11 ms·
Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2015?
previous posts:
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
- mherrmann 11y agoI 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 ^^
- vram22 11y ago> 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.
- mherrmann 11y agoYes, 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).
- vram22 11y agoGot 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".
- mkaroumi 11y agoMy 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 http://gardannewatches.com)
- wingerlang 11y agoHow is this a passive income though? Seems like the literal opposite.
- mkaroumi 11y agoAs 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.
- DanBC 11y agoAre those images renders or actual product? It's a really nice looking watch, at a great price.
- mkaroumi 11y agoRenders. The watches will be finished soon and then we'll be able to show you real photos. That'll happen in weeks, I hope :)
- grhmc 11y agoWhat 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-watch http://gardannewatches.com/products/gardanne-black-brown-wat...
- psykovsky 11y agoThose artifacts look more from a badly cropped photo than a render, so I would venture a guess that was a real watch.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- robinhoode 11y agoIs 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.
- _neil 11y agoI'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.
- robinhoode 11y agoNice to see someone name drop Bigger Pockets! That was my first big project as a Rails developer.
- shahmat 11y agoI'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!
- ethbro 11y agoIf 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-Measures/dp/0071603271/ 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.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- coupdetaco 11y agoSperm donation, 1k/month and I have to go in twice a week.
- IndianAstronaut 11y agoAren'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/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/justice/kansas-sperm-donation/
- robinhoodexe 11y agoThat 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 https://www.retsinformation.dk/Forms/R0710.aspx?id=142348 (official law information in Danish)
- mrits 11y agoThat was an issue because two people just hooked up and exchanged sperm. There was no doctor involved.
- calbear81 11y agoI doubt a child would be involved if sperm was the only thing exchanged.
- coupdetaco 11y agoIm 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.
- _pmf_ 11y ago"Passive income" ... you might want to see a doctor.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- andy 11y ago-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 http://greenrobot.com/pirates -Mopub, Inmobi and Facebook ads on my iOS and Android apps ($14 from Mopub this month)
- Dorono 11y agoI 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".
- andy 11y agoI don't really know about that. Right now I'm promoting muscle products. I've promoted diet products and email submits before.
- dplgk 11y agoThe 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.
- apdinin 11y agoDuring 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246255
- enraged_camel 11y agoThis 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.
- apdinin 11y agoThat'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.
- tedmiston 11y agoHope not to make this become non-passive, but: on iOS the demo video loads, goes full screen, then immediately exits for me.
- sul4bh 11y agoI conform this is bug.
- DizzyDoo 11y agoI 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 http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900
- makmanalp 11y agoThis 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?
- DizzyDoo 11y agoI 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.
- heinrich5991 11y agoThe game looks interesting. How did you come up with the music in the trailer? I think it's really fitting. :)
- DizzyDoo 11y agoFull credit to my friend Peter Nickalls (http://www.peternickalls.com 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.
- ortuna 11y agoI've been running https://commits.io/ https://commits.io/ The income is passive, but I know I can do a lot more if I put more time into it.
- ggambetta 11y agoMy novel -- in English http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QPBYGFI http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QPBYGFI and Spanish http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I1EU1Q0 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 :)
- akshat_h 11y agoYou may consider pricing it higher. I have seen shorts i.e 40-50 page books at 2.99
- mkaroumi 11y agoTotally agree. Always consider increasing your price. If people find it valuable, they'll still buy it:)
- brilliantsob 11y agoAmazon 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.
- peterjmag 11y agoCool! Just bought it. And I agree, you should try raising the price! =)
- ggambetta 11y agoThank 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 :(
- Shorel 11y agoWhich version of the novel do you prefer ?
- pedrokost 11y agoA very simple website which does the maths for `today() + N.days` for you. http://daysfromnow.js.org/ http://daysfromnow.js.org/ Total earnings: 7.35EUR in total from Google Ads
- mbesto 11y agoHas anyone in this community had success dropshipping? Any indications of expected margins? I'm particularly looking at TV accessories.
- nrivadeneira 11y agoI 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.
- roycehaynes 11y agohttps://pareday.com https://pareday.com - I'm making passive income off SitterCity affiliate program.
- dogstraightup 11y agoThis 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.
- nonotmeplease 11y agoSelling t-shirts http://www.zazzle.com/freesoftwarelove* http://www.zazzle.com/freesoftwarelove*
- mod 11y agoDoing any good?
- paltman 11y agoI have been running http://aminosoftware.com 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.
- twelvenmonkeys 11y agoMy passive income for 2015 was (http://kihi.io 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.
- tarball 11y agoI 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/ http://ecogex.com/logos/
- turley 11y agohttps://www.ottopost.com/ 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 :)
- tedmiston 11y agoHeavy 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?
- turley 11y agoThanks! 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.
- tedmiston 11y agoHave 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/ https://fl.ag/ [2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1306413684/flag-the-app-that-prints-and-mails-your-photos-for/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1306413684/flag-the-app...
- taprun 11y agoI 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 http://taprun.com/pricing
- watmough 11y agoMy 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
- dangrossman 11y agoImprovely (https://www.improvely.com https://www.improvely.com) and W3Counter (https://www.w3counter.com 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.
- lukestevens 11y agoIncredible. You're the unsung, bootstrap SaaS success story of HN imo :)
- going_to_800 11y agoMate, this looks like a modified version of piwik, how much is different from it?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dangrossman 11y agoI 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.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- 2bluesc 11y agoMy neighbor and I built https://backroad.io https://backroad.io for easy on-demand OpenVPN servers
- thegabez 11y agoThe first website I started was [SynbioSwag](http://www.synbioswag.com 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 http://www.themuse-seek.com) haven't made any money yet but slowly growing in users. So heres to 2016, hopefully Sheldon reads this.
- someotheridiot 11y agohttps://rebrickable.com 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.
- pauljohncleary 11y agoI have a chrome extension and service at http://tab.bz 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
- tedmiston 11y agoThis is cool. I use OneTab similarly though really just to stash tab overload more than share.
- pauljohncleary 11y agoThanks! 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.
- reboog711 11y agoI wrote and self published a training course on AngularJS for Flex Developers. ( https://www.lifeafterflex.com/AngularJSForFlexDevelopers/ 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.
- chown 11y agoAfter having it free for 2.5 years, started selling LightPaper (http://lightpaper.ashokgelal.com/ 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.
- panorama 11y agoI wrote a book that helps junior developers (e.g. bootcamp grads) land jobs: https://kokev.in/hired-fast 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.
- ddgflorida 11y agoConvertCsv.com (http://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.
- palidanx 11y agoAwesome idea! How did you initially advertise the site?
- ddgflorida 11y agoI've never advertised, but number one google search ranking for most keywords associated with CSV helps tremendously.
- NameNickHN 11y agoI 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.
- rphlx 11y agoCryptocurrency mining, as it was in 2014. Although it's mostly- rather than fully- passive.
- gesman 11y agoSelling domain name to chinese buyer over the weekend :)