Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income? - Kevin_S
======
m52go
The more I explore this concept of 'passive income' the more it seems like a
unicorn not unlike the Facebooks and Instagrams of the world.

Sure, it's possible to generate truly passive income, without any ongoing work
to sustain it, but such projects are so rare that it's impractical to pursue
them. It's like saying you're going to create the next unicorn...good luck
with that.

99.9% of endeavors worth doing pursuing require some level of constant work to
continue capturing the value they generate.

I say this as someone who made his first few 'passive' dollars LAST NIGHT
WHILE I WAS SLEEPING. But I put 'passive' in quotes because this was after 5
months of working for nothing, and the grueling work required to keep my
offering attractive continues.

~~~
CryoLogic
It's very easy to get passive income. Just buy high dividend mutual funds.

100k in the market should net you 4-12k per year.

~~~
volkk
ah yeah, the good ol' 100k i have lying around should finally have some use
for me!

~~~
graton
Spend less, save more :)

[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-
sim...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-
behind-early-retirement/)

------
bespoke_engnr
I have a Linux/Programming/Tech Career YouTube channel (
[https://youtube.com/c/tutorialinux](https://youtube.com/c/tutorialinux) )
that just hit 50k subscribers (yay!), and it makes around $450/month in ad
revenue.

I also made a poorly targeted and marketed practical system administration
Udemy course last year, which does about $500/month.

These projects, along with a few other small things, are on track to make
around $15k this year. That's after about 3 years of putting lots of time,
effort, and love into creating content on YouTube.

Unfortunately that 'passive' income just barely approaches 10% of what I make
at my full-time job (Sysadmin/Ops/Automation/DevOps? stuff), so the idea of
working on my 'passive/hobby' projects full-time is not an attractive
proposition yet.

I like building, running, and automating large distributed systems, so I'm not
really itching to quit my full-time work and "just" be a teacher. The ideal
situation would be 'regular' IT work 3 days a week, and working on YouTube, my
own web apps, and additional tech courses the rest of the time.

~~~
chippy
How much time do you put into the YouTube channel per week / month? I'm seeing
on average three 20 minute videos produced per week - so it's at least one
hour, but I'd imagine each video takes longer to edit etc?

~~~
bespoke_engnr
As I've started trying to be more professional about it, the time it takes to
produce content has grown quite a bit.

20 minutes of me talking into the camera takes 2-4 hours to plan, outline,
film, and edit.

30 minutes of screencast takes about 8 hours to script and film, and edit. The
planning/research phase before that takes really long, because I try REALLY
hard to avoid dependencies on jargon and specialized knowledge, to make the
material accessible.

I'm actually about to experiment with a series targeted at more experienced
sysadmins, where I can just improvise and work on a practical project without
much planning or gradual explanation of the fundamentals. I'm hoping those
videos will be much faster to create.

I spend a LOT of time thinking up and planning material, though -- not really
sure how to count that.

~~~
smnplk
Congrats on your channel. I will subscribe!

~~~
bespoke_engnr
Aw thanks, I hope you get something useful out of it! Feel free to message me
with feedback; I read all of it.

------
prezjordan
Inspired by previous "passive income" posts, I decided to ship something small
[0] after quitting my job earlier this year.

It only makes me ~$100/mo, which is enough to cover my PC gaming addiction.
Super fun experience, amazing how much you learn from building such a small
piece of software.

[0]: [http://shade.cool](http://shade.cool)

~~~
mstade
That's remarkably useful actually, cool project! Funny release notes too:

> # What's New in Version 1.0.3

> "Hey Jordan, this app looks great but unfortunately crashes when I mouse
> over to my second monitor while selecting a color"

> "That's impossible, I fixed that! Are you sure you're using the latest
> version?"

> "Yes I'm positive. Just put your primary display on the right and mouse over
> to the left screen"

> "Hmm... works on my machine."

> "Your other right"

> "...Oh."

> · This version fixes a bug with the color picker when your primary display
> is to the right of another display.

~~~
vivan
Reminds me of an anecdote from The Pragmatic Programmer:

Andy once worked on a large graphics application. Nearing release, the testers
reported that the application crashed every time they painted a stroke with a
particular brush. The programmer responsible argued that there was nothing
wrong with it; he had tried painting with it, and it worked just fine. This
dialog went back and forth for several days, with tempers rapidly rising.
Finally, we got them together in the same room. The tester selected the brush
tool and painted a stroke from the upper right corner to the lower left
corner. The application exploded. "Oh," said the programmer, in a small voice,
who then sheepishly admitted that he had made test strokes only from the lower
left to the upper right, which did not expose the bug.

------
heinrichhartman
7.49EUR interest payments from my Bank account (pre tax).

Does that count as passive income? At least I am not doing anything to get it.

~~~
Cerium
If you are counting that, then building up a dividend portfolio is a good
source of passive income. About $400 a year from a 1x,xxx portfolio.

~~~
noitsnot
I'm not a buyer in this market. Is there anyone else who prescribes to this?
It must be a very long term play.

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exitreturn123
Making a throwaway for this.

My annual pre-tax income from work is about $2,500,000.

My annual passive pre-tax income is about $1,200,000. This is 100% derived
from investment returns from an exit I had a few years ago from a startup I
was with.

I spend about $400,000/year (after tax) of that.

Here's the kicker: Nothing makes you feel more poor than being worth about
$40m in cash while you hang out with billionaires and live in NYC or SF.

~~~
lazerpants
Nope. Try being worth -32k. And yes, it is often my job to hang out with
wealthy people (in NYC, not SF).

~~~
exitreturn123
I do believe that I will never feel as rich as I did when I went from negative
net worth to zero. That liberating feeling was amazing, as it's all upside
after that.

You'll get there, and it'll feel so good when you do.

------
aabajian
I run a side project for sending business reminders:
[https://www.cronote.com](https://www.cronote.com)

Cronote made next to no money for 5 years, but slowly migrated its way to the
top of Google for search of "text message reminders" and "sms reminders." I
did a ton of work, made an iPhone app, changed the billing system four times
and rebuilt the interface three times.

I now have ~60 paying customers, but it only makes $300 per month after all
expenses. I don't think I've recouped the man-hours spent, but I've certainly
learned a lot along the way. I learned Python/Django (website back-end),
Objective-C and Swift (iOS app), and lots of fun stuff about timezones and
calendaring APIs.

~~~
soulchild37
Your side project reminds me of patio11's appointment reminder. I visited your
website and found the enterprise pricing is jarringly low, I recommend reading
some of patio11 HN post / his blog, perhaps you might be able to increase
price and earn 10x more a year.

------
mintplant
I make around $2,000/year from a store on the Second Life marketplace [0]. I
rarely log into SL anymore, except to move money out of my account, but the
products I made back when I was active continue to sell. I've never done any
advertising for them, so it's all based on organic search traffic and word of
mouth.

[0] [https://marketplace.secondlife.com](https://marketplace.secondlife.com)
(1 USD = around L$250)

~~~
zerr
I wonder what kind of people use SL nowadays.

------
thatwasunusual
I honestly don't know, but I should problably check.

I sold a _very_ small IT company in 1998 for $50K when I got a "real job"; the
truth is, I didn't earn much on my own company, and it was doomed to fail
anyway. I was only 22 years old, and my financially over-protective dad
(thanks, though, and RIP) insisted on putting all the money into pretty secure
stock funds.

I've never needed the money, and after my dad passed away in 2012, my
brother's lawyer and accounting company keeps it under control. Based on a
fairly conservative avg. interest of 7% since then, I should be good for $190K
now, increasing approx. $1K+/month at the moment. If my rather poor math
skills serve me right.

The reason I don't bother about this investment is that I'm currently OK with
the "normal pay", but it's also because I'm afraid of being disappointed if I
look into it, or (worse) get so excited I spend it all on crap. :/ Also, if I
never bother about those money, I guess I'll never miss them when the stock
market _really_ crashes. :)

~~~
zht
you should probably check... there may be fees or other things that have
happened.

~~~
thatwasunusual
Ah, yes. I forgot to mention that; the "fund controllers" take 1.25% of my
portfolio. The last 5 years it seems to have increased 12,6% in average,
though, so I'm not that worried. If I had controlled it myself, well, you get
the idea... :)

~~~
graton
That is a crazy high expense ratio. Schwab offers an S&P 500 index fund for
0.03%

[https://investor.vanguard.com/investing/how-to-
invest/impact...](https://investor.vanguard.com/investing/how-to-
invest/impact-of-costs)

[http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/expense.html?t=SWPPX&...](http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/expense.html?t=SWPPX&region=usa&culture=en_US)

~~~
thatwasunusual
...but is it better? :)

~~~
graton
Well here are the S&P 500 results for the last few years:

    
    
      As of today for 2017: 14.24%
      Dec. 31, 2016 	11.96%
      Dec. 31, 2015 	1.38%
      Dec. 31, 2014 	13.69%
      Dec. 31, 2013 	32.39%
      Dec. 31, 2012 	16.00% 
    

Source:
[https://ycharts.com/indicators/sandp_500_total_return_annual](https://ycharts.com/indicators/sandp_500_total_return_annual)

------
michaelthiessen
I think that "passive income" is a misnomer, or at least, not very useful. I
find it more helpful to think in hourly rates, since you're always putting in
time for something.

If you spend 100 hours setting up a website, and over the next 5 years you
never touch it and you make some money, some would consider that "passive".
But really, you put in 100 hours, and made $x from it.

I think people are really looking for high ratio of money to time spent, not
something that is truly "passive".

------
pingou
I make -200 Euros (yes, minus) per year with
[https://champignouf.com](https://champignouf.com) (a website to identify
mushrooms). I think it's the case for many people that their side project make
them lose money, if you consider hosting costs.

------
seanalltogether
I make about $250/mo off of Space Gremlin mac app and a few mobile games that
probably amount to nothing now. With kids entering the picture it's been
harder to focus on passive income projects.

~~~
numbsafari
I love space gremlin! Great app.

~~~
seanalltogether
thanks!

------
davedx
I make a few hundred per year from my e-book, which took about half a year of
on and off work to finish and is now partially out of date (tip: don’t write
books about front end software development).

My current side project is more ambitious and has a lot of potential but it’s
probably not going to work as passive income...

------
cdiamand
I make ~$60 a month off my side project
-[https://oppslist.com](https://oppslist.com).

Although it's been priceless in terms of the things its taught me about
shipping a product, and market demand.

~~~
mstade
Looks like your cert is invalid, it doesn't work if you drop the www
subdomain.

Edit: I checked out [https://www.oppslist.com](https://www.oppslist.com) which
works, and had to come back and say that's a nifty site, well done!

------
tachibana
Step 1: Save diligently (>30% of pre-tax salary)

Step 2: Invest in very conservative investments that throw off free cash (I
personally like fixed income like US treasuries and municipal bonds). The
operative word is "conservative" so that the passive income is reliable and
can be treated as a permanent offset to lifestyle costs.

Step 3: ...

Step 4: $$$ -- As the income in Step #2 grows, it increases the savings ratio
in Step #1 (a geometric series!).

This is a doable formula anywhere (I currently am working and raising a family
in Silicon Valley) and I've achieved financial independence in about ~10
years. I still keep working to stay engaged.

------
runj__
Not including anything from the company I co-founded: $10-$20 a month from
publishing Hypersphere (a book written by the 4chan /lit/ board) which sells a
few copies a month spread between Lulu and Amazon.

[http://www.lulu.com/shop/anonymous/hypersphere/paperback/pro...](http://www.lulu.com/shop/anonymous/hypersphere/paperback/product-22517627.html)

It was really fun self-publishing something and as an added bonus it's in the
permanent collection of the MoMA Library.

------
djsumdog
I earn $6 a month on my patreon:

[https://www.patreon.com/battlepenguin](https://www.patreon.com/battlepenguin)

I was driving around the US for five months and writing, but now I'll have to
put that on pause as I just moved in with a friend and need to find a real job
again.

~~~
raihansaputra
Just read through some of your blog posts. Sadly I'm not in a position to be a
patron. I really, really like your writing. I want to write too, but most of
my writings are stuck in a journal half-finished. Do you have any tips to
fleshing out pieces of writing like blog posts?

------
Mojah
It might be passive income now, but that is without counting the months of
work and years of experience I had to put into it.

A near-zero-maintenance project is DNS Spy [0], which brings in roughly
~600$/month.

[0] [https://dnsspy.io/](https://dnsspy.io/)

------
reacharavindh
Curiously watching this discussion. I have a few ideas that I thought I should
spend time building a product around releasing in the wild - a few months ago.
Haven't had the kick in the back to do them yet. May be looking at someone
else's $$$ will do it.

------
catpolice
Many of the things I would be tempted to describe (and am seeing others here
describe) as passive income aren't, at least in the strict sense:
[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/passiveincome.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/passiveincome.asp)

In the colloquial sense, I made about 18k last year off of money I dumped into
Betterment a while before. I don't do anything but periodically check on how
much money I've made. I wish I'd started passively investing about a decade
earlier. If you have anything beyond an emergency buffer just sitting in your
checking account, just do it.

------
graton
My S&P 500 index fund has gone up a lot this year. So good stuff there :)

------
penguin2016
How do you define passive? Is 3 hours a week passive after setup costs?

Would organic traffic after doing SEO for 2-3 weeks be passive? Theres a lot
of things which take 1 hour/week after being setup right.

~~~
cweagans
After setup costs, I'd define it as "anything that brings in a number of
dollars, where the number of dollars is not directly proportional to the
amount of time I spend on the thing in any capacity".

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
My day job matches that description!

~~~
cweagans
Really? If you choose to work 30 minutes a day for the next 6 months, your
income won't be affected?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
OK, you got me on that one.

However, if I choose to work 60 hours a week for the next 6 months, it won't
be affected either.

------
codazoda
I've made a measly $179 this year from Passive Income. It's not much but it is
entirely passive. Most of it comes from Google AdSense on my blog, which I've
been writing posts in for about 15 years. I mostly write stuff that I've
researched and completed and that I want to remember how to do again in the
future. I don't consider my time because these are simply notes I wrote for
myself and would have written regardless of being paid for them.

------
nsx147
Writing covered calls once per month

------
discreditable
On bestmotherfucking.website I make $10-20$ per year which goes into its
namecheap account. It breaks close enough to even that I have no plans to
shutter the site for the next 5 years.

On my blog I have affiliate links to Amazon products which I explain how to
use. I've made $428 over the past year. Those regularly net 30$ per month on
average. It covers the web hosting and leaves enough to help me buy random
Amazon stuff.

------
marketvulture
+500/mo and growing after 5 months. Workable passive income is not a rare
unicorn, but calling it "passive" is a misnomer. You have to work to get
traffic, incrementally improve the product and handle bugs, etc. Perhaps we
should call it what it usually is: "side" income.

------
soulchild37
I released a mobile app for checking upcoming train timetable half year ago
and earned approx $300. Assuming the same sales figure on the next half,
yearly will be $600.

Was inspired by a previous "passive income" posts in HN too, original goal was
to cover Apple developer annual fees.

------
numbsafari
My wife got our safety net liquid assets into decent yielding savings
accounts[1]. We’re also keeping some liquidity on-hand for some home
renovation projects. That plus dividends on small non-401k holdings and we’ll
pocket about $2k this year in a truly passive fashion.

[1]: lmcu.org

------
mapster
$5k/year from digital product ecommerce site (3500 products). i made it in
2012 and it just hums along as ppl buy & download. occasional emails - mostly
requests. I need to expand this site to help with kid's college expenses a
bit. might as well.

------
le-mark
Rental property, single family home. About $4800 a year in principle paid
down. I'm thinking of putting some cash toward paying off the mortgage, and
pocketing all the rent (minus insurance and tax). Just haven't pulled the
trigger on that yet.

------
reverend_gonzo
2 bedroom condo rented out on AirBNB. Don't have a full year's worth of income
yet, but I expect around 12k in profit plus 12k in principal paid down plus
any rise in market value.

------
julox
I am earning 10 cents pert month with pythonconverter.com

------
agumonkey
Do solar panel and home growing food counts ?

------
ionised
Zero.

I put every penny of it to good use.

------
megaman22
It's not exactly "passive", but I make about $16k renting the bottom floor of
the duplex I own. It's not without headaches of having to deal with tenants
and maintenance and whatnot, but since I live there anyway in the upstairs,
it's primarily things I would have to do in any case. And I can write off a
lot of interest and tools and materials on my taxes. It pays the mortgage, if
not the taxes, and should be a nice little income property down the road when
I buy a real house.

I also make about $100 a year on Amazon affiliate links on my blog.

------
vacri
negative a few grand. I supplement my mother's retirement income a bit, and
give a regular-but-small amount to charity.

It's pretty easy to set up - just contact your bank and get an automatic
monthly transfer going. I did it online, and haven't had to worry since!

~~~
dsjoerg
I run a small website that loses me a few hundred dollars per month. Not
taking it down out of nostalgia & for the people who are still using it.

~~~
totalZero
That's a lot of dough! How many people still use it?

------
lucraft
£0

------
reactbro
I make $3000 a month committing cybercrime

~~~
smnplk
You need to be spanked.

