

Ask HN: Creating passive income online - myth or doable? - vccafe

If you've read the "4 hour work week" you know what I'm talking about. Do you think it's doable to create a passive income stream online "on the side" with a small investment. What techniques have you found that work?
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zeynalli
Once it was very easy. Now it's very hard. But still doable. By passive income
you probably mean a content website monetized with ads. Some time ago there
were people that made millions of dollars only with google adsense. I don't
know if this technique still works but I think Google bans every time black-
hat adsense users if they manually discover them.

Most of adsense millionaires used this technique: they select most paying
keywords (there are several paid tools for that) and they make microsites
about this keywords. With some black-hat SEO, they make fortune with adsense.
They write codes, and automate the whole process. Some make content
aggregation, they don't write anything, everything is automated.

Google updates its algorithm to prevent this kind of abuses, but still, there
are too many people smarter than google engineers.

I've read too much about this kind of business. 7 years ago I made a small
site to test if it really works. I made a blogspot site with only 2 articles,
it brought me 100-200$ per month. I was in high school that time. Than I read
some interviews from big content website owners that they make too much money
with their website. And I made a decision that I'll learn SEO and build a big
content website with a unique idea. I was 5 years long a premium user in
SEOmoz. From articles by Rand Fish I discovered Hacker news. And the community
blew me away.

I started university and started to build my "unique idea content website" but
it was never finished because of Hacker News. I saw that although it's still a
good idea to make money with a content website, there is better way to make
money and it's more passive than that. It's just simple idea. Start a startup.

I'm still a student at a medical faculty. Last year I started a startup to see
what it looks like and if I can build something useful. I bought a domain name
for 10$ and 9$ hosting from hostgator. Now it makes 20-30k $ per month and I
don't do anything. I'm the owner of my small company and I have 12 workers and
one CEO to organize the work, and I continue my study at the university.

After seeing how it's simple to start a startup, (of course starting is not so
easy and the idea, marketing also important) I think I'll continue my life as
an entrepreneur, not as a doctor.

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tashfeen
Interesting. Is your site a content site or are you actually providing a
service? I am a physician with hopes to start something too (see my profile if
you are interested).

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zeynalli
No, as I said I didn't started the content site, because starting startup is
much more interesting, easier and brings money fast and easier, if the idea,
execution and marketing are well done.

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jdietrich
You have to create value commensurate with the return you expect. If you're
exceptionally clever or knowledgeable, you may be able to create a lot of
value in a relatively short amount of time, then implement a system that
allows you to continue to benefit from that value indefinitely - the sort of
thing described in the Four Hour Work Week.

People fail because they ignore the need to create value. They fall for sucker
schemes that promise vast reservoirs of cash on tap if only you know the
secret. There are rare opportunities that arise from market inefficiencies,
but you can bet your ass that if someone has identified one of these
opportunities, they're not going to cut you in on it.

If you want passive income, you need to create something of real value, then
work out how to sell it. It's usually easier to identify the market first,
then find a product to sell to it, rather than vice-versa. There are an
infinite number of possible products, but relatively few viable markets.

~~~
vccafe
"If you want passive income, you need to create something of real value, then
work out how to sell it"

Can you give a few examples that are doable on a small budget online?

~~~
Ajay2050
Selling case studies and reports can make it happen.

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SatvikBeri
I have done it, but it ended up being a lot of work relative to what I earned
(and eventually I lost all the income after a Google algorithm change.)

The thing is, it's generally easiest to create lots of value (and
correspondingly, earn a lot of money) in an area where you have very little
competition. 10 years ago nobody understood the internet, so passive income
online was easy. 5 years later it was doable, but harder. Today you'll
probably get a much higher RoI by learning R and doing some Data Science
consulting.

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Ajay2050
One good thing to make passive income is by selling Reports about something ,
gather lots of useful data and sell it as pdf.

If you can put some graphs, charts ,or infographic in it to make it more
insightful.

Here is great example : <http://www.marketinghotsheet.com/>

One of my friend used to do it, he had made good mullah through it.

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treskot
It did work in my case. I have a design blog which did help me get a lot of
design clients!

PS: What might work for someone maynot work for you. You have to find that
unique thing (idea) that might work for your case. Based on your skill set.

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vccafe
Just to qualify this further - what if you're not selling a service on top of
your blog? (i.e. design services in your case) - could you still create a
labor of love, like a blog and pay rent with the cash it generates? how?

~~~
treskot
Don't think about the end result while you're starting off. I didn't create a
blog because I wanted clients. I created a blog to show the world my work
(showoff) and people just happened to like it and the offers started flowing.

If you think about the end result (pay rent in your case) then you maynot be
able to succeed! Okay I don't want to talk philosophy here buy you got the
point, didn't you?

