~~
anon_builder
1) 6 years

2) 8 million monthly uniques

3) Hard to say. I can take a month off and it'll probably go fine. If it
crashes, I'm on it 24/7 (if I care for my wallet). I do work on it full time,
but that's working on growth as well as managing the present state. I try to
outsource as many chores and secondary tasks as possible, leaving the multi-
disciplinary work for me.

~~~
timurtamerlan
Good job you've done there! Thanks for the info and good luck!)

------
timurtamerlan
$25k in revenue, ~$15k in net income (at 12-15% monthly growth) from
<http://jivosite.ru> (English version <http://jivosite.com> is yet work in
progress). This is online chat for e-commerce web sites sold primarily to
russian-speaking audience, USA & Europe sales start in 2-3 months.
Bootstrapped, no office, 2 co-founders (1 business+tech, 1 tech), 3 employees
(1 marketing, 1 customer support, 1 programmer).

~~~
rizz0
How long have you worked on that, and how long have you been in business in
Russia?

~~~
timurtamerlan
We started coding in october 2011, first pilot customer was december 2011, and
active sales started february 2012, with approx linear growth ever since.

I'm in business since 2008, and this is my second business, first one was
hosted PBX service.

------
rdm2234
Created an iOS dev company few months ago w/ a friend. We made $50k in August
from a successful free iphone app. (around $40k in a regular month). We are
only two in the company and we are still college students. Don't know what to
say more about this but feel free to ask any question (except what is the app
^^)

~~~
lmirosevic
That's awesome! You said it's a free app. What's your business model?
Free+ads, In app purchase, freemium? And how do you market, do you use CPI/CPC
networks?

~~~
rdm2234
Business model is ads only (well you can pay to get rid of ads but it only
generates ~$40/day)

------
heliodor
I make about $200 per month from Android app sales. $30,000 and counting over
the last few years.

Back when Android had no apps (2008-2009) and all you could do was check the
'new apps' list for new releases, I noticed a spy camera app was released. The
app was terrible and there were many comments asking for various features. I
took a day off work, repackaged some camera code I had from a work-in-progress
app, implemented the requested features, and blew the competition out of the
water.

------
kintamanimatt
It's reasonably certain that the vast majority of entrepreneurs who are making
large amounts of cash are going to remain silent!

~~~
bdunn
Why?

~~~
lwat
"May you come to the attention of powerful people."

\-- Old Chinese curse

~~~
veyron
It's not even that.

Oftentimes many of the recurring services are easily replicable. So until a
market leadership position is cemented (until you set up the moat) you don't
want others to know that building XYZ service actually could be significantly
profitable.

~~~
jtheory
I have a moderately-successful side project in the education sector that I'm
not posting numbers about... not because I'm worried about competitors, but
because I've already lost a few very large signups ("can we sign up every
student in our school district?") when they get a sense it's a small project.

Even though the site has been up & running (and stable) for almost a decade
now, they don't want to make the jump unless there are OTHER entire school
districts already on board that they can talk to.

I'm not quite sure how to solve this chicken/egg problem yet. And since it's a
side project, I'm not even sure I _want_ to solve it right now -- that would
sabotage my primary work, unless I could rapidly find someone capable to help
with it.

But posting obviously-non-corporate-level sales numbers just a google away
really doesn't seem like it would help things; ESPECIALLY because those same
numbers will still be just a google away 5 years from now, even if the actual
numbers are an order of magnitude higher by then.

------
alexkearns
<http://www.gambolio.com> \- $0 a month

<http://www.casualgirlgamer.com> \- $200 a month

<http://www.musicgames.co> \- $5 a month

<http://www.tiki-toki.com> \- $5,000 a month

<http://www.peopleplotr.com> \- $100 a month

I make extra licensing some of my software but that does not count as
recurring income and can vary massively month to month.

------
djt
Unfortunately you're probably going to get lots of old ideas anyway as no-one
that has recurring (i'm guessing you mean Passive Income) will tell you their
current stream. It's a Goose that laid the Golden Egg problem.

What I would recommend is reading up about different ways to make money,
looking at things that other people have done in the past, then find ways to
think up what niche you could fill.

After that its about getting it done.

Look up Patio11 and read his comments, that's a great start.

------
consultutah
<http://testplanmanagement.com> = $2,000/month

<http://courtdatereminder.com> = ~$100/month

<http://enigmatic.me> = ~$200/month

<http://jobs.consultutah.com> = ~$30/month

<http://rubytoolbox.com> = ~$10/month

~~~
sherwin
I'm assuming you mean <https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/>? Props! I use that site
all the time... surprised that it only nets you $10/month

~~~
consultutah
Nope. I wish Id thought of what he did there. Mine is just a job board for
ruby devs now.

------
asanwal
ChubbyBrain (www.chubbybrain.com) makes $500-$700/month via good old Google
ads and some Amazon affiliate links. It's not our core business, but it covers
happy hour for the team and some misc expenses so we happily take it.

------
anon_educator
I have a free website/webapp in the education space that does about $90k/m
right now (2012-2013 school year) while school is in session, and grows about
2.5x each year. Revenue is 100% Adsense. I'm happy to answer any questions
that don't give away what the site actually is.

~~~
ryankeiser
Is the site/app targeted towards educators or students?

~~~
holgersindbaek
What's the website called?

~~~
olalonde
> I'm happy to answer any questions that don't give away what the site
> actually is.

------
DanHulton
$0, but hey I just launched. Asked again in a year.

(For those interested, it's a security plugin for Wordpress:
<http://www.panic-press.com>)

~~~
matznerd
I recommend putting some sort of security seal or emblem instead of just
"Protected." on the pricing page or and some other places...
<http://www.panic-press.com/pricing>

------
cmaxwell
-$20/mo from <http://www.golfingstat.com>. Can't get any traffic and the traffic I do get doesn't click on ads. FML

~~~
cmaxwell
I had $200 of adsense free credit. Ended up getting users (like 100).

Then I had $50 of Facebook credit and that turned into like 20-30 users.

Just don't know what to do at this point. Don't want to spend more time adding
features if it is not going to lead to anything.

Was thinking of making it like $10 a year or something and trying to get paid
users instead of ad users. Just not sure if anyone would even pay $10.

~~~
jvanderwal
The beauty of golf is people spend a lot of money on it. I'd charge people a
premium to use it. Couple recommendations: Lose the pop-up for Facebook sign-
in. Optimize it for mobile (you're probably going to use this while you're in
the cart). For marketing, try going directly to some clubs and getting in
front of some of their members. Some exclusive clubs probably won't let you,
but start small. Can't hurt.

~~~
cmaxwell
Thanks... I introduced the popup for facebook sign-in and it didn't change my
conversion for new (adwords) visitors but like 10% more signed up with
facebook so I kept it.

My site posts a timeline post when a user creates a new round (unless you have
turned that off). So it is kind of a free impression so I prefer facebook
sign-ups. Maybe that is a project for the winter make it mobile (jquery
mobile?) and implement some sort of payment system. $10/year seems fair to me.
Just have to figure out an amount that will cover my hosting + adwords spend
on a typical month.

------
robbiemitchell
Over $100k last year from educationalrap.com

\- ~45 educational rap songs, divided into middle school subject areas, that
include PDF worksheets and multiple versions of each song

\- One-time purchases via song/album downloads and shipped CDs; recurring
subscriptions to rrr.fm, a streaming music service for schools we contracted
out (built on Rails)

\- rrr.fm signup happens via Formstack, which drops the data into Campaign
Monitor, PayPal, and our app

\- $0 spent on advertising

\- Sells mostly to teachers directly, but also to schools, libraries, etc.

\- Part-time help to handle support and ship the CDs

\- Still paying off debt from production and high burns 2007-2008, but
comfortably cash-flow positive for a while now

------
rqphqel
About $150 per month with <http://www.catgifpage.com> (growing fast) and 10
bitcoins per month with a speed logo design service, I really enjoy earning
money this way!

~~~
brador
How about after hosting costs? I took a look at some image sharing sites
today, some of the financials are painful to read. Key point is they're hoping
for a buyout on the traffic rather than generating revenue themselves. We're
talking break evens at 20mb per ad click. Possible for a blog, a balancing act
for image sharing.

~~~
hahla
I own a sort of popular niche image hosting site (500k uniques per month) and
while most image hosting sites do lose money as they get more popular there is
still potential to make money in the area. Your right that it's never going to
make as much money as any profitable niche pushing 500k uniques but it's still
fun to run.

I'm looking for a developer that can help take the site to the next level if
anyone's interested email is in my profile.

------
tluyben2
I see a lot of people mentioning passive income; i'm not a native English
speaker; is recurring the same as passive? If you make $xxxx every month with
a job it's recurring right? But that doesn't count here?

As I see some 'used to' posts as well; I used to make quite a bit from
blogging (especially reviews I did, but real ones, not paid ones), however
Google Panda tanked that. Even though it was nice content. It made over
$10k/month. Dropped to around $100 which is just enough to pay the server.

~~~
fuzzythinker
Passive income means you built a method of generating income while you're
doing minimal to zero work, example, built a website that require maybe an
hour of work per week/month, or built a biz where operations have been/can be
delegated to someone else.

Having income from a "job" is active income where you actively have to work
(or pretend to work if your work can actually be automated and you've managed
to fool your boss otherwise).

------
Hawkee
I've generated over $200k in the past 6 years with a website I started in high
school in 1997 called hawkee.com. It's always just been a coding playground
for me to experiment with new technologies and to hone my coding skills. I
coded a product price comparison to help pay for the server costs and it has
more than paid for the server costs over the years.

I do freelance coding, but I do come back to the site every couple months to
play with new technologies and improve the user experience.

~~~
holgersindbaek
How do you make money on this website?

~~~
Hawkee
Price comparison in the hardware section.

------
brendino
A flash game I built in high school (about 7 years ago) went from an average
of $30 per month on AdSense to $500 the next month, to $3,600 the month after
that due to an unexpected surge in traffic for a keyword for which it ranked
#1 on Google. The $3,600 month happened in May, and it has since dropped
steadily to about $1,500 a month now. Regardless, it was a nice surprise since
the game was just sitting there from when I spent a weekend building it a long
time ago.

~~~
Eduard
How is it making money? With ads?

------
muratmutlu
This is one of my favourite Ask HN's, really insightful

------
heeton
About $20 a month, from some flash games I made about 8 years ago... Not too
bad?

------
ksherlock
~ $1,000/month in stock dividends.

~~~
brador
What's the ROI on that?

~~~
ksherlock
Based on the original cost, it's 17% (10% excluding outliers). Based on
current market value, it's 6%. I did sell off some REITs at a loss a three
years ago for tax purposes.

------
sideprojectbook
we just launched an ebook that has 17 interviews with hackers who built
recurring revenue apps: <http://www.sideprojects.com>

~~~
7null
nice, how much have you made on the ebook

------
dherken
I make between $500 und $100 per month off my stand-alone cross-browser
testing tool: <http://www.browseemall.com>

The product was launched on february this year and it's growing nicely so far.
Not real recurring yet, as every sale comes with one year of free updates.

~~~
ctek
Interesting. How many unique views a month does your site get now and what
kind of conversion rates are you seeing? I am planning to launch a paid
version of my app, <http://www.pageblox.com> and my potential customers are
also developers/designers.

~~~
dherken
About 200 - 300 a day...

------
nodemaker
I made an app for reading Hacker News called HackerNode which makes about $300
a month.

<http://www.hackerno.de>

Do you guys have any ideas on how I can increase revenues?

Thinking of a subscription based model with a lot of killer features but don't
know if there is a market for it.

~~~
hilko
Only thing I can think of is to often look at AlienBlue for inspiration.

------
tachibana
Sorry, no hard numbers for privacy reasons.

The basic living needs of my family (food, clothing, mortgage, utilities,
cars, etc.) has been covered by my investment portfolio for several years by
now. Any additional income goes straight towards increasing said portfolio.

Rough estimates for the source of the principal for the investment income:

\- 50% - savings from worked income

\- 30% - earnings from real estate investments

\- 20% - earnings from outside consulting / freelance software projects.

I personally believe that anybody who exercises a fair amount of discipline to
save away their income and spend reasonably can become financially independent
within 15-20 years. Thanks to what I learned from my accounting classes, I was
able to accomplish this in less than 10 years.

~~~
mattm
This is what I'm currently aiming for. I have about $100/month coming in from
dividends and distributions and am looking to seriously ramp this up. I
haven't really been paying that much attention until now. I figure if I take
on side work, I could have my basic expenses covered within 5 years and within
10 years I would have enough to cover expenses for any children that might
come along in the future and provide some cushion.

------
jbrains
I generate about $25k/year in mostly-passive-income from single family rental
homes. I average 20 hours/year maintaining this income stream in answering
email, collecting invoices for my accountant, and making the occasional tough
decision about renovating/repairing/waiting.

I got there after placing subcontractors for about 2 years with various
companies, which built up the cash reserves that let me purchase the rental
properties with no mortgages.

I got /there/ by inviting some young dude to a conference I organised whom I'd
met at another conference. He and I worked together to match talented young
programmers with companies that wanted them. Nice work if you can get it.

------
orangethirty
I just launched hacker fiction. It is a collection of stories (no more than
100 pages long) focused on hacking, sci-fy, and just about anything else I can
imagine. It already made its first $20 on launch day. :)

You can read a sampler here:

[http://orangethirty.blogspot.com/2012/09/hackfy-space-
raven-...](http://orangethirty.blogspot.com/2012/09/hackfy-space-raven-
issue-1.html)

I don thave a website yet, because Im still testing the idea to see if its
worth investing time in. Plans would be to write a collection of stories and
then sell them. Maybe some merchandise if any of the stories stick.

------
rugoso
About 90 dollars a month in a little iPhone app called TweakyBeat .. it was
free for like three years, then some day I asked myself if I could change it
from free to pay, and yes you can.

------
akeck
I haven't gotten very far into passive income. So far, I get 10.00/quarter in
sparse CafePress sales and ~60.00/quarter from dividend investments. CafePress
has been a rough ride. I've put up a good number of designs I think should do
well, but have yet to sell. That being said, I'm not really putting time into
all of the other aspects of doing well with CafePress. At this point, dividend
investments seem to be an easier route to consistent passive income.

------
philip1209
I make about $5/month on Food Trucks Near Me [1] through ads. At least it's
not losing money!

[1] <http://foodtrucksnearme.com>

~~~
matznerd
PUT MORE ADS! In between each row should be an ad unit! Contact all the Food
Truck owners and get them to put up an ad on a monthly basis. Food Truck
owners are relatively easy to sell to (I have experience here) because their
business is small. Take that money and reinvest it back into generating
traffic and build your own list of food truck customers and then charge for
blasts etc...

~~~
philip1209
Fair enough! I'm writing a Stripe page to allow food truck owners to buy a
'priority listing.' It's currently set at $100/month and you are put in the
top row. I'm thinking of dropping it to $20/mo. Any input on pricing?

~~~
matznerd
Since you have 4 cities, you can test different prices in each. $100 sounds a
bit steep for a food truck unless you can guarantee ROI for them. I think it
would be smarter to just add more cities and keep the price lower.

I would try something like $25 a spot and try to make them sign a 3-month
advertising contract. If they balk, just remember you have 30 other food
trucks and only 3 spots. This makes more sense if you had a good amount of
traffic.

~~~
philip1209
Multivariate testing? Now you're talking.

I am considering a lower pricing tier for a menu. Currently only St. Louis has
a couple menus, because curating and formatting the menus is a pain.

~~~
mapster
thinking the paid version would depend on local competition. Pay more to get
more if you have a lot of competition. if low competition, they would pay less
for the ad. You can determine which truck should pay how much based on
geospatial statistics if you have a location for each truck (let me know if
you have any questions about this). also, my brother in law has 2 food trucks
on a Hawaiian island - and there are plenty here in California, so I hope you
will add more locations.

------
nonce42
About $10-100 a month through Amazon Associates on a moderately popular blog
(usually the lower amount). And $12,000 a month from a small Bay Area office
building.

------
nathanbarry
I make between $1,500 and $2,500 (used to be higher) on the App Store from two
iOS apps (called OneVoice and Fluent). The rest of my income comes from design
consulting.

Right now I am working on a new book that launches on Tuesday about designing
iOS applications. If you are interested in iOS apps you should check it out:
<http://nathanbarry.com/inside-app-design-handbook>

------
ComNik
I learned web-development while making a little price-tracking/wishlist app:
<http://www.rankique.com/> (and a german version, pretty much for myself to
use..: <http://www.rankique.de/>)

Together they make about 30-50€/month. I'm working on a couple of new features
and I'm searching for a new name, but currently school takes up most of my
time.

------
NameNickHN
We run a couple of short URL and disposable e-mail websites like
<http://melt.li/> or <http://www.fakeinbox.com/> that make around $280 per
month. That's not much, obviously, but there was one month last year where we
made $3.400 due to a traffic surge caused by someone using one of our short
URL domains for spamming.

------
marcosero
In my spare time during my first year of university, I coded a Mac app to
calculate arithmetic and weighted average for italian universities:
<http://itunes.apple.com/it/app/mylibretto/id470129723?mt=12>

I gained almost 50 $/month during last two years and it costs me some hours a
year for customer support.

------
emilw
Right, I've pondered a while if I should be posting this but here goes. Out of
sheer boredom I created a adult orientated site, yes the whole nine-nsfw-yards
stuff. It's free to use, no sign ups, no premium accounts, no ads, no pop-ups
etc. Content is user generated and aggregated.

Aug 3rd - Sep 2nd 2012:

Visits: 81,045

Unique Visitors: 54,386

Pageviews: 3,189,136

Pages / Visit: 39.35

Avg. Visit Duration: 00:14:12

% New Visits: 63.69%

Are these numbers good enough to even start thinking about monetization?

------
egypturnash
In a couple months I'll find out of the first full year of my Tarot deck's
publication[1] will have resulted in continuing royalties. It came out only a
couple months before the end of last fiscal year, and came close to earning
out its advance, so I'm hopeful.

Royalties: passive income 1.0.

[1] <http://egypt.urnash.com/tarot/>

------
iguanayou
I launched <http://bestattendance.com> 20 months ago working solo while
holding a full time job. Profitable and bootstrapped. Growth was slow at
first, but things are really starting to take off now. It still does not
support a full time income but I project that it will soon(ish).

------
usmanity
I wouldn't call it exactly passive but it's not really a focus right now.

I setup an etsy shop on which I put some posters I've made.
<http://www.etsy.com/shop/Posterboard>

I actually have made -$1.40 b/c that's what it costed me to put up the
posters. It's been up for about 2 weeks now.

------
egomaksab
Just launched, $0/month . Breeze ( <http://letsbreeze.com> ), a simple agile
project management tool.

It's kind a hybrid between Trello and Basecamp (yes, the interface design is
influenced by Basecamp, but it kicks ass :) )

Basically it's a Kanban board with added time tracking and reports.

------
fourstar
~10 bucks a month. <http://hipsterorhomeless.com> :|

~~~
matznerd
Funny concept. Re-arrange the layout so that the ad units are on the left and
right of the photos, not all the way down on the bottom. Also, allow for
tagging so that the ads are more closely related. Also, after clicking the
vote, it just takes me to the next page after quickly displaying the score, I
want to know if the person is actually homeless or hipster? There are a few
directions you can take this, and while I doubt it could ever be your main
income source, you have potential to at least bring in a few hundred per
month. ..

~~~
fourstar
Hey thanks for the tips :) This was my first actual site done from scratch.
I've come a long way now and work for an awesome company, and have another
website that I am eagerly trying to find time to complete, but I definitely
will try to attack some (all maybe?) of those ideas that you've shared!

~~~
matznerd
No problem, if you need any other tips or clarification, fee free to drop me a
line... Good luck!

------
sergeytubin
It looks like $70-100 is average for a "good enough" android app without any
promotion. My IOU app is about the same. Launching a web-site for it soon
(same as app, with sync) to see how it affects. Not expecting much income from
all of this, it's just fun.

------
joss82
I generate maybe $10 a month after paying expenses (server, some small design
work) on this spare time website, through adwords:
<http://www.challengelistcreator.com>

Not sure it could go much further though.

------
ynh
I make a little over 600$ selling a Newsletter script on Codecanyon
<http://codecanyon.net/item/newsletter-mailer-v13/149365>

Currently I am planing a SaaS Newsletter Mailer.

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
I use your script. It's very nice and worth the price, but the script setup is
more complicated than it needs to be and the smtp is broken and I'm forced to
use phpmailer. Two things I've never had issues with from all the other
scripts I've installed on my server over the past 7 years.

I'd still prefer it over SaaS Mail because I don't have re-occuring costs
every month and I like being in control of my own email lists and the iframe
embedded email newsletter signup is awesome. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm the one that asked you about how to check the database to see if a user
had already signed up for a specific category newsletter before adding them to
it again. That's another thing you should fix.

3 little flaws but the rest of the script is just sooooo perfect. It's sold
over 1800+ times because designers/developers like us HATE SaaS newsletter
mailers. We like your script.

~~~
matznerd
The problem with running your own mail script is your inboxing rate. Your IP
is not going to be white listed and it can really hurt you later on. Not to
hate on the OP, but if you are building a serious business that needs to
ensure deliverability of email to users, I recommend an outside provider like
SendGrid, SailThru, MailGun, MailChimp, iContact, etc...

~~~
ynh
The software also supports Amazon SES

------
sunnynagra
We get anywhere from $50-250 per month from an iOS app called Basketball Shot
Tracker HD (www.slyceapps.com/shottracker).

It tends to depend on how close it is to the basketball season. We found the
in app purchase model to work really well for us.

------
ideamonk
<http://instasync.me> \- downloads all your instagram photos \- about $200
every month. \- expecting it to rise (pricing changes)

Looking at a few longer lists below, I think I've just started!

------
mapster
~$200/mo from digital download ecommerce site I launched last April. I have
3,200 products, all made by me. Magento store, $15/mo hosting. Adding more
products and services in the future.

------
kevbam
I used make about €200 a month on hubpages until Google Panda hit.The majority
of this came via Amazon affiliate sales. I still make a bit now, but it is way
down.

~~~
ja27
I was making about $30/month from Amazon affiliate and Adsense on two
different blogs. Once Panda hit, my Amazon affiliate blog died but the Adsense
one (sports) does more like $150/month now

~~~
matznerd
Panda slaps are recoverable in most cases, you just have to change strategy...

------
jjets718
$8 a month from <http://pillsoftware.com>, but I just launched, so I'm hoping
to get more traffic soon.

------
dhimes
About $50-$100 per month on reading and writing software I wrote a while back
(mostly writing). I don't advertise or promote it any more.

------
muellerwolfram
i made ~80$ in the first month after launching <http://www.themescroller.com>

i had a lot of traffic coming from my show hn thread
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4354376>) but since then i'm struggling
to find new traffic sources...

~~~
JayNeely
I'd write a personal email to some writers at web design blogs.
SmashingMagazine might be interested.

------
hsmyers
At the moment:

1\. 1,108.00 --- VA Disability 2\. 100.00 --- Client retainer 3\. 934.00 ---
Social Security (starting in October)

Total: 2142.00

Analysis: It is good to like Ramen Noodles!

\--hsm

~~~
genwin
Not to downplay your pain: I would love to get $934/month for SS! I've maxed
out contributions for many decades but will probably get less than $500.

~~~
Symbol
I'm 31 and fully expect Social Security / other entitlement programs to be
non-existent in 30+ years. At least I'm helping some of you collect something
today. Enjoy!

------
gagabity
About $300/Month on over a dozen Android Apps all Ad supported. AdMob with
Mediation including Millennial Media.

------
bryanh
$700-800/mo from BitBuffet.com. Haven't touched it in about a year as I am
100% on my main startup.

------
pook
Domainkiller, you have apparently been hellbanned since your one-word comment
38 days ago.

------
nicotoh
make a few hundred bucks from a dating site i created

www.likeapub.com

~~~
nicotoh
<http://www.likeapub.com>

------
DominikR
About 500€ with an Android app (a Facebook client, link:
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flipster>), though I do not
know if it will go up or down in the future, since I've just activated payment
options in my app. (activated In app purchase on 1st August, released Pro
version a few days ago)

Haven't done any marketing other then contacting a bunch of blogs (~20) before
realizing that this feels a lot like "farming" in a MMORPG, which I hate
doing, so I stopped. ;-/

Other than that, it's a nice playground for trying new stuff, which in some
cases is directly reused in the products I build for the startup I am working
for.

