
Ask HN: What are your passive income sources? - introvertmac
I do affiliate marketing. Just looking for few other options and would love to hear your experience&#x2F;story of creating passive income sources !
======
csallen
I run [https://IndieHackers.com](https://IndieHackers.com) where I interview
developers/entrepreneurs about how they make money from their apps and
projects. There are tons of examples there that fit into the "passive income"
category as you define it ("making something that makes you money while you
sleep").

A couple of good examples from the site:

\- park.io (from Mike Carson) makes $125,000/mo taking domain backorders; he
essentually wrote tons of scripts that buy expiring domains on behalf of his
customers for $100 and that allow customers to bid against each other

\- Instapainting.com (from Chris Chen) makes $32,000/mo allow customers to
commission artists to turn their photos into hand-made paintings; it took him
years to get to this point, but it's almost all automated and he rarely has to
step in

Indie Hackers itself is my passive income source, although right now it takes
a lot of work on a day-to-day basis. I'm writing a blog post about that that I
hope to put up on my timeline
([https://IndieHackers.com/timeline](https://IndieHackers.com/timeline)) by
tomorrow. I'm doing just over $1000/mo right now, mainly from sponsors.

~~~
dorfsmay
You're going to write a blog post on your site about how to make passive
income, which you are doing by hosting your site about how to make passive
income! I don't think it can get more meta than that!

~~~
lloeki
Nitpick: meta is too much of a catch-all, _mise en abîme_ is more apt here.

~~~
khedoros1
On the other hand, people that I know actually _use_ "meta", so it's probably
a better choice if I intend to communicate information to another person. As
used in the comment that you replied to, the intended meaning is unambiguous.

------
morgante
A stock portfolio that I've built through consulting profits is my main
passive income source. Anything else is not really "passive."

This probably isn't the answer you're looking for, but in my view the average
developer is much better off simply selling their time at the maximum rate and
funneling the profits into a well-managed portfolio. The median outcome for
this is much better than the story on most passive-income businesses.

~~~
chad_strategic
I have to laugh at "well-managed" portfolio. That's hysterical, in fact I'm
still laughing. I might even wake up in the middle of the night and laugh.

Silly, active managed portfolios never beat their benchmarks over the long
run. Anybody in the financial industry knows that... and index fund are only
good till that strategy doesn't work anymore.

~~~
morgante
Err, what? I'm not sure where you got the idea that I'm actively managing my
portfolio. The vast majority of my money is in index funds. In my view, a
well-managed portfolio is one which aims to perform at market and no better or
worse.

> index fund are only good till that strategy doesn't work anymore.

The day that index funds cease to be the optimal investment strategy (for most
individuals) is the day that stocks overall have stopped being a viable
investment strategy.

Obviously you're just arrogantly trying to make assumptions instead of asking
questions.

~~~
chad_strategic
>>> The day that index funds cease to be the optimal investment strategy (for
most individuals) is the day that stocks overall have stopped being a viable
investment strategy.

Don't worry the day will come. ;) It's called a black swan.

I'm not arrogant, I'm just well educated and a student of the market. If you
study the market long enough you will learn it's nothing more than just a big
casino run by the federal reserve and the big banks.

Yes, Index strategy was great when it was invented in the 70's and 80's and
probably the 90's. But if you have everybody rushing into index funds, well
that causes an imbalance in the market. Similar to 2008, the tech bubble and
even all the way back to tulip bubble. (google it)

I'm really sorry that disturbed your investment strategy.

~~~
morgante
It's hilarious that I'm being the one accused of arrogance when you're telling
me to Google black swans and the tulip bubble as though I don't know what they
are. You're being an asshole and patronizing me as though I don't know just as
much about investments as you do.

Index fund over-investment is a red herring which is being promoted by active
managers to try to justify their fees. In truth, the market balances itself
out: the more passive money there is, the greater the returns to active
management become.

In fact, looking through your comment history, you are in fact one of the
pariahs of the internet who's trying to push your bogus options strategies on
unsuspecting fools. Get lost and go spam somewhere else.

~~~
chad_strategic
No I'm not a pariah. I'm just tired of the arrogance of people that thinking
they know everything about investing on Hacker news. (This has been an epic
waste of my time, there is no economic incentive arguing with a d-bag such as
yourself.)

You are only mad at me because you are unwilling accept/understand/comprehend
an alternative investment strategy. As I said before I'm really sorry I
disturbed your investment strategy, ultimately hurting your fragile feelings.

What it comes boils down to is that you are programmer that thinks he knows
how to invest. [https://xkcd.com/1570/](https://xkcd.com/1570/)

Hmm... get your research correct. I don't offer services to individual clients
only institutions. I'm also regulated by the SEC.

Cheers!

~~~
morgante
That XKCD is the epitome of why I tell people they should _not_ try to build
their own algorithms.

Yet you think an MBA and a few LAMP scripts qualifies you to dispense
investment advice. Meanwhile I have _actually_ run a fund with actual
investors, but it's not something I recommend anyone try unless they are
willing to do a lot of research and work on it as a full-time job.

You should really stop arrogantly assuming you know better than everyone else.
I almost feel sorry for you, as your experience epitomizes the Dunning-Kruger
effect.

~~~
chad_strategic
Based on your continued responses and the fact your feelings are hurt, I'm
wining this battle.

(I'm guessing you are millennial snowflake?)

Where can I sign up for your fund!

Oh I can end this fun... well because I do have better things to do:

You are right and I am wrong, there you go do you feel better now?

~~~
morgante
You continue to lob ad hominem attacks instead of making any substantive
arguments.

I'm wasting my time arguing with you. Starting a discussion by "laughing" at
my portfolio _without even knowing what it is_ is not an adult thing do to.

I really hope you listen to feedback and grow as a person. Right now you're
carrying a lot of negativity around with you.

~~~
chad_strategic
I'm doing fine thanks.

Have great day!

~~~
morgante
I'm glad. I hope someday you realize that selling stock tips on the internet
is a scammy business model and that there are better ways to make money than
preying on the ignorant.

------
VyseofArcadia
I've got a savings account. Interest on that baby is getting me upwards of 30
cents a month.

~~~
luhn
I know you're being facetious and your real-life investment portfolio likely
looks much different but I need to say:

Savings accounts are a terrible place to put your savings.

If you have anything more than a couple thousand dollars, you can put it in a
mutual fund and see several percent return on average, versus the fraction of
the percent you can get from a savings account.

In certain situations savings accounts can be advantageous—They are very low-
risk and the money is immediately available. But for a long-term investment,
almost anything is better than a savings account.

~~~
AznHisoka
but they do help you sleep at night. the market can drop 5% in a day and not
many people can stomach that emotionally.

~~~
breischl
One should certainly tailor their investments to their own risk tolerance. But
there are better investments even with very low risk levels. Money market,
CDs, gov't bonds, and high-grade corporate bonds are all options that give
better returns than savings accounts with minimal risk (well, before some
gov't bonds were negative rate, anyway).

------
mjibson
I run [https://www.goread.io/](https://www.goread.io/) which is a
subscription-based RSS reader. It's open source and runs on google app engine.
It costs ~$2k per year to run and I make between $2k and $3k profit per year
for nearly zero effort. Stripe handles payments and app engine keeps the
servers running.

I consider it a high success because for the amount of marketing I've done in
the last 2 years (exactly zero), it still has paying users. If I did a few
months of code improvements and marketing pushes I could probably increase
that income a few times.

~~~
ShaneCurran
Hi Matt, love the site. Do you mind me asking what brings the running costs up
to $2k per year?

~~~
mjibson
In 2015 I paid app engine about $1700 or ~$130/month or a bit over $4/day. I
could probably get that down another dollar or so a day if I did some
optimization and cleanup work, but I haven't cared.

------
xchefhatx
I have a card game business that's aimed towards women, PoCs & the lgbtq
community - groups who aren't traditionally served.

Every couple of weeks I ship product to an Amazon warehouse and do a bit of
advertising on Facebook. It brings in around $40k/mo and 3-4x during the
holiday season.

~~~
morgante
Is that net or gross?

~~~
xchefhatx
Gross.

------
jefflinwood
I still get royalties from programming books I wrote about ten years ago - the
content has been updated by other authors in the mean time, and the
corresponding royalty split has declined, but I don't do anything active
either.

On the not-quite-as-passive side, I have an iPad game that I had basically
left out in the Apple App Store for several years, where it sold with no
involvement or investment on my end. Only recently, Apple required all app
developers to resubmit their older apps or face delisting - in my case, it
involved updating cocos-2d to support the latest ARM architectures, and making
a whole lot of changes for everything that had happened in iOS in the past
couple of years.

I also run a small API-as-a-service, which runs on reliable infrastructure,
and doesn't take much real work to monitor and/or run.

~~~
abrookewood
What type of programming book did you write that is still relevant 10 years
ago? Presumably something not tied to a specific language or technology?

------
andrei512
I run [https://www.weheartswift.com/](https://www.weheartswift.com/) the first
site dedicated to the Swift Programming language.

I've wrote a book that teaches people how to code in swift from the ground up.
[https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-programming-
scratch-100-e...](https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-programming-
scratch-100-exercises/)

I've also made an exercise platform similar to codeschool/codecademy/etc that
is available as a mac app using playgrounds or online by using our swift
sandbox [https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-
sandbox/](https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-sandbox/)

The site generates about 30k/year in revenue growing at a steady pace.
Operating costs are around 10k / year for
servers/software/subscriptions/marketing.

I need to spend about 2 weeks yearly updating the book/app to the last version
of swift. I also spend about 5 minutes per day replying to customer emails.
It's not that passive, but really close. (ignoring time spent developing
products/book)

~~~
deegles
Any advice on writing a technical book? I'm thinking of writing one on
developing for Alexa.

~~~
andrei512
actually teaching the content to people helped me the most.

gitbook is awesome and free.
[https://github.com/GitbookIO/gitbook](https://github.com/GitbookIO/gitbook)

blog a lot and start making a list of subscribers yesterday.

------
protomok
Portfolio of index funds based on
[http://canadiancouchpotato.com](http://canadiancouchpotato.com)

    
    
      25% TSX (Canadian market)
      25% S&P500 (US market)
      25% MSCI EAFE (Developed market excluding Canada/US)
      25% Fixed Income - cash,bonds,'high' interest savings account, etc.
    

Requires about 4-5 hours of time once per year to rebalance portfolio and
update some partially automated Google Docs files to track performance.

Works for me...also planning to get a rental property at some point.

~~~
patrickgordon
If you don't mind answering, how long have you been doing this for and roughly
how has your rate of return been?

~~~
pesfandiar
I've been following an older Canadian Couch Potato portfolio for a few years
now. The market has been mostly growing since 2010 so it probably doesn't
count, but it's been returning an average of 7-8% every year (dividend+gain).
Even last year, when the Canadian economy didn't do well, its return was
positive.

It takes more than 4-5 hours a year for me though. I invest a part of my
income every month. It makes sense since I don't pay any commission on
purchases, so YMMV.

More info: [http://www.pesfandiar.com/blog/2015/05/01/how-i-invest-my-
sa...](http://www.pesfandiar.com/blog/2015/05/01/how-i-invest-my-savings)

~~~
patrickgordon
Thanks for the info. It is appreciated!!

------
shanecleveland
Small tools and web apps that provide a quick solution to very niche problems.
Mostly aimed at business. Primarily based on obscure forms that occasionally
need to be filled out for shipping. If I find myself googling something but
don't find a great fit for what I need or many relevant hits, I look into
building it. Or if I find myself manually gathering and formatting data or
info, I see if I can automate it. Some end up being useful/found by others.
Some don't. I currently see about $300/mo through adsense. A few of these
things could turn into something more if I was ever motivated to do so, but
would no longer be passive. Some probably not. Most interesting is seeing what
takes off and what doesn't and trying to apply that to duplicate the success.

I've tried a couple affiliate projects, but have not found a great fit yet.

------
usgroup
Odd how few seem to mention property (real estate)? Even those alleging actual
returns worth a damn on stock portfolios. Surely the most obvious route on the
planet is property. For two reasons:

1\. It's leveraged. I.e. a bank will usually give you a 4:1 loan (mortgage) to
buy property. Interest will usually be close to the central bank rate, so it's
about as cheap as a loan gets, especially right now. If you then rent the
property you are receiving a monthly return on the leveraged sum having only
invested the deposit...

2\. Property is an appreciating asset (US,UK,China,FR,etc). It's a systemic
matter in many countries because it ties in a large part of an individuals net
worth and retirement expectations.

Your 200k leveraged with a mortgage will net you more than most stock
portfolios unless either you're Renaissance Capital or you just like a gamble.

~~~
Rainymood
>Property is an appreciating asset

Isn't this the cause of the housing bubble? If everyone thinks this? Why
wouldn't profits be driven out if everyone thinks like this? Simply curious.

~~~
usgroup
Over-valuation causes bubbles as opposed to appreciating assets. E.g. the
common wisdom says equity is a generally appreciating asset class because the
expected return over a long horizon is positive. Similar is true of property
except that no-one will give you a 40 year loan of 400k for peanuts to go
trade the S&P.

------
whiplashoo
I run [https://mapchart.net](https://mapchart.net) which is a map chart
creation tool. You can quickly create a map chart of World, USA, UK, Europe
and more with custom colors and descriptions.

It is completely free to use and my only source of income are Adsense ads on
the homepage and some sparse donations. Since May, when the site was featured
on the front page of Reddit, my audience has increased with a steady rate,
along with my ad revenue (almost $500 last month).

I don't really do anything maintenance-wise, except for answering questions
from my users. I work on it from time to time, mainly adding new features or
new country/regions maps, and I still enjoy it, as it was my first real
programming project (I actually submitted it as a final project for EdX's
CS50x course!).

~~~
shanecleveland
Great example. How long have you been running it? How did you get on the front
page of Reddit?

~~~
whiplashoo
I started it on December 2014, with a pretty ugly interface and only three
maps available (World, USA and Europe).

I already had some success on Reddit, where I created interesting map charts
with it (like religiosity by US state, most popular browser by country,etc.)
and shared the link to the site in the comment. This got me many users that
would either come directly from the Reddit post or see another map somewhere
and google my site.

The big spike came last May, when I shared it on /r/InternetIsBeautiful
([https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/4jcadt...](https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/4jcadt/make_your_own_custom_map_of_world_europe_the/))
, which is a specific subreddit for internet tools and single-purpose website,
and it propelled to the front page.

~~~
shanecleveland
Awesome. I love your "dogfooding" marketing strategy. Very smart.

~~~
whiplashoo
I had to google that, but yes, spot-on!

------
ehynds
About $300/mo on an app that provides real-time train tracking for Boston's
commuter rail. Thankfully for me the MBTA is a mess, so each system meltdown
(which happens about once a week) causes a spike in downloads.

------
tones411
I have made several small mobile apps.
([http://anthonytietjen.blogspot.com/p/my-
portfolio.html](http://anthonytietjen.blogspot.com/p/my-portfolio.html)) I
charge for some of them, but my White Screen Flashlight has ads.
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anthonytie...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anthonytietjen.whitescreenflashlight&hl=en))
If you are into programming, and are considering an app, make something super
simple (like my Cost Per Sq Foot Calculator), and you might be surprised that
people actually pay for it.

~~~
marktangotango
Ha I tried this (trivial app, get paid) and no one paid!

~~~
tones411
Was your app for iOS, or Android?

------
atemerev
I run a few high frequency trading algorithms on Bitcoin and other
cryptocurrencies. These are research-grade and not scalable (I already make
20-30% of trading volume on some exchanges), however, it still brings me
around $200 per month.

~~~
pigpigs
I'm actually thinking of doing this starting this weekend (mostly for fun).
Any tips you care to share?

~~~
atemerev
1) Have fun 2) Start from obvious opportunities first, then move to less
obvious 3) Commissions are the killer, minimize it at all costs.

------
DanHulton
I created [http://www.ipaidthemost.com](http://www.ipaidthemost.com) over a
year ago, and I can proudly say it's earned enough to buy a couple coffees.
Well, if you ignore hosting. And the few times I dropped $50 onto it to try to
advertise it.

It's odd. Most people who see it think it's clever and neat, and a few will
buy, but when advertised, people bounce right off.

~~~
sundarurfriend
Suggestion: since it's a vanity-based project, allowing people to add a photo
- either through gravatar, or via an upload - would probably increase
conversion.

Also, the actual paid-for message being in such tiny text is pretty odd given
that's the (user-side) purpose of the site. And that part is somehow the
hardest to read part of the page for me, perhaps because of the double
background (image + black background) interaction.

IMO, it's a lot of such small nudges that's reducing the effectiveness of the
site.

------
ArturT
What do you think about [http://sidekiq.org](http://sidekiq.org) gem approach
where you have free open source tool and paid pro version. I did similar thing
with my open source gem knapsack for test suite parallelisation in ruby. I run
pro version at [https://knapsackpro.com](https://knapsackpro.com)

~~~
mperham
I hope it's working out for you! I'd love to hear how things are going if you
want to email me privately.

------
quicksilver03
I wrote a book to help boostrapped startups choose the best hosting solution:

[https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com/](https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com/)

Promoting the book has been the major issue for me, which is probably why it
hasn't sold as much as I would have wanted.

~~~
thesmileyone
If it is actually good (ie, you stand by it, proudly!) then put it on Amazon
KDP and link to that high up before your landing page (which is your website
it appears).

You can even drive traffic right to it, ie from FB ads to the amazon link...
and if you have positive reviews then it should sell if you target the right
people.

And drop the price also in line with the rest.

------
Veratyr
I'm invested in forex (foreign currency trading). There are 3 buckets I'm in:

\- $3500 deposited, run since Jun 3 (~5 months), current balance is $5200 (48%
total profit, 8%/mo).

\- $5000 deposited, run since Jun 28 (~4 months), current balance is $4590 (8%
total loss, ~-2%/mo).

\- $3000 deposited, run since Sep 2 (~2 months), current balance is $3218 (7%
total profit, ~3.5%/mo).

It's certainly not for everyone but it's an amusing hobby. I've made a net
profit so far so I'm happy.

I came to this after stocks as the research I'd found seemed to show that
foreign currency fluctuations were significantly easier to predict (and profit
from).

~~~
tom_wilde
did you apply Deep Learning / ML techniques here? ;)

------
bkrull
I run BitPixels ([http://www.bitpixels.com](http://www.bitpixels.com)) that
provides automated website thumbnails. I purchased Bitpixels from another HN
member a few years ago and have continued to build and market it.

BitPixels currently makes ~$1k/month which is enough to cover the App Engine
and DigitalOcean bills plus a bit extra. I'm working to find 1-2 more
marketing channels that can drive sustainable growth.

~~~
dizrupt
Not 100% sure how this works or what it does. Can you explain?

~~~
bkrull
Definitely, so imagine if HN decided to show a thumbnail image beside every
link on the front page so users get a preview of what they'll see before
clicking the link. When looking for a solution HN will quickly discover that
auto generating website thumbnails is a nontrivial challenge to do well.

BitPixels solves this challenge by providing a simple img tag HTML code that
HN would use to automatically generate and cache a png thumbnail of any URL.

Behind the scenes, BitPixels uses a server farm of real Google Chrome browsers
to load URLs and take screenshots so the thumbnails look exactly like the real
website. Most competitors use open source libraries like phantomjs or cutycapt
that produce inaccurate thumbnails on modern websites.

~~~
jackgolding
You should chat to the indiehackers guy, sounds like you could help eachother
out!

------
ddgflorida
I created [http://convertcsv.com](http://convertcsv.com) and make about $750 a
month off google ads. I also have one affiliate link but it isn't producing
much. I spend a few hours a week answering emails, and another 2-10 hours a
month working on enhancements. As a developer I work with data a lot, and
noticed the lack of tools for converting delimited data - so I created my own
tools online.

~~~
introvertmac
How did you spread the word in early days of your project?(Any platform in
particluar helped or performed better for marketing?)

~~~
ddgflorida
No marketing, all traffic came from search engines. I focused on SEO from the
start and that helped with the rankings. I also made sure my site was more
functional than the competition. 100% client-side code.

~~~
shanecleveland
How long have you been running the site? A long, slow ramp-up, I assume? Were
you ahead of the competition timeline-wise?

Most of the good ideas I think I have end up being fairly saturated, which is
discouraging!

Well done. I now have your html tag remover on the reformattext.com bookmarked
for a current project. Thank you.

~~~
ddgflorida
Right - The site has been running over 3 years now. There wasn't much
competition at first but in the last year I've had real competition plus a
bunch of copycats, some who actually copied my code and changed the front-end.

------
mkoryak
I make about 30 bucks per months on a single ad on my jquery plugin
docsite[1].

I lose about 25 bucks per months on website for artists that I built over the
course of a few years in my spare time[2]

[1][http://mkoryak.github.io/floatThead/](http://mkoryak.github.io/floatThead/)
[2][http://exhibitionnest.com](http://exhibitionnest.com)

------
panorama
I do peer to peer lending on an internet forum, VAs handle most of the work,
~$1k/mo passive, ~$3k/mo when active (but it's been passive for the past
several months). I can try to answer what I can, but I can't divulge much more
because it's not at all a defensible revenue model, and anyone with access to
capital can do it.

------
dejv
I do run [http://notationtraining.com](http://notationtraining.com) not the
biggest source of money (~ 200 USD/month), but it keep earning money for six
years in row, so I am happy about it.

Other then that: rental property, p2p loans portfolio (~ 6% pa) and small
stock portfolio (around 5% pa).

------
badpixel
A small portfolio, some adsense on a blog, a game on the play store.

By all their powers combined here comes 70$ a year.

------
blahshaw
Target retirement date funds, a handful of individual stocks for entertainment
purposes. I also have dabbled with Lending Club (annualized ROI went from 15%
to less than 5% recently) and the money saved on interest in paying back my
student loans early.

------
shaunpud
I launched [https://askdns.com](https://askdns.com) a few months back and
making around ~AU$75/mo just from Adsense. There are around ~3M links in G now
so the traffic coming in is slowly increasing.

~~~
swapneeld14
If I may ask where do you get updated data to search for domains?

------
sideproject
I've been developing a tool that lets you create your own HackerNews. Then it
grew to a SaaS that lets you create, manage and grow an online community.

[http://www.hellobox.co](http://www.hellobox.co)

------
Mc_Big_G
$2/day on a simple ios/android app. Now I just need 1000 more apps.

------
wangzhebi
3-4k per month. I own a rental property doing nightly rentals. I've automated
all of the notifications, door code programming, arranging cleaning, etc.

------
jdc0589
absolutely nothing. Turns out its pretty hard to monetize open source
developer tools. Really wish there was other stuff I enjoyed working on in my
free time.

If anyone wants to start paying me for the JsFormat sublime plugin, let me
know, I'll gladly take your money.

------
sharemywin
if you hire the right people anything can be a passive income.

~~~
introvertmac
Passive income: something that makes you money while you sleep(read it
somewhere). Any examples, what type of businesses you are talking about?

~~~
JshWright
I get paid to sleep on overnight shifts, does that count?

~~~
codegeek
Not unless you can do it from anywhere AND you are not expected to be
available during overnight if the situation demands :)

~~~
JshWright
Oh I see, now we're moving the goalposts ;)

~~~
agumonkey
What about "money that would get into your account even you were recently
dead" ?

~~~
pritambaral
So ... life insurance?

