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Passive income is pretty great but no source of income is truly passive. You'll always have certain issues like maintenance, customer support, etc. i.e. when yo

by ashray 14y ago

Passive income is pretty great but no source of income is truly passive. You'll always have certain issues like maintenance, customer support, etc. i.e. when you're talking about software. If it were a website/webapp you'd still run into issues with bugs, security fixes. This doesn't even take into account the fact that new competitors might come in, search algorithms may change, etc. That said, a well SEO'ed site (for a popular keyword) is possibly the best kind of passive income one can have. No marketing expenses, the content is already there (presuming that's what got it SEO'ed well..) and you'll keep getting visitors. Awesome :)

kposehn 14y ago
> If it were a website/webapp you'd still run into issues with bugs, security fixes. This was really true a few years ago, but changed as of late. Right now we are running all of our sites on a Sinatra-based engine on Heroku. It has no admin backend, no security fixes to make, nothing. There isn't even a database! The whole thing is compiled and cached. Any changes made on a live basis come through git or via a unique caching system I did with S3/Cloudfront. The upshot of this stack is zero overall maintenance. It doesn't break as there is simply nothing to break (except Heroku/AWS)
- ashray 14y ago
  That's interesting but definitely not a global use case. Most apps will require some sort of bug fixes and security updates. Even the linux kernel requires security updates and I do think that's some tight code right there =) Not every app can be compiled-cached-served. I think 99% of them can't go that route.. Would love to see how you can run relatively dynamic code/functionality by the method you're suggesting.
  - kposehn 14y ago
    Ah, I think I didn't make it as clear. I'm talking about the typical affiliate site that is SEO'd or run with PPC. Many of those don't require much and you can often do dynamic functionality without requiring a database. I have one site where you can look up physical locations of the merchant. Instead of a database, there is a YAML file that is dumped into MemCache - doing a search hits that and I don't need to maintain any Postgres instances.
    - ashray 14y ago
      I see. So you do have a database (it's the YAML file) but I see how you're talking about keeping costs and maintenance on the lower side. Nice! So I guess the only thing you're worried about is if google algorithms change. Still, that won't happen to PPC. I would love to find some good niches for PPC affiliate commissions. Do you have any examples ? ( don't have to be your sites..)

by ashray 14y ago

kposehn 14y ago

> If it were a website/webapp you'd still run into issues with bugs, security fixes. This was really true a few years ago, but changed as of late. Right now we are running all of our sites on a Sinatra-based engine on Heroku. It has no admin backend, no security fixes to make, nothing. There isn't even a database! The whole thing is compiled and cached. Any changes made on a live basis come through git or via a unique caching system I did with S3/Cloudfront. The upshot of this stack is zero overall maintenance. It doesn't break as there is simply nothing to break (except Heroku/AWS)

ashray 14y ago
That's interesting but definitely not a global use case. Most apps will require some sort of bug fixes and security updates. Even the linux kernel requires security updates and I do think that's some tight code right there =) Not every app can be compiled-cached-served. I think 99% of them can't go that route.. Would love to see how you can run relatively dynamic code/functionality by the method you're suggesting.
- kposehn 14y ago
  Ah, I think I didn't make it as clear. I'm talking about the typical affiliate site that is SEO'd or run with PPC. Many of those don't require much and you can often do dynamic functionality without requiring a database. I have one site where you can look up physical locations of the merchant. Instead of a database, there is a YAML file that is dumped into MemCache - doing a search hits that and I don't need to maintain any Postgres instances.
  - ashray 14y ago
    I see. So you do have a database (it's the YAML file) but I see how you're talking about keeping costs and maintenance on the lower side. Nice! So I guess the only thing you're worried about is if google algorithms change. Still, that won't happen to PPC. I would love to find some good niches for PPC affiliate commissions. Do you have any examples ? ( don't have to be your sites..)