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Comment by altairiumblue | Hacker News Reader

- to generate income you need to either provide something valuable, scam people or get extremely lucky

- if you want to provide something valuable you need a good idea, some skills and hundreds or even thousands of hours of work on your idea

- all that work on creating and maintaining your project makes the potential income not passive at all

My impression is that the people who succeed at this usually start with a good idea, work on it for a while and somewhere down the line potentially turn it into an income stream. But the interesting idea comes first. On the other hand, the people who begin with the goal of making money and just the wish to "have passive income" or "be an entrepreneur" usually don't get anywhere. Unless they scam people or happen to get lucky, of course.

Also, everything from Robert Kiyosaki including "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" is somewhere on the scale between questionable advice and scam.

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It's a matter of scale. How many teenagers do you know who make $5 here, or $10 there, just mowing lawns, cleaning windows, or doing babysitting?

They're making money without luck, without scamming, and without being terribly valuable.

The problem is those things don't scale. I can imagine a couple of happy teenagers raking in $400-$500 a week, if they really push themselves, but it will be very seasonal work.

Hrm. uber for lawns? facebook for windows? (There are a lot of agencies that work as middlemen for childcare, where often vetting and background checks are involved. I'm not familiar with such a thing for pet-walking, window-cleaning, or lawn-mowing. Perhaps they exist, or perhaps there's your cheap and easy idea! Physical labour is cheap, anyway :)

Pet-walking: rover.com

Rover.com seems to be pretty shady https://www.gofundme.com/rovercom-sitter-killed-my-dog

https://www.gofundme.com/my-rover-sitter-killed-my-dog

http://www.roversdirtysecret.com/tag/killed/

Not to disagree or agree, but this reminded me of more than one story I've read of a young lawnmower person who got enterprising and started their own lawncare business, employing other people (and becoming quite successful).

They probably didn't have passion for mowing lawns, but perhaps their on-the-ground experience taught them enough that they could then use their other intellectual/social skills to scale up.

I don't have any formula for how to translate these anecdotes into new ideas... else I'd be doing one myself.

As a more practical and realistic alternative to Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" I would highly recommend "The Millionaire Next Door" by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko.

While not as eye catching or sexy as some other "get rich quick" books, it offers a profile of the average millionaire using research and interviews by the authors. As somebody who grew up thinking that wealth equated to status (and vice versa), this book was eye opening!

But the interesting idea comes first.

I am not sure this is a requirement. Some of the safest businesses are also the most boring, aren't they? Everybody needs to eat, everybody needs insurance, clothing, waste disposal... etc. There isn't anything unique or even interesting about waste management and yet, there are people making serious money in it.

I guess an idea just needs to be useful and executed well for it to make money. There are of course dumb ideas that make money and there are of course interesting ideas that make money, but the majority of businesses are just plain boring, just like many of our daily tasks.

> - to generate income you need to either provide something valuable, scam people or get extremely lucky

This isn't always true. If you're famous and/or important, you can get paid a high salary to sit on corporate boards and put in a few dozen hours/year.

I guess maybe that falls under "get extremely lucky"?

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