5 ms·

Can anyone identify a few example passive income apps that a single developer has managed to support? I know of bingo card creator, but what are some others?

davidwparker 13y ago
Here's a few discussions that I've bookmarked and go back to, time-to-time for inspiration: Small Product, Single Founder Success Stories https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029771 How much recurring income do you generate, and from what? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487 Anyone making a living from just 1 app? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772199 Inspirational money making web apps made by hackers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764682
- glanch 13y ago
  Just read the first link there about Jerry Shen, a 1-man startup in the fantasy sports industry. Seems like he was (is?) living the dream, based on his post on that thread, but I just googled him and was surprised to see he took a job at Yahoo Sports this month. I wonder what they offered him to make it worth his while to give up so much freedom.
- clarky07 13y ago
  @glanch you appear to be hellbanned, not sure why. I don't know what the offer was, but it wasn't just "job offer," they bought his business and are integrating it into their fantasy sports apps.
- kpennell 13y ago
  Thanks a lot for posting these, David.
- clarky07 13y ago
  I posted a variant on this today[1], to get some more up to date responses as those all seem to be quite old. all very good reading though https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6109924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6109924
mbosch 13y ago
Would love to see this.
- thejosh 13y ago
  I doubt if someone makes good money in a small market/niche, they would come out and say it.
  - hashtree 13y ago
    The first rule of being a passive hacker is... ;) That being said, they are all over. I find too many and I can't act upon them all. I've always had an interest in business models and successful companies/people in "non-sexy" (to most of the HN crowd) areas. Sometimes it seems that everyone is all wrapped up in solving first-world 20-to-30 age bracket problems (social, picture filtering, SaaS for other 20 to 30 year olds, etc). Nothing wrong with that, but there is so much more out there. IMO, it is way more interesting and has much more impact on peoples lives.
ianpurton 13y ago
I run the following, not to 5 figures but income is relatively passive. https://www.strongcoin.com/ https://www.strongcoin.com/ https://www.bitcoinary.com/ https://www.bitcoinary.com/ http://status2k.com/ http://status2k.com/ http://servermonitoringhq.com/ http://servermonitoringhq.com/ For example status2K is in the low 100's per month, but I haven't spent anytime on it for about a year.
- vicks711 13y ago
  I run an insurance blog at http://www.insurancedodo.com http://www.insurancedodo.com and earn from google adsense. Low four figure income every month and almost passive
thejosh 13y ago
Selling courses about how to make passive income apps? Selling SEO Guidebooks to make a passive income website?
wylie 13y ago
The author of the post runs Followgen by himself
b3b0p 13y ago
There is a good blog devoted to passive income: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/ http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/ They also have a podcast, which I have listened to. It's not bad at all.
liquidcool 13y ago
I'd say the most famous is Plenty of Fish (POF). Single founder, run part time by him and his girlfriend, makes millions per year. (My info is a little dated, but I haven't heard of a major change.)
- thenomad 13y ago
  It's somewhat larger than that now. They have quite a few employees.
donnfelker 13y ago
You don't have to be a single developer to build an app that does this. You can be a sales guy, marketing guy, etc. The power is in knowing how and when to delegate. In the soloprenuer world this is done through outsourcing. Many folks have businesses that they pay for through a suite of products. None of which generate enough revenue to pay for their salary, but the sum of all do and more. One major advantage of this is a risk diversification. IF market X falls out, then only one small income stream falls through and doesnt bring the business owner with it. Multiple income streams via a portfolio of apps is what a lot of folks do. However, there are many folks who have one app and they do great. Listen to Startups For The Rest of Us, Bootstrapped with Kids, Lifestyle Business Podcast, Product People, etc etc. Go to conferences like Microconf, Baconbiz, etc. There's tons of us out there. ONe additional thing to note is, alot of us that fit this category (I heard a number on Bootstrapped with Kids where its almost 60%) are people with a family to support (kids, wife, etc). A lot of us cannot get up and move to SOMA and work at Startup Company X while stuffing our family into a shoebox sized apartment in the Tenderloin district. Sure there are options, but sometimes you CANT move. Medical conditions, ailing family, a support system that you cannot leave, etc. When its time like these, people start to bootstrap and build portfolio of products to get back the most important resource they have: time. Your kids are only young, ONCE. Spending that time working 80 hour weeks at a startup that is not yours where you get .000125 of a percent of a company IIF they go big (acquired, IPO, etc) usually isn't worth the trade off considering that the vast majority of startups fail.
bdunn 13y ago
I manage to build + support Planscope (https://planscope.io https://planscope.io), sell my two books (very little support necessary, outside of the occasional download links ending up in spam), and run a monthly workshop single handedly in ~20-30 hours a week. And, cumulatively, they're generating a fairly nice income.
- donnfelker 13y ago
  ... and Brandon is one of those folks who I met at microconf. Case in point. :)
- lukeholder 13y ago
  I should have said: a part from bingo card creator and you :)
  - johnward 13y ago
    The point is that you are wrong. There are tons of people out there doing this.
Garthex 13y ago
I don't know if this technically counts but I'm a freelancer and I proposed and made an iPhone app for a company Social Print Studio where we do revenue share and they handle all fulfillment, customer service, and marketing. It's well on its way to a Bay Area salary for me and it's only been out for a few months. The app is called Print Studio. Basically I saw an opportunity for a company I liked (I knew them as friends not as a customer) to make even more money with very little risk to them (they didn't pay me a salary, only the revenue share) and as such I was offered a very good deal with no variable costs to me except for development maintenance time and any new features I want to add. Just leaving food for thought for you all, there are plenty of ways to generate passive income. You don't have to go it alone, collaboration is one of the best tools we have as humans! So get creative. :)
limedaring 13y ago
I'm a single founder with no employees, and I run http://WeddingLovely.com http://WeddingLovely.com as well as nine different online wedding vendor directories. It's a bit tough to juggle since my marketing needs are a bit more intense (I also run a weddings blog at http://WeddingLovely.com/blog http://WeddingLovely.com/blog) but I'm working on automating it now.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
MitziMoto 13y ago
I built and run http://theclunkerjunker.com http://theclunkerjunker.com. It started as an affiliate site I started on a whim one night (Or a few hours, more accurately). Within a year it was pulling in $30k/month with almost no expenses. Eventually the affiliate program fell apart and I completely re-wrote it and turned it into a legit service. I don't quite make $30k a month anymore, and it's noticeably more work now, but it's still profitable and I can work at my own pace.

davidwparker 13y ago

Here's a few discussions that I've bookmarked and go back to, time-to-time for inspiration: Small Product, Single Founder Success Stories https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029771 How much recurring income do you generate, and from what? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487 Anyone making a living from just 1 app? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772199 Inspirational money making web apps made by hackers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764682

glanch 13y ago
Just read the first link there about Jerry Shen, a 1-man startup in the fantasy sports industry. Seems like he was (is?) living the dream, based on his post on that thread, but I just googled him and was surprised to see he took a job at Yahoo Sports this month. I wonder what they offered him to make it worth his while to give up so much freedom.
clarky07 13y ago
@glanch you appear to be hellbanned, not sure why. I don't know what the offer was, but it wasn't just "job offer," they bought his business and are integrating it into their fantasy sports apps.
kpennell 13y ago
Thanks a lot for posting these, David.
clarky07 13y ago
I posted a variant on this today[1], to get some more up to date responses as those all seem to be quite old. all very good reading though https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6109924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6109924

mbosch 13y ago

Would love to see this.

thejosh 13y ago
I doubt if someone makes good money in a small market/niche, they would come out and say it.
- hashtree 13y ago
  The first rule of being a passive hacker is... ;) That being said, they are all over. I find too many and I can't act upon them all. I've always had an interest in business models and successful companies/people in "non-sexy" (to most of the HN crowd) areas. Sometimes it seems that everyone is all wrapped up in solving first-world 20-to-30 age bracket problems (social, picture filtering, SaaS for other 20 to 30 year olds, etc). Nothing wrong with that, but there is so much more out there. IMO, it is way more interesting and has much more impact on peoples lives.

ianpurton 13y ago

I run the following, not to 5 figures but income is relatively passive. https://www.strongcoin.com/ https://www.strongcoin.com/ https://www.bitcoinary.com/ https://www.bitcoinary.com/ http://status2k.com/ http://status2k.com/ http://servermonitoringhq.com/ http://servermonitoringhq.com/ For example status2K is in the low 100's per month, but I haven't spent anytime on it for about a year.

vicks711 13y ago
I run an insurance blog at http://www.insurancedodo.com http://www.insurancedodo.com and earn from google adsense. Low four figure income every month and almost passive

thejosh 13y ago

Selling courses about how to make passive income apps? Selling SEO Guidebooks to make a passive income website?

wylie 13y ago

The author of the post runs Followgen by himself

b3b0p 13y ago

There is a good blog devoted to passive income: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/ http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/ They also have a podcast, which I have listened to. It's not bad at all.

liquidcool 13y ago

I'd say the most famous is Plenty of Fish (POF). Single founder, run part time by him and his girlfriend, makes millions per year. (My info is a little dated, but I haven't heard of a major change.)

thenomad 13y ago
It's somewhat larger than that now. They have quite a few employees.

donnfelker 13y ago

You don't have to be a single developer to build an app that does this. You can be a sales guy, marketing guy, etc. The power is in knowing how and when to delegate. In the soloprenuer world this is done through outsourcing. Many folks have businesses that they pay for through a suite of products. None of which generate enough revenue to pay for their salary, but the sum of all do and more. One major advantage of this is a risk diversification. IF market X falls out, then only one small income stream falls through and doesnt bring the business owner with it. Multiple income streams via a portfolio of apps is what a lot of folks do. However, there are many folks who have one app and they do great. Listen to Startups For The Rest of Us, Bootstrapped with Kids, Lifestyle Business Podcast, Product People, etc etc. Go to conferences like Microconf, Baconbiz, etc. There's tons of us out there. ONe additional thing to note is, alot of us that fit this category (I heard a number on Bootstrapped with Kids where its almost 60%) are people with a family to support (kids, wife, etc). A lot of us cannot get up and move to SOMA and work at Startup Company X while stuffing our family into a shoebox sized apartment in the Tenderloin district. Sure there are options, but sometimes you CANT move. Medical conditions, ailing family, a support system that you cannot leave, etc. When its time like these, people start to bootstrap and build portfolio of products to get back the most important resource they have: time. Your kids are only young, ONCE. Spending that time working 80 hour weeks at a startup that is not yours where you get .000125 of a percent of a company IIF they go big (acquired, IPO, etc) usually isn't worth the trade off considering that the vast majority of startups fail.

bdunn 13y ago

I manage to build + support Planscope (https://planscope.io https://planscope.io), sell my two books (very little support necessary, outside of the occasional download links ending up in spam), and run a monthly workshop single handedly in ~20-30 hours a week. And, cumulatively, they're generating a fairly nice income.

donnfelker 13y ago
... and Brandon is one of those folks who I met at microconf. Case in point. :)
lukeholder 13y ago
I should have said: a part from bingo card creator and you :)
- johnward 13y ago
  The point is that you are wrong. There are tons of people out there doing this.

Garthex 13y ago

I don't know if this technically counts but I'm a freelancer and I proposed and made an iPhone app for a company Social Print Studio where we do revenue share and they handle all fulfillment, customer service, and marketing. It's well on its way to a Bay Area salary for me and it's only been out for a few months. The app is called Print Studio. Basically I saw an opportunity for a company I liked (I knew them as friends not as a customer) to make even more money with very little risk to them (they didn't pay me a salary, only the revenue share) and as such I was offered a very good deal with no variable costs to me except for development maintenance time and any new features I want to add. Just leaving food for thought for you all, there are plenty of ways to generate passive income. You don't have to go it alone, collaboration is one of the best tools we have as humans! So get creative. :)

limedaring 13y ago

I'm a single founder with no employees, and I run http://WeddingLovely.com http://WeddingLovely.com as well as nine different online wedding vendor directories. It's a bit tough to juggle since my marketing needs are a bit more intense (I also run a weddings blog at http://WeddingLovely.com/blog http://WeddingLovely.com/blog) but I'm working on automating it now.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

MitziMoto 13y ago

I built and run http://theclunkerjunker.com http://theclunkerjunker.com. It started as an affiliate site I started on a whim one night (Or a few hours, more accurately). Within a year it was pulling in $30k/month with almost no expenses. Eventually the affiliate program fell apart and I completely re-wrote it and turned it into a legit service. I don't quite make $30k a month anymore, and it's noticeably more work now, but it's still profitable and I can work at my own pace.