
Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions? - nns
Please share suggestions of whats worked for you and what hasnt
======
edent
* Apps with ads in them. Easy enough to churn out, but decreasing revenues and most of the high earning adverts are the scummiest. Low value and of low moral usefulness.

* Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See [http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar](http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar)

* Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial investment, and requires ongoing maintenance. On a good month I only hear from the managing agent once per month with details of how much rent is being paid.

* Stoozing. Find a credit card with 0% interest on balance transfers. Stick the money into a savings account. Or, if you like risk, on a horse. Need a good credit rating and decent savings rate to make more than a few hundred a year though.

* Affiliate marketing. If you can find a good theme (e.g. Halloween) and a decent place to put the links (somewhere that wants them - not spamming them everywhere) it's possible to get a moderate passive income. Well... not quite passive, requires upfront time commitment of selecting links and locations.

* Hosting / simple websites. Again, little bit of up-front commitment. Works best if you can find a local niche of people who want a friendly face to host their websites. Usually as simple as buying a domain, setting up WordPress, and turning on automatic updates.

In general, the best passive schemes require a large initial outlay and/or a
dubious moral outlook. A better way to enhance your income is to eat out less,
stop buying stuff you don't need, and shop around for deals. Boring but true!

~~~
shellerik
I have had some success in affiliate marketing using an approach that I think
many on Hacker News could duplicate. I launched my Amazon affiliate site about
a year-and-a-half ago and its earnings have increased by about $100 per month
with December being the first time I earned over $2,000 in a month.

The approach is to find a type of product where Amazon has thousands of
listing but the specifications are not very accurate and the filtering
criteria are limited, and where there are highly active forums with people
talking about and asking about these products. Then you build a proper
searchable catalog for the products. Include lots of search criteria, sorting
criteria, side-by-side comparison, recommended accessories, anything that
would be useful for people looking to buy them.

Once my catalog contained over 1,000 models I started replying to posts on
forums with a link to my site that provided what they were looking for. People
loved the site and it wasn't long before they were posting links to it to
answer each others questions. That's all it took to start ranking on Google
which is now responsible for 3/4 of my traffic.

Initially this is not passive income. The first few months are a lot of work
for very little money. Eventually the balances shifts to the point where
additional work is only needed if you want to keep growing. Amazon's product
advertising API allows you to get current prices, availability and popularity
(sales ranking) to keep everything fresh.

~~~
akavlie
Did that entail a lot of hand entry of product information? (considering that
Amazon was, as you said, lacking specifications)

~~~
shellerik
Yes it did. I have spent a lot more time researching and documenting specs
than I have writing code. The good news is that I don't mind that type of
work. I often build spreadsheets for fun to compare things I'm thinking of
buying so I just took that to another level.

------
CryoLogic
Here's my experiences for last year in passive income:

Total Gross Revenues: $20,000 or so.

Mostly from a single high-traffic niche site which I promote almost
exclusively through social media. My site offers a free version of what a few
other websites in the same niche offer as a SaaS service.

From that same site, most of the revenue (~80%) is from ads (ad revenue
increased when switching to responsive units). Next, Amazon associate makes up
about 15% of the revenue. And about 5% from donations.

The downside is that ad rates are DROPPING pretty quickly, ad-block usage
rates are increasing rapidly, some browsers block ads by default now, etc. So
I'm trying to get off of ad dependency.

I'm thinking in the future a Patreon funded project or project with additional
SaaS component will probably fare better if you traffic is at least medium
size (~50k/mo+), and comprised of repeat visitors.

I also have eBooks, which despite the rapid increase in popularity of Amazon
authors, seem to be doing well. My most popular eBook is bringing in ~40$ / mo
on the 35% plan (I can't use the 70% plan because someone stole it and
uploaded it elsewhere). The rest of my eBooks are bringing in ~$20 total. If
you have expertise, and strong communication skills - eBooks may be a good
route to go down. Leanpub offers higher % rate, and I've seen some technical
authors make a killing there - might be a better option.

As far as stocks go, I'm all invested in Vanguard which seems to like tech
stocks - so not so great this year. The high-dividend yield funds are probably
the way to go in 2016 since growth growth isn't so hot right now.

I would stay away from IoS & Android because app discovery is messed up, and
you need a marketing budget in most scenarios to make it big.

~~~
winter_blue
So all your eBooks are bringing in $60 / month in total? For the incredible
time investment required to write books, that is _quite discouragingly low_.

~~~
bitserf
This is less than I spend on coffee in a month.

~~~
odonnellryan
That's a lot! :)

~~~
harperlee
Just $2 a day!

I don't spend as much, and yes, coffee can be so much cheaper, but it's also
not a lot of money.

Interestingly, the following guy has a recurring theme on how trying to save
on lattes is inefficient and distracting (similar to the idea of premature
optimization in code):

[http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/save-on-
coffee/](http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/save-on-coffee/)

~~~
odonnellryan
Yeah. I make coffee at home. I'm not really sure what it costs me, to be
honest!

------
cddotdotslash
I write eBooks for developers interested in using semi-new technologies.
Previously, I wrote about developing websites to work with the Chromecast.
Most recently, I published an eBook about AWS Lambda[1]. The income is not
terribly good, but enough to make it worthwhile. I've been approached by
publishing companies who want to raise the price to $50+ per copy, but I
prefer keeping them at $2-$4 so they're more accessible for everyone.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016JOMAEE](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016JOMAEE)?

~~~
codinghabit
As soon as I read your post I wondered if it was the 'AWS Lambda' book that
keeps showing up in my recommendations. I clicked the link and sure enough
there it was! Of course, now I HAVE to buy it. :D

~~~
cddotdotslash
Haha glad it was recommended for you and hope you like it!

------
lubujackson
Some overarching takeaways:

\- niche sites with Google ads is a fading path, but still can work if you hit
a good market or produce evergreen content

\- selling niche e-books through Amazon or direct seems to be a decent option,
but is a lot of work unless you can produce quickly and have a feel for the
topic

\- apps are dangerous because discover is nearly impossible. If you want to
make apps, make quick little ones because the likelihood is that you will make
$0 on any one app

My personal opinion is to make niche B2B tools. There are a million little
inconveniences that small businesses deal with. If you find the right niche
you can charge way more than a B2C product, deal with way fewer customers and
charge extra for "custom" features and things like that. The trick is to find
a business problem worth solving. The best way to do this is to find someone
working a job and drilling them about their work flow. It's amazing the stuff
that can be automated that people still don't recognize.

There is one guy who was blogging about a simple scheduling app that let 1 man
operations (like barbers or chiropractors) simply text the app appointment
details and it would automate putting them in the calendar. It's a great
little business because scheduling is a big pain point for these tiny
businesses but no one addresses it in a humane way. A good way to make $ and
while also producing useful things for the world.

~~~
vijayr
_My personal opinion is to make niche B2B tools._

How does one find what to make? That is actually a harder problem to solve
than making the tool itself

~~~
shanecleveland
I work at a small, non-tech family business. I am the default IT guy, and I
have made a ton of internal tools for us. Most of these are either only useful
to us or would be hard to make universally for others. However, I have turned
a few into B2B web apps that have good traffic and earn a couple hundred each
month with virtually no effort or optimization. And the opportunity exists to
turn these into more robust SAAS offerings or do contract work, but that would
be less passive.

Not everyone is in this position, so it is a very interesting conundrum. If
you know anyone that works for or owns a small business or works as a
professional in a specific field, ask them about the tools they already use
and what tools they would like to have. Tell them to let you know the next
time they are facing a problem that they know could be done
better/easier/faster through a tool or app. If you can make something that
will help them, perhaps it will help others. Custom forms, data collection,
etc.

------
benologist
Amazon recently launched a new app store that pays developers by the minute in
lieu of all other monetization techniques, it's great if you can come up with
engaging apps.

[https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/underground](https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/underground)

~~~
slig
One success story of a small company on Amazon Underground -
[https://medium.com/@PuzzleBoss/actionable-steps-to-make-
mone...](https://medium.com/@PuzzleBoss/actionable-steps-to-make-money-on-
android-4ada61d127ed)

TL;DR: they have a Jigsaw Puzzle Android App and make shitloads of money on
Amazon Underground.

~~~
benologist
That's me. I now have a Sudoku app launched too, and a new 1200 piece jigsaw
to launch this month, and a word search next month.

~~~
swah
Thanks for writing that post!

------
jjangmes
This is not completely passive income, but after 1 ~ 2 months of some
committed work, it can become passive income. This is assuming you know what
you are doing and you have experience with e-commerce. (I was losing money for
the first 3 months)

-Private labeling on Amazon using FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon)

I currently earn some passive income (~$1000/month) by selling products on
Amazon. Amazon FBA is great because you just send all the products to Amazon
warehouse and they will do the packaging and shipping for you. If you shipped
out all the items yourself, it wouldn't be so passive. But since all my items
are currently at Amazon warehouse and everything's being shipped by Amazon, I
spend little time at the moment.

A summarized process will be 1\. Sign-up for Amazon seller account 2\. Find an
item to sell on Alibaba 3\. Purchase the item, receive, check, and send to
Amazon. 4\. Perform SEO for your product page 5\. Repeat 2 - 4 6\. After some
success, switch to Amazon Seller Merchant Pro.

The most difficult part wasn't finding the right item, but rather promoting
the page. Ranking my product will involve tons of keyword research, pinning
everything relevant on Pinterest, and revising copy-writing.

Once I start selling about 10 products/day for a single item, I'd move on to a
new product. The best time to start probably is NOT at 3rd or 4th quarter. You
want to have steady sales by 3rd quarter. Because if you do, you will
experience some shockingly crazy sales starting November lasting until early
January. If I now sell 10 units/day for product X, I was selling 100 units/day
starting late November. I regret not stocking more items, but it was my first
year doing this and it's a lesson learned.

~~~
danielki
A few questions, if you don't mind:

How do you figure out how much stock to order from Alibaba? Is it just based
on the maximum financial risk you want to undertake, or something else?

Do you ever replenish stock, or do you continuously rotate the items you sell?

How do you pick the items to sell? Just popular items within certain
categories that don't have a current Prime option? Or some other method?

What % of sales end up as returns due to defective products etc? Does Amazon
cover these, or do you take the financial hit if there's a refund?

~~~
stove
I have very similar questions...

------
shireboy
eBooks worked for me in 2014 & 15\. I am the author of an ebook Trello Dojo
([https://leanpub.com/trellodojo](https://leanpub.com/trellodojo)). I update
it periodically and earn a couple hundred dollars a month. Lots of people from
all over the world tell me it has helped them, which feels like I'm doing
honest, good work with it. I'm not going to retire early from just that, but
really want to do a few more, and possibly expand that concept into niche
sites/training/etc.

niche sites and blogging have not panned out for me (yet). I feel that's more
a lack of time/effort on my part. A test effort showed me my niche could work,
but I just haven't committed to really getting it rolling.

I'm also a software developer and have a few service type sites up my sleeve.
My thinking (as yet unproven in my own life) is that relatively simple
subscription services that "do one thing well" and can be marketed to
businesses and government agencies can earn well with minimal ongoing
investment. The trick there would be to automate as much as possible-
especially support- without sacrificing quality, and periodically dedicate
resources to keeping the technology current (easier said than done, I know)

It's hard to balance a current "non-passive" job, family, and side passive
gigs, but it _can be done_.

------
throwaway600613
Peer-to-peer lending can potentially be a great source of passive income. For
example, if you invested $100,000 in lower grade (C-G) notes on Lending Club
with an aggregate 12.0% net annualized return, you'd receive approximately
$6,000 in cash payments each month.

~~~
mattzito
It's worth noting that the money received from the peer-to-peer lending counts
as income, and hence can be taxed quite highly if you're already a high-income
individual and/or live someplace with a state income tax.

I invested a moderate chunk of money in lending club, and I don't regret it,
but between the defaults and early payoffs, I ended up at around ~8% return,
and then had to pay income tax on that 8 percent, which cut it way down.

That being said, there's the more intangible return, which is that some of hte
people I selected to fund were trying to get out of high-interest debt, or
fund purchasing a car for work, etc. Some(all?) of it was probably BS, but it
was nice to feel like you were investing money in someone who had a specific
need and helping them achieve it.

I'm not doing that anymore though, it's just not worth it.

~~~
bozoUser
If you re-invest the returns are you still taxed on them?

~~~
michaeltoth
Yes, the payments are interest, so you need to pay tax on these even if you
reinvest in further loans.

------
SyneRyder
There were a couple of posts with answers to this a month ago, you might find
good suggestions there:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10879529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10879529)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10726489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10726489)

------
nsxwolf
Sounds like it's just really, really hard to get people to hand you money. If
you already have a paying job, you're way ahead of the game. Maybe the best
strategy is to just look for higher paying jobs.

~~~
loumf
You can add $x0,000 to your annual income today by just asking for it
(correctly).

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-
negotiation/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/)

------
Theodores
Paint pictures of people's dogs. Yep, a little bit of painting is involved,
but painting is fun, right?

There is an inexhaustible supply of middle class people wanting pictures of
their dogs painted and they are prepared to pay proper art prices for
competent or in-style renditions of their dog in some picturesque scene. Since
we are not dogs* and are people, poor painting is not so obvious and efforts
get well received.

On the back of paintings-of-dogs it is possible to also paint your own stuff.
May not be entirely 'passive income' but holding a brush isn't hard and you
don't have to work in an office from 9 to 5 for the man.

*on the internets nobody knows you are a dog.

~~~
beering
While I like painting and I like dogs, this is quite literally the opposite of
"passive income".

~~~
tluyben2
Get someone to do it for you and automate the ordering and fullfilment part.
Upload pic of dog, pay online, send email to painter with shipping info,
painter fills online form with picture of result + tracking code upon which
she gets money in the bank. Passive.

------
AJay17
This was mine: [http://www.thingsunder15.com](http://www.thingsunder15.com)

~~~
marilyn
I see you've got lots of auto-posting going on social media... have these
efforts proven to be worth your while? Did you build up your followings
organically?

~~~
AJay17
None of the ones that Wordpress auto-posts have really done anything for me.
Pinterest and Stumble Upon have to be submitted manually, but they seem to
work out well.

------
10dpd
Borrow $1 million from a Japanese bank.

~~~
gummywormsyum
You'd get a better deal borrowing from Sweden, Switzerland, or Denmark

------
BimBimma
I made a command generator for Minecraft. It earns somewhere between $300 -
$500 $NZD per month (adsense). It's a passive income because even when I go
months without working on it, I still get paid. But what I would like to know
is how to make it earn about 10x more. So I can quit my main job and then just
make more cool stuff for the web.

I believe it's at the peak of what it can earn. Also about 25% of users have
adblocker.

~~~
geuis
This is for command blocks right?

~~~
BimBimma
Yes. The generated commands are long and complex and rarely fit into the chat
bar. So the only place for them is in a command block.

------
buf
Niche website. I built Casting Call Club
([https://www.castingcall.club/homepage](https://www.castingcall.club/homepage))
for the voice acting community. Roughly 13,000 voice actors currently use the
site, but it only breaks even with all the costs associated with it, so I
couldn't call it income.

~~~
geuis
You're probably already aware, but if not you should share this in
[https://www.reddit.com/r/VoiceActing/](https://www.reddit.com/r/VoiceActing/)

~~~
buf
Yessir, I am, but appreciate the heads up. I love that sub.

------
33a
Save money and invest it.

~~~
nns
Can you give examples of what kind of low-touch reasonable-return investments
you've benefited from?

~~~
gt565k
[https://www.wealthfront.com](https://www.wealthfront.com)

Haven't tried this myself, but Tim Ferriss seems to advertise it a lot and I
have a few coworkers that use it.

Minimum is $500 with no management fees (up to 10k I think)

~~~
pitchups
Looks interesting. However, could not find any info on their past performance.
Is that info available somewhere for review?

~~~
kingnothing
In the past 12 months, I've been up as much as 4% and am currently down 11%.
The allocations in foreign stocks, emerging markets, and natural resources are
killing me lately.

------
AznHisoka
On-demand proxies that you spin up in 1 second.

I can spin out cloud servers in an instant.. but I have to wait days for my
proxies to be activated.

~~~
iamroot
Can't you spin up a cloud server and install a proxy in short order?

------
cyogee
ThanksGiving season. I bought lots of YNAB codes (www.ynab.com) at 50% off and
sold them at 25% off on eBAY. Win Win for everyone.

Now they moved to cloud and didn't do any 50% off this year.

------
vijayr
There is one person (Rob Percival - google him) who is making _millions_ on
udemy teaching people how to program. Not sure if it works for everyone, but
lots of people seem to be trying. There are literally thousands and thousands
of courses on udemy.

------
chad_strategic
[http://www.bestoftheinternets.com](http://www.bestoftheinternets.com) This
worked for a while until google shutdown my adsense, becuasue I had developed
auto generated content.

~~~
chad_strategic
The only good news, believe it or not, it actually got me my first programming
job. So I guess it was worth it.

------
p0la
After reading all of this, my conclusion is: There ain't no such thing as a
free lunch. You may find some stuff with a more or less optimal f(risk,
initial investment, running cost, return) function, but no no brainer. I wish
someone had mentioned a blog a YouTube channel, I always been curious to know
how much moderately successful guys are making.

~~~
tim333
The nearest I've seen to a free lunch is buying property in an area that's
likely to go up. Low risk of loss, high chance of retirement style profits
especially if you do it more that once. Ethics so so.

~~~
sopooneo
Wouldn't the likelihood of the area going up already be built into the price?

------
skiltz
Built [https://wholesaleorderform.com](https://wholesaleorderform.com) \- Has
2 customers - Brings in $50 a month with zero maintenance. Still haven't even
finished the homepage :) No idea how to find customers... Anyone want to
partner up!

~~~
mod
How'd you get your two customers?

Why is your landing page so disingenuous? There's several things that are
lies, given that you only have two customers. "We've gathered heaps of user
feedback," "contact the onboarding team," etc.

I think you need a demo.

~~~
skiltz
We have gathered heaps of feedback from the two customers, but I take your
point. Landing page should be written by someone who knows what they are doing
:)

I had two separate unrelated customers ask for almost exactly the same system
after not being able to find an existing solution that meet their needs.

Thanks for replying!

------
jo909
What does passive mean to you? 99% hands-off income that just shows up
magically without any significant work?

Most schemes I see here and elsewhere require a lot of investment (of time
mostly) upfront, and then often also ongoing attention so the scheme keeps
working.

------
nassirkhan
\- i've tried and failed many times at this. Finally, I started an outsourcing
company 5group.co. My growth model is to get business from field partners like
your self and pay them 20% of the life time of profits from that customer. For
example, if someone refers a chat support outsourcing customer and the
customer spends 10k usd in a year, we pay out about $1400. We manage the
labor/office space etc so the is no capex like in real estate. You do need to
have the savvy to generate business though. \-- Prosper marketplace...lend
money on prosper and receive 7-8 % - tough if you dont have capital

------
jcslzr
I made a website with a free exercise to learn to type faster:
[http://www.learn-2-type.com](http://www.learn-2-type.com) ...sadly a lot of
people are using ad blockers

~~~
minionslave
I turned off my ad blocker for you site, and clicked on the ads. Hopefully you
get 2 cents.

~~~
jcslzr
thanks dude, living the vida loca now

~~~
angry-hacker
Clicked on Namecheap ad because they don't stop following me despite the fact
that I'm their customer.

-$0.05 for Namecheap.

------
NetStrikeForce
A service that people want to use :)

Just started [https://wormhole.network](https://wormhole.network) and still
putting some more money and time to add an API (coming very, very soon!), but
I'm pretty sure it will take off if I manage to promote it properly. The
product itself is pretty awesome, probably unrivalled and the possibilities
endless. I have a lot of features in the backlog and will be adding those
based on user feedback.

This is not fully passive, but the income is not a linear function with the
invested time, which ain't bad either.

------
meric
I used my good income job to rent a three room bedroom apartment, and rent out
2 of the rooms. I pay < $100 a week on bills and housing, and I live in a city
where the median house price is > $1m.

~~~
infinite8s
That's not against your lease?

~~~
meric
I was upfront about it with the landlord. She could lease to a double income
family, who're going to bargain with the rent at every opportunity, and
complain about every issue that comes up that could possibly be the landlord's
responsibility, with 3 kids, who with their parents working will have lots of
time home alone, or she could lease to me, a mid-twenties young man, with high
income and stability, and the kind of person who're generally quite chill
about things, and will take the care to look after the house.

Now I lease the two rooms to an immigrant, and another man who came to my city
to work because he couldn't find a job where his wife and kids currently live.

~~~
infinite8s
So you basically injected yourself as a pseudo-landlord, paying yourself with
a free room. Makes sense - since you are living there it would be fairly easy
to turn down a family (or conversely no family would likely want to share the
house with you) whereas it would be tougher for the landlord to turn down a
family in preference to a group of 3 unrelated people (discrimination laws and
such). It's just that typically young families present themselves as better,
more stable tenants than groups of people :)

------
jxm262
Bookmarked this post and thanks for asking! My plan, which may/may-not work
out - Start consulting, work like crazy to get _high quality_ clients, find
common needs among them, build products from these common needs. I'm hoping I
can find specific things between multiple clients that I might be able to sell
as an actual product, alongside the consulting. Anyway I just started
indepedent contracting on evenings/weekends about a month ago.. so far it's
working quite nicely for me :)

------
booop
Start a company. Hire a hardworking and dependable general manager on a salary
and give him/her great autonomy.

Sit back and enjoy the dividends.

~~~
tim333
Bit tricky to execute. You know any real world examples where it's worked like
that?

------
andrewsg
I run an product (clothing, tech, home-wares) curation site [1]. It primarily
uses affiliate marketing to generate an income. Lots of effort at the moment,
but hopefully will pay off in time.

[1] [http://iwantdis.com](http://iwantdis.com)

------
reinhardholl
I recently created [http://filepiper.com](http://filepiper.com), still busy
validating the idea, then get someone to pay :)

I always wonder if software products are really the way to go. Getting initial
traction is seriously hard

~~~
asteadman
Great Idea! At my day job we occasionally (ie: a couple times a year) need
customers to send us "large" files (too large to email) and the customers do
not typically themselves have enough technical ability to "host" it (be it
through dropbox/google drive/etc) themselves. I spent a couple days looking
for something similar a year ago and ended up with a dated product at a very
expensive price. [Our web-hosting is currently sucky shared hosting we've had
for decades /w a small upload limit]. I was thinking of rolling my own
solution but never got around to it, glad to see somebody is working on it.
PS: Assuming it works, I'd start charging right now, skip this "free for now"
nonsense.

~~~
reinhardholl
Thanks for the feedback! Your use case is exactly why I started the project, I
have very similar issues daily. It is definitely working. the idea behind the
free for now was to entice early adopters.

At the current sign up rate I will remove that in about a week or two.

Thanks again for the feedback :)

------
jerguismi
Bitcoin arbitrage.

~~~
lfx
Correct my if I'm wrong but bitcoin arbitrage doesn't seem like good idea,
here is pretty good explanation - [https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-
price-arbitrage-expl...](https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-price-
arbitrage-explored/)

I would better put my money in more "real" etf's and start from there.

~~~
joeyspn
> Correct my if I'm wrong...

You are _very wrong_ , plus you are talking to jerguismi (localbitcoin's
founder), who I'd presume has made quite a bit from arbitrage in the space...

~~~
jklein11
The article does make a very interesting point. One which I'm hoping jerguismi
could respond to.

The article talks about the slow transaction time being a barrier to
arbitrage. Basically, you couldn't buy in one market and sell in another
market simultaneously. Wouldn't that make an arbitrage opportunity
speculative?

Also, because jerguismi is a founder of a bitcoin exchange, isn't it in his
interest to promote trading bitcoin? I have no reason to believe that
jerguismi would misrepresent his knowledge, but I think his role in the
bitcoin community isn't de facto evidence that his statement is true.

~~~
joeyspn
> The article talks about the slow transaction time being a barrier to
> arbitrage.

The article is wrong on many levels. You don't need to transact (or even own)
bitcoins in order to arbitrage. You can just _buy /sell_ and open _short
/long_ positions via the exchanges websockets API... Not WallSt speed, but a
decent speed for any self-made bot vs point&click traders.

~~~
thecatspaw
Can you elaborate a bit more? What do you mean by "You can just buy/sell and
open short/long positions"?

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max0563
Steam games, granted if you can get Greenlight which really isn't that hard to
be honest. I have a game on there that isn't exactly the best, but it
generates some beer money.

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financedfuture
Allocate part of your wealth in riskier assets. If you think you're able to do
it on your own, play around with some ETFs.

Alternatively, ask around for a good hedge fund.

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elwell
Addons / Plugins for existing platforms that have an appropriate marketplace
for this (e.g., Concrete5).

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max_
-Build a BTC gumroad version.

-AI stuff like [http://predictor.ai](http://predictor.ai)

~~~
herbst
[http://i.imgur.com/RbOznIO.png](http://i.imgur.com/RbOznIO.png)

So thats how success looks like ;)

~~~
livingparadox
It looks like it needs the www subdomain.

[http://www.predicto.ai/](http://www.predicto.ai/)

~~~
brandoncordell
Still won't render correctly in Chrome.

~~~
max_
[https://predictors.ai/#/p/Neural_Storyteller](https://predictors.ai/#/p/Neural_Storyteller)
HN doesn't aloow me to edit Links after an Hour...

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taytus
We are looking for investors...

~~~
goldenkey
Isn't everyone looking for love...

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abatista111
I built a education platform and plan to charge monthly once I get more
students.. [http://thinkacademy.io/](http://thinkacademy.io/)
[http://thinkacademy.io/courses/1/learn-ruby-on-rails-
in-4-we...](http://thinkacademy.io/courses/1/learn-ruby-on-rails-in-4-weeks)

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nether
Some people have successfully bought cars just to rent out via Turo (formerly
RelayRides). It's not hard to make well over the monthly payment if you live
near a major airport. Most insurers don't like this though and I wouldn't be
surprised by an Airbnb-esque crackdown in the coming years. Until then though,
it's the good times.

