Ask HN: Creating passive income online - myth or doable?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4962606

by vccafe • 14 years ago

13 17 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

If you've read the "4 hour work week" you know what I'm talking about. Do you think it's doable to create a passive income stream online "on the side" with a small investment. What techniques have you found that work?

treskot2• 14 years ago

It did work in my case. I have a design blog which did help me get a lot of design clients!

PS: What might work for someone maynot work for you. You have to find that unique thing (idea) that might work for your case. Based on your skill set.

vccafe3• 14 years ago

Just to qualify this further - what if you're not selling a service on top of your blog? (i.e. design services in your case) - could you still create a labor of love, like a blog and pay rent with the cash it generates? how?

treskot2• 14 years ago

Don't think about the end result while you're starting off. I didn't create a blog because I wanted clients. I created a blog to show the world my work (showoff) and people just happened to like it and the offers started flowing.

If you think about the end result (pay rent in your case) then you maynot be able to succeed! Okay I don't want to talk philosophy here buy you got the point, didn't you?

zeynalli4• 14 years ago

Once it was very easy. Now it's very hard. But still doable. By passive income you probably mean a content website monetized with ads. Some time ago there were people that made millions of dollars only with google adsense. I don't know if this technique still works but I think Google bans every time black-hat adsense users if they manually discover them.

Most of adsense millionaires used this technique: they select most paying keywords (there are several paid tools for that) and they make microsites about this keywords. With some black-hat SEO, they make fortune with adsense. They write codes, and automate the whole process. Some make content aggregation, they don't write anything, everything is automated.

Google updates its algorithm to prevent this kind of abuses, but still, there are too many people smarter than google engineers.

I've read too much about this kind of business. 7 years ago I made a small site to test if it really works. I made a blogspot site with only 2 articles, it brought me 100-200$ per month. I was in high school that time. Than I read some interviews from big content website owners that they make too much money with their website. And I made a decision that I'll learn SEO and build a big content website with a unique idea. I was 5 years long a premium user in SEOmoz. From articles by Rand Fish I discovered Hacker news. And the community blew me away.

I started university and started to build my "unique idea content website" but it was never finished because of Hacker News. I saw that although it's still a good idea to make money with a content website, there is better way to make money and it's more passive than that. It's just simple idea. Start a startup.

I'm still a student at a medical faculty. Last year I started a startup to see what it looks like and if I can build something useful. I bought a domain name for 10$ and 9$ hosting from hostgator. Now it makes 20-30k $ per month and I don't do anything. I'm the owner of my small company and I have 12 workers and one CEO to organize the work, and I continue my study at the university.

After seeing how it's simple to start a startup, (of course starting is not so easy and the idea, marketing also important) I think I'll continue my life as an entrepreneur, not as a doctor.

tashfeen2• 14 years ago

Interesting. Is your site a content site or are you actually providing a service? I am a physician with hopes to start something too (see my profile if you are interested).

zeynalli4• 14 years ago

No, as I said I didn't started the content site, because starting startup is much more interesting, easier and brings money fast and easier, if the idea, execution and marketing are well done.

iSloth• 14 years ago

Any info on what the startup actually does ?

zeynalli4• 14 years ago

We grew big too fast, our team can't handle too much costumers for now. I've bootstrapped, I have not time now to apply for a VC money and I can't work because I'm in last year of medical faculty, I must concentrate on my exams, medicine is very hard to study. So I decided to not accept any payments anymore in next 4-5 months. Also our initial website and branding was not so good and I thought it would be better if we rebrand and relaunch with a different name. I had bootstrapped that time and built everything by myself. Therefore I deleted everything in website to rebuild it. It's empty actually. Now I hired some top designers from Dribble, I think it will be ready in 40 days. I'll open a Show Hn thread for the launch.

somesaba• 14 years ago

seems fishy

jdietrich• 14 years ago

You have to create value commensurate with the return you expect. If you're exceptionally clever or knowledgeable, you may be able to create a lot of value in a relatively short amount of time, then implement a system that allows you to continue to benefit from that value indefinitely - the sort of thing described in the Four Hour Work Week.

People fail because they ignore the need to create value. They fall for sucker schemes that promise vast reservoirs of cash on tap if only you know the secret. There are rare opportunities that arise from market inefficiencies, but you can bet your ass that if someone has identified one of these opportunities, they're not going to cut you in on it.

If you want passive income, you need to create something of real value, then work out how to sell it. It's usually easier to identify the market first, then find a product to sell to it, rather than vice-versa. There are an infinite number of possible products, but relatively few viable markets.

vccafe3• 14 years ago

"If you want passive income, you need to create something of real value, then work out how to sell it"

Can you give a few examples that are doable on a small budget online?

Ajay20502• 14 years ago

Selling case studies and reports can make it happen.

SatvikBeri• 14 years ago

I have done it, but it ended up being a lot of work relative to what I earned (and eventually I lost all the income after a Google algorithm change.)

The thing is, it's generally easiest to create lots of value (and correspondingly, earn a lot of money) in an area where you have very little competition. 10 years ago nobody understood the internet, so passive income online was easy. 5 years later it was doable, but harder. Today you'll probably get a much higher RoI by learning R and doing some Data Science consulting.

Ajay20502• 14 years ago

One good thing to make passive income is by selling Reports about something , gather lots of useful data and sell it as pdf.

If you can put some graphs, charts ,or infographic in it to make it more insightful.

Here is great example : http://www.marketinghotsheet.com/

One of my friend used to do it, he had made good mullah through it.

Ask HN: Creating passive income online - myth or doable?

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