
ASK:HN  Recommendations on new sources of income - fosco
Looking for recommendations on how I can generate or obtain new sources of income while working a full time job.<p>Active or Passive income, due to my minimal resources I see active as my only realistic option but happy to review any and all suggestions!
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zazpowered
Build a mobile app. An app I built a few years ago is still making money on
auto pilot. If you rank high on the App store you will get a steady stream of
downloads.

Build a website. Because of SEO traffic this can be pretty passive. I have a
few websites that are making income that I stopped working on years ago.

Invest. Investing is a great way for passive income you can look for dividend
stocks, REITs or just plain real estate. Take a look at some options here
[https://senzu.io/investing/compare](https://senzu.io/investing/compare)

For actively making money you can try to do contract work in your free time

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kennu
Did you put a lot of effort in writing original text content for the website?
My experience has been that, even if a website might be useful for other
reasons, it needs to have lots of original text e.g. to be approved for Google
ads.

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Jugurtha
I'm not sure this is true. I had a one article blog where ads were approved.
Though it had 800+ comments and ranked better than the thing it talked about
(card options in an underbanked country where banks suck at making their
products known). I'm almost certain very few of the people who got a card
didn't visit the site(and it's the very reason I wrote it: it was hard to find
any pertinent info in one place when I wanted to get a card that I felt the
effort should never be repeated by anyone).

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patgenzler
If you want side income in short order, your best bet is to sell your time
(freelancing). Regardless of your profession, there's something to do to make
extra income - if nothing else, drive for Uber or Lyft.

If you want side income in the long run, then consider chasing passive income
plays where you don't sell your time - blogging, building a bunch of mobile
apps or web sites, selling things on Amazon or eBay, etc. These things take a
lot of time. Figure out something that intersects your skills, passion, and (a
small) market and pursue it relentlessly. Give it a year or two for each idea.

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jetti
Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:

* Tutor

* Create some online content (ebook, course, blog) and either put ads on it or sell the content

* create a side project that you want to productize (this will take more time and may not lead to any money)

* become a secret shopper.

* Get a part time job at a local place of business (retail, restaurant) this would be the "easiest" of them but may not be the most rewarding

* buy a site/app that is already generating revenue and either maintain it or fix it up

* put your skills up on fiverr or other similar site

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gallerdude
Is becoming a secret shopper like a legit thing? I always only see those
annoying pop-ups.

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amalag
It is a thing, there are legit organizations, but the pay is miniscule. I did
one once to do an oil change at my dealership. They paid for the oil change
plus some small amount of money. There is definitely some hassle in filling
out the online forms exactly the way they want them. I only did 1-2, too much
hassle.

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fhood
Do you live near a University? I got offered $35 an hour to tutor intro CS
kids the other day. Not sure if that is what you are looking for, but a few
hundred a week is a nice supplement, particularly if you are a grad student.

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codegeek
First, there is no such thing as "passive" that is 100% sustainable for a long
period of time.

But, there are things that you can do where you will not ALWAYS trade your
time for money. That should be the goal. I call that passive for me. But don't
focus too much on the word itself.

Some ideas:

\- Create a SAAS. It can bring money where you don't always trade your time
for that money BUT it requires time to do support, maintenance and
enhancements. You can decide how much. Lot of small products that are doing
under 10K per month with not a lot of hours spent per week.

\- Write a tutorial/E-Book and sell it. This again can generate income for
which you won't always trade your time. But it has a huge upfront cost.

\- Work an extra job during weekends. Not recommended but it technically
answers the question "how can I generate new sources of income". Silly answer
but technically correct. Of course, you are trading time for money 1-1 with
this one.

\- If you are good at something but cannot a tutorial/e-book, then offer your
service live for a fee over the phone or skype etc. Live coaching, tutoring,
code mentoring etc.

Note that all of the above requires marketing efforts specially in the
beginning. You cannot magically expect people to find you and pay you. The
"find you" part is the critical one where a lot of us fail.

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brianwawok
> First, there is no such thing as "passive" that is 100% sustainable for a
> long period of time.

I think a large enough and diverse enough investment is.. i.e. something
across many markets across many asset classes. That is as close to passive
income as you can get.

The downside is obviously you need $1 million dollar seed money to tap out 40k
a year from it...

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codegeek
yes correct. I was specifically talking about creating something and not just
investing money in a fund investment.

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jimmies
Find a niche on eBay and sell it. Old stuff like cards, vinyls, retro hardware
hauls that you can get on CL and resell it for a nice profit. News stuff like
electronics boards, good headphones, mechanical keyboards, etc,... you could
import from Aliexpress and resell with support.

