
Ask HN: Passive Income Suggestions? - throwaway_yc
Please share suggestions of whats worked for you and what hasnt
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gt565k
Buy either a larger multi bedroom house or a multi family home with 5% down
payment and get roommates.

Charge roommates for rent who mostly cover either all or 50%+ of your
mortgage.

Live in it for a year (you have to reside for a year because 5% down gets you
owner occupied financing), then buy a 2nd place, move out of the first place,
and backfill your bedroom with another tenant.

Repeat every year for 3-5 years, and you'll have 3-5 properties with tenants.
if you do it right, you'll cash flow right away.

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deanmoriarty
Buy VT or a similar broadly diversified equity index fund, it can't get more
passive than that. I have all my savings invested that way.

~~~
pbk1
what happens when you need to pay for $TragicLifeEvent and are forced to
liquidate your ETF position in a downturn?

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deanmoriarty
I should have probably said that I also keep 6-9 months of living expenses in
a traditional savings account for emergencies. It didn't even occur to mention
it since it's a minuscule portion of my net worth (< 2%), compared to the
amount that's invested in the market, but that's definitely a good observation
and I should have specified that to begin with.

~~~
neuroticfish
>6-9 months of living expenses in a traditional savings account for
emergencies

Geez seeing comments like this make me wonder if I'll ever be debt free enough
to have nearly a year of living expense to fall back on. I've barely got
enough in my savings account for 2 months of bills and loan payments.

~~~
deanmoriarty
If it makes you feel any better, I had to travel 6k miles from my home country
to Silicon Valley in order to reach this level of financial stability, so I
had to do some significant sacrifices (e.g. not being able to stay close to
friends and aging parents, ...).

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jerryalex
A couple of suggestions:

\- Affiliate websites. These are basically content websites with built in
affiliate links. You try to rank your content for certain keywords in search
results

\- Real estate. I've been a real estate investor since 2008 and I can say that
it's probably the most well known way of building passive income. Simply put,
you buy a house, rent it out and continue the process. However, it's a long
term game because of the amount of starting capital required to buy. I
wouldn't recommend it if you don't have much money to start because of the
repairs and maintenance you will be responsible for as tenants continue
renting.

I hope this helped. Let me know if you have any questions.

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vladojsem
Did you hear about Amazon FBA?

You can source a product from a Chinese manufacturer and sell it on Amazon:
1.) find a niche that you find interesting before you source 2.) you bulk buy
this product and ship it directly to Amazon warehouse 3.) make attractive
Amazon listing and put much effort into your launch so that you can get your
product ranked 4.) with a successful launch and a quality product you can get
to the first page of Amazon 5.) just sit back and refill orders

It has some cons as well, but it is definitely viable way how to create
passive income. The cons are following: \- the fees for Amazon FBA including
monthly seller fee, shipping to warehouse, warehouse storage each month, long
term warehouse storage, shipping to customer, Amazon referral fee \- you are
dependent on one platform \- you are not building your own brand (but you can
start it afterwards if you see FBA is working for you)

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gesman
\- Web hosting

\- Write rich, good quality articles comparing services that pay recurring
comissions. I made $1000+ on one lousy blog post like that. One service keeps
paying me monthly recurring commission for the last 15 yrs for referring them
few customers.

~~~
lawlorino
Could you expand on your second point? What do you mean by services paying
recurring commissions? Do you have any examples or ways to identify
opportunities like this?

~~~
ksaj
> one lousy blog post

I keep hearing that guy's voice - the one with the animated fake hand-written
white boards that seems to sell _everything_ online from stock tips to home
business deals to manly man ways to be a man - when I read phrases like this.
It immediately means "prepare to be sucked in."

"I got rich by writing one simple advertisement. AND SO CAN YOU!" followed by
three hours of blah blah blah (no content) until you either give up, or pay up
out of desperation to finally get that so-called "tip".

And if it took 15 years to make that thou, I'd pass.

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companyhen
DeFi apps like [https://compound.finance](https://compound.finance)

~~~
gcsm
Not really good idea if you don't have much money because of low interest
rates.

