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Comment by revorad | Hacker News Reader

There is a strange obsession here on HN with passive income. Yet I haven't seen any good examples of passive income, which were built without significant effort or time. Income is anything but passive.

Here's a better way to look at it:

You want to earn $500/month? As a good Ruby developer, you can earn that much in two days doing contract work. And no, it doesn't matter if you're based in Bangalore, you could be based in Belgaum and it wouldn't matter, as long as you had a good internet connection.

You can make more money while doing work you enjoy, instead of trying so hard looking for passive income. And you can save up, invest that money and buy solid chunks of time to totally focus on your crazy startup ideas.

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I own a forum that makes me $1500/month. I haven't logged in for 6 months. All the effort was done in 2007.

Contract work, like 9-to-5 employment, is the opposite of what people have in mind when they say "passive income". The goal of passive income isn't to get something for nothing. It's to create something that generates income that isn't linked 1:1 with your time.

I meant that you can earn enough in 2 days, and then spend the rest of your time building a product which you really want to build and get off the time-selling treadmill.

Passive income does not mean no effort. It means initial investment that pays off over time. For example, book sales or a portfolio of stock photos would be passive income.

My point is that if it takes so much effort, it's better to spend it on doing something you're not trying to avoid doing. You make more money and it's more satisfying, when the goal is not to stop doing it.

But I think people get a kick out of chasing passive income, because it gives them a sense of having "hacked" the system.

Trading time for money is already how it works. It's the default. There's nothing more satisfying about it. We've been doing it since we got our first job sacking groceries or folding sweaters. You're paid a fixed rate because you're not the one risking anything.

This isn't "The System". It's just the labor market.

    > My point is that if it takes so much effort...

So what? It takes effort. Everything does. Building something that produces value on your own whim takes effort just like satisfying the terms of a work contract or finding good contracting relationships in the first place.

Know what else takes effort? Building only what others pay you to build despite your ability to build anything. Not everyone is content with that. I reckon most of us don't consider that the height of our life ambitions, but the alternatives aren't as straightforward as dropping our CV into a dropbox. Hence this Ask HN submission.

Your posts are just selling some brand of status quo that we're already familiar with.

Chill out, danneu. You misunderstood me.

I'd be the last person to say don't build a business! I'm saying the opposite. Selling time does suck and selling a product or service is much better.

All I'm saying is that if that's what you want to do, then do it properly. Don't waste time on "passive" stuff. Actively build a business.

From my perspective, passive income is about having enough cushion, esp in the US where we have no safety net, so that we can work on stuff that is value over just money. I have lots of stuff I want to work on that other people would like, but is risky from an income standpoint. Passive income is our own version of "basic income" so we can pursue other things. Not winning or hacking the system.

There is also a strange obsession with consulting. How do you find customers that aren't mom and pop shops looking for someone to build their site for $200?

Write online, ask your friends to refer clients, ask people for work at meetups/conferences, cold call and email companies, look up the dozen remote job boards that crop up every other week, subscribe to every industry mailing list you can.

There are about a 1000 ways to do it. But you have to actually do it.

Here's a business plan: someone build a site for us developers who despise marketing and/or who suck at it.

(I mean, if I loved marketing, I would have become a marketer).

Pair us with someone who loves marketing. S/he finds high-paying consulting jobs, I build awesome sites and/or mobile apps, and we split all the income 50%/50%, minus fees for the company.

Have some kind of rating system, where both your peers and customers rate your work. The higher that you are rated, the better marketer you can get paired with. I imagine the top marketing experts could find clients willing to pay $1000/hr rates for the top developers.

I think this could work.

Mediocre developers are often charged out at $1000/hr rates by big name tech companies to their big name clients, who themselves sub-contracted to mid name developers under quite careful contract terms (client liability). Sub-contractors sometimes sub-contract themselves.

I'm thinking from an enterprise type technology stack: A smaller startup offering PaaS or SaaS to enterprise clients, perhaps replacing an in-house system could benefit from the indirectly acquired knowledge and expertise pool of enterprise developers, where the barriers to entry are sometimes slow and expensive.

Cold call and email what companies? About what work? I doubt most of the mid-sized and big companies will hire a contractor with no recommendations from someone close to the execs.

I am not nitpicking, just sharing that what you've suggested works only for very experienced people with a big network. I am still in University.

Unless you've actually tried and failed at cold calling, that sounds like a typical excuse (which I used to use as well). If you're scared, you'll have to get over it by just trying it a few times.

And contrary to your belief, being in university is a great advantage. You can say you're a student doing some research/looking for help, and people are generally much more willing to help.

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