12 ms·

Using coding skills to make passive income

259 points by czue 2y ago

czue 2y ago
Here's an off-the-cuff summary: First you have to make space in your life for it. You need long blocks of time for deep work. The first idea you pick is unlikely to work, so pick something and start moving. Many of the best products come out of working on something else. When building, optimize for speed. Try to get something out in the world as quickly as possible and iterate from there. Pick a tech stack you're familiar with, that you'll be fastest in. Try to spend half your time on marketing/sales, even if you hate it. The most important skill you can have is resiliance. Not giving up is the best path to success. This is hard because there is so much uncertainty in this career path. It's worth it! The autonomy and freedom are unmatched by any other career.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  Well, when you put it like that, it sounds pretty fluffy.
- martylamb 2y ago
  Good summary. I've landed on all of the above with my own projects, from a mix of experience, reading, and reason. Hardest for me has been making time between family, work, and other activities that are important for me. Unlike when I was younger I can't just stay up coding until 3AM anymore. In fact I find myself without the mental energy after work that I want to put into my projects, so evenings are out completely for me. So instead I wake up at 5AM and put myself into it before work. It was a big adjustment, but all I needed to do while acclimating to that schedule was ask myself each morning which I wanted more: warm blankets or a successful project? Now it's a pretty energizing way to start the day.
  - gottagocode 2y ago
    Take the warm blankets into the office with you
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    > but all I needed to do while acclimating to that schedule was ask myself each morning which I wanted more: warm blankets or a successful project? I choose warm blankets lying next to my warm wife where my heat and shelter is paid by exchanging my labor for money 40 hours a week, paid time off, paid health care, etc
- latexr 2y ago
  In other words, it’s the exact same bland, generic, worthless advice parroted by every grifter selling you the dream of financial independence via passive income. And if you fail, it’s your own fault, you just didn’t want it enough, you didn’t do the necessary sacrifices.
  - flir 2y ago
    The advice (in the post you're replying to) isn't bad. But you can do it all, and still not have lightning strike.
    - f1shy 2y ago
      I certainly do not think is good. I won’t say I’ve seen destroyed lives because of it, but pretty much miserable in comparison to what it had been if not followed the advice. It is just bot for anyone, and just too often fails.
      - flir 2y ago
        And I've seen people succeed (admittedly by spending every spare minute devoting themselves to the pursuit of money). Can we agree that it is, at core, gambling? Like spending all your disposable income on lottery tickets?
        scarface_74 2y ago
        > And I've seen people succeed (admittedly by spending every spare minute devoting themselves to the pursuit of money). Is that what you call success?
        flir 2y ago
        It was for him. It wouldn't have been for me, hence the caveat. Different people have different goals.
        latexr 2y ago
- ryandrake 2y ago
  This is not really passive income. What he's describing is running your own one-person business. That's about as far from passive as you can get. Actual passive income is living off the returns and royalties from assets, doing nothing but managing those assets (or maybe not even doing that).
  - grahamj 2y ago
    But you have to work to get those assets, just like building a website
    - sixstringtheory 2y ago
      OK, but TFA is about the work part, not the passive part, despite the title. Even having a “portfolio of revenue generating products” will require work to maintain. Maybe full time or more so, depending on if you used log4j or an SSL cert from a provider that screwed things up, say. Or built on a fickle platform like reddit, twitter or Apple that changes the fundamental rules every so often. Just because you don’t have a boss that will fire you for not waking up for on call during an outage, doesn’t mean that outages won’t happen or need to be fixed. It reminds me of people that consider buying a second home and rent out the old one to gain “passive income”, not realizing how much work it can be to be a good landlord.
      - alp1n3_eth 2y ago
        I feel like "passive" income is anything that takes under 10 hours a week once it's up and running. There's rarely any opportunity that can be considered passive if your definition is 0 work ever once it's going. The only thing that [might] fit into that slot is investment dividends.
        sixstringtheory 2y ago
        I don’t know if it’s 0 for me, but it’s definitely way less than 10 hours per week. I have ETFs and a HYSA that I basically never look at. That’s passive.
daghamm 2y ago
Looking at your portfolio, one could argue that to succeed you need to try a lot of different projects some of which you maybe have no personal interest in. I think some people would not be comfortable with this and rather take a steady paycheck from Big Corp while working on 1-2 darling projects at home.
- jamal-kumar 2y ago
  It kind of mirrors my observations in what makes a successful individual in the world of ecommerce, you gotta have the capital to start like ten ideas at once then you whittle out which one don't profit more than 10k a month and come up with new ones to fill the place. Shit sounds like tedium or uncomfortable or whatever to some, but I know multiple millionaires on this tip.
- czue 2y ago
  ...maybe? Although that doesn't quite ring true. Every project (even the dumb wedding cards one) arose from some need in my life that turned into a desire to make something exist in the world. That said, I totally agree that some people would rather keep the steady paycheck. The career is a large up-front investment with a variable outcome. But, it's not as hard as it can be made out to be, and the payoff, if successful, is immense.
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
I want to believe. But is this really still possible in todays world? Isn't there competition from the thousands of software devs laid off in last couple years. They can all make apps. Just like the Flappy Bird guy. Sure, it was big hit, but so easy to have a hundred knock offs within a week.
- Scoundreller 2y ago
  Part of the goal might be to stay under the radar. In a pre-app world, I wrote some blogs with ads. Some of my favourite ones were dumb but fairly evergreen articles where I had domain knowledge like “best directions to the dmv offices in $mytown”. (Pro-tip: it’s upstairs at the XYZ shopping mall, but if you park by the pizza place, you’ll be at the doors that take you straight there) Reliable and consistent income. Not a ton, but more like a bond than a stock.
- kflgkans 2y ago
  I think it's simply survivorship bias. Thousands of people try this and fail. And occasionally you read an article like this, which is like the one in a million who managed to get lucky with their ideas and manage to make it a success. And I think they underestimate how much luck they had.
  - czue 2y ago
    Luck is a huge factor for sure but I also think it's not as hard as you're making it out to be if you set yourself up for success. I have four products that make money, built over the course of seven years. None of them really benefit from each other. If it was pure luck and 1/1,000 chance of success I don't think my current portfolio would be possible. (I also have a lot of failures, so I agree there's luck and risk, just not as strong as you're making it out to be)
- factorialboy 2y ago
  Building a business is more than just building the app. And everything can be duplicated for cheap, especially with gen-ai. But small-businesses will transform, continue and dare-I-say thrive.
dirtybirdnj 2y ago
> First you have to make space in your life for it. You need long blocks of time for deep work. This is the obstacle to EVERYTHING in my life. It's very chaotic, which causes a lot of stress and has led to decreasing performance. I try so hard to clean up, to improve things. To try to proactively get ahead of stuff. It never seems to be enough. Something happens I cannot prepare for, or in trying to save and be efficient something goes wrong I cannot afford. My whole plan, saving AND getting things done has now blown up. I no longer have one, I now have three problems and I have also lost/wasted a day. Tomorrow I have four problems, plus I am aware of this dynamic and unable to escape it so technically 5? This compounds over time. How do you escape this failure loop? tl;dr: the "being poor is expensive" trap, how escape when so burned out you are struggling to tread water? It's not just money, it's attention span. It's the ability to set my mind to something and accomplish what I set out. Having that muscle atrophy and tear has been traumatic and I am struggling to find emotional or medical interventions worth the effort.
- ndileas 2y ago
  It really depends on the specifics of your life. I get a lot of mileage out of imagining what a more functional adult would do, then doing that (stupid example: <FUNCTIONAL ADULT> doesn't buy the cheapest shoes available and try to make them last 5 years while enduring back pain). It's hard to change quickly; sometimes decisions I made years ago (or that someone in my family made decades ago) throw a wrench in the works. I also took a big step back from various forms of ambition, in favor of building a solid, enjoyable life. I hope it gets better for you too.
  - dirtybirdnj 2y ago
    > I also took a big step back from various forms of ambition, in favor of building a solid, enjoyable life. I think you are onto something here, but there's no way to keep my current situation sustainable let alone live on less. The financial thing I can't do much about but the psychological maybe. It's hard when I feel like there is nobody to help me and I have to do everything alone.
    - 2y ago
cootsnuck 2y ago
Good post! I think the gradual transition you were able to do from salary -> consulting -> software products is very important and not the norm (mainly being able to keep part of your salary while doing some consulting on the side). The only people I've seen able to do that are VPs or C-suite. I'm below those rungs. So I'm quitting my job to go "all in" on the consulting. (But I've been prepping and will make sure things line up so I can hit the ground running.) All of this is to say, I think that transition either during or after salary work is the super important part that I see everyone gloss over. My goal is to make a fraction of my salary with consulting for the first couple years, focus just on that, and eventually shift my focus to software products.
- w10-1 2y ago
  With consulting, you're responsible for finding and securing all your opportunities. With work, they're fed to you (at volume!). Don't underestimate the opportunity cost of any decision. Right now with such broad tech+business awareness, being at the right place at the right time is pretty much your only differentiator. So perhaps consulting will lead organically to the best opportunity, but often opportunity is gated by access to a good team, reasonable infrastructure, and most importantly good customers with leading-edge problems.
lngr 2y ago
This is what I call meta advice. He makes most of the money now from persuading others starting a passive income side gig, for which he coincidentally has a starter pack to sale. While this might be a reliable income, it is in no means a template for other people to start a successful passive income business with a working business idea.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  It's been repeatedly shown that the best alternative source of income is selling to people looking for alternative sources of income.
  - aatd86 2y ago
    One extra level of indirection always solves everything.
    - el_memorioso 2y ago
      Except for too many levels of indirection.
    - ipython 2y ago
      Business idea: I can sell you a list of people who you can then pay to tell you how to make money on the internet!
  - madcaptenor 2y ago
    It worked for Levi Strauss.
  - avgDev 2y ago
    When there is a gold rush sell shovels.
    - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
      The modern version of that is GPUs.
ternnoburn 2y ago
Reading this, it feels much more like "using coding skills to make income". It's a great description of one person's journey, but "work hard for a decade, continue to work at a healthy lighter pace after" isn't really passive income in my mind. And I'm not sure it beats, e.g., work hard and save hard at tech company for a decade, then use the invested surplus as passive income to work lightly thereafter. At least, not in the general case.
- oldandboring 2y ago
  > work hard and save hard at tech company for a decade, then use the invested surplus as passive income to work lightly thereafter I used an LLM to help me do the math but it appears you would have to make $1.5 million/year at "tech company" if you were to save 20% of your income and have $4 million saved after 10 years. That $4mm saved would allow you to appreciate to $5mm to retire on after 20 years while simultaneously withdrawing $150,000/year in passive income to live on. Of course you can adjust this based on how aggressively you save, how much you need to withdraw each year, and how much runway you have until retirement and how much retirement you need to be comfortable. Regardless, what you're suggesting is available only to the privileged few who can get extremely high-paying jobs early in their careers and hold onto them while having low enough expenses and high enough discipline to save aggressively. OP's approach is a very doable path for folks who aren't so fortunate and/or young, but can code, have some life experience, and don't want to go get another job.
  - Jabbles 2y ago
    Your choice of numbers is very odd - even though you mention that you can adjust them for your own circumstances, the starting point is unrealistic. - Very few people earn $1.5M/year - Saving 20% implies that you're spending ~$1M/year while working, so $150k/year in retirement would not be appealing Did the LLM pick the numbers for you?
    - oldandboring 2y ago
      Whoosh. You missed the point completely. Of course very few people earn $1.5M/year. That's my point -- the poster I was replying to was naively thinking they could just work hard for a tech company and save for 10 years and then live off the passive income of the saved investment, which is silly. The rest of the numbers were conservative figures I chose. $5mm to retire, 20% saved while working, $150k/year passive income. The whole point is that what he's describing is pretty unrealistic.
roger_ 2y ago
I’ve been wanting to do this for years but I’m still trying to figure out how to get started. My skills are more in algorithm development (statistical signal processing, machine learning) and electronics than web coding though, so it’s probably not as easy as just making a simple website that does something slightly useful.
- ge96 2y ago
  on the other hand I would venture to say there are less like you (demand) than generic web devs
- acuozzo 2y ago
  I'm in the same boat, but my domain is embedded programming. I recently ran across advice here to just copy an existing successful idea and compete on e.g., price, rather than wasting time trying to come up with something novel / innovative. The argument is that if the idea is successful, then most of the market legwork has been done for you already. I'm considering entertaining it. I last seriously did WWW-related work in 2001 or so, but Python with FastAPI + HTMX + Bulma CSS looks easy enough to spin-up on and maps pretty well to my now-ancient understanding of the web.
  - roger_ 2y ago
    I’ve done simple one off web stuff over the years and yeah it seems much more straightforward nowadays. Copying and undercutting someone else is certainly easier!
- avgDev 2y ago
  Unless you are trying to develop something ground breaking, web isn't terribly difficult if you have programming experience. Yes, there will be some new things to grasp. However, tooling is pretty great today and if you pick up a known framework most problems are already solved. You will just fit the pipes together to do what you want.
  - TechDebtDevin 2y ago
ge96 2y ago
I still want to do this 9 years later I still haven't made something. Still working for someone else. Going to get out of debt first then work on it again, I want to be able to sleep/wake whenever.
mettamage 2y ago
One part of me is itching to do it. Another part of me can't let it go that I can't beat leetcode interviews. I'm quite close, I think I can do it. I guess it's an ego thing. But not fully though is it? Earning a couple of years of FAANG money opens one up to then just travel the world. I'm from the EU but will make the switch to the US in about a year from now (marriage). So from that perspective, I just don't know if it's strategic. When you have $300K in the bank and you just go to SE asia, you also have "no schedule" etc. That should be doable with FAANG. I do feel this path delivers more impact though as life becomes a bit more like a game and you're creating your own quests. You're solving things that you are quick enough at to solve but also things that you find important or just simply fun. Man, I'm torn. Both take quite a bit of a time investment. I'm not sure how I can monetize a "leetcode with me" type of thing. If there was still a market for that, I might do that to start both things off at the same time. Maybe I should just become a Twitch streamer :') But I don't think that'd pay off. I guess it wouldn't hurt to try.
- jebarker 2y ago
  > Earning a couple of years of FAANG money opens one up to then just travel the world. If you can resist lifestyle inflation
  - mettamage 2y ago
    I could now but that'd be tough with kids.
- Scubabear68 2y ago
  With all the FAANG layoffs is this still a realistic goal for many people?
  - mettamage 2y ago
    Fair question, maybe I'm a bit too starry eyed. What do you think?
    - 2y ago
coold 2y ago
Using your coding skills: 1) make hello-world-ish portfolio 2) sell courses how to make money using coding skills 3) PROFIT
zb3 2y ago
Unpopular opinion: truly "passive" income should be impossible, because this means someone is working hard but not receiving their compensation. EDIT: of course unless it's the robots that do all the work, but then it's not really passive...
TrackerFF 2y ago
I wonder how LLMs will impact this industry. 10 years ago, when I was chasing this - I'd look for proven business models. Find some small startup / company that sells some software or service, try to figure out what they did and how they did it, then spend time getting into the domain, tech, and what have you. It was a lot of work, and took time. If I do it now, I have the luxury of simply asking my LLM of choice to give me a run-down, and what I need to do. Hell, I've even experimented and gotten a LLM to dish up a working MVP in a single day, which I can iterate on.
- potatoman22 2y ago
  But how do you make sure you're solving the right problem? LLM?
  - TrackerFF 2y ago
    You find existing solutions to a problem, and copy it. That's it. People spend time chasing novel problems, or coming up with solutions that are looking for problems - when in reality the vast majority of business and entrepreneurship comes down to looking for tested/validated business problems, looking at the existing solutions, and finding ways to enter that market, and win/siphon customers.
shireboy 2y ago
This is what I want to do ultimately, but I'm at a sort of crossroads. I have a good job, a consulting side gig, a good family, and 0 hours for my own ambitions. Several years ago I made about 20k on a solo project, so I know I'm capable. I just need to be able to focus on my dream instead of someone else's. Lately I've landed on 'it will happen when it needs to', but I also worry that I'm plateaued and will wish I'd risked it earlier.
bsnnkv 2y ago
Good timing with this submission as I started selling commercial use software licenses using a subscription model this year (Jan 2025) and I'm amazed that 6 people have already signed up and paid for a license. The text-based tech internet has become incredibly hostile to people sharing their work over the past decade, so a few years ago I decided to try and engage people through YouTube instead and I think this has been a decision that has really paid off. For people interested in pursuing something like this I'd definitely recommend trying out video format communication over blog posts and articles if the latter aren't doing well for you. I have done a lot of "building in public" on YouTube over the past few years and have built up a really solid product that people have been actively asking me to release a commercial license for so that they can use it at work. I feel pretty good about things right now!
- disqard 2y ago
  I checked out the links in your profile -- kudos to you for building useful things and putting them (and yourself) out there! Getting from 0 to 1 is the hardest part, and you're at 6 already. I hope you keep at it, for years, and see monotonically increasing numbers. Doing something like this (sustainably) would be fantastic success. Best of luck!
  - bsnnkv 2y ago
    Thanks for the encouragement! Truth be told, I had never thought of myself who could take things from 0 to 1 until I read this comment :)
qoez 2y ago
Cool article. I feel like a lot of these 'passive income' things though are just 'X purchaces diffused over time until the market niche is saturated'; hence the need to keep making new sites/products
loxias 2y ago
Dimagi became successful?!? Awesome! I also worked there as a third person, though I don't think overlapping with you. :) Congrats on living the dream, I tried, failed at that 5 years ago ("maybe i can just sell my coding directly...") though I probably gave up too quickly. Nice article!
- czue 2y ago
  Hahaha, what?! Are you the one that went to Burning Man without telling anyone and then re-appeared online a couple weeks later wondering whether you still had your job? Because, if so, that story definitely made the rounds...
  - loxias 2y ago
    HAHAHAHAH! Oh man... Ouch! First time I'm hearing it put that way!! As far as I knew, the contract was done before I left town! :) But that absolutely, to a T, sounds like (a distorted version of...) *exactly* the sort of miscommunication I'd get into 20 years ago. Glad to hear some version of my youthful exploits turned into tales, even if I have to be the "heel". :) bows
jbs789 2y ago
Knowing how to code can have very useful local applications, which reduces your competition. Of course it may not immediately scale in the same way but leveraging connections and local know how is an angle that tends to go under-explored at least in the online narrative, is my observation.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
When my life was falling apart and I was trying to fix my relationship with my ex she dictated that we spend 'quality' time together which meant watching horrible reality TV while she was on insta on her phone. Out of mind numbing boredom I made a system for SEO spam websites during this time. I would take expiring domain names (so names someone had gone to the trouble to research but been unable to make work) parse out keywords and lookup popularity for them, lookup ad rates for them, and spit out names to buy and make a SEO spam site for (goal was 300 websites making $1 a day or $100k a year), or good names to domain squat. If a domain turned out bunk I threw my link-spam-network software on it to provide linkbacks to my money/new sites. I made around 30k profit a year plus another $5k selling domain names doing this before life fell further apart and it rotted on the vine. I was really tempted to sell it as a package but could never bring myself that low even deep in addiction. Plus Google started cracking down on that trash. I still think the concept of 300 somethings (though please not SEO spam) that make a dollar a day is viable for us here though because we're in the unique position where the creation/maintenance is just a matter of our spare time since we can do the specs/design/coding/administration/maintenance/etc ourselves. It seems like there are still people doing this. Look at new car model forums. Everytime a new car models is released there's a rush to create discussion forums for that model with people hoping Google blesses theirs so they can add it to their portfolio of money maker car model forums. Maybe the secret sauce is forcing yourself to watch reality TV until your mind rebels and says 'fine, grab me the laptop and we'll make mind numbingly boring software products as that is at least better than watching this'. Edit: To clarify this wasn't my income source this was just what I did while being forced to watch 'The Kardashians' for bonding time.
- dmitrygr 2y ago
  The world does not need more spam. I do not think watching the Kardashians was punishment enough for you. I wish it was Barney theme in a loop at 100dB
  - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    Yeah I was ashamed to share this anecdote. But decided maybe it can do a little good motivating someone to counter the bad. And I'm pretty sure SEO spam doesn't work anymore so it shouldn't encourage more evil.
sansseriff 2y ago
If anyone has trouble focusing on personal projects at home, I've found Focusmate (www.focusmate.com) to be very handy. You hop on a scheduled google-meets style video call with someone random, and then just work. You talk very briefly at the beginning to tell each other what you're working on and then you both mute yourselves for 25 - 75 minutes. It's weird, I've found it really ticks my brain into productivity mode.
- supriyo-biswas 2y ago
  Do pomodoro timers have the same effect for you? I assume it's the pressure of giving yourself fixed amounts of time and the knowledge of the fact that a break is coming up (so that you don't take one unintentionally) that really drives the productivity.
  - joseda-hg 2y ago
    I've never been able to sitck with pomodoros to the same degree, because ultimately there's no cost or shame to pausing or ignoring a self imposed timer There is a slight something to ignoring it when there's a person on the other side, even if it is a perfect stranger that I will never see again
- jwmoz 2y ago
  Seems a very elaborate way just to do some work.
  - BroodPlatypus 2y ago
    It’s how an extroverts brain works. Same reason extroverted CEO’s were pushing for return to office. Social pressure to get work done.
scarface_74 2y ago
How is “spending my free time coding after I get off work instead of spending time exercising, spending time with friends and family, traveling, hobbies, etc”, “passive income”?
- czue 2y ago
  If you read the post, that's explicitly a path I acknowledge I couldn't personally do, and I recommend instead creating time by doing things like going down to 80% time in your day job, or finding lucrative contract work.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    And the vast majority of jobs are not going to let you go down to 80% time and if you are just a commodity “coder”, you aren’t going to find lucrative staff augmentation contracts. It’s been awhile since I had a job where I was responsible for hiring staff augmentation “consultants”. But the hourly rate that they got was shit. On the other hand, if you have the background, skillset, network, etc to be a highly paid strategic consultant who knows how to talk to the “business” and bring in a specialized skillset, you don’t need side income to have the freedom that you want. You can charge a high enough hourly rate that you can already basically set your own schedule. I fall into the latter category. But I choose to work full time for consulting companies because they take care of all of the headaches.
    - czue 2y ago
      Yeah this came up in the Q&A of the video as well. I think if you are 1) a high performer and 2) not working for a mega-corp, you probably have a lot more negotiating power than you realize. Having been on the other end of some of those conversations, as a manager/executive if your options are to either to let someone take Friday's off and cut their salary by 20% or potentially lose them entirely to another job, it's pretty clear that it's better to take 4 days from them. Hiring is still one of the biggest problems companies face, and most would rather retain good people than force them out.
Temporary_31337 2y ago
I will try to dig up some concrete numbers but for vast majority of people they make more money lifetime from working and saving some of that money and then investing that. So IMO for people in software the correct way for passive income is earning a lot actively working so you can have passive income from investments portfolio
robertlagrant 2y ago
Coffezilla already covered this exact topic four years ago[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWMAOzH20mY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWMAOzH20mY
yencabulator 2y ago
Blatant self-promotion, and a post history of primarily self-promotion: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=czue https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=czue

259 points by czue 2y ago

czue 2y ago

Here's an off-the-cuff summary: First you have to make space in your life for it. You need long blocks of time for deep work. The first idea you pick is unlikely to work, so pick something and start moving. Many of the best products come out of working on something else. When building, optimize for speed. Try to get something out in the world as quickly as possible and iterate from there. Pick a tech stack you're familiar with, that you'll be fastest in. Try to spend half your time on marketing/sales, even if you hate it. The most important skill you can have is resiliance. Not giving up is the best path to success. This is hard because there is so much uncertainty in this career path. It's worth it! The autonomy and freedom are unmatched by any other career.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Well, when you put it like that, it sounds pretty fluffy.
martylamb 2y ago
Good summary. I've landed on all of the above with my own projects, from a mix of experience, reading, and reason. Hardest for me has been making time between family, work, and other activities that are important for me. Unlike when I was younger I can't just stay up coding until 3AM anymore. In fact I find myself without the mental energy after work that I want to put into my projects, so evenings are out completely for me. So instead I wake up at 5AM and put myself into it before work. It was a big adjustment, but all I needed to do while acclimating to that schedule was ask myself each morning which I wanted more: warm blankets or a successful project? Now it's a pretty energizing way to start the day.
- gottagocode 2y ago
  Take the warm blankets into the office with you
- scarface_74 2y ago
  > but all I needed to do while acclimating to that schedule was ask myself each morning which I wanted more: warm blankets or a successful project? I choose warm blankets lying next to my warm wife where my heat and shelter is paid by exchanging my labor for money 40 hours a week, paid time off, paid health care, etc
latexr 2y ago
In other words, it’s the exact same bland, generic, worthless advice parroted by every grifter selling you the dream of financial independence via passive income. And if you fail, it’s your own fault, you just didn’t want it enough, you didn’t do the necessary sacrifices.
- flir 2y ago
  The advice (in the post you're replying to) isn't bad. But you can do it all, and still not have lightning strike.
  - f1shy 2y ago
    I certainly do not think is good. I won’t say I’ve seen destroyed lives because of it, but pretty much miserable in comparison to what it had been if not followed the advice. It is just bot for anyone, and just too often fails.
    - flir 2y ago
      And I've seen people succeed (admittedly by spending every spare minute devoting themselves to the pursuit of money). Can we agree that it is, at core, gambling? Like spending all your disposable income on lottery tickets?
      - scarface_74 2y ago
        > And I've seen people succeed (admittedly by spending every spare minute devoting themselves to the pursuit of money). Is that what you call success?
        flir 2y ago
        It was for him. It wouldn't have been for me, hence the caveat. Different people have different goals.
      - latexr 2y ago
ryandrake 2y ago
This is not really passive income. What he's describing is running your own one-person business. That's about as far from passive as you can get. Actual passive income is living off the returns and royalties from assets, doing nothing but managing those assets (or maybe not even doing that).
- grahamj 2y ago
  But you have to work to get those assets, just like building a website
  - sixstringtheory 2y ago
    OK, but TFA is about the work part, not the passive part, despite the title. Even having a “portfolio of revenue generating products” will require work to maintain. Maybe full time or more so, depending on if you used log4j or an SSL cert from a provider that screwed things up, say. Or built on a fickle platform like reddit, twitter or Apple that changes the fundamental rules every so often. Just because you don’t have a boss that will fire you for not waking up for on call during an outage, doesn’t mean that outages won’t happen or need to be fixed. It reminds me of people that consider buying a second home and rent out the old one to gain “passive income”, not realizing how much work it can be to be a good landlord.
    - alp1n3_eth 2y ago
      I feel like "passive" income is anything that takes under 10 hours a week once it's up and running. There's rarely any opportunity that can be considered passive if your definition is 0 work ever once it's going. The only thing that [might] fit into that slot is investment dividends.
      - sixstringtheory 2y ago
        I don’t know if it’s 0 for me, but it’s definitely way less than 10 hours per week. I have ETFs and a HYSA that I basically never look at. That’s passive.

daghamm 2y ago

Looking at your portfolio, one could argue that to succeed you need to try a lot of different projects some of which you maybe have no personal interest in. I think some people would not be comfortable with this and rather take a steady paycheck from Big Corp while working on 1-2 darling projects at home.

jamal-kumar 2y ago
It kind of mirrors my observations in what makes a successful individual in the world of ecommerce, you gotta have the capital to start like ten ideas at once then you whittle out which one don't profit more than 10k a month and come up with new ones to fill the place. Shit sounds like tedium or uncomfortable or whatever to some, but I know multiple millionaires on this tip.
czue 2y ago
...maybe? Although that doesn't quite ring true. Every project (even the dumb wedding cards one) arose from some need in my life that turned into a desire to make something exist in the world. That said, I totally agree that some people would rather keep the steady paycheck. The career is a large up-front investment with a variable outcome. But, it's not as hard as it can be made out to be, and the payoff, if successful, is immense.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

I want to believe. But is this really still possible in todays world? Isn't there competition from the thousands of software devs laid off in last couple years. They can all make apps. Just like the Flappy Bird guy. Sure, it was big hit, but so easy to have a hundred knock offs within a week.

Scoundreller 2y ago
Part of the goal might be to stay under the radar. In a pre-app world, I wrote some blogs with ads. Some of my favourite ones were dumb but fairly evergreen articles where I had domain knowledge like “best directions to the dmv offices in $mytown”. (Pro-tip: it’s upstairs at the XYZ shopping mall, but if you park by the pizza place, you’ll be at the doors that take you straight there) Reliable and consistent income. Not a ton, but more like a bond than a stock.
kflgkans 2y ago
I think it's simply survivorship bias. Thousands of people try this and fail. And occasionally you read an article like this, which is like the one in a million who managed to get lucky with their ideas and manage to make it a success. And I think they underestimate how much luck they had.
- czue 2y ago
  Luck is a huge factor for sure but I also think it's not as hard as you're making it out to be if you set yourself up for success. I have four products that make money, built over the course of seven years. None of them really benefit from each other. If it was pure luck and 1/1,000 chance of success I don't think my current portfolio would be possible. (I also have a lot of failures, so I agree there's luck and risk, just not as strong as you're making it out to be)
factorialboy 2y ago
Building a business is more than just building the app. And everything can be duplicated for cheap, especially with gen-ai. But small-businesses will transform, continue and dare-I-say thrive.

dirtybirdnj 2y ago

> First you have to make space in your life for it. You need long blocks of time for deep work. This is the obstacle to EVERYTHING in my life. It's very chaotic, which causes a lot of stress and has led to decreasing performance. I try so hard to clean up, to improve things. To try to proactively get ahead of stuff. It never seems to be enough. Something happens I cannot prepare for, or in trying to save and be efficient something goes wrong I cannot afford. My whole plan, saving AND getting things done has now blown up. I no longer have one, I now have three problems and I have also lost/wasted a day. Tomorrow I have four problems, plus I am aware of this dynamic and unable to escape it so technically 5? This compounds over time. How do you escape this failure loop? tl;dr: the "being poor is expensive" trap, how escape when so burned out you are struggling to tread water? It's not just money, it's attention span. It's the ability to set my mind to something and accomplish what I set out. Having that muscle atrophy and tear has been traumatic and I am struggling to find emotional or medical interventions worth the effort.

ndileas 2y ago
It really depends on the specifics of your life. I get a lot of mileage out of imagining what a more functional adult would do, then doing that (stupid example: <FUNCTIONAL ADULT> doesn't buy the cheapest shoes available and try to make them last 5 years while enduring back pain). It's hard to change quickly; sometimes decisions I made years ago (or that someone in my family made decades ago) throw a wrench in the works. I also took a big step back from various forms of ambition, in favor of building a solid, enjoyable life. I hope it gets better for you too.
- dirtybirdnj 2y ago
  > I also took a big step back from various forms of ambition, in favor of building a solid, enjoyable life. I think you are onto something here, but there's no way to keep my current situation sustainable let alone live on less. The financial thing I can't do much about but the psychological maybe. It's hard when I feel like there is nobody to help me and I have to do everything alone.
  - 2y ago

cootsnuck 2y ago

Good post! I think the gradual transition you were able to do from salary -> consulting -> software products is very important and not the norm (mainly being able to keep part of your salary while doing some consulting on the side). The only people I've seen able to do that are VPs or C-suite. I'm below those rungs. So I'm quitting my job to go "all in" on the consulting. (But I've been prepping and will make sure things line up so I can hit the ground running.) All of this is to say, I think that transition either during or after salary work is the super important part that I see everyone gloss over. My goal is to make a fraction of my salary with consulting for the first couple years, focus just on that, and eventually shift my focus to software products.

w10-1 2y ago
With consulting, you're responsible for finding and securing all your opportunities. With work, they're fed to you (at volume!). Don't underestimate the opportunity cost of any decision. Right now with such broad tech+business awareness, being at the right place at the right time is pretty much your only differentiator. So perhaps consulting will lead organically to the best opportunity, but often opportunity is gated by access to a good team, reasonable infrastructure, and most importantly good customers with leading-edge problems.

lngr 2y ago

This is what I call meta advice. He makes most of the money now from persuading others starting a passive income side gig, for which he coincidentally has a starter pack to sale. While this might be a reliable income, it is in no means a template for other people to start a successful passive income business with a working business idea.

SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
It's been repeatedly shown that the best alternative source of income is selling to people looking for alternative sources of income.
- aatd86 2y ago
  One extra level of indirection always solves everything.
  - el_memorioso 2y ago
    Except for too many levels of indirection.
  - ipython 2y ago
    Business idea: I can sell you a list of people who you can then pay to tell you how to make money on the internet!
- madcaptenor 2y ago
  It worked for Levi Strauss.
- avgDev 2y ago
  When there is a gold rush sell shovels.
  - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    The modern version of that is GPUs.

ternnoburn 2y ago

Reading this, it feels much more like "using coding skills to make income". It's a great description of one person's journey, but "work hard for a decade, continue to work at a healthy lighter pace after" isn't really passive income in my mind. And I'm not sure it beats, e.g., work hard and save hard at tech company for a decade, then use the invested surplus as passive income to work lightly thereafter. At least, not in the general case.

oldandboring 2y ago
> work hard and save hard at tech company for a decade, then use the invested surplus as passive income to work lightly thereafter I used an LLM to help me do the math but it appears you would have to make $1.5 million/year at "tech company" if you were to save 20% of your income and have $4 million saved after 10 years. That $4mm saved would allow you to appreciate to $5mm to retire on after 20 years while simultaneously withdrawing $150,000/year in passive income to live on. Of course you can adjust this based on how aggressively you save, how much you need to withdraw each year, and how much runway you have until retirement and how much retirement you need to be comfortable. Regardless, what you're suggesting is available only to the privileged few who can get extremely high-paying jobs early in their careers and hold onto them while having low enough expenses and high enough discipline to save aggressively. OP's approach is a very doable path for folks who aren't so fortunate and/or young, but can code, have some life experience, and don't want to go get another job.
- Jabbles 2y ago
  Your choice of numbers is very odd - even though you mention that you can adjust them for your own circumstances, the starting point is unrealistic. - Very few people earn $1.5M/year - Saving 20% implies that you're spending ~$1M/year while working, so $150k/year in retirement would not be appealing Did the LLM pick the numbers for you?
  - oldandboring 2y ago
    Whoosh. You missed the point completely. Of course very few people earn $1.5M/year. That's my point -- the poster I was replying to was naively thinking they could just work hard for a tech company and save for 10 years and then live off the passive income of the saved investment, which is silly. The rest of the numbers were conservative figures I chose. $5mm to retire, 20% saved while working, $150k/year passive income. The whole point is that what he's describing is pretty unrealistic.

roger_ 2y ago

I’ve been wanting to do this for years but I’m still trying to figure out how to get started. My skills are more in algorithm development (statistical signal processing, machine learning) and electronics than web coding though, so it’s probably not as easy as just making a simple website that does something slightly useful.

ge96 2y ago
on the other hand I would venture to say there are less like you (demand) than generic web devs
acuozzo 2y ago
I'm in the same boat, but my domain is embedded programming. I recently ran across advice here to just copy an existing successful idea and compete on e.g., price, rather than wasting time trying to come up with something novel / innovative. The argument is that if the idea is successful, then most of the market legwork has been done for you already. I'm considering entertaining it. I last seriously did WWW-related work in 2001 or so, but Python with FastAPI + HTMX + Bulma CSS looks easy enough to spin-up on and maps pretty well to my now-ancient understanding of the web.
- roger_ 2y ago
  I’ve done simple one off web stuff over the years and yeah it seems much more straightforward nowadays. Copying and undercutting someone else is certainly easier!
avgDev 2y ago
Unless you are trying to develop something ground breaking, web isn't terribly difficult if you have programming experience. Yes, there will be some new things to grasp. However, tooling is pretty great today and if you pick up a known framework most problems are already solved. You will just fit the pipes together to do what you want.
- TechDebtDevin 2y ago

ge96 2y ago

I still want to do this 9 years later I still haven't made something. Still working for someone else. Going to get out of debt first then work on it again, I want to be able to sleep/wake whenever.

mettamage 2y ago

One part of me is itching to do it. Another part of me can't let it go that I can't beat leetcode interviews. I'm quite close, I think I can do it. I guess it's an ego thing. But not fully though is it? Earning a couple of years of FAANG money opens one up to then just travel the world. I'm from the EU but will make the switch to the US in about a year from now (marriage). So from that perspective, I just don't know if it's strategic. When you have $300K in the bank and you just go to SE asia, you also have "no schedule" etc. That should be doable with FAANG. I do feel this path delivers more impact though as life becomes a bit more like a game and you're creating your own quests. You're solving things that you are quick enough at to solve but also things that you find important or just simply fun. Man, I'm torn. Both take quite a bit of a time investment. I'm not sure how I can monetize a "leetcode with me" type of thing. If there was still a market for that, I might do that to start both things off at the same time. Maybe I should just become a Twitch streamer :') But I don't think that'd pay off. I guess it wouldn't hurt to try.

jebarker 2y ago
> Earning a couple of years of FAANG money opens one up to then just travel the world. If you can resist lifestyle inflation
- mettamage 2y ago
  I could now but that'd be tough with kids.
Scubabear68 2y ago
With all the FAANG layoffs is this still a realistic goal for many people?
- mettamage 2y ago
  Fair question, maybe I'm a bit too starry eyed. What do you think?
  - 2y ago

coold 2y ago

Using your coding skills: 1) make hello-world-ish portfolio 2) sell courses how to make money using coding skills 3) PROFIT

zb3 2y ago

Unpopular opinion: truly "passive" income should be impossible, because this means someone is working hard but not receiving their compensation. EDIT: of course unless it's the robots that do all the work, but then it's not really passive...

TrackerFF 2y ago

I wonder how LLMs will impact this industry. 10 years ago, when I was chasing this - I'd look for proven business models. Find some small startup / company that sells some software or service, try to figure out what they did and how they did it, then spend time getting into the domain, tech, and what have you. It was a lot of work, and took time. If I do it now, I have the luxury of simply asking my LLM of choice to give me a run-down, and what I need to do. Hell, I've even experimented and gotten a LLM to dish up a working MVP in a single day, which I can iterate on.

potatoman22 2y ago
But how do you make sure you're solving the right problem? LLM?
- TrackerFF 2y ago
  You find existing solutions to a problem, and copy it. That's it. People spend time chasing novel problems, or coming up with solutions that are looking for problems - when in reality the vast majority of business and entrepreneurship comes down to looking for tested/validated business problems, looking at the existing solutions, and finding ways to enter that market, and win/siphon customers.

shireboy 2y ago

This is what I want to do ultimately, but I'm at a sort of crossroads. I have a good job, a consulting side gig, a good family, and 0 hours for my own ambitions. Several years ago I made about 20k on a solo project, so I know I'm capable. I just need to be able to focus on my dream instead of someone else's. Lately I've landed on 'it will happen when it needs to', but I also worry that I'm plateaued and will wish I'd risked it earlier.

bsnnkv 2y ago

Good timing with this submission as I started selling commercial use software licenses using a subscription model this year (Jan 2025) and I'm amazed that 6 people have already signed up and paid for a license. The text-based tech internet has become incredibly hostile to people sharing their work over the past decade, so a few years ago I decided to try and engage people through YouTube instead and I think this has been a decision that has really paid off. For people interested in pursuing something like this I'd definitely recommend trying out video format communication over blog posts and articles if the latter aren't doing well for you. I have done a lot of "building in public" on YouTube over the past few years and have built up a really solid product that people have been actively asking me to release a commercial license for so that they can use it at work. I feel pretty good about things right now!

disqard 2y ago
I checked out the links in your profile -- kudos to you for building useful things and putting them (and yourself) out there! Getting from 0 to 1 is the hardest part, and you're at 6 already. I hope you keep at it, for years, and see monotonically increasing numbers. Doing something like this (sustainably) would be fantastic success. Best of luck!
- bsnnkv 2y ago
  Thanks for the encouragement! Truth be told, I had never thought of myself who could take things from 0 to 1 until I read this comment :)

qoez 2y ago

Cool article. I feel like a lot of these 'passive income' things though are just 'X purchaces diffused over time until the market niche is saturated'; hence the need to keep making new sites/products

loxias 2y ago

Dimagi became successful?!? Awesome! I also worked there as a third person, though I don't think overlapping with you. :) Congrats on living the dream, I tried, failed at that 5 years ago ("maybe i can just sell my coding directly...") though I probably gave up too quickly. Nice article!

czue 2y ago
Hahaha, what?! Are you the one that went to Burning Man without telling anyone and then re-appeared online a couple weeks later wondering whether you still had your job? Because, if so, that story definitely made the rounds...
- loxias 2y ago
  HAHAHAHAH! Oh man... Ouch! First time I'm hearing it put that way!! As far as I knew, the contract was done before I left town! :) But that absolutely, to a T, sounds like (a distorted version of...) *exactly* the sort of miscommunication I'd get into 20 years ago. Glad to hear some version of my youthful exploits turned into tales, even if I have to be the "heel". :) bows

jbs789 2y ago

Knowing how to code can have very useful local applications, which reduces your competition. Of course it may not immediately scale in the same way but leveraging connections and local know how is an angle that tends to go under-explored at least in the online narrative, is my observation.

_DeadFred_ 2y ago

When my life was falling apart and I was trying to fix my relationship with my ex she dictated that we spend 'quality' time together which meant watching horrible reality TV while she was on insta on her phone. Out of mind numbing boredom I made a system for SEO spam websites during this time. I would take expiring domain names (so names someone had gone to the trouble to research but been unable to make work) parse out keywords and lookup popularity for them, lookup ad rates for them, and spit out names to buy and make a SEO spam site for (goal was 300 websites making $1 a day or $100k a year), or good names to domain squat. If a domain turned out bunk I threw my link-spam-network software on it to provide linkbacks to my money/new sites. I made around 30k profit a year plus another $5k selling domain names doing this before life fell further apart and it rotted on the vine. I was really tempted to sell it as a package but could never bring myself that low even deep in addiction. Plus Google started cracking down on that trash. I still think the concept of 300 somethings (though please not SEO spam) that make a dollar a day is viable for us here though because we're in the unique position where the creation/maintenance is just a matter of our spare time since we can do the specs/design/coding/administration/maintenance/etc ourselves. It seems like there are still people doing this. Look at new car model forums. Everytime a new car models is released there's a rush to create discussion forums for that model with people hoping Google blesses theirs so they can add it to their portfolio of money maker car model forums. Maybe the secret sauce is forcing yourself to watch reality TV until your mind rebels and says 'fine, grab me the laptop and we'll make mind numbingly boring software products as that is at least better than watching this'. Edit: To clarify this wasn't my income source this was just what I did while being forced to watch 'The Kardashians' for bonding time.

dmitrygr 2y ago
The world does not need more spam. I do not think watching the Kardashians was punishment enough for you. I wish it was Barney theme in a loop at 100dB
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  Yeah I was ashamed to share this anecdote. But decided maybe it can do a little good motivating someone to counter the bad. And I'm pretty sure SEO spam doesn't work anymore so it shouldn't encourage more evil.

sansseriff 2y ago

If anyone has trouble focusing on personal projects at home, I've found Focusmate (www.focusmate.com) to be very handy. You hop on a scheduled google-meets style video call with someone random, and then just work. You talk very briefly at the beginning to tell each other what you're working on and then you both mute yourselves for 25 - 75 minutes. It's weird, I've found it really ticks my brain into productivity mode.

supriyo-biswas 2y ago
Do pomodoro timers have the same effect for you? I assume it's the pressure of giving yourself fixed amounts of time and the knowledge of the fact that a break is coming up (so that you don't take one unintentionally) that really drives the productivity.
- joseda-hg 2y ago
  I've never been able to sitck with pomodoros to the same degree, because ultimately there's no cost or shame to pausing or ignoring a self imposed timer There is a slight something to ignoring it when there's a person on the other side, even if it is a perfect stranger that I will never see again
jwmoz 2y ago
Seems a very elaborate way just to do some work.
- BroodPlatypus 2y ago
  It’s how an extroverts brain works. Same reason extroverted CEO’s were pushing for return to office. Social pressure to get work done.

scarface_74 2y ago

How is “spending my free time coding after I get off work instead of spending time exercising, spending time with friends and family, traveling, hobbies, etc”, “passive income”?

czue 2y ago
If you read the post, that's explicitly a path I acknowledge I couldn't personally do, and I recommend instead creating time by doing things like going down to 80% time in your day job, or finding lucrative contract work.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  And the vast majority of jobs are not going to let you go down to 80% time and if you are just a commodity “coder”, you aren’t going to find lucrative staff augmentation contracts. It’s been awhile since I had a job where I was responsible for hiring staff augmentation “consultants”. But the hourly rate that they got was shit. On the other hand, if you have the background, skillset, network, etc to be a highly paid strategic consultant who knows how to talk to the “business” and bring in a specialized skillset, you don’t need side income to have the freedom that you want. You can charge a high enough hourly rate that you can already basically set your own schedule. I fall into the latter category. But I choose to work full time for consulting companies because they take care of all of the headaches.
  - czue 2y ago
    Yeah this came up in the Q&A of the video as well. I think if you are 1) a high performer and 2) not working for a mega-corp, you probably have a lot more negotiating power than you realize. Having been on the other end of some of those conversations, as a manager/executive if your options are to either to let someone take Friday's off and cut their salary by 20% or potentially lose them entirely to another job, it's pretty clear that it's better to take 4 days from them. Hiring is still one of the biggest problems companies face, and most would rather retain good people than force them out.

Temporary_31337 2y ago

I will try to dig up some concrete numbers but for vast majority of people they make more money lifetime from working and saving some of that money and then investing that. So IMO for people in software the correct way for passive income is earning a lot actively working so you can have passive income from investments portfolio

robertlagrant 2y ago

Coffezilla already covered this exact topic four years ago[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWMAOzH20mY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWMAOzH20mY

yencabulator 2y ago

Blatant self-promotion, and a post history of primarily self-promotion: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=czue https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=czue