3 ms·
My definition of "passive income" is income for which you need not work more than five hours a week. Some people are stricter and define it to mean no work each
by dsacco 9y ago
My definition of "passive income" is income for which you need not work more than five hours a week. Some people are stricter and define it to mean no work each week. With very few exceptions, there are no opportunities which will actually end up being passive income for you just because you're a web developer. There are several opportunities to increase your income, but it's rare that they are fully automatable (or even feasible as a part time venture).
One option is running a successful service company; this is by definition not passive unless you own it and don't need to actively manage it. So that's out.
Likewise, a productized SaaS company is not passive unless you have very minimal customer support requirements, new feature development and marketing to do. That's overwhelmingly unlikely (if you look through the routine threads asking HN for SaaS success stories, you don't typically find instances where there is a minimal time commitment).
I'm not trying to discourage you from developing a successful stream of income. I'm just trying to push back against the idea that you can reliably generate income passively using web development skills. There are a few options that can require very little time (in theory, I still don't think you'll easily get there in practice). But I think the only one that will leverage web development and still be mostly passive is running a network of websites monetized through ads that have low effort content. Other than that, maybe write a useful ebook and promote it until it has excellent SEO and referrals.
- thakobyan 9y agoThanks for the great answer. Maybe I should have mentioned "side income" not "passive income".
- shanecleveland 9y agoNow we're talking ... so what sort of web dev do you do? For a business, in an agency, for your own clients? It's all about solving problems. What problems have you solved for them or yourself that you can automate?
- thakobyan 9y agoI work full-time but want to start something on the side. I've built couple projects in the past but nothing that major that generates income.
- dsacco 9y agoLet's start by reframing your thinking: which business problems can you reliably solve for companies that value time more than money by leveraging web development? If you already have a full time job, you might be disallowed from side income derived from services (i.e. consulting). If you don't have such a provision, you can start by selling your services for web development to companies that need them. Search through patio11 and tptacek's comments to read more about this route. In my opinion consulting is easier than productized software (even if it's less straightforward sometimes). But you can more easily scale up a software product and reduce your time commitment for it. So if that appeals to you, then you should start by looking at what domain knowledge you have.
- icebraining 9y agoCan you really maintain a consulting service if you have your 9-5 weekdays unavailable? Even on sites like Elance it seems like many clients expect you to be available during the day for Skype calls.
- reboog711 9y agoI don't completely agree.... Passive Income the easy way: Invest money in an S&P 500 Index fund. Routine dividends are easily count as passive income. You need a lot invested for this to be a significant amount, though. The reason this may be easier for a web developer than, say, a retail cashier is that the web developer most likely has a higher salary. --- Owning a company, whether services company or SaaS is also another way to get passive income. However, unless you have huge capitol to hire folks to do the work, or put a lot a time in to build the company [and then replace yourself] it may not be practical; and it definitely isn't immediate. -- I've done the writing route, writing, and self-publishing, technical programming books. It is a great way for passive income. Once it is published you get residual income each month. Much to my surprise, I've found that programming books have a much longer tail than I would have expected.
- imdsm 9y agohow much do the books make you, and how much have they made you, over how long? thought about writing, but not sure if it would be worth it
- reboog711 9y agoI'm still not sure if it is worth it as a stand alone venture. :ha, ha: I have gotten consulting clients through my self published efforts, which pays off in dividends. Generally I make around $50 a month. I'm not laughing all the way to the bank; but it isn't nothing. I assume most self published [technical] authors are in the same boat financially. There are a few 'lottery winners' out there, such as ngBook, but most probably trickle along. I'd have to look up dates and run financial reports to figure out how long and how much. I don't spend too much time running the numbers for that aspect of my business. I published "Life After Flex" which was explicitly targeted to Flex Developers who want to learn "HTML5" applications, primarily focused on AngularJS. That used the "Authority" model; so high price with lots of extras. I retooled that into the "LearnWith" series which builds the same app in different technologies. It is intended to be "no frills" approach and I sell the books for $6.99 through Gumroad and Amazon. I'm copy editing the Angular 4 version of it now; and with any luck I'll be working on a React [or maybe Vue?] version before end of year.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jasonkester 9y agoif you look through the routine threads asking HN for SaaS success stories, you don't typically find instances where there is a minimal time commitment Here's the front page Ask HN from 3 weeks ago where we all spent a couple days talking about examples of businesses doing exactly that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14437921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14437921 It's entirely possible to build a SaaS that takes close to zero of your steady-state time if you design it to do so from the start.