
Ask HN: Sideprojects/passive income businesses with little or no own coding? - Quanttek
Whenever sideprojects or ways to gain passive income are discussed here, the conversation focuses on programming projects that can be run on the side. Of course, this is very much connected to the nature of the side.<p>However, I&#x27;d like to hear from people who do&#x2F;did sideprojects that involved little programming from their side and that, maybe, even provided them with a passive income. For me it&#x27;s a bit difficult to imagine such projects and I think it would be a novel topic to talk about.
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ilovetux
The best side project I had involved no coding whatsoever. When in college, I
applied for and received a "peddlers license" which I used to allow me to set
up a table downtown by a bus stop and sell holiday themed items at the
appropriate times of the year.

In my third semester, I got some freshmen to take over the daily operations
just taking a percentage off the top. Those freshmen passed the gig onto the
next class and that kept going, that little table is still bringing in about
$1000 four times a year for me (Valentine's day, independence day,
thanksgiving and christmas)

~~~
joshdance
How did you source the items?

~~~
ilovetux
Mostly sams club, dollar tree and Alibaba. Pretty much the same today, but I
have met some people who allow me to source certain hand-made items for a good
bargain.

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davidgh
Niche knowledge.

We had our first house built for us. I learned a ton in the process and lots
of “if I ever have a house built again I will remember to...”

Some years later, we decided to move and build another house. Alas, all those
things I “learned” were mostly forgotten. So I decided to journal the entire
experience and turned it into a blog.

Most of the content I just gave away for free. But I also put up a $9 “kit”
that provided a printable copy of the blog, additional pictures, my full
budget breakdown, spreadsheets I developed to help manage the project, etc.

I’ve done nothing to promote the site but have earned in the low thousands
over the years.

~~~
dkmn
This. Actual value you know, have, or are creating anyway. Many people will
happily pay a reasonable fee for such things. Pros: not a gimmick,
satisfaction of being an author. Cons: target of opportunity.

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emilioolivares
If you want passive income with no work, then you have to supply capital. If
you don't have capital, then work is required. Unfortunately there are no
passive income businesses that require zero capital and zero work. They just
don't exist.

Passive no-coding ways to make money: >Public market investments: stock
market, ETF's, bonds, derivatives, commodities, real estate, bitcoin >Non-
public investments: start-ups, business ventures, hedge funds, private equity,
etc.

There are other businesses which people think are passive but they are not.
Having a website that makes money is not a passive income. Ask anyone that has
one, they have to put in some sort of work. If they don't the money dries up.
You have to create new content and really target your ads to actually make
money.

Good luck!

~~~
TomMarius
You can hire copywriters, PPC marketers and a manager using revenue of the
site

~~~
jthewriter
But you'd have to supply work/capital to get it to the point of generating
revenue.

~~~
TomMarius
I don't think the question was about passive income that's free to set up.
There is no such one, why would anyone work if you could just wave your magic
wand?

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anmolparashar
I built this site [1] that lets people find and list internet businesses that
are available for sale. I didn't write a single line of code, used Carrd and
Airtable to build the whole thing. Let me know if this is the type of answer
you were looking for?

[1] [https://soochi.co](https://soochi.co)

Edit: If anyone does have a business they'd like to list, just include HN at
the beginning of your story to get $10 off!

~~~
samsolomon
This is a cool idea. Are you using Airtable as a CMS or just using it to
collect form data and manually updating the Carrd site?

If you are using Airtable are you using Zapier or some other tool to connect
it to Carrd?

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Random_Person
At work, I had a client say "I wish we had software that did this." What they
were asking for was little more than a Google Form with a few reporting
options. So, I whipped them up something in PHP/MySQL and handed it off.

I quickly found more clients (word of mouth) that want the same software and
can't find anyone that will provide it for less than $5k/yr. I work for a non-
profit (education industry) that isn't really built to operate on funding
streams like this, so I set up my own business and bought the rights back to
my code/ip.

I'm currently in the pre-launch phase as I re-factor a bit and make the code
better suited to multi-agent use, but honestly, it's something an experienced
developer could code in a weekend. I'm a total hack, so it's taking time. I
already have 4 clients and more calls coming in, so the only thing holding me
back is myself.

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jatsign
Drop shipping. Haven't done it, don't recommend it, but I see it mentioned in
places like

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/)

~~~
pjc50
Doesn't that run the risk of making yourself accessory to someone else's
credit card fraud?

~~~
throwaway2016a
"Victim" not "accessory"... if it is fraud there will likely be a charge back
which will cause you to lose money the if you can't document it well but the
customer / fraudster still gets the item.

You pay the dropship warehouse, you don't pass the customer card info to them.
It is as if you bought the product and picked someone else's shipping address.

No more / less risk than standard eCommerce, just someone else is doing the
fulfillment for you.

Drop shipping is great in theory, one problem is that the margins are usually
lower than if you bought the items wholesale but you don't have any
warehousing or handling cost. The real problem is that if you are drop
shipping an item odds are 1000 other people are and it is a race to the bottom
to see who is willing to sell for the least profit.

------
jaymzcampbell
iOS sticker packs - never did it myself (can't draw to save my life) but there
was at one point good money [2] to be made in them. The full title of [1] is
_How I made two ridiculous iOS 10 sticker packs for Messages without any
coding experience_ so think that fits the bill. The reddit post [3] is from 4
months ago, so perhaps there's still room to get somewhere with it.

[1] [https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/13/ios-10-sticker-packs-
messages...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/13/ios-10-sticker-packs-messages/)

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/13/chat-app-line-makes-
over-2...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/13/chat-app-line-makes-
over-270-million-a-year-from-selling-stickers/)

[3]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6kyair/i_just...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6kyair/i_just_made_1k_usd_selling_imessage_stickers/)

------
pjc50
What other type of work would you be discussing? Obviously there are no
opportunities that don't involve either work or capital investment...

~~~
samsolomon
I believe the OP is asking about projects making income that are not
programming heavy. Some quick thoughts off of the top of my head:

\- Writing Books

\- Content-Focused Websites or Newsletters

\- Selling Digital or Physical Products

It probably depends on your skillset. Without some sort of specialist
knowledge it may be tough. In the design world icon sets, UI kits and
typefaces are popular things to sell.

~~~
filipm
Lightroom presets come to my mind.

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arkades
> I'd like to hear from people who do/did sideprojects

ITT: almost exclusively people who didn’t do the projects they’re spitballing.

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bprieto
If you have some niche or specific knowledge, you can set up a blog and sell
infoproducts (courses, books, templates, etc.). I've done this on the side and
there is money to be made. I had earnings of low thousands some months.

But it's difficult to grow an audience, it's hard work to create quality
products and even though you can set up an almost automatic selling machine
with little coding, just plumbing WordPress, Mailchimp and PayPal, there are
still some customer support to be done.

So it's long term, not completely passive income, but if you know something
and other people are willing to pay for that knowledge, it can be done.

------
amorphic
There is now potential for side-projects involving small-scale manufacturing
thanks to recent advances in 3D printing.

A friend and I created Enstaved [1] ("Customized Staves and Accessories")
after a prop that we designed and 3D printed for a talk I gave at PyCon AU
proved really popular.

We did put in quite a bit of up-front work designing a product line and a
website. Now most of our job is promotion and manufacturing the staves people
order. Frankly that doesn't feel like "work" at all...:)

[1] [https://enstaved.com](https://enstaved.com)

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jmkni
I know a guy who sells Hot Sauce on Amazon, he's a talented programmer but
probably makes more money selling sauce!

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bewe42
Books and courses come to mind (require some coding). Affiliate websites etc

Can't remember one now, but there are plenty of examples of startups that
faked to be fully automated software but behind the scenes all was done
manually.

~~~
throwaway2016a
Books and courses are actually a tremendous amount of work upfront. Last book
I wrote for a major published I only got $6000 and it consumed hundreds of
hours.

Self-publishing is high profit but the same amount of work (if you care about
quality and reputation), no upfront advance, and you have to do your own
marketing.

------
jasonwen
Amazon FBA businesses, dropshipping, blogs but that will take a while for SEO
to kick in, Amazon affiliates, and other affiliate programs but you’ll need
traffic to do that.

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atsaloli
A friend of mine put together a deal to purchase a rental property, and I
invested with him, and my investment is earning dividends now.

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segmondy
gofundme Just open a page, tell a sob story and wait for the money to roll in.

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ph_coffeejunkie
Selling music is also often mentioned.

~~~
thekashifmalik
What are we talking about; selling third party music or one's own music?

~~~
ph_coffeejunkie
Primarily own music, but both is possible of course ;) For instance there are
a lot of "digital only" labels around

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rodolphoarruda
Directory Listings or Job Openings sites using Wordpress and specific plug-
ins/themes.

~~~
rodolphoarruda
I wonder why I got downvoted here.

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ju-st
candyjapan.com comes to my mind (not my project)

~~~
emilioolivares
Candyjapan is definitely a business supported by a lot of custom code. Read
this: [https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/how-many-
lines-...](https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/how-many-lines-of-
code-is-candy-japan)

~~~
ju-st
Yes, but it would be possible to create a similar thing without much coding
(paypal checkout button, email, excel, wordpress).

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cjoh
Real estate. Rental units are a great passive income

~~~
weego
There's a slight barrier to entry there that someone looking for small amounts
of passive income might not be able to overcome...

~~~
brightball
Property management would probably be the next closest thing minus the
barrier.

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timthelion
Not something I've done personally, but lawyers selling form letters is a
common passive income source which requires no coding ;).

~~~
rodolphoarruda
Yes. Or if you are a specialist within your industry, you can put together a
collection of useful templates and sell them online via a mini e-commerce
site.

~~~
eurticket
The real money in that is made by offering support, which might as well be
another full time job.

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rblion
Become an escort.

~~~
BjoernKW
That’s probably the least “passive income” business there is.

~~~
rblion
it was a joke.

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realPubkey
If you google "get rich quick", you will find 100ths of schemes.

