Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?

120 pointsca98am79118 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6661536

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588

I released a small computer puzzle game based on finite state automata called The Cat Machine[0] back in August, which still steadily sells copies, accompanied with bigger spikes when a Steam sale comes around. From what I hear, the 'long tail' after release goes on for some years, which I believe since back in 2009/2010 I wrote a number of Flash games and I still get a monthly Paypal of about $5 from them. Steam is a bit healthier than the Flash marketplace nowadays.

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

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

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

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

The game looks interesting. How did you come up with the music in the trailer? I think it's really fitting. :)

Full credit to my friend Peter Nickalls (http://www.peternickalls.com), who composes music for TV shows that are far more impressive than my little game. The soundtrack he did for the game is fantastic, I'm glad we put together the soundtrack DLC.

I haven't had much time for video games lately, but I love your game. Glad to hear it's still bringing in money for you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I conform this is bug.

"In order to send emails on your behald, "

Spelling error on your FAQ's - nice product.

Thanks! Fixed... and an extra upvote to you for the trouble.

This is very cool.

If there was a way for autopest to automatically stop when the other party responds to your "pests" (maybe via an email client plugin) I would sign up for sure.

That's actually my next big update. I've got a Gmail plugin about 80% complete that will auto-stop the messages, too.

I still kind of count it as "passive" work because I had to learn to develop Gmail plugins for my startup. I was able to transfer that experience to Autopest.

FYI to anyone reading this... InboxSDK is amazing for Gmail plugins.

This is awesome! As a musician and bandleader, I could absolutely use something like this. Are there any plans to make it work with a standard SMTP/IMAP setup? I don't use Gmail for privacy concerns, and have hosted my own email server for years now.

I can make it work on SMTP/IMAP, but, right now, it requires a custom setup. I've got a couple accounts that pay to do this... but they also have lots of team members using it.

Awesome product! Do you mind giving more information about how long have you been building this, and how much do you make?

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

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

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

Incredible. You're the unsung, bootstrap SaaS success story of HN imo :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Awesome idea! How did you initially advertise the site?

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

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

http://daysfromnow.js.org/

Total earnings: 7.35EUR in total from Google Ads

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

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

[0] https://js.org/

https://www.ottopost.com/ - a simple Instagram postcard printing service.

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

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

Heavy Instagram user here. This is cool.

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

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

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

[1] https://fl.ag/

[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1306413684/flag-the-app...

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

Yup. I was renting one unit in a duplex. My landlord put it on the market at a way-too-high price. Fast-forward nine months of having to get out of the way when the real estate agent wanted to show the property, and the price steadily dropping into my range, and I realized it would be a real PITA to have to move all my stuff out and find another apartment if someone bought it and hiked the rent or wanted to move into my unit. Went to one bank, was told that I'd need to put down 20-25% on a commercial loan. Went to another bank, and the loan officer worked out that I could get an FHA first-time owner-occupant loan, since I was planning on staying in my unit, and renting out the other one. Stockpiled cash for a few months by only paying minimums on my credit cards and cutting back on anything extra, plus a little help from my folks, for the down payment(FHA was only about 3.5% down), and bought the building.

Now I'm collecting $1300 a month rent from the other tenant, which covers almost all of the mortgage and taxes. Upkeep isn't that big a deal, since the way my lease was written, I was already responsible for all of the groundskeeping and snow removal when I was renting anyway. Also, it's worth it to make sure you have good tenants, that pay on time, and don't make a mess.

Yes. Our family sold an ag property this year and I purchased 3 rental properties. Two of them are 3 bedroom condos that I rent to students at Cal Poly SLO. The third is a 3 bedroom home that is a family rental. It's been going smoothly so far. While student rentals seem risky on the surface, I like them because (a) most students (here, at least) are paying their rent with student loans or parents' money, so its fairly guaranteed, (b) turnover is easy to predict, (c) you'll have no guilt of evicting a young family who has fallen on hard times, (d) if you find serious STEM or grad students, they usually don't party too hard.

After the initial fixes and repairs we had to do during the purchase process (every home in California has termites), I've been working to automate as much as possible. Here's my "Landlord Stack":

1. Cozy for applications and rental payments (https://cozy.co/) (Price: free)

2. Rocket Lawyer for leases, other documents, and random law questions (https://www.rocketlawyer.com/) (Price: $50/mo)

3. Xero for accounting (https://www.xero.com/) (Price: $9/mo)

4. Trello for organizing information and to-dos (https://trello.com/) (Price: free)

5. We bank at Chase and use their online bill-pay to handle the few utilities we're responsible for.

So for I've had to unclog a couple toilets and fix a window screen. Other than that, smooth sailing so far. Email in profile if you want to get in touch.

Awesome, I go there! Always cool to here from someone in the area, and interesting to see things from a landlord perspective

I go there too :) just went back to school after a long "hiatus" ... get in touch sometime

I have some anti-advice, not what you asked for, but perhaps valuable anyway for you to take into consideration. When I moved to a new home, I started renting out my old house. I found I just cannot handle being a landlord. The seemingly constant calls for repairs just throw me for a loop. I cannot concentrate at my dayjob when I'm thinking about having to yet again deal with plumbers, handymen or other trades people and their associated expense (and they are EXPENSIVE) and/or repairing it myself (and I'm no handyman). I went days with close to zero productivity as the repairs drag on. And this is with pretty good tenants. I cannot imagine the added mental stress if they were bad tenants. I've pretty much decided when the home selling season starts picking up in spring, I'm selling and getting out of landlording.

I run a 4plex. It's not really passive income, but the income:time invested ratio is much better than my programming salary.

The single best piece of advice I can give is to provide a great experience for your guests and have a high price to match that experience. No factor I've found better judges the quality of a tenant than the ability to hand over a big wad of cash.

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

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

Nice to see someone name drop Bigger Pockets! That was my first big project as a Rails developer.

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

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

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

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

I'd also highly recommend bigger pockets, it's great for USA information specifically. I'm from canada and I still find it really useful, it has a great community that is very open and helpful!

I started doing landlording for passive income at the beginning of the year. My property is 360 miles away from me (a converted vacation home). I do use a property management service. You will have extra tax paperwork to file at the end of the year (Schedule E).

My novel -- in English http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QPBYGFI and Spanish http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I1EU1Q0

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

You may want to follow how self published author of Wool, Hugh Howey has sold his books on amazon.

He broke each novel into a four or five book series and sold each book for a dollar. He also made sure to schedule the releases every two to three months. (agile-writing?)

He makes six figures a month on most months [1]

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/07/tech/mobile/kindle-direct-...

Ooh, interesting. I'll think about that. But my main sticking point is actually marketing... I could give away part 1/4 and sell parts 3 to 4 for $1, but I'd still need to get part 1 to a lot of people somehow. And that's what I'm not good at :(

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

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

Amazon KDP has different revenue splits based on price. I think 2.99 is the minimum price for the (much) larger split, which is why so many writers price their books at 2.99.

Which version of the novel do you prefer ?

I originally wrote it in Spanish, my native language. My English is OK, but probably not as good as my Spanish, especially not when writing something that needs to "read nice" (as opposed to, say, technical articles).

I started translating it myself but the progress was too slow. I hired a translator, who was a native English speaker. The result is OK but not great -- in the end I could have done an equally good job. So I'll probably be writing the sequel in English.

To answer your question -- I believe the original Spanish version is slightly better.

That's the one I'm going to read then. Cheers.

Cool! Just bought it. And I agree, you should try raising the price! =)

Thank you! Given there's some consensus, I'll consider raising the price. I set it at the minimum, I think, to make it as widely read as possible (I'd set it permanently free if Amazon allowed it). But maybe this is creating a perception of lower value and making people not read it :(

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

"Passive income" ... you might want to see a doctor.

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

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/justice/kansas-sperm-donation/

That depends on the country. In Denmark, you have no responsibilities[0] at all if you choose the anonymous option.

[0]https://www.retsinformation.dk/Forms/R0710.aspx?id=142348 (official law information in Danish)

Im in California but I doubt it. I remember that story you linked, the Kansas gentleman answered a craigslist ad and impregnated a lady at her house so the state now doesnt want to recognize her relationship with her SO as valid. I dont think its representative of the risk, especially since the clinic I go to will probably just use an applicator or something.

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

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

Do you have to be a certain height?

What about weight?

I think qualifying is more about your semen, which can be affected if you are under or overweight.

Passive outcome is more like it amirite!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't really know about that. Right now I'm promoting muscle products. I've promoted diet products and email submits before.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My watch company.

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

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

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

http://gardannewatches.com/products/gardanne-black-brown-wat...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glad to hear that from you.

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

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

OOPS... it wasn't a real watch...

How is this a passive income though? Seems like the literal opposite.

As I said before, this is not really passive income, but I can easily sell watches just with the effort I put in earlier. I don't have to put as much time and effort as soon as the watches come if I don't want it to scale.

Are those images renders or actual product? It's a really nice looking watch, at a great price.

Renders. The watches will be finished soon and then we'll be able to show you real photos. That'll happen in weeks, I hope :)

I would echo the same sentiments as others. The watch design looks great, however, it does look like a photoshop render than an actual watch. If this was not posted on HN, I would have immediately ignored it as a scam. Have you shipped the watch to any customers?

Totally understand. It's hard to make people trust you before you have the real pics of the watch. But they'll be finished soon and then we'll have some real photos ;)

Really interested in designing my own watch.

What software do you use to design them? Is there an industry standard format that I would need to send manufactures?

I've tried googling around but I have not found anything conclusive.

The easiest way is to contact a manufacture and ask how they would want it. I used CAD and sent it but it's different from time to time.

Those watches look very nice!

Is it possible to get the white compass with a black leather strap?

Thanks a lot! It won't be able at first, but probably in March/April :)

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

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

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

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

I have a chrome extension and service at http://tab.bz which has around 25k users.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  * http://femcalapp.com

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

Total income this year: about 5 Bitcoins http://ecogex.com/logos/

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

My neighbor and I built https://backroad.io for easy on-demand OpenVPN servers

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

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

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

Selling t-shirts http://www.zazzle.com/freesoftwarelove*

Doing any good?

https://pareday.com - I'm making passive income off SitterCity affiliate program.

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

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

Selling domain name to chinese buyer over the weekend :)

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