
Daring Adventures with Passive Income - dgarner
http://www.patrick-wied.at/blog/daring-adventures-with-passive-income-1/?wblog=1
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kposehn
I think that one of the classic problems with the notion of passive income is
the belief that it cannot have any ambition.

A case in point is that my wife and I created a web site 3 years ago. This
site has not been touched in over a year, and that was the first and only
update to the site in over 2 years.

It has been consistently banking $2,500-$4,500 per month for the entire time
it has been online. I put in _maybe_ a few hours of time each quarter just to
check in on it.

Now, there is a catch - you can't just make a site and call it a day. You
first have to do market research, come up with an angle, partner with a
merchant or five, write a content plan, build it, market it, etc.

Now, assume that your time is worth $100/hour. If you spend a full 2 weeks on
it at 40 hours/week, you'll rack up $8,000 in overall opportunity cost. At
first glance, that is a steep price.

However, if you've picked right, you'll make that money back within a few
months, probably less. This does mean there is going to be an upfront cost to
you in order to get it out the door, but you will also have a better long-run
profitability.

~~~
sown
> You first have to do market research, come up with an angle, partner with a
> merchant or five, write a content plan, build it, market it, etc.

It seems like you could make a website about that without some kind of selling
angle because those were the first questions I had. I can't think of anything
I know to write that anyone would be remotely interested in reading; i have no
life, can't relate to normal things like bars or restaurants or whatever
people do in their spare time.

~~~
girasquid
Step back and examine your life, and you'll find tons of stuff once you think
about it. For example, poking through your history I discovered that you've
been through an acquisition: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4329721>. It
probably wouldn't make you a boatload of cash to retire on, but there are
probably some folks out there who are interested in learning about Surviving
The Acquisition, or What To Do When You're Being Acquired.

If you don't feel like you have anything yet - go learn something, and
document the process. Others who are learning usually appreciate that, and
there's always something you can teach someone.

~~~
kposehn
Well put.

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unreal37
The author makes a good point about support being a big hassle, but I think
misses the lesson from it. When you're selling something for $7.50, customers
demand a lot of support if something goes wrong.

But who says they are entitled to that support? You should craft a carefully
worded answer to support emails around "support being through the existing web
site and documentation". And quote a nice high hourly rate if they want custom
services.

Zero support should be the model for software priced under $100.

Looking at ThemeForest, most authors respond to all comments in the forums for
their template, but politely say they cannot assist with customization or make
even small changes to their theme for people.

~~~
steveplace
Support becomes an upsell. I've seen that model used in a lot of software I've
bought, seems to work very well.

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binaryorganic
Cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J2Nfrde...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J2NfrdeDMO4J:www.patrick-
wied.at/blog/let-the-adventurous-journey-begin-passive-
income+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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technotony
People confuse minimum viable product with low quality all the time. Minimum
viable is really about the smallest set of features a customer needs to spend
money on your product. It doesn't mean a low quality product rushed out
quickly. A minimum viable product could still take you months to build, and
require design help, if the features demanded were hard to build.

~~~
kposehn
> A minimum viable product could still take you months to build, and require
> design help, if the features demanded were hard to build.

Oh so very, very true.

A hard lesson to learn, that. We're about to release a new product and man it
has taken longer than we ever thought. Still worth it :)

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Kerrick
I must say that making $1,000 in a year from passive income is a pretty low
goal. I make that in under three months with my "now passive" income. (I
prefer to call it "now passive" income because it came from a lot of hard work
in the past, but requires little to no upkeep.)

The author mentions that he plans to set another goal once he reaches the
$1,000 goal. My advice: definitely do so! It may not be easy, but it is
possible. And yes, reaching an originally low goal may give you the motivation
to continue.

My personal goal is to eventually have enough "now passive" income that if I
were to lose my job, I _could_ lower my standard of living and survive
unemployed without dipping into my savings.

~~~
yitchelle
I think that the first goal is totally dependent upon his current situation.
It is very much a low hanging fruit scenario, so that grabbing the low fruit
will provide some motivation and inspiration to continue one. Nothing worse
than setting the bar too high, missing it and getting depressed about it.

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tnorthcutt
I would encourage the author to read patio11's blog
(<http://www.kalzumeus.com/blog/>). You could be aiming higher, and I think
you'd do well to switch your focus away from penny-producing efforts like
Flattr and toward more scaleable things.

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ashray
Passive income is pretty great but no source of income is truly passive.
You'll always have certain issues like maintenance, customer support, etc.
i.e. when you're talking about software.

If it were a website/webapp you'd still run into issues with bugs, security
fixes.

This doesn't even take into account the fact that new competitors might come
in, search algorithms may change, etc.

That said, a well SEO'ed site (for a popular keyword) is possibly the best
kind of passive income one can have. No marketing expenses, the content is
already there (presuming that's what got it SEO'ed well..) and you'll keep
getting visitors. Awesome :)

~~~
kposehn
> 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 unique caching system I did with S3/Cloudfront. The
upshot of this stack is zero overall maintenance. It doesn't break as there is
simply nothing _to_ break (except Heroku/AWS)

~~~
ashray
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.

~~~
kposehn
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.

~~~
ashray
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..)

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dgarner
in case the server didn't make it:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tyEeSk8...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tyEeSk8_kGYJ:www.patrick-
wied.at/blog/daring-adventures-with-passive-
income-1+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=ch&client=firefox-a)

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oh_sigh
Can someone give some examples of (hypothetical or real) "passive income"
service/site? Every time I hear about the concept, the person is always very
circumspect of revealing anything about their business(rightfully so), so it's
hard to visualize for me.

~~~
chunkyslink
Here you go: <http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/how-to-build-a-niche-site/>

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anovikov
Passive income is a return on equity. Not 'an ec2 instance that makes money'.

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

~~~
_delirium
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.

~~~
anovikov
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.

