
Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams - mraza007
What are some ideas as developer where I can turn my skill into passive income.
I write blogs but I’m not sure if its a good idea to monetize it
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scriptstar
I made a course on a small topic which is keyword research/SEO related and
hosted on Udemy. It took me a week to create the whole thing since then I
haven't done anything except answering a few questions of the students.

It's 99% passive. I am making around $150 per month.

This is the simple method I followed (CPSO)

Customer => Problem => Solution => Offer

1.) find a topic with enough interest (customer finding activity)

2.) identify a single problem in that topic (Problem finding activity)

3.) provide a clear cut solution to the problem Make sure they get a result by
the end of it. Record your screen showing the solution without any fluff.
(Solution providing activity)

4) Create a compelling offer and present to the customer (Make a compelling
offer activity)

For the last part (offer), I created a video which is almost 45 minutes long
and taught nearly 90% of the course. There's no need to buy if you watch the
intro video which is free to preview on the course.

It's doing well.

Watch the preview video, and you are good to go—no need to buy it. But if you
want to support an honest creator, then please consider purchasing the course
using the following link. Many thanks.

[https://www.udemy.com/course/keyword-golden-ratio-formula-
fi...](https://www.udemy.com/course/keyword-golden-ratio-formula-find-easy-
keywords-to-rank-high-in-google/?couponCode=HACKER-NEWZ)

~~~
mraza007
The course looks very phenomenal I might buy it since SEO is really important
as it gets you to the right audience

~~~
scriptstar
Thank you for your kind comments. I am looking forward to see you there.

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holgersindbaek
I'm a designer-turned-developer and created a nice-looking solitaire card game
website: [https://online-solitaire.com/](https://online-solitaire.com/). It's
making me around $1500 a month.

My approach was to find a nice of apps that where already popular and then see
if I could make it better.

~~~
mettamage
Any tips on becoming a developer turned designer? I'd be interested in that.

~~~
holgersindbaek
That's a tough one. One suggestion would be "don't". Most companies want
either one or the other. I'm not a brilliant developer or a brilliant
designer, which makes it hard for me to find my role in bigger companies.

On the other hand I can make things like [https://online-
solitaire.com/](https://online-solitaire.com/) and
[https://habitualapp.io/](https://habitualapp.io/) as a one-man operation.

~~~
mraza007
Honestly i love that Since as a one man operation you are owning the entire
process compared to working for a company where things are done by other
people too both have its pros and cons

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alexmingoia
What does passive income mean to you? Is it passive income when a YouTuber
gets paid whenever someone views a video, but spends hundreds of hours making
great content and building an audience? Is SaaS MRR passive income after
you've spent hundreds or thousands of hours building a product and acquiring
customers? Is it passive income when an author receives royalties after
spending months writing, publishing, and marketing a book? Is advertising
revenue passive income after you've spent hundreds of hours writing blog posts
and building an audience?

If you want to leverage your time to make money when you sleep, you need to do
the work to acquire income producing assets.

Here's some ways you could monetize your skills as a developer:

\- Provide value for free (blog posts, code, videos, whatever) to grow an
audience, then sell courses or paid content to that audience.

\- Create open source software that other people need, then sell training
videos on how to use it.

\- Build an audience for your blog, and join a developer/tech focused
advertising network.

~~~
gitgud
> _Create open source software that other people need, then sell training
> videos on how to use it._

Please don't do this, I personally hate this motivation for Open Source
development.

The incentive of the project developer is not aligned with the user. The
developer has the incentive to make the software complex and unintuitive, so
that people _require_ training to use it.

Any proposed changes to make the project easier to configure, threaten the
income of the developer and will probably not be considered...

Monetisation is extremely hard to get right in open-source software.

~~~
alexmingoia
Even better, don’t write the software at all. Just sell training for popular
open-source software. Could offer a cut of sales to developer in exchange for
advertising the training on the GitHub.

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shoo
baseline suggestion for truly passive income is invest in the stock market: do
dev work for people in exchange for money --> invest the money in the stock
market (e.g. low cost passive index funds) --> expect roughly 5% real return
on capital invested for long term buy & hold stock investment

~~~
mraza007
I have been thinking about it do you know how can i get started I’m just
scared what if i make the wrong investment

~~~
marketgod
Look into Financial Independence and 4% Safe withdrawal rate. Also look up
lazy portfolio.

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amoitnga
build a dating app that doesn't charge for reading messages from other users.

Make it 1 dollar a month. let us talk to each other. Keep our profile there
for years without us having to take an action. if somebody finds me and wants
to talk to me - I want to get an email about it. I don't understand why such a
simple app (browse, filter, message, get notifications) has to cost 10/15
bucks a month. make it 10 a year.

~~~
mraza007
I have seen people doing that but I’m afraid people below 18 might start using
that

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muzani
Sites like
[https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1](https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1)
are full of examples on what has been done. You can't do the same idea twice
usually, but you can spot lots of patterns there.

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matt_the_bass
Figure out a way to make money from a hobby. It’s not passive but it can be no
net effort.

I like to make wordclocks. I like the process of figuring out better
manufacturing processes. Some people buy them. Win win situation.

I don’t sell many, but enough to pay for my cnc.

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mrfusion
Is selling something on Etsy ever a good idea? How to know if there is demand?

~~~
giantg2
It can be. It's not passive income since you have to make and ship the items.

If you see other items similar to yours, then there is likely demand. If you
don't, then you could experiment by making a few and listing them.

~~~
mrfusion
Thanks. I was thinking of selling wooden benches but would the shipping be
ridiculous? Are there any shipping hacks to keep it affordable?

~~~
jthistle
This shipping hack may apply, or it may not.

Search for a local warehouse that provides order fulfillment services and see
if you can have them ship your benches.

A place like that ships enough packages they can usually get lower shipping
rates than other businesses. I own a company like that in Ohio. With my rates
it costs perhaps $30 to ship a gaming PC to California... for an individual it
might cost $75.

