Comment by astrofinch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by astrofinch | Hacker News Reader

In case anyone is reading this thread and becoming pessimistic about their chances of achieving passive income, I'd like to note that there is a clear sampling bias: folks that have found profitable niches are less likely to share their projects for fear of attracting competition. I suspect that choosing a good niche is pretty important when it comes to passive-income type projects. It looks like the most profitable project so far in the thread is il's, and he sold his site on flippa, so competition is now someone else's problem.

Just to test this out, if anyone is staying quiet about their project for fear of attracting competition, could they please reply to this comment and say so? Don't worry, your silence is totally understandable :)

(The sampling bias will probably still remain somewhat due to folks have their projects linked to from their profiles and not wanting to remove them.)

My most profitable side project actually plays in an extremely competitive space but I usually stay quiet about it because it's boring, extremely uncool, and borders on sleazy. Anyways, I wrote it in a weekend and it makes me about $400/month.

Boring AND sleazy. Now I'm intrigued.

It's stripping for blind people.

That doesn't sound boring or sleazy to me.

Similarly, a lot of folks I know dabble in 'adult' orientated side-businesses.

Most people won't be up-front about working in that space publicly.

I assume this is affiliate marketing and not content creation?

Almost always based on either affiliate marketing or just sourced content. Source is cheap and common, and the same, tired adult content model still works: Horny guy, cock in hand, still whips out credit card. It's an aging model, but there's always margin on the dance floor.

Do you use AdWords for PPC traffic? Is that allowed by Google?

> Just to test this out, if anyone is staying quiet about their project for fear of attracting competition, could they please reply to this comment and say so?

Um, now that you've asked, the most important part of any secret is knowing the existence of a secret (or phrased otherwise: you don't ask questions about stuff you don't know the existence of).

So: no, you can't really control for this sampling bias.

But thanks for asking, we're fine :)

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