WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]
top | item 4467603

Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

313 points| xjones | 13 years ago

The last thread by the same name got a lot of attention, but seeing as it's over a year old it would be interesting to hear from new people and also get updates from some people who posted in the previous thread.

Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487

279 comments

order
[+] codex|13 years ago|reply
I generate about $1K-$2K a month in passive income. I spend approximately zero hours on maintenance every week, and I bootstrapped it while holding down a full-time job. It took an extra 5-10 hours per week for about a year. Here's what I did:

a) Got a job at a major software company for very high comp. b) Spent an extra 5-10 hours a week working intelligently at my full time job; got promoted. c) Invested the salary, bonus, and stock from my high comp. corporate job in real-estate and tech-heavy index funds, and reap the (literal) dividends passively.

b) is optional; even without the promotion, I would still make enough money to generate almost all of my passive income via investments. Not bad for zero hours per week.

A stable income has allowed me to buy a house at the bottom of the housing market, which will appreciate at about 1% over inflation; my other investments typically do 2-8% over inflation (especially retirement funds, which grow tax-deferred). All in all, at least $1K per month, spiking to much more. At the rate I'm continuing to invest, I'll likely double that monthly return within 18 months.

Sure, this is all pretty volatile, but no more volatile than entrepreneurship, and with much better worse and average case scenarios.

Best of all, these investments will, in the long term, outpace inflation, which is more than can be said for selling software or tech stuff, which tends to depreciate in price over time (after all, the marginal cost of software is zero, which depresses prices due to competitive dynamics).

[+] cageface|13 years ago|reply
I've been saying for a long time now that people with the ability and motivation to make money in tech could probably easily do as well or better in other avenues. Tech entrepreneurship has its own rewards but on average it's hardly easy money.
[+] WickyNilliams|13 years ago|reply
Very interesting! I've been wanting to investigate this kind of thing for a while but just don't know where to start. Can you point me to any resources that will give me a good grounding in investment? In what way did you invest in real estate? How do you choose what to invest in? Would love for some direction here, would be very much appreciated
[+] mapster|13 years ago|reply
It's less about the money and ALL about creating and building and changing. In other words, I don't want to build someone else's Lego set - I want to create my own.
[+] bdunn|13 years ago|reply
A little over $2700/mo with Planscope (https://planscope.io), my SaaS product that's been out since February. I'm averaging about a 8% growth rate month to month, so very excited about how things are going.

* Bootstrapped

* Raised my consulting rates to free up more time for products (= same amount of consulting income)

* Most new customers come via referrals from existing users and organic traffic (via targeted blog posts)

* Wrote a complementary book targeting people who aren't necessarily looking for PM software (http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com), and upselling Planscope through that. Extremely successful so far.

[+] patio11|13 years ago|reply
Seems I commented on this last year, so what the heck:

http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month

Sales are up by about 40% year-to-date over last year, owing to a combination of increased AdWords spend, organic growth in the business, and a successful redesign (and related conversion optimization) right before summer.

Appointment Reminder is doing fairly decently -- monthly recurring revenues (on the publicly available plans) are up about 4x versus the last thread. I've recently gotten some time to actually work on it (my wedding kept me busy for much of the earlier part of this year). My run rate is currently up about 50% since, oh, two months ago? (Why? Interesting question -- re-did pricing, tweaked my marketing knob to "slightly more than zero work", and started getting a wee bit serious about e.g. my use of email to people in their trial period.)

The enterprise pipeline, which is not tracked in those figures, is... well, like all enterprise sales operations ever, I cry a lot and dry my tears on stacks of money. Not terribly relevant to folks who like recurring revenue because it feels like avoiding work, since Enterprise Sales is pretty much exactly what work always felt like, but it is work you get to bank in the past and then get a fairly motivational check from monthly for the present and extending into the future.

I guess consulting doesn't count as recurring revenue, at least not on my model, so I'll skip it. I'm productizing one of my consulting offerings and should be releasing it later this month -- we'll see if that works out.

[+] cageface|13 years ago|reply
I'd like to hear your thoughts about mobile. Everybody seems to be stampeding in that direction right now but you seem to have ignored it so far.

Is this a deliberate decision or just a question of sticking to tools/platforms you're more familiar with?

[+] xjones|13 years ago|reply
Patrick, big fan of your writing and projects like most others here.

Any new Kalzumeus Podcasts coming down the line?

I'd love to see some more posts on Appointment Reminder too. I think many of us could benefit from your insights on selling B2B SaaS products.

[+] cmaxwell|13 years ago|reply
patio11 is a god...can't imagine his consulting offerings will fail.
[+] the_bear|13 years ago|reply
A couple of years ago I started a food blog with my mom (www.theyummylife.com). She does all the writing, and I do programming, design, and monetization. I spent a lot of time setting it up originally, but now it only takes a few hours each week of my time. Right now we're making $5000-6000/month after expenses, and I get 40% of that.

My main business (a bootstrapped SaaS startup) generates more than that, but the profits are mostly being reinvested back into the company, so I don't think it qualifies as passive income.

[+] matznerd|13 years ago|reply
The site looks awesome and appears to have great monetization with links to amazon and ads from the BlogHer network. I recommend you experiment with "Add To Cart" links and buttons instead of "View On Amazon" because the cookie with a link to Amazon only lasts 24 hours and if they come back later and then buy the item you will not receive credit. But if you use the "Add To Cart" button, the cookie lasts 90 days!

This little known tip can net you a lot more money, it has worked for me... https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/t2/a...

[+] kmfrk|13 years ago|reply
Does your mom snap the photos herself? They're - dare I say - a big part of what makes the site so great.

Top-notch design.

[+] xjones|13 years ago|reply
Great job on both of those! Very impressive.

I definitely think the SaaS startup is relevant here. I just used the same title as the last thread, but personally I'd like to hear about any sort of recurring revenue. And as someone who's developing their own SaaS product right now, I need all the motivation I can get from others' success stories.

I don't wish to pressure you about your metrics, but how long did it take you to get your SaaS startup to where it is now? And are you working on it solo?

[+] boothead|13 years ago|reply
Wow, that's a really great site. May I suggest working location into your amazon affiliate links. I'm sitting here in the UK looking at the refrigerator oatmeal recipe. If the links had said amazon.co.uk there's a much higher chance I would have bought the ingredients.
[+] imakeusername|13 years ago|reply
What are you doing to generate a profit? Your e-book only sells for $0.99; I imagine you're not selling 6K+ books per month. I imagine the links on the sidebar are some sort of affiliate program, so you probably earn some money there.

Also, I'm curious about the platform your site is built on, the affiliate links are cool because they seem to all be related to the recipe; I'm curious how you handle the organization.

Thanks for the feedback.

[+] irunbackwards|13 years ago|reply
That's awesome, congratulations! Do you manage the PPC and stuff too? SEO?
[+] ChrisNorstrom|13 years ago|reply
I'm the proud Loser of the bunch, behold my magnificent FAILS. (The ironic thing is, I do UI/UX consulting. So I make time to optimize other people's sites but not my own)

http://residentevilradio.com = -$10/month in shoutcast server hosting (will switch to HTML5/Flash jukebox soon)

http://timeforzen.com = $0 no monetization or affiliate links yet

http://tasck.com/2 (NOT finished, PRE-ALPHA) = $0 no monetization or affiliate links yet

===== Dead Links Below =====

http://moviestop.info (success, no income, now offline/sunsetted)

http://humanchan.com (failure, no income, now offline)

http://humanchannel.net (failure, no income, now offline)

http://onenotes.com (failure, never launched)

http://businessgardening.com (failure, no income, no traffic, now offline)

http://extremephotoshopping.com (failure, a little traffic, no income, now offline)

As you can see, I'm a designer (markup, some php, some javascript, some jquery), not a developer. I can hack things together, build original themes, but can't code complex things from scratch. So I have to stick with small projects that I can actually finish. It sucks but I'm working my way up. I've got some really interesting sites, products, and services I want to experiment with in the future as I learn to program as much as I can.

http://chrisnorstrom.com (the best site I ever launched, a small collection of my ideas and inventions (the non-patentable ones anyway) )

BTW, We should start a fail thread where everyone posts all the failed projects/startups they've worked on over the years.

[+] memset|13 years ago|reply
I wrote a simple android app which lets Virgin Mobile customers see how many minutes they have left on their account. [1] It is open-source [2], and I have optional ads. (I created the app without ads, and then added them in a later update with a note saying "hey, these ads are an experiment. You can disable them in the app's settings if you want, but otherwise, enjoy it!"

This generates between $60-$90 per month, depending on... well, I honestly have no idea what it depends on. Pizza money. And bragging rights.

This app is basically in maintenance mode though I have a lot of things I want to do with it. Android programming is so difficult, though (difficult documentation, impossible for me to figure out how to do anything gui-related) that it's been hard for me to really make big enhancements.

In fact, since going to Google IO this year, I'm no longer a VM customer! Might buy a cheap VM account to do maintenance on this app, which would still be profitable for me.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jaygoel.vi...

[2] https://github.com/poundifdef/VirginMobileMinutesChecker

[+] codypo|13 years ago|reply
I have had a few interesting experiments here in the past year.

Experiment 0: I bought a hotel affiliate site off of flippa. It did pretty well initially, but I didn't do enough investigation into how the previous owner had been generating traffic. In short, there was a lot of untoward stuff going on. As I was getting all of that straightened out, the site got (deservedly) banned from Google's index for a few key terms. I made my money back and learned a valuable lesson: don't buy sites off of flippa.

Experiment 1: I created a few different sites around a big product launch, and monetized via product reviews and the Amazon Affiliate program. This worked very well for a period of time; the site was grossing $100 a day for several weeks with essentially 0 work. Slowly, my site dipped in the rankings for the key terms as much bigger players got their act together. From this, I learned that one-off sites can be valuable, but probably not in the long term. I should've sold the sites at their peak.

Experiment 2: I wrote some algorithms to find underpriced stocks and then examinate a few strategies around that security's options. This was actually a lot of fun. Based on my program, I ended up buying out-of-the-money puts on 5 or 6 different stocks. I'm sitting on a small profit right now. The next step is to exit my positions, finetune the algorithms based on a few key things I learned, and put more money into action.

[+] suresk|13 years ago|reply
I make between $200 - $400 per month off my HTTP testing tool: http://www.uresk.net/httpclient/

Not very impressive (who knew selling a niche tool in an environment where $5 is considered "expensive" wasn't the road to instant riches?), but it has been fun to make and it is always cool to hear about how useful the tool has been to fellow developers.

[+] cageface|13 years ago|reply
Was pulling ~$600/month from iOS apps but yanked them all off the market in response to Apple's patent bullying. I plan to port the ones that make sense to Android.
[+] mittermayr|13 years ago|reply
I created FRUJI.com (Twitter Analytics service) and it keeps generating a minimum of about $50 a day, sometimes (often) more. It's fully self-maintained (unless the server or database crashes), which is just purely amazing. The machines sell, process the orders, upgrade, and provide the customer experience. All I did was programming it. I go for a run, my phone rings a couple of times, I look, PRO account purchased, PRO account purchased, THIS IS F* AWESOME.

I tried creating/selling other things to businesses. This time, it's mostly you and me's, paying it out of their own wallets. Never expected this to work so well.

[+] anon_builder|13 years ago|reply
In august I made about $122,000 from display ads, mostly Adsense. 5-10% of that is spent on stuff like server space and freelance employees. I can imagine that this will not be taken seriously due to lack of details, but for anyone interested, I'm open to answering non-specific questions.

Edit: I see 'from what' is also the question; I have a bunch of entertainment related sites.

[+] timurtamerlan|13 years ago|reply
Few questions, if you dont mind :)

1. How long did it take to reach this level of income?

2. What is the total monthly traffic that generates 122k?

3. How much time does it take to manage the whole thing in its present state?

[+] highace|13 years ago|reply
Do you have any tips for squeezing the most out of adsense? Ad positioning, types, quantity, obtrusiveness?
[+] vidyesh|13 years ago|reply
- So is it niche marketing?

- Are all your websites revolving around the same niche?

- How many do you deploy for particular keyword and its long-tail keyword?

- How many years/months you spent on keyword research? I mean when did you eventually ended up on this niche?

- All your income is just Adsense? or Affiliate marketing too?

- All yours websites are ranked #1 on SERP or few just somehwere on page #1?

- Is your traffic source completely organic?

- How much of black hat SEO involved?

[+] brador|13 years ago|reply
What's your backup revenue plan in event of an adsense ban?
[+] CWIZO|13 years ago|reply
I would love to hear some more on this if you don't mind. If you are making that kind of money, then our company is clearly doing something horribly wrong :)
[+] sr3d|13 years ago|reply
Do you have a strategy of how you built up your network? I'm really curious about how you started, and how you'd pick the right idea to pursue.
[+] bbayer|13 years ago|reply
How many sites did you mention? And how much unique visitor do you have in total?
[+] GrothingFash|13 years ago|reply
where do you find good freelance employees? Do you have many writers under your wing?
[+] tommoor|13 years ago|reply
wow, congrats. I'm sure a lot of hard work and energy went into this over the years!
[+] timurtamerlan|13 years ago|reply
$25k in revenue, ~$15k in net income (at 12-15% monthly growth) from http://jivosite.ru (English version http://jivosite.com is yet work in progress). This is online chat for e-commerce web sites sold primarily to russian-speaking audience, USA & Europe sales start in 2-3 months. Bootstrapped, no office, 2 co-founders (1 business+tech, 1 tech), 3 employees (1 marketing, 1 customer support, 1 programmer).
[+] rizz0|13 years ago|reply
How long have you worked on that, and how long have you been in business in Russia?
[+] yudmiy|13 years ago|reply
неплохо, хотя думал что больше)
[+] rdm2234|13 years ago|reply
Created an iOS dev company few months ago w/ a friend. We made $50k in August from a successful free iphone app. (around $40k in a regular month). We are only two in the company and we are still college students. Don't know what to say more about this but feel free to ask any question (except what is the app ^^)
[+] lmirosevic|13 years ago|reply
That's awesome! You said it's a free app. What's your business model? Free+ads, In app purchase, freemium? And how do you market, do you use CPI/CPC networks?
[+] heliodor|13 years ago|reply
I make about $200 per month from Android app sales. $30,000 and counting over the last few years.

Back when Android had no apps (2008-2009) and all you could do was check the 'new apps' list for new releases, I noticed a spy camera app was released. The app was terrible and there were many comments asking for various features. I took a day off work, repackaged some camera code I had from a work-in-progress app, implemented the requested features, and blew the competition out of the water.

[+] kintamanimatt|13 years ago|reply
It's reasonably certain that the vast majority of entrepreneurs who are making large amounts of cash are going to remain silent!
[+] bdunn|13 years ago|reply
Why?
[+] djt|13 years ago|reply
Unfortunately you're probably going to get lots of old ideas anyway as no-one that has recurring (i'm guessing you mean Passive Income) will tell you their current stream. It's a Goose that laid the Golden Egg problem.

What I would recommend is reading up about different ways to make money, looking at things that other people have done in the past, then find ways to think up what niche you could fill.

After that its about getting it done.

Look up Patio11 and read his comments, that's a great start.

[+] asanwal|13 years ago|reply
ChubbyBrain (www.chubbybrain.com) makes $500-$700/month via good old Google ads and some Amazon affiliate links. It's not our core business, but it covers happy hour for the team and some misc expenses so we happily take it.