
Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? - djadmin
Any side projects, Game, OSS, Hacks.
======
gottebp
Breville coffee grinders are impossible to get internal parts for. I designed
a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-part in their BCG800XL SmartGrinder.

The storefront is through ShapeWays[1] and I use ifixit[2] to drive the
traffic. It's passively making ~$425/mo with about 10 minutes of work per week
on my end. This all happened because my grinder failed and I couldn't get
parts.

[1] [https://www.shapeways.com/product/NASLAGCCP/breville-
bcg800x...](https://www.shapeways.com/product/NASLAGCCP/breville-bcg800xl-
coffee-grinder-impeller-upgrade)

[2]
[https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG800XL+Grinder+Jamming+due+to...](https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG800XL+Grinder+Jamming+due+to+Worn+Impeller/62905)

~~~
grogenaut
Is the material used in the part safe to ingest?

~~~
ricardobeat
Was thinking the same. Looks like the original plastic part is destined to be
slowly ground and consumed by the user, the printed one will have the same
fate.

~~~
grogenaut
and what's the original part made from? that's what I'd want to compare.

------
jrheard
Young hackers who have a surplus of income and have funds to spare that aren't
being channeled toward debt / family / donations, heed me: save as much of
your salary as you can, and put it in boring investments (index funds / etc),
probably through vanguard.com (no affiliation, I just use them and have heard
nothing but good things from people I trust). You can pretty easily set up
your job's direct-deposit system so that a portion of your salary goes
directly into your investments without you ever seeing it, it's a good set-it-
and-forget-it system. It adds up over time!

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

~~~
velcro
Any tips for something solid vanguard-like in the EU?

~~~
susi22
GERMANS: Be aware! Don't buy any US ETFs when you pay taxes in Germany. There
is pretty heavy penalty tax on ETFs. Depends on the difference of the price on
the first day of trading of the year and on the last. If unlucky you can pay
50% tax on your gains. I did just this year pay 45% and I won't be getting it
back. Read thru this first: [https://www.justetf.com/de-
en/news/etf/steuereinfach-in-etfs...](https://www.justetf.com/de-
en/news/etf/steuereinfach-in-etfs-investieren.html)

~~~
leonhandreke
I have read the link you posted and I'm still not clear on how you would end
up paying ~50% and not be able to get it back.

If your ETF is "ausländisch thesaurierend" ("foreign accumulating"), declaring
it will be a bit more complicated but not that hard. Would you mind explaining
your situation a bit better? Maybe I'm missing something (and I wouldn't want
to, since I'm looking into this topic myself at the moment).

------
kohanz
This was pretty accidental, but to motivate myself to complete the arduous
application process for my professional engineering license, I creates a
WordPress blog documenting the process. Also because I thought I would learn
something new (setting up WP blog) and this seemed very "shippable". I
completed the application process over the course of a year and haven't
written a blog post in over a year.

Thanks to a complete lack of material in this niche, the site
([http://pengapplicant.ca](http://pengapplicant.ca)) gets a decent amount of
organic search traffic given the niche size (2k page views per month) and I
make about $15/month in Adsense. Recently I was also contacted by someone who
sells materials for the application and exam and have become an affiliate for
them. It's only been one month, but i've already made one referral which
netted me $100. So passive income on this after hosting costs is probably
$220-ish and will be more in 2017 hopefully with more affiliate sales.
Obviously very small potatoes, but I never set out to make any money for this
and it looks like now it will at least cover my yearly professional dues ;)

To be honest, the best part is the messages I get from people saying how I
helped them get their license. That's a much nicer feeling than the $.

~~~
wordpressdev
By changing ad placements, and adding a more ad units, you can increase your
Adsense earnings significantly.

~~~
chei0iaV
And add banners pleading to disable Adblock, right?

------
caseysoftware
Previously, as a developer evangelist with Twilio, I had to know the tech
events and tech leaders in my local community. While I didn't figure out a
repeatable approach then, in late 2015, it hit me.

I built a bot network that reads tech events - mostly meetups, some
conferences and workshops - for a given city from a variety of sources and
tweets them. I use machine learning to determine hashtags, time of day to
tweet, and new data sources. When I launched Austin -
[https://twitter.com/ATXTechEvents](https://twitter.com/ATXTechEvents) \- in
September 2015, I got 900 followers the first month. I suspected it was a
fluke so launched Dallas FW and Houston to test. It wasn't a fluke.

In 2016, I've launched 45 different cities in the US and the network has 100k
followers collectively, has its own automated weekly mailing list, and is
generating 1.4M+ impressions/month. Revenue is affiliate fees for conferences
(we are a media partner for O'Reilly) and workshops and selling the ad blocks
in the newsletter. Almost all of that is automated. The revenue is pretty
minor right now but growing and I spend 1-2 hours on it a week.

The landing page is here:
[https://techeventsnetwork.com/](https://techeventsnetwork.com/) (only some of
the cities) and the full list of cities is here:
[https://twitter.com/TechEventsNet/following](https://twitter.com/TechEventsNet/following)

~~~
avinassh
> I use machine learning to determine hashtags, time of day to tweet, and new
> data sources.

can you elaborate more this?

~~~
caseysoftware
Sure.

My last startup - Clarify.io - did automatic speech recognition through
machine learning. Since I was doing the roadmap and API design, I wanted a
better understanding of ML and started digging into it.

For context, I started by studying the Austin tech community since that's what
I know and could manually check the conclusions.

The basics:

Overall, the system tracks 5500+ groups, conferences, etc which is close to
60k events. It grows as it discovers new groups and events via a few channels.

As it finds and imports groups and then events, it categorizes each based on
how they're described. If it's from Meetup.com, the category data and topic
are reasonably good so it starts with that. If the source is Eventbrite, less
so. If the source is an event website, even harder.

After ~15 months, it's discovered about 105k keywords/phrases, some only
barely related. Of those, only about 7500 are actually useful. Not
surprisingly, they include languages, frameworks, companies, products and
combinations of words. (Side note: I've found words like "hacking" are less of
an indicator now than when I started.. because everyone is "hacking"
something.. marketing, cooking, etc.)

From all that, groups are qualified in/out based on their overall score. I
manually review things that are borderline but that's 2-3 most weeks. That
keyword/phrase list also feeds into the hashtags that get used.

The first version of this - hardcoded, no ML - was hacked together in a day.
I've rebuilt it from the ground up to wire in the ML processing to scale
across all the cities.

I later did some major refactoring to have pluggable output so it can
broadcast into a Slack channel (done & released) and eventually send you a
reminder DM or text (via Twilio!)

~~~
caseysoftware
Oh, and I'm careful to disqualify job fairs. You might find a session about
resume writing or "getting a better job in tech" but not the fair itself. I've
gotten a bunch of thank you notes and tweets about that aspect.

They have their place, just not in my system.

------
inovica
I run a number of side projects and have done since the mid 1990's. I started
in business when I was 21 and I'm now 47, so definitely considered 'old' to
some of you on here! I've been o reader of HN since it came out, but rarely a
contributor. A few comments from me and a link to some of what I've done and
how they have done in 2016:

\- Rich Dad, Poor Dad got me into the idea of 'passive' income. Nothing is
truly passive of course, but it makes me think about what I do

\- SourceGuardian. This is encryption software I set up in 2002 as I had a
need myself and the nearest product was $6000 at the time. It has generated a
great passive income since then. Enough to pay all my bills. 2016 was no
different. I work with 2 other people on it, one of whom I've never met (he's
in Russia) and it works well

\- Competitor Monitor. This _used_ to be a side-project 5 years ago, but it
has grown significantly and in the past year we are up by 35% and we have
grown our team. Strangely this has now become passive in the sense that I have
created a structure and systemised the business (read The Emyth Revisited
book) and that has allowed me to step out. I am not more of an investor than a
day-to-day contributor

\- UKscrap.com. This one died in 2016. The site is still there, but
competition and my lack of interest killed it

As I said, nothing is truly passive, but you need to have a passion for
whatever you do and I would try to create a 'passive index' for your ideas.
How much time will they take to get off the ground, how much to run monthly,
what is the product life cycle (if you can work that out!). From when I
started there are a HUGE number of resources to help you also. Feel free to
ask for help or advice, for what it's worth!

EDIT: I actually met my SourceGuardian partner once in Prague for 2 days.
Forgot that when I wrote the above!

~~~
wvlia5
Hi! I would like to know the language and LOC of both SourceGuardian and
Competitor Monitor, to see the what's the complexity of code people are
selling. Thanks

~~~
inovica
Both are relatively complex now and I don't have a precise answer for 'lines
of code' for you. Competitor Monitor has evolved for 5-6 years and has various
subsystems including image matching, crawling, proxy management and much more.
Both started out as MVP's and have evolved. Competitor Monitor is built in
Python and Go predominantly, however that shouldn't mean anything. The
language, platform and complexity of someone elses product should not be any
guide for you on your own. Looks also like you created a throw-away account
purely to write the request

~~~
wvlia5
Thanks ;) yes I did

------
bootloop
Unfortunately not 2016, but two years ago when the Samsung Gear Watch came out
a friend of mine got it right away. We went out drinking the same day and when
we came back at night we put together a watch face while still being drunk. We
uploaded it, set the lowest possible price 1$, and... Nothing happened.
Everywhere in the admin panel it showed 0. 0 downloads, not a single dime
earned, even after a few days. We were devastated.

But than I found another tab in the utterly shitty admin panel and it hit me
like a rock. The numbers on the dashboard were a monthly overview and in fact
we earned already hundreds of dollars and downloads in just a few days. I went
back to the computer, but together an even better watch face, set it to 1$
again and watched it selling like hotcakes.

However it tried out quite quickly after that. People started to copy stuff
and giving it away for free and I never bought the watch myself, I just used
the emulator to test my apps. So I took them out of the store at the end
because dealing with taxes and sharing the income does not make it worth it if
you get support requests like "how can I change the time on my watch", "what
do I care, its your shitty watch and Samsung's shitty interface"... So yea.
That's my best story about unexpected passive income. Selling stuff fast on a
new platform seem to work!

Edit: Found some screens. First one:
[https://i.imgur.com/TIVsPKO.png](https://i.imgur.com/TIVsPKO.png) Best
selling one:
[https://i.imgur.com/9L8TetO.png](https://i.imgur.com/9L8TetO.png)

~~~
dorfsmay
You created an apps in a few hours while drunk, set the price to the lowest
possible, and when you thought you had no sale after a few days, you were
"devastated"?

~~~
bootloop
Look. We were very emotional at the point. We thought the binary clock was a
good design and the booze helped us to believe we were going to get very rich
of it. ;-)

~~~
tomcam
Love the honesty of your answer!

------
durkie
i own a decent amount of tesla stock and 2016 was a great year for lending it
out.

since tesla is such a controversial company, lots of people want to own the
stock (expecting it to go up) and lots of people want to short sell it
(expecting it go down).

if you're a stock holder, certain places (like interactive brokers) will let
you lend your stock holdings to people that want to sell it short. you earn a
premium on this loan, but its basically risk-free since the brokerage bears
the counter-party risk.

because short interest is so high, there was a substantial portion of 2016
where there weren't enough shares available to satisfy short sellers' demand.
TSLA became classified as "hard to borrow" and borrowing premiums would be
anywhere from 8% to 100+% depending on the day/demand. this is money short
sellers pay on top of the cost to purchase the shares (and one more thing to
bear on top of the risk of short-selling, but that's another story).

the premium is paid daily, and the brokerage usually takes a chunk of it
(often half), so if you had $100k of tesla stock and the premium was 50%,
you'd earn (100,000 * 50% * (1/2) / 365) = $68.50 for each day that someone
borrowed your shares. the rate fluctuated daily, but this still netted me
several thousand dollars of truly passive income, since i was planning to hold
the stock either way. this is also a huge income stream for institutional
shareholders that are sitting on millions of shares.

~~~
danesparza
Thank you for teaching me something new about the stock market -- I had no
idea this was a thing!

~~~
tomcam
Ditto. Never heard of this or if I did, it totally didn't register

------
austenallred
I co-wrote a book on user acquisition and co-created an accompanying video
course to climb out of debt left over from a failed startup.

Made $104,000 in revenue since June (turns out the user acquisition stuff
actually works), about 87k of which is profit, so we'll say ~$11,000/month
part-time. It still makes me a solid $2,000/month now with zero work, and
hopefully more once the book is officially published. (It's done and delivered
to backers, but won't be on bookshelves and Amazon until after it's typeset.)

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-ultimate-growth-
hacki...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-ultimate-growth-hacking-
guide-secret-sauce-marketing--2/x/14399717#/)

I know the marketing will be over-the-top for HN. Just know it sells because
the content is really, really good.

~~~
ABS
Vincent Dignan, one of the worst twitter spammer I've ever blocked (more than
once since he likes/liked to ignore complaints, open a new account and do it
again...to the same people!).

If spamming all of twitter in alphabetical order is an example of the growth
hacks....

I see the account he used to do most of the spamming has been suspended by
Twitter now [https://twitter.com/vdignan](https://twitter.com/vdignan)

~~~
therealjohn
Would you not spam Twitter if you were in debt and could make 11k/mo? I agree
it's lame but gotta pay the bills :)

~~~
ericd
There are alternatives to wasting thousands of people's time, such as getting
a salaried job doing something that's a net positive for society.

------
limedaring
I wrote Hello Web App and Hello Web App: Intermediate Concepts
([http://hellowebapp.com](http://hellowebapp.com), they're learn-to-build-a-
web-app books using Django) and self-published both in 2015.

Just checked and this year I've made about $13,000 in profit. It's mostly
passive — this year I started using a fulfillment company so the majority of
my work is sending them orders (and answering questions about the book.)

Hoping to continue the trend next year by launching a book on teaching design
for engineers
([http://hellowebdesignbook.com](http://hellowebdesignbook.com)).

~~~
e12e
I'd be curious to hear a rough estimate on how much work went into those
books, and the site? I'm assuming "13k in profit" means sans expenses for
proof reading, hosting etc - but not counting the actual work writing
everything?

I also find it satisfying to see that it's apparently quite possible to make
(some) money on such projects - keep up the good work! :-)

~~~
limedaring
So the year they were wrote (first book came out May 2015, second book in Dec
2015), I made $15k profit. Mainly because I did two Kickstarters for the books
+ the launch campaigns. Of course, 2015 (and a bit of 2014) was when I was
spending time writing/designing/editing/publishing the books, so "profit"
would be lower if you include my time.

This year, other than answering questions on my book's discussion forum as
well as running a couple workshops for PyCon and DjangoCon, has been largely
writing-free so it would truly be 13k in profit. :)

------
IAmEveryone
210,000 Euro, divided between me and a friend.

We started a small online shop about 10 years ago, and it's mostly automated.
About 5 minutes/day + one week / year of work.

Before that, I had spent a few years (trying to) run rather big software
projects (for me – I was 18 or 19). They had cost me so many sleepless nights
that I swore to never again take on customers paying me more than 100 Euro
each. Now, if anybody complains, or gets on my nerves, they get their money
back and are never heard from again.

My friends joke I'm the living example for an unconditional basic income. They
haven't decided on the outcome yet, though.

~~~
blockchan
I assume you don't sell physical products, then? Is it something you created
by yourself?

------
rachelandrew
I put my CSS Layout knowledge into an online course at:

[https://thecssworkshop.com/](https://thecssworkshop.com/)

Interestingly it has been very popular with teams (so selling a set of
licenses so a whole team of developers can use the material). I also teach the
same material in person (either in-house or in open workshops) so I'm keeping
the two in sync. I made some notes about that process on my blog:
[https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2016/06/03/creating-
an-e...](https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2016/06/03/creating-an-epub-for-
workshop-notes/)

I intend to do a bit more marketing of both the in-person and online training
in the new year.

As an independent (not working for a browser vendor) invited expert to the CSS
Working Group, training and offering this course is really how I can fund
doing that.

~~~
philippnagel
Would you be willing to sell the code powering the website itself?

~~~
rachelandrew
It's built using my other product Perch Runway, using our Shop add-on :) took
me about half a day to put together as Shop deals with membership stuff by
default.

[https://grabaperch.com](https://grabaperch.com)
[https://shop.perchcms.com](https://shop.perchcms.com)

~~~
philippnagel
Awesome, thank you, will look into it!

I am currently putting together an online course and I am still undecided on
the easiest method of delivery.

------
timbowhite
TLD List - [https://tld-list.com](https://tld-list.com)

It's a price comparison website for top-level domains. Gross on average is
$600/month through affiliate sales and data download subscriptions. Requires
maybe 10-20 hours of work per month for maintenance and new features.

The most difficult part is tracking registrar affiliate earnings, and then
actually getting paid by the registrar. Many require you to manually request a
payout once you've reached the minimum payout threshold, others simply ignore
your payout requests.

~~~
archon810
I don't know if I'd call 20 hours passive income.

------
elcapitan
Being a developer in a large corporation.

~~~
kodisha
Gotta appreciate sarcasm in this answer, take a [+]

~~~
le-mark
Note it's not necessarily sarcasm. Personally, I've been working as a
developer for years (15+), and I 'quit' a couple of years ago.

What do I mean by 'quit'? I've been working in large corporation bouncing from
team to team. I only write code if I absolutely have to. So in practice I end
up actually "working" a few days a month. I don't do shit at work. I just
deliver something every so often, and with my experience, I can do as much as
a typical dev in 1/10 the time. And I can do the hard stuff some developers
just can't. An example of this was writing a parser for third party lua config
files. The team fought a half assed implement for months, I came in and re-did
it in a week.

Agile has been a god send for me. I just complete a couple of tickets a week,
enough to have something to report in the stand up. So far as management is
concerned I'm golden.

~~~
hypercluster
But what do you do instead? Hours must seem long without work!

~~~
sitkack
The mind can playback any movie idea you can think of, even some you probably
can't.

------
ThomPete
My side project [http://www.ghostnoteapp.com](http://www.ghostnoteapp.com) is
still growing.

It's a tricky product because the way the app work is not for everyone, at the
same time when people use it they normally share it with their friends. So I
get good organic traffic. The biggest issue is to explain whats unique about
this productivity tool, but seeing the video normally do the job.

It's not able to pay for me not working yet as I live in NY so there are
obvious reasons for that being hard.

But it does provide me with a healthy chunk of money. And through feedback
from customers I have found a new product in the same area and that will be a
SaaS product.

------
refrigerator
My brother and I have built a couple of test prep sites for UK medical school
entrance exams: [https://www.bmat.ninja](https://www.bmat.ninja),
[https://www.ukcat.ninja](https://www.ukcat.ninja) . BMAT Ninja made about
$25k this year (up from $16k last year) and UKCAT about $10k.

Didn't do any work on marketing really so it is pretty much passive, but I
think with a bit of work they could both do a lot better. It's a very seasonal
market - we only get customers for about 3 months per year (the 3 months
leading up to the exams), so thinking of branching out into other exams that
occur during other times of the year so the income is a bit more steady.

~~~
harperlee
How did you get the question bank? Did you pay students for questions? If so,
how did the costs balance the profits?

~~~
refrigerator
We paid freelancers from around the world (via www.upwork.com) to write the
questions based on some guidelines we made (it's not really hard to write
questions of this level so anyone can do it with a bit of guidance) and then
paid medical students to write the solutions. Probably spent about $7k on this
stuff back when it started, so it did require a bit of upfront cost.

------
dejv
I do have portfolio of small web apps: tools for learning music notes, non-
latin alphabets, language flash cards and so forth.

They are making some nice money each year, but the trend is quite clear: given
same traffic I am making about 50% less each year. Ad revenue is way down
(more adblock users, less money per click, CTR is down), but paid premium
plans are balancing it a bit.

These projects are still my biggest passive income stream, but they are going
to die in few years. Other than that I am owning agriculture land (that I am
renting), rental property and portfolio of p2p loans.

Those traditional assets are much more expensive to acquire, but then the
yield is much predictable and stable. Still, the tech projects are my best
source of income considering the amount of money/time required to create it.

~~~
Havoc
How are the p2p loans doing?

~~~
dejv
They are doing good. My strategy is to invest very conservatively and for
relatively short time. I am making about 7% pa.

~~~
Havoc
That's pretty impressive. I was under the impression that its near break-even.

Which site are you using if I may ask? And what is your idea of short time in
this context?

~~~
dejv
I am from Czech Republic and I am using quite a new platform called Zonky.

What I see is that quality of loans go down as a platform scale and I am lucky
to be with this platform from the start. So my cohort is made up of mostly
early adopters. I am year in my portfolio with 0 defaulted loans and 1 late
payment (I feel like this loan will default during the lifetime).

My strategy is to invest to nonconsumer debt (no car loans, no holiday or
Christmas presents loans or loan refinancing). I am investing in loans with
disclosed profession (investing in IT professionals, govt workers, school
teachers...) and with disclosed loan history (aiming to people with 0 debt). I
want the loans to be paid in 3 or 4 years. I do break my rules for about 5% of
portfolio that goes to riskier loans, this is where I get majority of my
yield, otherwise my yield would be like 4 or 5% instead of 7 - 8%.

I guess this strategy is not applicable in US or UK, where is normal to have
some debt (there is/was very different debt culture in most EU), and even here
is still harder to discover these good loans, so I basically stopped investing
in there.

Next year I want to start experimenting with b2b loans for unpaid invoices
(business sell their new invoices with terms like NET30 or NET90 to boost
their cashflow).

~~~
Havoc
Thanks

------
tomschlick
ZoneWatcher - Side project of mine to monitor your/your clients' DNS services
and alert when a change to a zone has been made. It serves as a revision
history & alerting system which has been helpful when a client fucks with
their DNS and expects you to put Humpty Dumpty back together quickly.

I launched it a few months ago and have a few smaller subscribers with a
handful of larger subscribers.

[https://zonewatcher.com](https://zonewatcher.com)

~~~
chipperyman573
I really like the theme you used! What's it called?

~~~
tomschlick
The marketing portion uses Pivot: [https://themeforest.net/item/pivot-
multipurpose-html-with-pa...](https://themeforest.net/item/pivot-multipurpose-
html-with-page-builder/8748103?ref=trs21219)

------
yeahdef
[http://dollarfuckyou.com/](http://dollarfuckyou.com/) I've made about 300$ :/

~~~
many_bells_down
Really interesting idea! Have you encountered any legal issues?

~~~
yeahdef
no, I spoke with a lawyer friend who seemed to think I have all my bases
covered.

~~~
thepredestrian
I recently created a website similar to this recently at a hackathon. I
considered setting up a payment system but decided not to as I didn't think
people would actually pay for something like this... curious to know - over
what period of time did you make the $300?

------
Tharkun
My passive income has mostly dried up this year. Years ago I built an
automated webshop deployment system for a bloke who makes hundreds of small
websites a year, and dozens of webshops a year. The deal was that I'd build it
for free, but I'd get a fee per shop he deployed. This worked out pretty well
for a couple of years, but now he's swimming in money and is retiring, and my
passive income source has dried up.

Of course, because of my laziness, I took the passiveness too far and it's now
all but impossible to reuse it for another potential client.

It was fun while it lasted.

~~~
kriro
You could take over for the guy if you want to turn it into active income.
Since he's retiring and made some good money off the cooperation with you he
probably wouldn't mind setting you up with some clients and sharing some of
his methods. Can't hurt to ask (if you want to go that route)

------
cesarb
Here in Brazil we have it easy. The most boring funds (the ones which track
the interbank rate - CDI) easily return around 12% per year (depending on the
administration fee; the smaller the administration fee, the higher the
return). With the inflation around 6% per year, this gives around 6% returns
before tax. If you stay with the fund for at least two years (and it's of the
correct kind), the tax rate is 15% over the gains, so you have an after-tax
return of around 5% per year above inflation. And that's for a fund which
basically never gives negative returns.

You can go further and buy government bonds directly, through the Tesouro
Direto system. Those indexed by the SELIC rate (which is sort of related to
the CDI) are currently around 13.5% per year, before administration fees and
taxes (in fact, the boring funds I mentioned above mostly invest in these
SELIC-indexed government bonds).

This will change when (and if) rates get lower, but so far, investing in these
funds or bonds is the simplest (and one of the best) way to have passive
income.

~~~
DangerousPie
You probably know this, but it's always important to keep in mind what causes
such high interest rates.

A high interest rate is a signal that lenders are wary of lending money to the
borrower because of an increased risk of default/inflation. That's fine as
long as you are aware of this, but don't think you're getting a "better deal"
than someone investing in a boring 1% German government bond. That 12.5%
you're getting in addition represents the increased risk that the Brazilian
government might default on their debts or the currency might inflate enough
to negate the advantage.

~~~
cesarb
I live in Brazil, so if the government defaults, every other investment I
could have made here would also crash, and the local economy with them. It's
not called the "risk-free" interest rate for nothing: it's the lowest risk
investment one can get within Brazil. Corporate bonds, for instance, will have
a higher return, due to their higher risk.

As for inflation, when it increases the SELIC/CDI rates tend to rise with it
too. And if you're afraid of that (it hasn't been long since we had a
hyperinflation, so a lot of people still are), another government bond (NTN-B)
has a return of inflation (measured by the IPCA index) plus a pre-fixed
component (currently around 6%). Due to its pre-fixed component, it has some
interest rate risk (if the interest rate rises, its present value drops, and
vice-versa), but that's not a problem if you intend to keep it to term.

And, actually, the high interest rate is set by the government, as a way to
control the inflation, so it's not as linked to the risk of default as one
might think. The government could decide to lower the interest rate (and it
has: a few years ago, it was set lower, but that led to the currently higher
inflation, so the government increased it again to contain the inflation).

~~~
DangerousPie
> I live in Brazil, so if the government defaults, every other investment I
> could have made here would also crash, and the local economy with them.

Wouldn't that be a good reason to invest some money abroad?

> And, actually, the high interest rate is set by the government, as a way to
> control the inflation

But surely that's the interest rate that their central bank charges to the
banks (which influences the interest rates banks pay/charge for savings/loans
with them), not the interest rate that they are paying on their own government
bonds? I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure those are two very different
things.

~~~
cesarb
> Wouldn't that be a good reason to invest some money abroad?

Yes, and I intend to do that someday. It's not trivial to do, however, while
investing in the boring funds I mentioned is extremely easy for anyone with a
bank account, and investing in government bonds is as easy as investing in
stock. In particular, for both the funds and government bonds the tax is paid
automatically, while if you invest abroad, you have to do the calculations
yourself, and from what I've read they are not as simple. Not to mention the
extra cost and risk of opening an account outside your country; for instance,
the Brazilian customer protection laws won't apply to an account outside the
country, for obvious reasons. All in all, it's a lot more research to do, with
the extra risk of investing outside your home jurisdiction, for a much smaller
return, and the only benefit being reducing your exposition to your own
government - one I'll be always exposed to, since I live here (it could easily
impose taxes on capital held abroad, for instance).

> But surely that's the interest rate that their central bank charges to the
> banks (which influences the interest rates banks pay/charge for
> savings/loans with them), not the interest rate that they are paying on
> their own government bonds? I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure those are
> two very different things.

It's complicated, but basically the government sets the SELIC rate target, and
buys/sells government bonds so the SELIC rate moves towards that target. The
SELIC rate itself is the interest rate banks pay each other for a one-day loan
with government bonds as the guarantee. Finally, one of the government bonds
(the LFT) pays the principal ajusted by the SELIC rate at its term. There is
also the pre-fixed government bonds (the LTN), which pays a fixed value but is
bought for less, the inflation-indexed NTN-B, which I already mentioned, and a
few others.

As for why increasing the interest rate helps control the inflation, that's
one thing I still don't quite understand. I just know that the government does
increase the interest rate when the inflation gets above the target.

------
vladdanilov
Optimage – a visually lossless image optimization tool

[http://getoptimage.com](http://getoptimage.com)

Released this week. Came unnoticed on HN but somehow got featured on PH. 1200+
downloads of free version and a few sales.

Not sure if that'll change. In that case, the best of 2016 will be one of the
plugins for Sketch
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12319286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12319286).

~~~
Romajashi
what's PH?

~~~
nonsince
Pornhub

~~~
Infinitesimus
To be fair porn sites do need all the video/image optimization they can get
due to the sheer amount of data they hold

~~~
brettz
Yes, Pornhub uses a mix of JPEGmini and our own image optimization.

~~~
fpgaminer
@brettz, not sure if you work for PornHub or not, but if you do and this
question isn't weird for here: do you know if PornHub would be interested in a
video superresolution service tuned specifically for pornographic content?
i.e. upscale SD to HD or HD to UHD, but with state-of-the-art algorithms that
go far beyond "dumb" upscaling. My friend and I are tinkering with the idea of
starting a small service to do that, filling specifically the adult video
niche so we can focus the algorithm for improved performance (versus a more
general superresolution technology).

Sorry if this isn't in your wheelhouse or it's inappropriate to ask in a HN
comment.

~~~
brettz
Sounds interesting can you email me more info

------
antr
In early 2016 I purchased commercial real estate, got a 25 year fixed rate
mortgage, and leased it. This requires very little of my time every month, and
the post-tax yield is above 5%. I couldn't be happier.

I'm now considering doing this again in 2017. Hopefully interest rates will
remain as low as they have been in order to lock-in an attractive mortgage.

~~~
PaulRobinson
You don't say where you are based, but you are going to get a shock if you
think interest rates are going to stay on the floor. If you can get a genuine
25-year fixed rate, great, but you need to tread carefully here.

Brexit, Trump, EU sentiment, China trying to deal with their own problems,
they're all pointing to the same way: devalued currencies. Where they start,
rising interest start to follow.

I'd also be wary of assuming commercial real estate was a lock-in. I've heard
horror stories.

I'm glad it's working for you right now, I'm just saying: make sure you tread
carefully and have done your research before you start gearing up.

~~~
antr
The all-in fixed rate is 2.10%, and let me repeat: fixed. Not LIBOR + spread +
you need to have you savings account with us + you need to buy my home
insurance, etc.

I don't understand why you say "tread carefully"... when it's the bank bearing
all the IRS cost. Plot any LIBOR curve, and you'll see that the bank is the
one to lose here. Banks are fighting for customers, and cheap loans and
mortgages is the game they are playing. I could go into more detail, but given
that I have a 12 month DSRA account in place, I'm quite happy with the
investment.

~~~
brianwawok
Don't you lose if you can't find Tennant's for your property? Or do you plan
to just go bankrupt if that happens?

~~~
antr

      > but given that I have a 12 month DSRA account in place, I'm quite happy with the investment.

~~~
brandon272
What happens if you can't find tenants for 12+ months? I've seen many
commercial properties sit barely occupied for years.

~~~
antr
Worst case scenario, pay the mortgage with my salary.

~~~
brianwawok
So that seems a pretty risky investment to me. Only a few percent profit for
the risk of eating a giant monthly bill.

~~~
antr
"Risky" investment for commercial real estate in a tier I area in a European
capital? I find _any_ residential property more risky and volatile, at least
from a price elasticity point of view.

I guess we have different views on how we perceive risk. But that is ok.

~~~
brianwawok
I am not saying commercial is more risky than residential. I am saying for the
low gain, I would not take that kind of risk (i.e. more than near 0)

------
Murkin
A self published book on "Redux". Still in progress but already sold for
3,160$ in revenue between me and a friend.

Hope to have it really pickup once done and turn profitable

[https://leanpub.com/redux-book](https://leanpub.com/redux-book)

~~~
billconan
why did you choose this leanpub platform?

I like the fact it can publish unfinished book. but I'm worried that it is not
as big as amazon?

~~~
Murkin
Its a great place to build and edit the book. The pre-release is a good market
validation bonus.

Once its done we will publish on Amazon as well (no exclusivity at leanpub)

~~~
billconan
Are you worried about piracy?

Because leanpub allows paid user to download pdf and epub files. those can be
easily shared.

whereas, on amazon, you probably could only distribute the work via kindle and
printed (I'm not sure), without providing any shareable files?

~~~
mark_l_watson
re: piracy: I just released my latest Leanpub book (Haskell Tutorial and
Cookbook) 2 weeks ago, and I put a Creative Commons 'share with attribution,
no modifications, no commercial reuse' license, and I explicitly tell people
that it is legal to share the PDF, ePub, and Mobi files with their friends,
and they have my best wishes if they do so.

I have written a number of books and the payout in increased networking with
people who are into the same tech as I am, increased consulting business, etc.
is awesome. I also make decent passive income from writing, but that is a
secondary objective.

------
PascLeRasc
Adding an optional buy button to my Chrome Extension has made me $0.59 so far,
so technically that's my best.

My friend has made about $650 off of his AMD investment so far though and is
thinking of moving all of it into Micron.

~~~
tomcam
Stop with the bragging. You're killing us here!

------
robius
I used to do index funds. Then I went looking for an active portfolio manager.
After a few years I found one, he was good, but 6mo in he switched jobs and
left for another career.

The next guy wasn't good and eventually didn't want to actively manage the
account. I kept looking until this year when I found fractalgo, which is used
by large institutional investors to trade through science without emotion and
second-guessing.

Downside is you needed to be a qualified investor.

I called up the owner curious about how the fractal tech worked and found out
he was setting up a service for everyone, not just the big guys.

After some research I moved my IRAs left over from previous 401Ks to a
custodian that can do directed investments + broker and let the automated
system go.

Couldn't be happier. No humans required once set up, and it keeps growing like
a weed while I sleep.

Do your own research for what works for you and seek it out. You will find it,
eventually.

[https://fractalgo.com](https://fractalgo.com)

Since doing so well, they just opened a fund using the same technology.

[https://fractalternative.com](https://fractalternative.com)

~~~
n-exploit
What type of returns are you seeing? How has it performed in down periods?
What's your beta?

~~~
robius
The owner sent me his returns from 2007 and it's a steady upward slope, even
through down times.

I just started last month, and I'm up overall, although the Trump event took
some back. The system takes these draw downs into account.

If I told you I made $11K last month it's mostly meaningless since the size of
the account and markets you choose are important.

So I don't have enough data for you, but the data that was shared with me was
better than anything else I've tried. And I've done day trading too. This is
much simpler and passive once set up.

Feel free to reach out if you want, see profile info.

~~~
nether
> it's a steady upward slope, even through down times.

Exactly what Madoff's returns looked like. I googled the guy behind Fractalgo,
Rich Clifford. Looks like he's been through some shady dealings.

~~~
sheldoan
Link for the lazy [https://www.tradingschools.org/reviews/fractal-
alerts/](https://www.tradingschools.org/reviews/fractal-alerts/)

------
frou_dh
2 (count 'em) dollars a month. For letting two people who don't want to run an
instance of my OSS program themselves tap into my personal instance.

~~~
foota
One. Two. I counted them.

~~~
futuravenir
I followed your lead and also counted them...But just in my head.

------
Shrugs
I made [http://fivestar.io/](http://fivestar.io/) a year or two ago; it's a
better Amazon search.

It shines when you search for something that you want the best version of,
without caring about the details; i.e., let the masses determine the quality
for you. It weights results based on ratings, review volume, and some other
stuff, segmenting the results by price range.

Helps me answer the question "I want the best phone mount for my bike, but I
don't want to spend more than $20" without fiddling with Amazon's search
parameters and then scanning the page.

Makes ~$100/month off of affiliate links.

~~~
raybb
Isn't it against Amazon's terms to use the affiliate API to make a search
engine?

~~~
tomcam
Note parent's username

------
joemanaco
I'm making between $3'000 and $10'000 Dollars with native apps/games and html5
games. I made much much more a few years ago but app store revenue is
decreasing each month and all my latest apps made me nearly nothing. (My
portfolio: [http://intermediaware.com](http://intermediaware.com)).

~~~
cableshaft
I used to make native apps/games and some web games, and I was wanting to
start making small games again, but I keep hearing how revenue has dropped
precipitously for them and it makes me worried.

As someone who's experiencing the drop in revenue firsthand, what are you
thinking of doing to address that? Shift platforms to PC/Steam? Change the
designs of future games to reflect current trends, etc.?

I was considering I might just make games using a simple cross-platform tool
like Love2D, keep the designs of the games small but addictive, single player
only, no levels but can be played endlessly to failure (i.e. Tetris or 2048),
either make them free with a simple consumable or a dollar, and distribute
them on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android.

I don't expect to make a ton of money for most of them but I hope I'll get
lucky with one of them and it becomes a hit. I have about 3 past web games to
port and update that could work.

Does this seem feasible? What would you do differently?

~~~
joemanaco
I think you should have a good concept/idea how to reach your audience without
to rely on the app stores.

When I started that wasn't required. You just released your game and users are
coming in for free. So I decided to do lots of small apps - but in the long
run it would have been wiser to do apps that engage the users for a long time
and constantly update with new content to keep those users engaged.

For myself I'm currently moving to bigger projects and also release for
consoles and PC/Steam. But it's very risky for a small developer - because if
you develop serveral months or years and the game flops you're basically out
of business.

~~~
cableshaft
That's unfortunate. I'm totally a small game designer. I come up with concepts
that excite me all the time but "adding new content" i.e. seasonal hats and
new weapons and crap doesn't excite me at all (and I did it professionally for
a year at one game company, I can do it for work but I'd hate to do it in my
spare time).

Adding features or levels is different, and I could do some of that, but I
think I just want to make a games that are addictive to play and give you the
"oh, I can get a little farther this time!" feel, like again like 2048.

Oh well, if they're not successful then that's just too bad.

------
buf
[https://www.castingcall.club](https://www.castingcall.club) Social network
for amateur voice actors. I wrote about it here:
[https://medium.com/@buf/accidentally-built-a-successful-
soci...](https://medium.com/@buf/accidentally-built-a-successful-social-
network-now-what-23aa237665d2) Brings in about $2k/mo.

p2p lending is hit or miss for me: 3-10%

Index funds pull in the rest.

I've also moved temporarily to a very cheap COL country so that I can focus on
some more side projects to pull in extra sources of income before I return to
the work force.

~~~
wfunction
Question: how do index funds (or any kind of stock, really... in fact this
question isn't really about index funds) "pull in the rest"? Do you actually
manage to sell them when they're high and buy when they're low again? Or do
you get stocks with dividends and just make money using the dividends?
Obviously merely possessing stock of high value is kind of moot if it doesn't
turn into cash somehow, so I'm curious how people usually do this. (I don't
know much/anything about finance.)

~~~
buf
To answer your other question (hn has a child-reply limit I think), it makes
money on the dividends, which are reinvested back into the portfolio.

~~~
wfunction
Ah, gotcha. Thanks!

------
andersthue
Still my 5 year old watermarking tool making around 3-5k$ a month.

My only new product this year was a 6 weeks video course [1] in productivity,
it makes around $5000 every time I fill a class.

1\. [http://timeblock.com](http://timeblock.com) TimeBlock course

~~~
omegote
What's that watermarking tool of yours?

~~~
nthState
Maybe it's: [https://www.watermark-
image.com/download.aspx](https://www.watermark-image.com/download.aspx)

------
jastr
TheSimplePostcard.com, makes me ~$220/month. Text it a photo and it sends a
postcard. It took me a few long weekends to build using Django and Twilio.

~~~
karolisram
Sweet project, like it a lot :) perhaps do the same for Europe?

~~~
jastr
I need to find a postcard printer in Europe.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Vistaprint? They're a massive German operation - mind you every town has at
least one print shop but VP already has a custom printing system, their parent
company have a print fulfillment API
([https://open.cimpress.io/](https://open.cimpress.io/)).

[Just an occasional private customer]

------
alkonaut
Money in the bank, made me well over $100 over the whole year.

 _adjusts monocle_

~~~
abledon
_slow clap_

------
scolvin
Helpmanual.io is my first attempt at passive income. Launched 6 weeks ago and
traffic is building nicely. There's still a fair bit to do but the delight of
sites like this is you can make improvements when you want. Shame that ad
income is less than it used to be but we'll see how it gets on.

[https://helpmanual.io](https://helpmanual.io)

~~~
erikb
It seems to be a searchable man page index. What does it offer that
google+terminal don't offer?

~~~
scolvin
Man pages in the terminal are pretty annoying as you can't (easily) search
them.

By "Google" I presume you mean online indexes of man pages E.g. This site.

The other man pages sites are ugly, old and incomplete, despite that done of
them rank pretty high on Alexa. I built this site to end up smarter, more
modern, easier to use and more complete. Still a work in progress atm.

~~~
to3m
On Firefox, code examples are sometimes 1-2 pixels longer than their viewport,
so you can get a fairly pointless scrollbar. See, e.g.,
[https://helpmanual.io/man3/printf/](https://helpmanual.io/man3/printf/)

One suggestion: how about guessing at hyperlinks. For example, there are a few
underlined instances of `size_t' in the printf man page. If you ask for the
size_t man page, you get the man page for stdint. Suppose I had a device on my
desk that could automate this sort of drudgery for me...

(I did something like this for my patched version of Bwana:
[https://bitbucket.org/tom_seddon/bwana](https://bitbucket.org/tom_seddon/bwana),
original: [https://www.bruji.com/bwana/](https://www.bruji.com/bwana/) \-
works well, at least for the OS X man pages. My code only looks for man pages
with the exact name, though, since it runs on demand. If you're doing a
preprocess to generate all the pages ahead of time then you could perhaps
afford to be more thorough.)

------
77yy77yy
Domain sales, over US$ 2M/yr that could have been mid 7 figures easily but
still holding onto those other gems. With all the new extensions valuable .com
domains is where it is. Brokers managing sales. Also not sure if falls into
passive or not, sold a business few years ago and did the financing, still
getting paid monthly for few more years.

~~~
gremlinsinc
I have a decent 5 letter one, zvive.com (zuhvive like survive w/ a z) I'm
still trying to figure out a startup to launch on it, but i think it could be
a good brandable one.. I wanted to do an online survival store, etc... Do you
think I could get some money for it on the market?

------
pilom
I work remotely and moved into an RV to travel around North America with my
wife. Started blogging about travel and working on the road at
[http://therecklesschoice.com](http://therecklesschoice.com) and using Amazon
affiliate links whenever appropriate that pull in about $50/month.

~~~
brianwawok
This seems not passive. If you blog 5 hours a month and make $50, you made $10
an hour.

~~~
sdfjkl
It is if you like to blog anyways.

~~~
pilom
Yeah we were doing it anyway to keep our family in the loop about where we
were and how it worked. Honestly it's probably way less that $10/hour, but we
do it for the travel log anyway.

------
thewhitetulip
After being encouraged by folks on HN

I published my tutorial on writing webapps with Go without a framework,

[http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-
textbook](http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook)

There isn't much income because I want the book to be free, I'm writing
another tutorial migrating the same app taught in the book to use VueJS
library.

~~~
tomcam
Why not publish (at a typical ebook price) on Amazon also? Be a fun experiment
to have both paid and free versions--not too many opportunities to collect
that kind of data. Or maybe make the vue version available only on Amazon
while leaving the older version as is.

~~~
thewhitetulip
It is an interesting proposition, but I do not know why, I feel to give out my
book for free, the reason for this might be from the fact that I learned
programming on my own reading free books, the great books came with a hefty
price tag, hence I don't feel it morally right to publish my book/tutorial at
a hefty $$.

Said tutorial/book since people have told me that if it isn't present in
actual stores it can't be called a book :)

Also, my first book/tutorial is available via leanpub.com, so users can pay if
they want, so far hardly 10 have paid, but gitbooks.com where the online
version is hosted does get around 200 page views daily + 800 downloads
monthly. Leanpub currently has 550+ readers.

~~~
tomcam
I deeply admire your motives. Am not trying to remove that pleasure from your
life, but I will say that very often people who pay tend to appreciate and
value one's work product more than if it's free. Thanks for the thoughtful
answer.

~~~
thewhitetulip
Thank you!

Yes, I do understand that folly regarding money. Money tends to bend reality,
there are many psychological experiments done with money,

for instance: spending physical money induces more pain than spending money
using a card, that's why it is recommended to carry cash around the next time
we do shopping (read this in a book Thinking Fast and Slow and observed in
real life)

I know you aren't trying to remove that pleasure from my life! But the thing
is, after open sourcing my tutorial, it has been read thousands of times, and
there have been 4-5 readers who went out of their way and communicated to me
how much they loved the book and in the words of one reader on HN, "it is one
of the best tutorials I have read" regarding webapps in Go.

It is a humbling experience for me to hear this from someone else (who isn't
my best friend :D)

It is a great irony that while documentation is free, books are not.

Plus, I am not an author, writing tutorials/books isn't my primary source of
income, although I was thinking of keeping the Vue book/tutorial open source
on github, it already is, [http://github.com/thewhitetulip/intro-to-
vuejs/](http://github.com/thewhitetulip/intro-to-vuejs/) and charging money
for the PDF, most probably I won't be doing that, let's see.

Thanks for your input!

~~~
tomcam
LOVE the Vue.js book. Thanks for pointing me to it. It's a timely contribution
for my work. For a non-writer, you're a damn good writer. Thanks for all your
contributions.

~~~
thewhitetulip
Thank you for your compliment :-) If you like it, please help me in spreading
word about it!

By the way, I had started writing a novel 2yrs ago, but I am not finding time
to complete it!

I didn't understand what you meant by "It'ts a timely contribution for my
work".

The book is far from complete though, and the 5'th chapter was written in two
hours :-D. I have observed that (when I take a vacation of a week to program),
I am more effective when I have 2hr programming sessions.

I'll contact you when the book is done :-)

------
bert2002
The best was a physical project - www.spypatch.com. A sticker for the camera
on your laptop. I dont do any advertisement, but it sells through Amazon and
the website. ~2k/y.

~~~
soft_dev_person
Clever.

Friendly correction: peace of mind, not piece of mind =)

------
vital101
Many years ago when I was still a PHP + Wordpress developer, I discovered that
getting updates to private plugins and themes was a huge pain.

Fast-forward a few years and I finally built out
[https://kernl.us](https://kernl.us) as a learning project (Mongo, Node.js,
Angular). It's mostly passive income now, pulling in ~$450 per month.

------
snadal
Some years ago, I did some referral promotion for a webhosting company with
nice results, around 70k.

Later, company rules changed and I stopped actively promoting it, but second
level referrals still are generating 5-10k year with doing absolutely nothing
of work.

------
joelrunyon
I've been running
[https://UltimatePaleoGuide.com](https://UltimatePaleoGuide.com) for a number
of years now. This last year we launched
[https://PaleoMealPlans.com](https://PaleoMealPlans.com) and it's been a great
product / service so far in addition to the rest of our offerings.

------
sepharoth
Made a med school entrance exam prep platform with my brother last year
(www.bmat.ninja) - $12k profit last year, $27k this year.

Once the website was setup, maintenance workload was pretty minimal (the
occasional BugSnag report), so I guess that counts as passive.

------
panorama
I wrote an ebook that helps Junior Developers get jobs - it's primarily
targeted at bootcamp grads: [https://kokev.in/hired-
fast](https://kokev.in/hired-fast)

In the past 8-10 months, it made about $5k+ through sales as well as
partnerships with a couple online bootcamps. Not too shabby as I spent almost
no time marketing it. Plus it was fun to write since I'm passionate about the
topic and I've received some awesome feedback (of the "you actually changed my
life"-sort). That was more than worth the hundreds of hours I spent writing
it, the small bit of money aside.

------
herbst
I have a website with ads on it. Or actually a few, but one that mostly pays
for my life right now.

~~~
tinbucket
I'd be really interested in learning from you about what you did with this
site and the less successful ones.

~~~
herbst
What i did? Well when i have a idea that i think somebody else could like too
i throw it into a website, then throw it out there and see what people think.
Sometimes i get valuable feedback and can improve, sometimes it is good as it
is.

The only "secret" other than user generated content (what makes it actually
passive) for me is to never stop trying. I have like 50 in use domains right
now, many which i did not extend because they did not pay for themself after a
year.

~~~
tinbucket
Thanks for the reply. It's something I'm researching but without much
background knowledge or experience, it's hard to know where to start.

How do you source your user generated content? Is the big earner a forum or
the like? I'd kind of envisioned some kind of static sites with ads.

Have you taken a noticeable hit like others in this thread from diminishing ad
revenue and rates?

~~~
herbst
My site is only 1.5 years old. Revenue was stable that time. I think the
biggest break was before that. But my site is also not "made for adsense"
which was what google mostly penalized.

Its more like a forum, but not one. Users can post their own content and
others can vote and comment that. Plus it has a huge searchable database.

The problem with static sites (i have those too) is that google loves site
updates as often as possible. A site that is good ranked today can be killed
by a more dynamic one next day.

------
jsaxton86
It seems like the vast majority of employment contracts prohibit side projects
like this, or at the very least, require explicit company approval. I'm
interested in hearing strategies on how to best pursue side projects without
violating one's employment contract.

~~~
fapjacks
One way is to be a California employee, where the labor law explicitly
protects your side projects as long as you aren't using your employer's
resources and isn't related to your day job. If you decide to take something
Big Time and make a startup around one of your ideas, California also
conveniently ignores non-compete agreements. These two things are why Silicon
Valley exists in California and nowhere else.

------
neals
I build a small CMS / CRM + app as a freelancer, for a client. This was 6
years ago. I build it for almost nothing, because it's a really simple thing
that took a week or two.

I agreed to automated billing with him and he pays per user. I also build
API's so he can hire other developers to do stuff with the data and add
features.

I myself haven't touched the code for years, but the growth of the database
means an extra monthly $1250-ish comes in. Which is nice.

------
t0mislav
25$/month in Adsense. Not much, but it's passive and it grows. Everything
started as a fun small project.
[http://random.country/](http://random.country/)

~~~
thenaterhood
I'm really curious to know how you promote and get traffic to a site like
that. I've seen a couple and I've been working on my own, but I've never known
how they get discovered.

~~~
t0mislav
I didn't promote too much, I just put link in signature on two forums I
occasionally visit and forget about it for a few months. Later, people somehow
find it. Over the time there were few twitter posts about it, few share on
4chan and similar pages. Then your rank on Google gets better, and so on.

------
discreditable
I wrote a guide on how to get around my local ISP's requirement to use their
crappy modem/router combo and recommended a verified-working router with an
Amazon affiliate link. Since Jan 1. I've pulled in $160. Very nice since I
host at nearlyfreespeech.net and the site has cost less than $1 in hosting
this year, and $10 for the domain.

------
BorisMelnik
Started a hosting company: its very small and only offers shared hosting right
now, but it is almost making money. I never wanted to get into hosting, but so
many of my clients were using Godaddy etc I just had to get them away from
that chaos.

Note: I'm also looking for a partner in this if anyone has any experience let
me know.

~~~
arrmn
How did you start did you buy the servers or are you just using one of the
cloud providers and "whitelabel" them?

------
2throwaway2000
I make $1,400/mo from Google AdSense. I made a Wordpress website for people
who want to find information about other people. I don't do anything on the
site anymore besides perform Wordpress updates. It's basically changed my
whole life and I am very fortunate/lucky. Throwaway account.

~~~
jmzwar
Congratulations - that is great to hear.

Is the traffic mainly from google?

~~~
2throwaway2000
85% Google

------
jventura
I did an Android app
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flatangle....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flatangle.charts))
earning me some 80€ since August. Hope next year will be better!

------
loloferrari
Been trying to do this for years, never really succeeded.

In 2016 i've relaunched
[https://www.interssl.com/en/](https://www.interssl.com/en/) but when i'm
being honest there are just too many support incidents. So i just can't call
it passive income anymore - even if that was the initial idea.

The margin of sales without support basically just covers the cost for the
orders that require heavy support. Remaining income is basically blown for
advertising and maintaining the site.

My conclusions:

a) think twice about potential time killers - even if the core business model
per se is passive, it might turn out to be time intensive ...

b) i'd rather not go into reselling something anymore but rather sell my own
product, gives me more financial headroom.

my 2 cents.

~~~
Romajashi
letsencrypt is free, wosign is free; maybe there's something else which is
free; they don't require a lof of effort to install them. who are your
customers then who pay for what they can get for free?

------
armenarmen
I built catelus.com a couple weeks ago and I've done $130 in revenue.

It's a domain name idea generator. You feed it a keyword and it translates it
into 30+ languages and shows you .com's that are not being used. Trying now to
get more eyeballs across it. Fun though!

~~~
anchpop
Your domain lookup doesn't seem to work, unless I'm misunderstanding
something. Searching "smart" brings up elegant.com which is certainly taken.

Edit: are you doing a lookup of the raw version instead of the cleaned one?

~~~
armenarmen
I'm doing the look up on the raw version yeah. I'm working in weeding out
false positives now.

Squated domains that aren't pointing to anthe thing are right now registering
as available.

Moving to an actual Whois lookup has to get better results. Thanks for taking
a look! And I appreciate the feedback

------
averageweather
[http://www.averageweather.io](http://www.averageweather.io)

Only have made like $20 off Adsense, but I've got a lot more work to try and
get this tool into passive mode:

* working on selecting a date range

* style up the site a bit more

* maybe have users so you can save searches etc

I get very valuable data that the travel industry would probably consider
great leads, but I'm just figuring out what to do with it all.

Edit - and fill out these graphs:
[http://www.averageweather.io/monthly/boston/ma/12/](http://www.averageweather.io/monthly/boston/ma/12/)

~~~
libria
Nice. Some wants:

* If I type Manhattan, NY, automatically show me a map w/ overlay of weather in Manhattan and surrounding areas. Maybe default to today, but also forward cursor to calendar.

* Or maybe automatically show bar chart of Manhattan for 1 week starting today. If they select a day automatically show +-3 days.

* or allow a date range to be selected or even just Month of December

* you need exposure, I've never heard of this before

edit: Oh ok, you've already done some of these, good.

1 more: move the C/F selector to upper right and make it a sticky value per
visitor

~~~
averageweather
Thank you. Any tips on exposure?

~~~
libria
Myself no, let's hope someone with more expertise answers.

At a guess I'd say it would be difficult to buy ads to get exposure to then
sell ad clicks. Cheapest way would be very high SEO placement, but you don't
have much content for indexers to anchor on. Maybe add features like expand
out travel/local things-to-do space? Good domain name though.

Join relevant forums (travel, weather) and be active and genuinely helpful and
leave website in signature.

------
odbol_
I made about $10 from app sales of my Android Wear watchfaces
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.odbol.foun...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.odbol.fountainoftime.wear)
and
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.odbol.oxwo...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.odbol.oxwoodwatchface.wear)

$10... For the whole year. App sales aren't the golden goose everyone things
they are.

------
errozero
I released the new version of my Acid Machine synth + drum machine web-app
just under a month ago. It has made about £200 in the last month.

The web-based version is like a demo, it's free to use but saving and
importing is disabled. I'm selling a downloadable desktop app version which
has the restrictions removed.

I'm thinking of making it completely free and maybe selling ad-space on there
instead.

[http://www.errozero.co.uk/acid-machine](http://www.errozero.co.uk/acid-
machine)

------
georgiecasey
an android app that pulls in about €500 a month. i coded it years ago and
literally have not thought about it this year until now. it used to bring in
about €700-€800 a month but i finally got some competition after a few years.
i've noticed the app game is tightening up

~~~
djadmin
and what is the app about? Any link to share?

------
treistab2
My friend and I made an online course for User Experience Design, and sold it
on Udemy. So far we have about $40,000 in enrollment revenue, which yields
about $20,000 in profit that we split. We are looking into doing more courses,
but aren't sure yet what to teach. If anyone wants to collaborate on a
project, we have a full studio and all of the equipment.

Here is a link to the course: [https://www.udemy.com/user-experience-design-
the-accelerated...](https://www.udemy.com/user-experience-design-the-
accelerated-ux-course/)

In addition to that project, I also launched an online store for design patent
artwork. To do this, I downloaded images of patents from the US Patent Office
Database, paid a virtual assistant $1/hour to clean them and standardize the
proportions, then using a Photoshop Action applied in Batch, I generated all
of the images. After getting all of the images, I built an online store and
integrated with printing and fulfillment service using Woocommerce and a
Restful API - so when orders are placed, it triggers the artwork to be
printed, and shipped, automatically. I now make about $300/month from that
project and spend about 10 minutes/week managing it.

Here is a link to that website: www.PatentArtStore.com

Anyone have any suggestions for my next project?

~~~
jklepatch
Very creative I love it. Your store might need to be a bit polished though.
For example, on mobile: \- Shop now button too small. Should be bigger and
more visible ("call to action") \- One item per line on shop page, otherwise
really hard to see the pic

Wish u good luck for ur project!

------
pfooti
I wrote a blog post about three years ago about doing single-sign-on stuff
between salesforce and google by writing a google appengine app that acted as
a SAML IDp. At the time, salesforce didn't speak OAUTH and google didn't
natively speak SAML, so you had to do it on your own. I put it on an old blog
I had laying around and turned on google adsense.

To date, I've made $6.31 from that blog post alone. Someday, I'll get over
$100, so adsense will pay out.

~~~
icebraining
I wonder how much you could have made by SaaS-ing it.

------
weichsel
I added an animated GIF exporter to my lossless screen recorder Claquette
(macOS,
[https://www.peakstep.com/claquette](https://www.peakstep.com/claquette)). The
project got some traction when Apple featured me in the Mac App Store this
August. It also entered the Product Hunt front page and finished in the top 3
on launch day. Revenue is nothing spectacular, but it's a nice additional
income.

------
AtticusTheGreat
I just recently launched a statuspage aggregator at
[https://statusbeacon.io](https://statusbeacon.io) which has been pretty cool
to work on.

I've also got an online multiplayer boggle game that has made me low 3 digits
per month since about 2008,
[http://serpentinegame.com](http://serpentinegame.com), mostly ad revenue but
also paid memberships.

~~~
rovr138
Looked at statusbeacon.io. Is there a place to see all the providers you
monitor without having to sign up?

~~~
AtticusTheGreat
I just put up a list here: [https://statusbeacon.io/service-
list](https://statusbeacon.io/service-list)

------
boudra
Launched this small tool 5 weeks ago: [http://sqlify.io](http://sqlify.io)
Made a few dollars with AdSense.

~~~
raybb
Just so you know, your site doesn't work too well on mobile (an ad makes the
page too wide and displaces text).

------
djaychela
I've written a book on using Cubase with a general grounding in music,
recording and music technology [1]. Income has been very patchy, and never
what I'd hoped for at any point. Best month has been around £450, but that's
only happened a couple of times (I don't know why, either, unfortunately),
usually it's more like £40. Made about £2000 in total, so definitely not
something to retire on. Unsure as to whether it's the market for the book, the
quality of the book (I hope not and don't think so given the positive feedback
I have had from those who have bought it), or a total lack of marketing that's
at fault. Not entirely passive as I've had to update it for each revision of
the software that has come along, which takes around a week's full time work.

[1][http://www.lulu.com/shop/darren-jones/the-complete-guide-
to-...](http://www.lulu.com/shop/darren-jones/the-complete-guide-to-music-
technology-using-cubase-9/paperback/product-22955472.html)

~~~
onlyfortoday2
Unsure as to whether it's the market for the book, the quality of the book (I
hope not and don't think so given the positive feedback I have had from those
who have bought it), or a !total lack of marketing! that's at fault.

i dont think your unsure you know :)

------
pmorici
I design & build adapters for old server power supplies that make it super
easy to reuse them as general purpose 12 volt power supplies.

------
kaa2102
Web and email hosting. Designed sites in 2015, hosted on Google Cloud and
continued to take in monthly web and email hosting income in 2016.

------
wonderwonder
Built an saas document management & review site for a very large company 3
years ago. I have a monthly maintenance contract with them and receive about
$3,500 per month. After expenses (insurance & hosting) and my partners split I
net $1,300 per month. Over the last 2 years, I have invested an average of
about 2 hours a month, most months I do no work at all.

------
brandables
[https://brandfountain.com](https://brandfountain.com)

I sold a domain I had intended to develop this year to a FB founder for
$12,000 and another for $7,500. After researching I found there are few places
to buy really good startup domains so I made brandfountain to passively fund
my startup(s)!

~~~
bbernoulli
maybe you could partner with that AI generated logos guy (was posted within
the last couple weeks, can't remember the name, sorry)

edit: i'm remembering it as logojoy

------
soft_dev_person
I made some silly fan designs on CafePress many years ago. Haven't really
touched it since then, but it still generates $50 per year. Provisions have
been going down. though.

That being said, it's mostly 2 designs out of ~35 that sells anything at all.

I'm sure there's some potential in there, but it's kind of hit and miss.

------
kidproquo
Tasktopus, is a lightweight, task manager for the desktop (Mac OS X, Windows
and Linux). Tasks are managed on a Kanban-style board with Backlog, Doing,
Done and Archived columns.

Built with Qt. 14-day trial on Gumroad[0]. Also available on Mac App Store[1].

MAS version has made me 40$/month. Gumroad version is better (lets you try it
and lets you use same license key on all 3 platforms). However, I have sold
only one license on Gumroad! I guess the MAS has better discoverability.

[0]
[https://gumroad.com/l/ADWm/tasktopus](https://gumroad.com/l/ADWm/tasktopus)
[1]
[https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/tasktopus/id1039688985](https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/tasktopus/id1039688985)

------
grecy
I wrote my first e-book [1] about how to save money to work less and live your
dreams. I'm really happy for a first attempt, and it has inspired me to write
more.

[1] [http://amzn.to/2hcfuB7](http://amzn.to/2hcfuB7) \- Work Less to Live Your
Dreams

~~~
toymachine
Wow, that's awesome. How are you promoting/marketing it? How do people find
out about it? And how are you getting reviews?

Have been thinking about this for awhile and haven't settled on the right
topic yet!

~~~
grecy
Thanks! Marketing has mostly been on my website[1] and social[2]. I'm getting
reviews from people interested in what I'm doing, sites that cover Overland
Travel, 4x4, etc. (I'm driving around Africa for the next 2 years)

[1] theroadchoseme.com

[2] @theroadchoseme on FB/Instagram/YouTube

------
Nilzor
This is my portfolio :

[http://www.nilsenlabs.com](http://www.nilsenlabs.com)

None of them have made a lot of money, but one is still generating a small
amount. Guess which. Hint: Income is not proportional with the shinyness of
the technology stack

~~~
cmadan
GogTasks? It seems to solve a real problem.

~~~
OJFord
I'd go with _GetOut Ølbarometer_ \- I think you're underestimating the
European desire for cheap beer!

------
xchaotic
I have a rental property, it's not much, barely breaking even on mortgage
payments, but the hope is I will have the principal as an asset when the
mortgage is paid off and any payments coming in will be pure bonus.

------
brulard
In 2012 I created devices mockups and was selling it since on graphicriver.
[https://graphicriver.net/item/devices-responsive-web-
mockups...](https://graphicriver.net/item/devices-responsive-web-
mockups-/2920264) . It was sold more than 3400 times already, and made about
$800/month in the first few months. Now the income is somewhere around $25/mo
but it's been 4 years since. The funny thing is, that I have never seen these
devices close-up in real life before creating these mockups :)

------
nemoniac
So does Bitcoin not count as passive income?

------
xni
Bought Oclus Rift, played with it a lot, then created a site where you can
take them for rent. Got #1 position in Google for "rent oculus". Outcome:
about 4k this year. Now stopped it.

------
vyoming
I have launched [https://drilldb.com](https://drilldb.com) couple of months
ago, got few paying users and growing each month.

------
shellerik
$50k from investment earnings (index funds, mostly 401k - I'm in my 40s).

$20k from a website I built a couple years ago (searchable product catalog
with Amazon affiliate links).

~~~
shostack
Was that dividends or just unrealized gains in the fund price?

------
wordpressdev
Maintaining a few websites, ranging from a gift ideas website based on (and
earning from) Amazon, to some content sites, latest being
www.americaundertrump.com

------
codecamper
I want to be able to invest in solar projects. These projects often have
internal rates of return of 10%+.

However, this involves 20 or 30 year contracts to buy power from you after you
have made the initial investment to purchase /rent land and install the
panels.

Wish there were a way to securitize those deals & allow us to trade them like
bonds.

~~~
burkemw3
Look at solar yield cos, the well structured ones just own the revenue stream

~~~
codecamper
trouble with the solar yield cos is they have these "sponsors" But those guys
are just PV manufacturers who are looking to boost their margins by installing
PV and then charging their yieldco top dollar for those projects. It's an
obvious conflict of interest.

I've got some PEGI, which is mostly wind power that has less of this conflict
of interest.

However, I'd much prefer to simply invest directly in a solar project via a
notes (lending club) sort of mechanism. Allow me to sell the notes on an
aftermarket if I suddenly need money for another reason.

------
cannin
Passive investing in commission-free index exchange traded funds (ETFs) along
with a lazy portfolio explorer
([http://portfolios.lunean.com/](http://portfolios.lunean.com/)) to analyze
ETF portfolios (e.g. backtesting, portfolio comparisons, and ETF
correlations).

~~~
hrez
You have a mess in fund names. I.e. "VTI 60% Total Bond Market ETF" etc.

------
halcyondaze
~$2k/mo from an informational hobby-related website I run and monetize with
affiliate sales. Growing, too!

~~~
tomcam
Are you able to keep it enjoyable? Invariably when I ask people who run hobby-
based stores selling things like toy trains, comic books, or stamps, they tell
me it's no longer fun to them.

~~~
halcyondaze
Yes, I am expanding offline as well because I want to explore it as much as
possible. Still fun for me, and what isn't I try to outsource to others.

------
DictumMortuum
I am the person behind
[http://dictummortuum.blogspot.com](http://dictummortuum.blogspot.com)

I reach the adsense threshold about once every year, so it's ~70 euro/year.
Sad, but I don't spend a lot of time maintaining it.

------
sdfjkl
Amazon referrals. I made £40 or so.

------
ronnier
$2,550 in rental home income on a house that will be paid off in 3 months.

~~~
tomcam
What a great feeling!

------
alecmgo
[http://www.siliconvalleyguide.org](http://www.siliconvalleyguide.org) is a
geeky tour guide to Silicon Valley. It makes about $10/month in ads.

~~~
tomcam
Fun! Good idea. Duly bookmarked.

------
37463892
I make about $80 a month from
([http://redreport.org/](http://redreport.org/)), mainly from organic search
traffic.

~~~
RhodesianHunter
It would probably be more if the ads didn't actually cover the content.

------
joshuak
"Investment" is not income, passive or otherwise.

Income is step one. Investment of that income is step two.

A "salary" is income that is bound to time worked.

"Passive income" is income that is not bound to time worked.

The key difference between passive income vs investing, is _what_ is being
invested. With passive income like salary _time_ is the investment, not money.
That's why it's income.

All the comments discussing saving and investment strategies are rather
missing the point of the question.

------
srigi
Running ransomware network. For $6000 investment you can get $80000/month rent
coming to you.

------
jccalhoun
i made like $125 in amazon gift cards between swagbucks and bing(now
microsoft) rewards points.

------
wlievens
Stock appreciation and dividends.

------
buckhx
$AMD + $ARRY

~~~
alimbada
I'm relatively new to investing and started a year ago. $AMD was one of the
companies I chose to invest in last December. I'm up 100+% (in GBP) on my AMD
investment right now and planning to hold for another year. If Zen and Vega
deliver (and I think they will) I'm confident I'll see 200% a gain in the next
6 months, possibly even close to 300%.

------
fratlas
Trump game! Not huge amount, but for the small amount of the effort it was
great.

~~~
Romajashi
What is Trump game?

~~~
funnyfacts365
A game with Donald Trump as the character, most likely.

~~~
OJFord
Two years ago, the first response would surely have been "Top Trump cards,
most likely", most likely.

Perhaps it's Trump Trumps? If not, it should be. Or presidential candidate
trumps; Trump trumps all?

------
koyao
Sold a condo in California and bought two investment properties in Texas.

------
vuchkov
2K, domain & hosting services. | thx, god!

------
jdmoreira
I'm very curious to know how much both 64bites.com and buildyourownlisp.com
made this year. Maybe the authors would like to comment? :)

------
woodyb23
Bitcoin has been my most profitable.

~~~
addonis1990
Can you elaborate please ? I am considering investing a some time in bitcoin
and blockchain next year and I would really appreciate your insights. What
tools/services/websites did you use ? Did you learn that on your own ? what
resources did you use ?

~~~
j_s
Pretty sure Bitcoin works best for the people who got in early.

anon4this1: _I bought 5800 bitcoins mostly for around $5 back in 2011ish [...]
I 'm up 15,400% in 5 years_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13093895](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13093895)

~~~
jklein11
I think anon4this1 dropped a few zeroes there

------
andreshb
Airbnb listings in NYC, BOG, MDE - make enough to live almost anywhere I want.

------
myroon5
Using Lendingrobot - an automated p2p lending service

~~~
siong1987
isn't that funded?

~~~
refulgentis
Yeah, grandparent is spam: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/07/lending-robot-
makes-lendin...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/07/lending-robot-makes-
lending-club-investing-easy-as-setting-screen-brightness/)

~~~
myroon5
I am not involved with the company other than being a happy customer. It was
by far the best passive income I made this year.

~~~
logicallee
I think you're using the actual definition of passive income (make an
investment, don't do anything else other than wait), whereas everyone else
seems to be talking about fake-passive income, such as lifestyle businesses
they pretend not to work on. (But really do.)

------
jeremyt
Bitcoin

------
tove
My passive income is quite standard. Three apartments in a new block. I bought
all of them four years ago when the construction was still unfinished. This
got me a good price. I knew that the area would be under continuous
development, therefore it won't be hard to find renters. I was right. Best
part is that I didn't even have to furnish them. I managed to rent them all
unfurnished.

~~~
Dowwie
In what country are you located? Furniture is more of a short term rental
requirement, unless you've included essential appliances with your
categorization.

~~~
tove
Germany (Frankfurt). I didn't provide the appliances, except for fridge and
electric oven+stove (because I managed to get a discount on buying three sets
of these appliances through a friend). Sorry, also the kitchens were furnished
by me. The rentals were made long term.

------
ommunist
rent from real estate

------
branchless
Passive income. So great that financiers gave people a nice name for
extorsion. Some ideas on here are creating value and selling it over time. No
problem with that.

Too many are rentier activity, costing everyone more in the long run.
Appropriating wealth rather than creating it.

Hacker news seems to embrace this culture. Surely the antithesis of the early
days of computing and the origin of hacker culture.

~~~
dgacmu
What a strange attitude.

I'm very grateful that my landlord chooses to own an apartment and rent it to
me on a short-term basis. I needed housing for four months, I already own a
house (which is being remodeled), and I certainly didn't want to try to buy a
second house for five months.

For that rental, I'm happy to let my landlord earn a profit, in exchange for
taking on the risk of owning and maintaining the property.

~~~
eevilspock
Not strange at all. Many well-respected people have this point of view, from
Nobel laureate economists to free-market libertarians.

The problem is that most of the profit he "earns" is from the ownership of
land, not from maintaining the property.

See my other comment for more, or this now on the HN front page:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13153047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13153047)

~~~
dgacmu
The profit he earns is because he's providing a service that I need -- short-
term housing. To do that, he's taking on various risks associated with
homeownership, such as a lack of available tenants and fluctuations in capital
due to market conditions.

Some of the issues discussed on the linked post aren't fundamental to the idea
of profiting from what you own, they're examples of something closer to
monopoly abuse -- buying out all of the available properties in an area, etc.

It's not great when there's not enough property available for outright sale,
but it's also not great when there's no room available for short-term housing
either.

The linked article has several issues with it, though I won't disagree with
the problem of using regulation to lock-in a high-profit monopoly. That's a
bad thing, and it's common, and it's something we should fix. But some claims
in there -- "A professor at an architecture school or law school does not earn
a six figure salary due to providing superior mentoring and teaching. They
earn their money because they are the legal gate keepers to entering licensed
occupations." \-- are baloney. The earn that salary because that's what it
takes to pay them to not go make substantially more money in practice, and the
university carefully calculates that minimum to keep their professors at
minimum cost.

(This one I do have specific knowledge of - I'm a professor who just spent the
year in industry, and the degree by which my salary increased during that year
was... large. That's not specific to computer science, either; I know a lot of
law professors who're in a nearly identical situation. They do the job because
they love teaching, and the university is happy to give them a pay cut in
exchange for that.)

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estomagordo
2016 isn't over. Ask in 3 weeks time.

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shadykiller
I don't need to invest anywhere. My company invests for me in 401k and by the
time i retire i will get $401,000 as the name suggests :)

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dbg31415
Surprised nobody has mentioned getting married yet. Dual incomes is probably
the easiest path to wealth. Just don't ever get divorced...

~~~
mf2hd
It's too risky, not worth it :)

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eevilspock
This post is what's wrong with Capitalism. Rent seeking. The Matthew Effect.
Making money by making money.

~~~
shostack
Generally, the people interested in this are interested because time is the
most valuable resource of all. If they can obtain enough passive income to be
independently wealthy, they can contribute to humanity in whatever way they
choose vs being forced to sell their time to a day job where they have limited
control of their life.

Creating value and receiving some percent of that as rent is not inherently a
bad behavior. But if you think you have a better, more "noble" answer, I'd
love to hear it.

~~~
eevilspock
Now on the HN front page: _Great Problems: An Epidemic of Rent-Seeking_
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13153047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13153047)

> obtain enough passive income to be independently wealthy

"Passive income" does not make you "independently wealthy". You avoid "being
forced to sell [your] time" because you extract wealth from those who do.

Rent seeking does not, by definition, involve "creating value":

 _In economics and in public-choice theory, rent-seeking involves seeking to
increase one 's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth. Rent-
seeking results in reduced economic efficiency through poor allocation of
resources, reduced actual wealth creation, lost government revenue, increased
income inequality, and (potentially) national decline._ \- Wikipedia

From _Taking Back Adam Smith and “Classic Liberalism”_ :

 _Many conservative economists claim to be staunch followers of Adam Smith.
They shout slogans such as “Supply and Demand!” “Capitalism”! “ “Let the
markets work!” However, for anyone who actually read Adam Smith, you would
note that the “invisible hand” was not his only observation of the inner
workings of capitalism. Adam Smith recognized that many in the economy were
making gobs of money, but weren’t contributing anything. He was referring to
what was eventually called “economic rent”.

Smith observed that all production required 3 things. Land, Capital, and
Labor. A very simple example would be a brick factory. The building and oven
needed to create the bricks are the “capital” – the owners are the
capitalists. The people making the bricks is the “labor” – the people doing
the actual work. The Land the factory occupies and the clay used to make the
bricks is the “land” – the owners of the land are the “Rentiers”. Any money
made by selling the bricks is then divided up between these three groups: the
rentiers, the capitalists, and the workers._

Where many here on HN and I will differ is what forms of passive income are
rent seeking rather value creating applications of the output of one's
previous labor.

Note that you can even be pro-Capitalism and anti-rent-seeking: _How
Economists Duped Us into Attacking Capitalism Instead of Parasitic Rent-
Seeking_ [http://evonomics.com/economists-duped-attacking-
capitalism/](http://evonomics.com/economists-duped-attacking-capitalism/)

