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I was waiting for the pitch at the end, but it didn't appear. Other than that it's a straight forward restatement of what others have said already. The problem

I was waiting for the pitch at the end, but it didn't appear. Other than that it's a straight forward restatement of what others have said already. The problem with these types of posts is that they make it seem like passive income is easy. In fact it is a hell of a lot of work to create, say, an info product, and marketing it can also be a full-time job. You need to have surplus income and time to take on the risk of doing this, which is hard to do if you're an employee. This probably explains why most of the passive income stuff we read on HN comes from consultants.

jonaldomo 13y ago
I agree with this, I reread it wondering if I had missed it.
jasonkester 13y ago
Seems like you have your answer then: don't build an info product. Build a product product. With customers. It will only ever be a full time job if you work on it full time. Since it's your company, you get to choose the hours you work, so you can make your lifestyle look however you want it to look. So yes, it may in fact be a hell of a lot of work. But fortunately you possess a hell of a lot of time before you die. Divvy it up any way you choose, but please don't give up because it takes effort. The end result is really nice.
- noelwelsh 13y ago
  I am building a product product. It has customers. It is a heck of a lot of work. (I'm also building an info product.) It may be surprising to you that my customers actually don't care how many hours I want to work, but only about the value I deliver to them. I don't get to wave a magic wand and work 10 hours a week and keep all my customers, though I'm sure my competitors would wish I tried. The place I see "lifestyle businesses" working best is where the market is unattractive to larger competitors due to size, difficulty reaching clients or others. There only select markets where this is the case. Look, I love all the lifestyle business stuff and I'm adopting some of the tactics myself, but the suggestion of this article and your comment that the hours you work is solely a matter of choice is bullshit. You have to give up something, normally money or proximity to family and friends. Or put it a lot of work upfront building a business that you can then coast on.
  - alanchavez 13y ago
    I agree with you on some points, it's a lot of work to earn passive income and during my first year trying to earn passive income on the side I lost money and incurred in a debt of around 50K USD... but last month I finally got the hang of it, and after putting 30 hours a week after my fulltime job during my first year of trial and error, last month I grossed 10K merely working about 10 hours a week after my fulltime job... That said, it's possible and it's not in its entirety bullshit.
  - jasonkester 13y ago
    In what way? What would happen to your business in you spent 20 minutes answering emails tomorrow morning then went fishing for the rest of the day? What would happen if you did that twice a week from here on out? If the answer is yes, the business would implode within a day, is there not something you could do to change that?
    - noelwelsh 13y ago
      In my case, I'd go broke. Consulting pays the bills while we get the product to profitability.
  - jmduke 13y ago
    It may be surprising to you that my customers actually don't care how many hours I want to work, but only about the value I deliver to them. I don't get to wave a magic wand and work 10 hours a week and keep all my customers, though I'm sure my competitors would wish I tried. I think the argument here is that "value delivered to customers" and "amount of work required to deliver that value" are completely unrelated to one-another. To give two examples: 1. The biggest possible improvement you can generally bestow upon a small services business is a website (not even a fancy one, just a five-page Wordpress shindig with acceptable SEO.) This takes approximately two hours and $50 (I'm being generous.) 2. Video games are one of the most difficult software products to produce in terms of sheer SLOC, expertise required, and resources needed, and yet the value most customers assign to them ranges between $0 and $60.
- madsravn 13y ago
  Stupid question: What is a product product? Can you mention an example, just a simple one? :)
  - johnward 13y ago
    I believe they were referring to "product products" as anything other info products. Because for some reason people don't think of info products as valuable when they can be just as much or more valuable then something like SaaS.
snoonan 13y ago
Learning to build a profitable business requires as much learning, trial and error as learning to be a good coder. He neglected to mention this. As a product creator, he has the right background to get started on the road. There should be no question in anyone's mind that you need to wear several important hats well and do the hard work to be good at them. The determining how to scale of each of the dimensions (time, money, freedom) becomes something you can control. If you can't wear all the hats yet, you need to learn more. Half-assing someone else's affiliate site model, dropship site, etc is kind of like like trying to build an great app by cutting & pasting code from google searches. You need to learn how to code first. Same with business and marketing.

jonaldomo 13y ago

I agree with this, I reread it wondering if I had missed it.

jasonkester 13y ago

Seems like you have your answer then: don't build an info product. Build a product product. With customers. It will only ever be a full time job if you work on it full time. Since it's your company, you get to choose the hours you work, so you can make your lifestyle look however you want it to look. So yes, it may in fact be a hell of a lot of work. But fortunately you possess a hell of a lot of time before you die. Divvy it up any way you choose, but please don't give up because it takes effort. The end result is really nice.

noelwelsh 13y ago
I am building a product product. It has customers. It is a heck of a lot of work. (I'm also building an info product.) It may be surprising to you that my customers actually don't care how many hours I want to work, but only about the value I deliver to them. I don't get to wave a magic wand and work 10 hours a week and keep all my customers, though I'm sure my competitors would wish I tried. The place I see "lifestyle businesses" working best is where the market is unattractive to larger competitors due to size, difficulty reaching clients or others. There only select markets where this is the case. Look, I love all the lifestyle business stuff and I'm adopting some of the tactics myself, but the suggestion of this article and your comment that the hours you work is solely a matter of choice is bullshit. You have to give up something, normally money or proximity to family and friends. Or put it a lot of work upfront building a business that you can then coast on.
- alanchavez 13y ago
  I agree with you on some points, it's a lot of work to earn passive income and during my first year trying to earn passive income on the side I lost money and incurred in a debt of around 50K USD... but last month I finally got the hang of it, and after putting 30 hours a week after my fulltime job during my first year of trial and error, last month I grossed 10K merely working about 10 hours a week after my fulltime job... That said, it's possible and it's not in its entirety bullshit.
- jasonkester 13y ago
  In what way? What would happen to your business in you spent 20 minutes answering emails tomorrow morning then went fishing for the rest of the day? What would happen if you did that twice a week from here on out? If the answer is yes, the business would implode within a day, is there not something you could do to change that?
  - noelwelsh 13y ago
    In my case, I'd go broke. Consulting pays the bills while we get the product to profitability.
- jmduke 13y ago
  It may be surprising to you that my customers actually don't care how many hours I want to work, but only about the value I deliver to them. I don't get to wave a magic wand and work 10 hours a week and keep all my customers, though I'm sure my competitors would wish I tried. I think the argument here is that "value delivered to customers" and "amount of work required to deliver that value" are completely unrelated to one-another. To give two examples: 1. The biggest possible improvement you can generally bestow upon a small services business is a website (not even a fancy one, just a five-page Wordpress shindig with acceptable SEO.) This takes approximately two hours and $50 (I'm being generous.) 2. Video games are one of the most difficult software products to produce in terms of sheer SLOC, expertise required, and resources needed, and yet the value most customers assign to them ranges between $0 and $60.
madsravn 13y ago
Stupid question: What is a product product? Can you mention an example, just a simple one? :)
- johnward 13y ago
  I believe they were referring to "product products" as anything other info products. Because for some reason people don't think of info products as valuable when they can be just as much or more valuable then something like SaaS.

snoonan 13y ago

Learning to build a profitable business requires as much learning, trial and error as learning to be a good coder. He neglected to mention this. As a product creator, he has the right background to get started on the road. There should be no question in anyone's mind that you need to wear several important hats well and do the hard work to be good at them. The determining how to scale of each of the dimensions (time, money, freedom) becomes something you can control. If you can't wear all the hats yet, you need to learn more. Half-assing someone else's affiliate site model, dropship site, etc is kind of like like trying to build an great app by cutting & pasting code from google searches. You need to learn how to code first. Same with business and marketing.