Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?
Please share suggestions of whats worked for you and what hasnt
* Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar
* Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial investment, and requires ongoing maintenance. On a good month I only hear from the managing agent once per month with details of how much rent is being paid.
* Stoozing. Find a credit card with 0% interest on balance transfers. Stick the money into a savings account. Or, if you like risk, on a horse. Need a good credit rating and decent savings rate to make more than a few hundred a year though.
* Affiliate marketing. If you can find a good theme (e.g. Halloween) and a decent place to put the links (somewhere that wants them - not spamming them everywhere) it's possible to get a moderate passive income. Well... not quite passive, requires upfront time commitment of selecting links and locations.
* Hosting / simple websites. Again, little bit of up-front commitment. Works best if you can find a local niche of people who want a friendly face to host their websites. Usually as simple as buying a domain, setting up WordPress, and turning on automatic updates.
In general, the best passive schemes require a large initial outlay and/or a dubious moral outlook. A better way to enhance your income is to eat out less, stop buying stuff you don't need, and shop around for deals. Boring but true!
Doesn't really work anymore : Most balance transfer credit cards charge a minimum fee of 1% to 3% on the transfer amount AFAIK. Savings account pay less than 1%.
What I interpret your explanation as is more akin to trading - Buying backs at a time and waiting for odds to fluctuate at an exchange for a sale.
Although there is no (simple) way of doing a pure arb between a bookie/exchange, all the popular exchanges expose existing liquidity in a market and you can quite safely reduce the risk by double checking available liquidity at the exchange in the seconds before placing your back bet.
There is an upfront time element needed, and then to keep it rolling you'll need to take advantage of reload offers if you want a trickle, but if you're prepared to put the work in and use a site like this that does most of the "thinking" for you, it can work.
I remember the now defunct site that showed me how to bag bonuses as a student a decade ago being straightforward about your pretty modest level of expected winnings (and for blackjack bonuses, modest level of risk) and focusing mainly on the actual maths.
For anyone that wants it as a passive income project, there's some very nice potential affiliate earnings (redirected through another domain, naturally) for anyone that wants to create a less scammy looking explanation...
If you're interested I highly recommend the MoneySavingExpert Matched Betting forum - http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=41
It is free, unbiased (lots of the specifically tailored sites like PA mentioned above have affiliate deals which reduce the amount you can earn) and active.
Discussion on the MSE forum is restricted to what they define strictly as "risk free", not "EV+" opportunities, but that's a healthy start.
Their definition of risk free is making a guaranteed profit regardless of the outcome - Either natural arbitrage or an offer-dependent forced arbitrage.
It also required upfront confidence in the sustainability of the government subsidy. In The Netherlands a lot of now-solar panel owners decided to invest because of subsidies, but last year the government decided to stop the subsidy for 2016. Especially with the low energy prices, that makes it a net loss for a lot of people.
I assume that by apps you mean native mobile apps. Anyone know how ad-supported mobile apps stack up against web apps? On the one hand, there's no such thing as ad blockers for native apps. On the other hand, web apps run on more platforms out of the box including desktops, and desktops in general seem to be easier to monetize via ads.
> Hosting / simple websites. Again, little bit of up-front commitment. Works best if you can find a local niche of people who want a friendly face to host their websites. Usually as simple as buying a domain, setting up WordPress, and turning on automatic updates.
Does anyone here have experience with this? It's an awfully saturated market, and there's not a lot of ways to differentiate yourself without turning it into a full-time job. That said, if it is as easy as edent makes it sound, I'd love to dive in as an excuse to get some system administration experience (and try out some ideas I have in that area).
Not gonna win any design awards, but so many small-biz sites suck badly because the tools available aim to do too much and become complicated or encourage the user (probably non-technical to begin with) to get too fancy and do too much.
Piggy-back off this and up-charge: https://picnic.sh
Biggest challenge would be gaining traction.
thinking back one client moved because she said she couldn't update her site herself (note it was a cms) and some dude bamboozled her into drupal. He used the theme I'd built her from my custom cms and years later the site still has the same content copied from the one I did for her..
- it's harder than you think and a lot of work to find new customers
- customers usually want more than "just a website"; you also need to offer things like newsletters, online reservation, etc.
- if you get enough customers to make it worthwhile, you will be get lots of support requests
Every time I meet him, someone calls him for help with their website.
Barebones, but enough so anyone searching locally wouldn't have trouble finding their phone number, hours, location, etc.
I don't use Facebook or the yellow pages. If you don't have a website, I probably won't find you. And if your website quickly tells me what I want to know vs. making me click through pages under construction to find it, I'll be much happier.
But, as markyc said, Facebook may be the best strategy for small businesses.
There is on Android. Two options: install a pseudoVPN proxy that happens to consult an adblocking filter; root your device and install an /etc/hosts blocker.
I remember doing this in 2007. I wasn't aware there was a specific name for it.
Most people I know who do well in that space do so after several years. Once they learn how to be a landlord, learn the quirks of the market they invest in, etc, it can be pretty low stress, although not necessarily hands off.
But if you're just starting out, you should expect to make some mistakes and run into some headaches as you figure things out.
The approach is to find a type of product where Amazon has thousands of listing but the specifications are not very accurate and the filtering criteria are limited, and where there are highly active forums with people talking about and asking about these products. Then you build a proper searchable catalog for the products. Include lots of search criteria, sorting criteria, side-by-side comparison, recommended accessories, anything that would be useful for people looking to buy them.
Once my catalog contained over 1,000 models I started replying to posts on forums with a link to my site that provided what they were looking for. People loved the site and it wasn't long before they were posting links to it to answer each others questions. That's all it took to start ranking on Google which is now responsible for 3/4 of my traffic.
Initially this is not passive income. The first few months are a lot of work for very little money. Eventually the balances shifts to the point where additional work is only needed if you want to keep growing. Amazon's product advertising API allows you to get current prices, availability and popularity (sales ranking) to keep everything fresh.
Thanks
Even if you are willing to take on a moderate amount of risk, most people - even those with good credit and decent incomes - are going to net a few hundred bucks per year off this thing, max.
It is a really poor way to make extra income.
Total Gross Revenues: $20,000 or so.
Mostly from a single high-traffic niche site which I promote almost exclusively through social media. My site offers a free version of what a few other websites in the same niche offer as a SaaS service.
From that same site, most of the revenue (~80%) is from ads (ad revenue increased when switching to responsive units). Next, Amazon associate makes up about 15% of the revenue. And about 5% from donations.
The downside is that ad rates are DROPPING pretty quickly, ad-block usage rates are increasing rapidly, some browsers block ads by default now, etc. So I'm trying to get off of ad dependency.
I'm thinking in the future a Patreon funded project or project with additional SaaS component will probably fare better if you traffic is at least medium size (~50k/mo+), and comprised of repeat visitors.
I also have eBooks, which despite the rapid increase in popularity of Amazon authors, seem to be doing well. My most popular eBook is bringing in ~40$ / mo on the 35% plan (I can't use the 70% plan because someone stole it and uploaded it elsewhere). The rest of my eBooks are bringing in ~$20 total. If you have expertise, and strong communication skills - eBooks may be a good route to go down. Leanpub offers higher % rate, and I've seen some technical authors make a killing there - might be a better option.
As far as stocks go, I'm all invested in Vanguard which seems to like tech stocks - so not so great this year. The high-dividend yield funds are probably the way to go in 2016 since growth growth isn't so hot right now.
I would stay away from IoS & Android because app discovery is messed up, and you need a marketing budget in most scenarios to make it big.
Is that anything like what you did?
On the other hand, I've read about owners of tools (like ListenToYouTube, W3Counter) - who run just a tool by itself with little or no social features.
If it's just the tool the audience wants, it may be totally possible to outsource the creation - and than just focus on marketing it. I'd like to see someone take a SaaS tool, outsource the development - release it for free (ad-funded or similar) and post a case study.
I don't spend as much, and yes, coffee can be so much cheaper, but it's also not a lot of money.
Interestingly, the following guy has a recurring theme on how trying to save on lattes is inefficient and distracting (similar to the idea of premature optimization in code):
Can you go into more detail? Why are there different plans?
Are you building relationships with influencers and getting promoted to their audiences, or have you found tactics / channels to drive traffic directly that works well for you?
- niche sites with Google ads is a fading path, but still can work if you hit a good market or produce evergreen content
- selling niche e-books through Amazon or direct seems to be a decent option, but is a lot of work unless you can produce quickly and have a feel for the topic
- apps are dangerous because discover is nearly impossible. If you want to make apps, make quick little ones because the likelihood is that you will make $0 on any one app
My personal opinion is to make niche B2B tools. There are a million little inconveniences that small businesses deal with. If you find the right niche you can charge way more than a B2C product, deal with way fewer customers and charge extra for "custom" features and things like that. The trick is to find a business problem worth solving. The best way to do this is to find someone working a job and drilling them about their work flow. It's amazing the stuff that can be automated that people still don't recognize.
There is one guy who was blogging about a simple scheduling app that let 1 man operations (like barbers or chiropractors) simply text the app appointment details and it would automate putting them in the calendar. It's a great little business because scheduling is a big pain point for these tiny businesses but no one addresses it in a humane way. A good way to make $ and while also producing useful things for the world.
How does one find what to make? That is actually a harder problem to solve than making the tool itself
Not everyone is in this position, so it is a very interesting conundrum. If you know anyone that works for or owns a small business or works as a professional in a specific field, ask them about the tools they already use and what tools they would like to have. Tell them to let you know the next time they are facing a problem that they know could be done better/easier/faster through a tool or app. If you can make something that will help them, perhaps it will help others. Custom forms, data collection, etc.
If anyone has already built that app, please let me know.
TL;DR: they have a Jigsaw Puzzle Android App and make shitloads of money on Amazon Underground.
But I netted $8k last month on Underground against 38k downloads, that's pretty decent.
-Private labeling on Amazon using FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon)
I currently earn some passive income (~$1000/month) by selling products on Amazon. Amazon FBA is great because you just send all the products to Amazon warehouse and they will do the packaging and shipping for you. If you shipped out all the items yourself, it wouldn't be so passive. But since all my items are currently at Amazon warehouse and everything's being shipped by Amazon, I spend little time at the moment.
A summarized process will be 1. Sign-up for Amazon seller account 2. Find an item to sell on Alibaba 3. Purchase the item, receive, check, and send to Amazon. 4. Perform SEO for your product page 5. Repeat 2 - 4 6. After some success, switch to Amazon Seller Merchant Pro.
The most difficult part wasn't finding the right item, but rather promoting the page. Ranking my product will involve tons of keyword research, pinning everything relevant on Pinterest, and revising copy-writing.
Once I start selling about 10 products/day for a single item, I'd move on to a new product. The best time to start probably is NOT at 3rd or 4th quarter. You want to have steady sales by 3rd quarter. Because if you do, you will experience some shockingly crazy sales starting November lasting until early January. If I now sell 10 units/day for product X, I was selling 100 units/day starting late November. I regret not stocking more items, but it was my first year doing this and it's a lesson learned.
How do you figure out how much stock to order from Alibaba? Is it just based on the maximum financial risk you want to undertake, or something else?
Do you ever replenish stock, or do you continuously rotate the items you sell?
How do you pick the items to sell? Just popular items within certain categories that don't have a current Prime option? Or some other method?
What % of sales end up as returns due to defective products etc? Does Amazon cover these, or do you take the financial hit if there's a refund?
niche sites and blogging have not panned out for me (yet). I feel that's more a lack of time/effort on my part. A test effort showed me my niche could work, but I just haven't committed to really getting it rolling.
I'm also a software developer and have a few service type sites up my sleeve. My thinking (as yet unproven in my own life) is that relatively simple subscription services that "do one thing well" and can be marketed to businesses and government agencies can earn well with minimal ongoing investment. The trick there would be to automate as much as possible- especially support- without sacrificing quality, and periodically dedicate resources to keeping the technology current (easier said than done, I know)
It's hard to balance a current "non-passive" job, family, and side passive gigs, but it _can be done_.
It also takes work to liquidate quickly. So if not selling notes on a second market you're locked into your investments for up to 5 years.
[0] http://kb.lendingclub.com/investor/articles/Investor/Is-ther...
[1] http://kb.lendingclub.com/investor/articles/Investor/What-ar...
https://www.lendingclub.com/info/demand-and-credit-profile.a...
8.99 / 23.47 = 38%
https://www.lendingclub.com/info/statistics-performance.acti...
Their median return is 7.2%.
The top 90th percentile is 9%.
> For example, if you invested $100,000 in lower grade (C-G) notes on Lending Club with an aggregate 12.0% net annualized return, you'd receive approximately $6,000 in cash payments each month.
That just isn't a situation that happens for 99% of people.
Personally, I've seen worse returns and I know a number of other people that feel the way Lending Club came up with these numbers is fudged a bit since almost everyone I know ends up below the median.
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0040&...
The reality is, its returns are reasonably high risk [as you are limited in how many you can invest due to the caps the other guy mentioned] and if you get a bad basket you are screwed.
I'd rather invest in stocks given the real returns for the average person in Lending Club are about the same. Also, literally 0 of its proponents factor in what happens during a major recession [ default rates will skyrocket ] which will make even these modest returns terrible very quickly as loans default.
I invested a moderate chunk of money in lending club, and I don't regret it, but between the defaults and early payoffs, I ended up at around ~8% return, and then had to pay income tax on that 8 percent, which cut it way down.
That being said, there's the more intangible return, which is that some of hte people I selected to fund were trying to get out of high-interest debt, or fund purchasing a car for work, etc. Some(all?) of it was probably BS, but it was nice to feel like you were investing money in someone who had a specific need and helping them achieve it.
I'm not doing that anymore though, it's just not worth it.
Looking for a higher paying job (if money is what you want to optimize) is never a bad idea, regardless of whether your future plans involve entrepreneurship.
There is an inexhaustible supply of middle class people wanting pictures of their dogs painted and they are prepared to pay proper art prices for competent or in-style renditions of their dog in some picturesque scene. Since we are not dogs* and are people, poor painting is not so obvious and efforts get well received.
On the back of paintings-of-dogs it is possible to also paint your own stuff. May not be entirely 'passive income' but holding a brush isn't hard and you don't have to work in an office from 9 to 5 for the man.
*on the internets nobody knows you are a dog.
Really, this can be 'passive income'...!
I believe it's at the peak of what it can earn. Also about 25% of users have adblocker.
The yield? 2.1% Nothing to write home about. [1]
Is there some high-yielding, regular-income fund I should know about? Even allowing for sorta-irregular funds, you probably can't do much better in this environment, though I'd like to be proven wrong.
[1] https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0723&...
The chart in [3] shows a few funds against the S&P 500. Prices seem to largely track the S&P index. Maybe there's a way to chart the dividend yield over time, too.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2014/08/22/choosing...
[2] http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/stocks/what-about-a-hig...
[3] https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
Haven't tried this myself, but Tim Ferriss seems to advertise it a lot and I have a few coworkers that use it.
Minimum is $500 with no management fees (up to 10k I think)
This is essentially what Personal Capital, Wealthfront, Betterment, etc., do for you. I don't use those services because I enjoy learning about personal finance and I think the work required on my part is pretty easy. Your mileage may vary.
As in the peer thread on stock funds, this plan is not a great income generator because it's designed more for capital preservation and long term capital gains. (Unless you have half a million dollars in there and interest rates are favorable for the bonds or cash holdings.) But for me it's a great way to carve out savings and get some real compounding going. The longest drawdown in the past 40 years is 2-3 years, so I'm comfortable using it with any savings I don't expect to need to use in the next five or more years.
Implementation could hardly be simpler for the robustness that it offers. You put the money in and divide it into four parts. Once a year take a look at the balances and rebalance if any category is too far out of alignment.
For resources, Harry Browne's book mentioned in [1] is awesome for general investment sense and lays out the basics of the plan. Another book by Roland and Lawson [2] goes into much more of the nuts and bolts of implementation using different account types, tax status, and many other factors in individual situations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-Safe_Investing
[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Permanent-Portfolio-Long-Term-Inve...
For example, the baseline interest rate of Brazilian Government Bonds are paying 14.25%/year.
The exchange rate is much more volatile than the inflation rate alone, but it is relatively easy to hedge.
Way too many comments in the thread branching off yours are answering the wrong question -- "how to grow your money in general" -- which is not the same as passive income.
[1] See Vanguard's bond fund yield https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0084&...
However, if you're going to dispute the premise of the question, you need to explicitly say so and connect it to the alternate point you're making rather than expect readers to see the connection; otherwise, it looks like you're just being non-responsive.
And indeed, that's what the thread looks like now.
You can inherit only once from your rich parents.
I can spin out cloud servers in an instant.. but I have to wait days for my proxies to be activated.
Now they moved to cloud and didn't do any 50% off this year.
Why is your landing page so disingenuous? There's several things that are lies, given that you only have two customers. "We've gathered heaps of user feedback," "contact the onboarding team," etc.
I think you need a demo.
I had two separate unrelated customers ask for almost exactly the same system after not being able to find an existing solution that meet their needs.
Thanks for replying!
Most schemes I see here and elsewhere require a lot of investment (of time mostly) upfront, and then often also ongoing attention so the scheme keeps working.
-$0.05 for Namecheap.
Just started https://wormhole.network and still putting some more money and time to add an API (coming very, very soon!), but I'm pretty sure it will take off if I manage to promote it properly. The product itself is pretty awesome, probably unrivalled and the possibilities endless. I have a lot of features in the backlog and will be adding those based on user feedback.
This is not fully passive, but the income is not a linear function with the invested time, which ain't bad either.
Now I lease the two rooms to an immigrant, and another man who came to my city to work because he couldn't find a job where his wife and kids currently live.
Sit back and enjoy the dividends.
I always wonder if software products are really the way to go. Getting initial traction is seriously hard
At the current sign up rate I will remove that in about a week or two.
Thanks again for the feedback :)
I would better put my money in more "real" etf's and start from there.
You are very wrong, plus you are talking to jerguismi (localbitcoin's founder), who I'd presume has made quite a bit from arbitrage in the space...
The article talks about the slow transaction time being a barrier to arbitrage. Basically, you couldn't buy in one market and sell in another market simultaneously. Wouldn't that make an arbitrage opportunity speculative?
Also, because jerguismi is a founder of a bitcoin exchange, isn't it in his interest to promote trading bitcoin? I have no reason to believe that jerguismi would misrepresent his knowledge, but I think his role in the bitcoin community isn't de facto evidence that his statement is true.
The article is wrong on many levels. You don't need to transact (or even own) bitcoins in order to arbitrage. You can just buy/sell and open short/long positions via the exchanges websockets API... Not WallSt speed, but a decent speed for any self-made bot vs point&click traders.
Alternatively, ask around for a good hedge fund.
-AI stuff like http://predictor.ai
So thats how success looks like ;)
* P.S HN should take half the blame for disabling editing after a while