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Ask HN: Ideas on creating passive income streams
What are some ideas as developer where I can turn my skill into passive income.
I write blogs but I’m not sure if its a good idea to monetize it
- holgersindbaek 6y agoI'm a designer-turned-developer and created a nice-looking solitaire card game website: https://online-solitaire.com/ https://online-solitaire.com/. It's making me around $1500 a month. My approach was to find a nice of apps that where already popular and then see if I could make it better.
- JPLeRouzic 6y agoIt's a beautiful game, but I wonder what part of the game is monetized? Thanks!
- holgersindbaek 6y agoThanks a lot :-). Hit me up at contact@online-solitaire.com if you have any suggestions or feedback for the site. After 5 games or so, ads will start to appear. Just normal sidebar ads. I've made it so people won't be blasted with ads the very first time they enter the site, so they'll get the "optimal" experience to start with.
- alexmingoia 6y agoHow is it earning money? I don't see any ads or premium versions for sale.
- holgersindbaek 6y agoSorry for the confusion. They appear after about 5 games. It's just normal sidebar ads.
- mettamage 6y agoAny tips on becoming a developer turned designer? I'd be interested in that.
- holgersindbaek 6y agoThat's a tough one. One suggestion would be "don't". Most companies want either one or the other. I'm not a brilliant developer or a brilliant designer, which makes it hard for me to find my role in bigger companies. On the other hand I can make things like https://online-solitaire.com/ https://online-solitaire.com/ and https://habitualapp.io/ https://habitualapp.io/ as a one-man operation.
- holgersindbaek 6y agoJust realized that my first answer might not be the most helpful :-P. If you're still interested in becoming better at design, it's all about learning-by-doing. Much like development. I spend a lot of time on https://dribbble.com/ https://dribbble.com/ when I initially started designing and that's often where I go to find inspiration these days as well. Besides that, I'd suggest to doing as many design-related projects as possible. They don't have to be big. They just need to force you to go through the process of going from thought to an actual design. A lot of people practice design by re-designing already existing apps. The tool of the trade nowadays, when it comes to websites and apps at least, is https://www.sketch.com/ https://www.sketch.com/, which I can highly recommend. Hope that helped a bit more.
- mettamage 6y ago
- archenemy 6y agocool! I opened it just to check it out and ended playing my first solitaire game in (probably) a decade.
- holgersindbaek 6y agoHaha... I hope you enjoyed it. Hit me up at contact@online-solitaire.com if you have any suggestions or feedback for the site :-).
- thirtythree 6y agoI looked at the site and there doesn't seem to be ads. How much does it cost to host?
- holgersindbaek 6y agoSorry for the confusion. Forgot to mention they only appear after a while. After you've played 5 games (if I remember correctly) they'll start to appear. I think I spend about $60 a month hosting it. My biggest expense right now is Moz which is $100/month.
- saluki 6y agonice work, well done, fun to play, is your revenue all just from your sidebar ads?
- holgersindbaek 6y agoYup... if you have any ideas for other potential revenue streams, let me know :-).
- 6510 6y agoSell custom decks of cards.
- holgersindbaek 6y agoInteresting idea :-). Have you seen something similar done somewhere else?
- NicoJuicy 6y agoHow many visitors per month do you have?
- holgersindbaek 6y agoI get around 600k pageviews a month. So A LOT of returning visitors.
- mraza007 6y agoThat’s phenomenal with that kind of money you can easily travel and live in countries like Bali Thailand and etc . Even afford good lifestyle there
- huydotnet 6y agoI'm curious, what ads service you're running? As far as I know, Google Adsense doesn't allow web apps.
- 8589934591 6y agoWonderful site. Thank you. I have a question. So how do you deal with sites which deliver the same content as you? Like, say you come across another site which also delivers playing card games like yours, would you go after it legally or something? Or have you faced issues where you have been told you are plagiarizing the game from another place? Pardon my ignorance. I am unfamiliar when it comes to this kind of knowledge.
- alexmingoia 6y agoWhat does passive income mean to you? Is it passive income when a YouTuber gets paid whenever someone views a video, but spends hundreds of hours making great content and building an audience? Is SaaS MRR passive income after you've spent hundreds or thousands of hours building a product and acquiring customers? Is it passive income when an author receives royalties after spending months writing, publishing, and marketing a book? Is advertising revenue passive income after you've spent hundreds of hours writing blog posts and building an audience? If you want to leverage your time to make money when you sleep, you need to do the work to acquire income producing assets. Here's some ways you could monetize your skills as a developer: - Provide value for free (blog posts, code, videos, whatever) to grow an audience, then sell courses or paid content to that audience. - Create open source software that other people need, then sell training videos on how to use it. - Build an audience for your blog, and join a developer/tech focused advertising network.
- gitgud 6y ago> Create open source software that other people need, then sell training videos on how to use it. Please don't do this, I personally hate this motivation for Open Source development. The incentive of the project developer is not aligned with the user. The developer has the incentive to make the software complex and unintuitive, so that people require training to use it. Any proposed changes to make the project easier to configure, threaten the income of the developer and will probably not be considered... Monetisation is extremely hard to get right in open-source software.
- mraza007 6y agoAgreed monetization is really hard on open source software
- alexmingoia 6y agoEven better, don’t write the software at all. Just sell training for popular open-source software. Could offer a cut of sales to developer in exchange for advertising the training on the GitHub.
- 6y ago
- shoo 6y agobaseline suggestion for truly passive income is invest in the stock market: do dev work for people in exchange for money --> invest the money in the stock market (e.g. low cost passive index funds) --> expect roughly 5% real return on capital invested for long term buy & hold stock investment
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- giantg2 6y agoHistorically you could count on 5-7%. The outlook for the market over the next 10 years is an annual return of 3-5% (Vanguard). Just wanted to throw that out there to elaborate on the 5% number you put out.
- mraza007 6y agoI have been thinking about it do you know how can i get started I’m just scared what if i make the wrong investment
- marketgod 6y agoLook into Financial Independence and 4% Safe withdrawal rate. Also look up lazy portfolio.
- muzani 6y agoSites like https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1 https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1 are full of examples on what has been done. You can't do the same idea twice usually, but you can spot lots of patterns there.
- mrfusion 6y agoIs selling something on Etsy ever a good idea? How to know if there is demand?
- giantg2 6y agoIt can be. It's not passive income since you have to make and ship the items. If you see other items similar to yours, then there is likely demand. If you don't, then you could experiment by making a few and listing them.
- mrfusion 6y agoThanks. I was thinking of selling wooden benches but would the shipping be ridiculous? Are there any shipping hacks to keep it affordable?
- giantg2 6y agoNot really. You can work with the shipping companies to get the rates lowered if you're shipping as a small business instead of an individual, but it won't help much. You might be better off selling them at craft shows or selling on consignment through a local small business.
- jthistle 6y agoThis shipping hack may apply, or it may not. Search for a local warehouse that provides order fulfillment services and see if you can have them ship your benches. A place like that ships enough packages they can usually get lower shipping rates than other businesses. I own a company like that in Ohio. With my rates it costs perhaps $30 to ship a gaming PC to California... for an individual it might cost $75.
- akudha 6y agoDoesn't Etsy let you sell digital products too? That could be passive, isn't it?
- 6y ago
- scriptstar 6y agoI made a course on a small topic which is keyword research/SEO related and hosted on Udemy. It took me a week to create the whole thing since then I haven't done anything except answering a few questions of the students. It's 99% passive. I am making around $150 per month. This is the simple method I followed (CPSO) Customer => Problem => Solution => Offer 1.) find a topic with enough interest (customer finding activity) 2.) identify a single problem in that topic (Problem finding activity) 3.) provide a clear cut solution to the problem Make sure they get a result by the end of it. Record your screen showing the solution without any fluff. (Solution providing activity) 4) Create a compelling offer and present to the customer (Make a compelling offer activity) For the last part (offer), I created a video which is almost 45 minutes long and taught nearly 90% of the course. There's no need to buy if you watch the intro video which is free to preview on the course. It's doing well. Watch the preview video, and you are good to go—no need to buy it. But if you want to support an honest creator, then please consider purchasing the course using the following link. Many thanks. https://www.udemy.com/course/keyword-golden-ratio-formula-find-easy-keywords-to-rank-high-in-google/?couponCode=HACKER-NEWZ https://www.udemy.com/course/keyword-golden-ratio-formula-fi...
- mraza007 6y agoThe course looks very phenomenal I might buy it since SEO is really important as it gets you to the right audience
- scriptstar 6y agoThank you for your kind comments. I am looking forward to see you there.
- amoitnga 6y agobuild a dating app that doesn't charge for reading messages from other users. Make it 1 dollar a month. let us talk to each other. Keep our profile there for years without us having to take an action. if somebody finds me and wants to talk to me - I want to get an email about it. I don't understand why such a simple app (browse, filter, message, get notifications) has to cost 10/15 bucks a month. make it 10 a year.
- mraza007 6y agoI have seen people doing that but I’m afraid people below 18 might start using that
- matt_the_bass 6y agoFigure out a way to make money from a hobby. It’s not passive but it can be no net effort. I like to make wordclocks. I like the process of figuring out better manufacturing processes. Some people buy them. Win win situation. I don’t sell many, but enough to pay for my cnc.