
Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015? - ca98am79
previous posts:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4639271<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6661536<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7094402<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8107588
======
DizzyDoo
I released a small computer puzzle game based on finite state automata called
The Cat Machine[0] back in August, which still steadily sells copies,
accompanied with bigger spikes when a Steam sale comes around. From what I
hear, the 'long tail' after release goes on for some years, which I believe
since back in 2009/2010 I wrote a number of Flash games and I still get a
monthly Paypal of about $5 from them. Steam is a bit healthier than the Flash
marketplace nowadays.

[0]
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900](http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900)

~~~
makmanalp
This is amazing and hilarious! Could you tell us a bit more about the process?
Did you build this on your own? What did you use to make it run on so many
platforms - Unity?

~~~
DizzyDoo
I made in just under 4 months of work, came from an idea I had at University
when studying those classic finite state machine diagrams, where you
effectively have to draw state machine diagrams that process a regex-like set
of rules. I realised I was having fun solving these problems, and I reckoned
with the right abstraction I could trick people into doing some basic Computer
Science-y logic puzzles! Cats, it turns out, are really good for that!

All built on my own, with some music help from a friend of mine. Used Unity
for ability to easily hit Windows, Mac and Linux. I'll probably get around to
porting it to iOS and Android next year too, since feedback has been so strong
on Steam, and there's a definite impulse-buy aspect to having lots of
colourful cats riding around on trains.

------
apdinin
During my day job I run a full-time startup, but, as a weekend hack a couple
years ago, I built an automated email sales tool called Autopest
([https://autopest.com](https://autopest.com)). I've never done any promotion
for it, but it keeps growing on its own organically via word-of-mouth.

About a year and a half ago I mentioned Autopest in an HN thread titled "Ask
HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?"
Since then, it keeps getting featured in Reddit and Quora lists for "best
growth hacking tools" and "best sales hacks," and I've also seen it popup on
sites like Inc.com and LifeHacker.

I guess Autopest isn't technically passive in the sense that every few months
I code a new feature or two based on user feedback, but I also go months
without touching it, and more people just keep signing up.

P.S. Here's the original HN thread... some good links to other passive income
projects as well:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246255)

~~~
tedmiston
Hope not to make this become non-passive, but: on iOS the demo video loads,
goes full screen, then immediately exits for me.

~~~
apdinin
Dang... maybe I'll get that fixed in a couple months :)

------
dangrossman
Improvely ([https://www.improvely.com](https://www.improvely.com)) and
W3Counter ([https://www.w3counter.com](https://www.w3counter.com)) have grown
to $45,000 MRR.

W3Counter is completely passive -- no new code or features in over a year, no
customer support load, autoscaling frontend (EC2) and backend (Aurora).
Improvely gets feature updates a few times a year and has some light e-mail
support load.

I also added a single banner ad to each of my open source projects'
documentation sites, and that's added ~$200/month via AdSense. Developers are
surprisingly lucrative targets for advertisers I guess.

~~~
going_to_800
Mate, this looks like a modified version of piwik, how much is different from
it?

~~~
dangrossman
I don't know, I've never used Piwik. W3Counter predates it by a couple years.

Back in the '90s and early '00s, you either had a daily barebones report from
a basic log analyzer, or you paid hundreds to thousands of dollars for a
license to good analytics software, most of which was just a fancier log
analyzer. I never had that kind of money to spend on analytics back then, so I
built my own.

My first free "hit counter" with reports service was part of Website Goodies,
a site I started around 1996, but didn't have its own domain until 1999.
W3Counter was a spin-off of that tool into its own site in 2004.

Google Analytics didn't come about (by acquiring Urchin and making their
newest product free) until the end of 2005. Piwik's from late 2007 according
to Wikipedia.

------
pedrokost
A very simple website which does the maths for `today() + N.days` for you.

[http://daysfromnow.js.org/](http://daysfromnow.js.org/)

Total earnings: 7.35EUR in total from Google Ads

~~~
tedmiston
Is that profit beyond covering the domain, hosting, etc. or before?

~~~
pedrokost
Yes, it's hosted as a github page, with a js.org domain on top [0].

[0] [https://js.org/](https://js.org/)

------
ddgflorida
ConvertCsv.com ([http://convertcsv.com](http://convertcsv.com)) brings me in
$600-$800 a month just on google ads and one recent affiliate link. The site
converts delimited data into different formats. Written completely in HTML and
JavaScript. It's been out there for several years and has steadily increased
in traffic.

~~~
palidanx
Awesome idea! How did you initially advertise the site?

~~~
ddgflorida
I've never advertised, but number one google search ranking for most keywords
associated with CSV helps tremendously.

------
turley
[https://www.ottopost.com/](https://www.ottopost.com/) \- a simple Instagram
postcard printing service.

I created it as an alternative to the many printing services that require a
dedicated app. OttoPost doesn't require an app since it just searches for your
new Instagram photos and prints automatically (that's configurable).

Not exactly world-changing, but definitely something hands-off at this point
and better than nothing :)

~~~
tedmiston
Heavy Instagram user here. This is cool.

I really like the price point, but for a 99¢ postcard including postage, do
you actually make any money?

~~~
turley
Thanks! The margins are pretty tight at the moment, but I still make a little.
Margins would improve with more volume as I can get better bulk rates.

~~~
tedmiston
Have you seen Flag [1]? It was a successful Kickstarter [2] for making photo
prints free by supporting them with advertising on the back. Might be
something worth looking into.

[1] [https://fl.ag/](https://fl.ag/)

[2] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1306413684/flag-the-
app...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1306413684/flag-the-app-that-
prints-and-mails-your-photos-for/description)

------
robinhoode
Is anyone doing old-fashion landlording these days? I'm trying to break into
that space, but I have no idea what I'm doing and could use some advice from
someone who's done it before.

~~~
_neil
I've been looking at this as well and I also have very little idea what I'm
doing. I found a spreadsheet on Bigger Pockets that helps evaluate properties
as rental investments by plugging in some numbers. Apart from that, I just
have some alerts set up on Redfin and a general idea of what parts of my city
would probably attract good tenants.

But I've seen enough stories about nightmare situations that I'd rather cover
all my bases before jumping in.

~~~
ethbro
If you're interested in real estate investment and willing to do trivial math,
I'd recommend Frank Gallinelli's book ( [http://www.amazon.com/Every-Estate-
Investor-Financial-Measur...](http://www.amazon.com/Every-Estate-Investor-
Financial-Measures/dp/0071603271/) ) for the basics.

He comes across as a great guy (heard him interviewed on a podcast before I
bought the book), has a really readable style (seriously, it makes real estate
financials "light reading"), and generally seems focused on helping people (he
was apparently teaching when a publisher approached him to write a book - he
told them he wouldn't write the book they wanted because he thought it would
be useless, but he would write them a book on what he thought would be most
useful).

And absolutely: if you're from a comp-sci background, the real estate math is
all trivial plug and chug. But it is worth learning the accepted ways of doing
things so you can properly compare and model your properties.

~~~
tylercubell
Investment property analysis is one of the problems I'm working on in my
startup ([http://offmarketleads.com](http://offmarketleads.com)). One thing I
learned from interviewing the top hard-money lender in Boston is that new
investors often don't perform due diligence properly and are ignorant of costs
that can make or break a deal. As a value-added service, I'm pulling in data
from public records, MLS, and proprietary sources to automate 95% of this
grunt work so they can get a more down-to-earth estimate of what a property is
really worth and improve their chances of getting financed. However, this is
predicated upon finding great deals which is the top pain point I'm solving.

------
ggambetta
My novel -- in English
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QPBYGFI](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QPBYGFI) and
Spanish
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I1EU1Q0](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I1EU1Q0)

Sells a couple Kindle copies per week. In terms of actual income, it's
negligible. The feedback has been unanimously positive, so my problem is to
get it in the hands of as many people as I can. Therefore, if you want the
epub/mobi files, just message me (see bio) and I'll be happy to send them :)

~~~
akshat_h
You may consider pricing it higher. I have seen shorts i.e 40-50 page books at
2.99

~~~
mkaroumi
Totally agree. Always consider increasing your price. If people find it
valuable, they'll still buy it:)

------
coupdetaco
Sperm donation, 1k/month and I have to go in twice a week.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
Aren't there potential liability issues arround this? Where you may have to
take responsibility for a child.

[http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/justice/kansas-sperm-
donation/](http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/justice/kansas-sperm-donation/)

~~~
mrits
That was an issue because two people just hooked up and exchanged sperm. There
was no doctor involved.

~~~
calbear81
I doubt a child would be involved if sperm was the only thing exchanged.

------
twelvenmonkeys
My passive income for 2015 was ([http://kihi.io](http://kihi.io)) a VPS /
cloud server provider for coreos, atomic, shit like that.

Netted me enough income to pay for the data center hosting and a few starbucks
coffees per month for myself.

It's not much, but it essentially gives me a free dev area with a ton of
computing power for me to roam free.

------
panorama
I wrote a book that helps junior developers (e.g. bootcamp grads) land jobs:
[https://kokev.in/hired-fast](https://kokev.in/hired-fast)

Decent income in 4 figures, but I didn't do it for the money (it took me
hundreds of hours from start to finish). However it's a great feeling when you
go out for dinner, check your email, and a new purchase essentially pays for
dinner right then and there :P.

------
someotheridiot
[https://rebrickable.com](https://rebrickable.com) \- A LEGO database that
shows you which sets you can build from your existing collection, also
includes thousands of fan-submitted designs.

Although at the moment it is far from passive (probably spend more time on it
than my full time job), but it can be left alone for a little while and still
generate income.

------
andy
-Advertising affiliate offers from Convert2media. ($1496 profit so far this month)

-Adsense/Lifestreetmedia on my Pirates FB app (Adsense: $29 this month. Lifestreetmedia: $47 this month) [http://greenrobot.com/pirates](http://greenrobot.com/pirates)

-Mopub, Inmobi and Facebook ads on my iOS and Android apps ($14 from Mopub this month)

~~~
Dorono
I want to get into Affiliate Marketing (especially Mobile Marketing) but where
ever I look, it seems like just scamming people off their money. Are there any
ethical and legal offers you know of?. Not only white hat, I mean really ads
that bring something a user wants and want to pay for, rather than the "lose
10kg in 2 weeks ebook".

~~~
dplgk
The barrier to entry to almost nothing so the "industry" is extremely
saturated and full of "work from home" and "passive income" pipe dreams. It's
still a ton of work and research to start making any sort of consistent
monthly income and it's not passive at all. You'll be constantly tweaking,
testing, switching ads...creating new websites and content, etc. Warrior Forum
and Wicked Fire are the main places to get a feel for what people are doing.
You'll also get a feel for the other people in that space - they just have a
scammy, creepy feel.

------
mherrmann
I co-founded a company developing QA automation software in 2012. Worked on it
full-time until 2014. Had an EU grant covering our costs during that period.
In 2015, I invested about 200h into it (mostly answering support emails and
dealing with taxes) and made about 20k€ this year.

I've been working on an Appointment Reminder clone for a year now in my home
country Austria. I will about break even in 2015, but will have an MRR of
~1500€ in 2016, with low ongoing costs.

So I reckon that in 2016 I can have a pretty passive income (working
5-10hrs/week) of 2000+€ per month. Not that I will work that little because I
obviously still want to grow my income. And I also need to add that I've been
earning considerably less in the past 3.5 years than I would have if I had
stayed employed as a software engineer.

Oh, and then there's the Android app that makes about 15€ per month ^^

~~~
vram22
> Had an EU grant covering our costs during that period. In 2015, I invested
> about 200h into it (mostly answering support emails and dealing with taxes)
> and made about 20k€ this year.

How is it that the EU gives grants to for-profit companies? Is it to encourage
business growth so the GDP goes up?

I'm talking about a "grant" which seems to imply gratis, free money, as
opposed to a loan that has to be paid back, which is available in most
countries.

~~~
mherrmann
Yes, it is to encourage growth. The grant was gratis (ie. we didn't have to
pay it back) but did come with a lot of administrative bullshit (maybe a third
of one man lower over the course of two years).

~~~
vram22
Got it, thanks. Surprising that the admin stuff takes so much time. I guess
they want to make sure that the money is being well spent, i.e. you are
running the business "properly".

------
mkaroumi
My watch company.

Started it in September and started selling before the watches were made.
They're still in production and will be finished soon.

Wouldn't maybe call it "passive income", but the sales keep coming through
WOM. ([http://gardannewatches.com](http://gardannewatches.com))

~~~
grhmc
What is with these artifacts in this image? Are these real watches? It looks
like some image samples poorly photoshopped together.

[http://gardannewatches.com/products/gardanne-black-brown-
wat...](http://gardannewatches.com/products/gardanne-black-brown-watch)

~~~
psykovsky
Those artifacts look more from a badly cropped photo than a render, so I would
venture a guess that was a real watch.

~~~
mkaroumi
The watch case design is a render and the band is a photo of real bands. But
as I said before, the watches are under production right now, finished very
soon. So we're not able to have any real photos of the watch yet :)

~~~
grhmc
Got it. A bit surprising you didn't get any manufacturing samples, but cool.

~~~
mkaroumi
I could, but that would cost $300 for that sample. I got a sample of another
watch to feel the quality. And I can tell you - it felt good!

~~~
ethbro
Out of interest, strongly assuming that you've contracted manufacture to a
foreign country from the price point (and assuming your profit in there),
could you speak at all about how your contract goes with regards to quality
control?

What happens if what you get doesn't match what you're expecting, without an
approved sample?

Also, any ballpark on the setup? Or is it per-unit?

(Feel free to demure if you don't want to share, just curious. You see fewer
physical than virtual products!)

~~~
mkaroumi
Great questions. I can't answer as detailed as I would like to do.

But, I can't be 100% sure that these watches will be of the same quality, but
I'm 99% sure. I've dealed with these manufacturers for a while and we have a
tight partnership.

I don't want to misinterpret and give you wrong info, so what do you mean with
ballpark? Not sure what you mean :)

~~~
ethbro
Understand there are contractual (and business!) limitations to what can be
said, so thanks for any answers. :)

By ballpark, I meant could you give round numbers (ie number of figures) on
the up-front investment to get something like this off the ground? Or whether
it's a back end per-item partnership?

Also, kudos to you and best of luck. It is a nice design, and you're right --
the watch community is under-served by reasonably priced but simple designs.
Some of Seiko, Citizen, Orient, and especially Skagen's stuff is nice, but
it's amazing how terrible other pieces are.

Some of my favorites are still vintage from the 60s!

~~~
mkaroumi
Glad to hear that from you.

I'm really sorry, I can't tell you how much I invested but I can tell you that
it was for the first batch and not per-item charging. So you kinda need to
invest a lot of money to start something like this - if you want to create
great quality products :)

Vintages from the 60s are sooo amazing. We were actually inspired from some
vintage watches (and modern watches) :)

------
taprun
I wrote a book on pricing software [1] that sells for $50+ per copy. Not only
does it supply me with passive income, but it serves as instant credibility
when I introduce myself to people in the field.

[1] [http://taprun.com/pricing](http://taprun.com/pricing)

------
chown
After having it free for 2.5 years, started selling LightPaper
([http://lightpaper.ashokgelal.com/](http://lightpaper.ashokgelal.com/))
couple of months ago. I received a number of emails thanking me for continuing
its development. I was pleasantly surprised how generous Mac app users are :)
did much better than I expected. Honestly, I started charging it just to get
better at "entrepreneurship". And so far I've learned a lot. I usually spend
couple of hours every day except on weekends when I put in few extra hours.

------
paltman
I have been running [http://aminosoftware.com](http://aminosoftware.com) for
almost 10 years now with a partner. It's not huge money but we do zero
promotion and support amounts to a handful of emails a year and pays for my
kids private school. Our customers are government and enterprise so purchase
through invoice/PO paperwork but that's just a few minutes using a google docs
template.

------
pauljohncleary
I have a chrome extension and service at [http://tab.bz](http://tab.bz) which
has around 25k users.

It nets a tiny amount of revenue per month, I'm using it as a testing ground
to keep my coding skills sharp, learn meteor and as a case study for growth
hacking/product Dev

I run it off a couple of digital ocean droplets at around $10/month

~~~
tedmiston
This is cool. I use OneTab similarly though really just to stash tab overload
more than share.

~~~
pauljohncleary
Thanks! I had a similar extension that used the tab.bz API called Tab
Condensor. It only had around 1000 users so I took it down to focus on the
main product.

------
reboog711
I wrote and self published a training course on AngularJS for Flex Developers.
(
[https://www.lifeafterflex.com/AngularJSForFlexDevelopers/](https://www.lifeafterflex.com/AngularJSForFlexDevelopers/)
). I think I released it in early 2014.

It never made the splash I had hoped; but it's staying power was lots more
than any of my previous books and it still gets a bunch of downloads each
month.

The series also works great as a way to convinced consulting clients I have
the chops to build applications for them.

For those that want to check out the books at the lowest tier; they are pay
what you want--even if it is nothing. You can use the code 'hackernews' to get
50% off the higher tiers--I think the real value of the series is in the
screencasts.

I'm told the Angular pieces will work independently of the Flex parts.

------
thegabez
The first website I started was
[SynbioSwag]([http://www.synbioswag.com](http://www.synbioswag.com)). My hail
mary marketing strategy was to get Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory to wear
one on the show, but that never happened. I usually sell a couple of shirts
around Christmas though. It pays for hosting of the other sites I've built.
About a year after launching SBS I learned to make web apps and built
[TheMuse-Seek]([http://www.themuse-seek.com](http://www.themuse-seek.com))
haven't made any money yet but slowly growing in users. So heres to 2016,
hopefully Sheldon reads this.

------
watmough
My iPhone apps I created from 2009 - 2011 still provide a small income
typically around $20 - $40 per month. Back in the day FemCal alone was doing
$1500+ per month, with me 'full-time' on promoting and supporting it, but with
little support or maintenance, apps waste away quickly.

It might be several hours to fix, retest and update documentation for even a
small platform change, so just keeping up with platform changes can be
significant effort if you work a full-time job, have children, other
commitments etc.

The good news for me is that changes at work are affording me the opportunity
to escape some process and re-open some of my side-projects again.

    
    
      * http://femcalapp.com

------
tarball
I design logos for Bitcoins. Designing a graphic identity can take me weeks,
but this particular project is for me an experiment. The logos I design are
quickly made: it takes usually 1 to 2 hour per logo. They are totally adapted
to the (really) small brief I receive by mail, from total strangers. My
clients usually want something smart, quickly. The small economy of those
projects are for me interesting and inspiring design constraints. I use only
open source fonts. Sometimes, I draw the typeface myself when I feel inspired.

Total income this year: about 5 Bitcoins
[http://ecogex.com/logos/](http://ecogex.com/logos/)

------
ortuna
I've been running [https://commits.io/](https://commits.io/) The income is
passive, but I know I can do a lot more if I put more time into it.

------
2bluesc
My neighbor and I built [https://backroad.io](https://backroad.io) for easy
on-demand OpenVPN servers

------
mbesto
Has anyone in this community had success dropshipping? Any indications of
expected margins? I'm particularly looking at TV accessories.

~~~
nrivadeneira
I once tried drop shipping but the prices I was getting were worse than Amazon
prices. I would have gotten better margins if I had just ordered on Amazon and
shipped it to my customer. That said, this was for video games, which are
already very low margin, and only one wholesaler would drop ship.

------
NameNickHN
I run a couple of temporary email websites like fakeinbox.com and
wegwerfemail.de. Earned a total of $3.153 with AdSense and cost about $655
(server, domains) since January 1st.

------
nonotmeplease
Selling t-shirts
[http://www.zazzle.com/freesoftwarelove*](http://www.zazzle.com/freesoftwarelove*)

~~~
mod
Doing any good?

------
roycehaynes
[https://pareday.com](https://pareday.com) \- I'm making passive income off
SitterCity affiliate program.

~~~
dogstraightup
This is a cool concept. My girlfriend babysits for supplemental income and
would use something like this. UrbanSitter is a solid competitor out there
right now. Slightly different focus, but same concept.

------
rphlx
Cryptocurrency mining, as it was in 2014. Although it's mostly- rather than
fully- passive.

------
gesman
Selling domain name to chinese buyer over the weekend :)

