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Ask HN: Fastest route to $2000/mo. cashflow, worry free and conscience clear

by jharrison on 12/20/10, 10:49 PM with 84 comments

• by whalesalad on 12/21/10, 12:07 AM

  I made about 10k off sales from a WordPress theme over the course of about a year. Not that much money, but it's a GREAT feeling to wake up in the morning and see money in your account. I'd be walking through the mall with my girlfriend at the time and tell her, "just sold a premium copy! want ice cream?" Very, very motivating. It gets to the point that you get a "taking-candy-from-a-baby" feeling that leads you to really try and improve your product day-after-day, to keep your initial customers happy, and to get more sales.

  So, I agree that a niche software product you're actually passionate about will help. I happened to be in a fortunate position where a demand existed for a one-off product I had created a while back, all I had to do was fill the void. Customers were already looking to me for it. I feel like a total fucking idiot for not doing it sooner. I could have made probably 3x the money, just guestimating. Find something that inspires you personally, because that is what will push you to completing it.

  I got laid off from a startup position that was caving in. I had a small severance to live off of, and had always wanted to build this idea. Unfortunately while at the startup I was also working on a second one on the side (death, I know) so I never really had time to do anything but those two things. Getting laid off was perfect. I sprinted as hard as I possibly could for 3 weeks, designing, coding, and building a sale site with a mini activation server. It was loads of fun. It was also very exciting to look back on those three weeks and realize that I had done a great job making the right decision when hit with a small road block. Asking myself things like, "Where does this fit with the 80/20 rule? Can I launch this feature in a second update a week later? Do I need it at all? Oh, wait, these two features can easily be combined into one. The technology behind the two won't be nearly as cool, but users will probably prefer it." All of that, I feel, is what lead to my success. Getting the product out as soon as possible, without cutting any essential corners. We've all heard it before, but living it was great. I guess I pretty much built my own "nano" startup.

  Damnit, now I want to do it again.

• by patio11 on 12/20/10, 11:18 PM

  I'd recommend a niche software product, preferably one with recurring revenue, but you could do it with a day or two of consulting if you have skills and contacts.

• by robryan on 12/21/10, 12:15 AM

  Usually if something is easy, fast and worry free to get to that kind of wage, which is very comfortable living in the vast majority of locations, there are probably many people attempting to do said thing.

  Really you need to leverage some kind of skills to go after something either outside the low hanging fruit, or create something that people wouldn't have considered to have a good enough market. Of course there is an element of luck, if you can make some apps and get them to take off, the mobile ad market seems to be like the early web advertising at the moment, probably returning above the mark. Something like this for example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1870960

• by Kilimanjaro on 12/21/10, 12:17 AM

  The fastest route would be an iPad app. Make an ABC book for kids about animals, or fruits, or things, with big pics and nice visuals. Kids love them, parents love them, instant winner.

• by lessthanideal on 12/21/10, 2:10 AM

  What you're really looking for is a product. I'll even wager you are probably looking for a product that requires minimal unit production and distribution costs. That puts you in a class of products that are electronic, or products that you can convert from an electronic representation to a physical one and have a supplier to deal with those physical challenges (like shipping) for you. People often forget the 2nd option, but it's there.

  A short list of items that meet this qualification: software, writing (books, novellas, blogs, etc.), digital art, digital photography, music (original), sound of other types (background sounds that can be used in the production of music, for example), designs/instructions (for building something) and a probably a bunch of other stuff. If I missed a big one, please reply to this post with it. You should also be looking for free resources online that you can leverage. Are there free services that you can leverage to make your business easier to manage? Can you do some work (collection or processing) of some freely available data that might give it additional value which you can then extract through sales or in some other way?

  Because your goal is to make a living and give yourself some extra freedom, you don't have to overengineer this. This isn't your masterpiece. It doesn't have to be pretty or break new ground necessarily. Don't chrome plate it if you're writing software for it or to support it.

  Frankly, I just started taking advantage of this type of business and I feel almost guilty. The code isn't that great. The idea isn't that great. It's not something to write home about in terms of engineering a solution. But it makes me money even if I don't touch it for a month at a time. I'm not living off this business yet, but I am seeing good growth and I see a virtually infinite path to expanding the digitally based offerings of the business (more offerings = more money).

• by calbear81 on 12/20/10, 11:47 PM

  So I'm not sure if you're asking what are some business investments or you're asking about financial vehicles that can generate $2K/month of cashflow off of $1M of initial investment.

  One option during this down market is to purchase rental property, you'll have to do some digging but the most depressed markets are 70% off of their peaks and most pros will tell you it won't drop much more than that (but it's not ZERO risk). You need to crunch the numbers and then renovate and find tenants but I know of a few small investors that own 15-20 rental properties and can generate ~10% margins monthly and you have the potential upside of property appreciation.

  If you don't want to deal too much with getting hands on and managing a business, it's conceivable to be pretty low-risk to go with high dividend / low growth blue chip stocks. For example, AT&T is at $29/share right now. It's been paying $.42/share per quarter so about $1.60/year. It'll move around a bit but assume that they won't get screwed when the iPhone goes multi-carrier, you are talking about $1M for 34,483 shares which will pay $13,793/quarter in dividends alone which is $4,597 per month. Assume 40% taxation rate and you're $2,758 post taxes. You can use any finance site to screen for companies with high dividend yields. Keep in mind that high dividend usually means low risk of stock price movement but there is still risk.

• by gregjor on 12/20/10, 11:11 PM

  Conscience is the word you want. And cash flow is not the same thing as income. There's an old Monty Python sketch called "How To Do It" where the explanation of how to get rich is "First, get lots of money."

• by keiferski on 12/20/10, 11:19 PM

  Make a simple web app that sells for $15 a month. You'll only need to get roughly 150 customers to make $2000. Or change the price and recalculate.

• by Kilimanjaro on 12/21/10, 12:09 AM

  I just coded http://boog.me over the weekend hoping it may generate some revenue while running unattended.

  If it brings at least $100 a month, I'll work on nine more sites like that to make a grand.

• by JasonPunyon on 12/20/10, 11:08 PM

  You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

• by jraines on 12/21/10, 12:13 AM

  Take a few hours to scan the "recently sold" listings on flippa.com and you will have a few answers to that question.

• by coffeenut on 12/20/10, 11:28 PM

  Leverage existing equity as collateral and purchase one or several investment properties (very carefully of course). There are some incredible deals to be found right now.

• by feint on 12/21/10, 12:50 AM

  I take a multi stream approach to the problem. Half my income comes from a web app I built (task.fm) and the other half from my personal site - I just review the books I read and products I use and earn through affiliate commissions. A couple of pages on my personal site make over $500 a month in commissions, because they are highly targeted (first result in Google).

• by rishi on 12/21/10, 1:53 AM

  The fastest way to $2k/mo in your own business is a lot of hard work.

• by cheald on 12/21/10, 7:25 AM

  Create a product and sell subscriptions. Even at a low price point, if you offer something people are willing to pay for on a recurring basis, you'll end up with a steady and growing income stream. Niche products work here - find an itch in a niche market you participate in, scratch it, and then charge other people to have you scratch the itch for them.

  I've done side/hobby projects of both the ad-driven and subscription-driven flavors, and the subscription-driven stuff gets a lot more profitable a lot faster. It does incur additional stress, because you have direct paying customers to take care of, but depending on the nature of the product, it might not need that much support. On the flip side, it's friggin' amazing to watch payments come in on a daily basis, then look back in a week and realize that you've got your rent paid for.

• by chubs on 12/21/10, 12:09 AM

  Seems like the common thread here is to 'start a web app, charge a recurring fee'...

  Any suggestions for such an app that people here would find useful and willing to pay, say, $10 a month for, that would be small enough to be developed by one guy? I can't think of any ideas off the top of my head.

• by jaywalker on 12/21/10, 7:29 AM

  Perhaps, "a money machine" is a better word than "hands-off investment."

• by chubs on 12/21/10, 12:10 AM

  Make a few iphone / ipad apps? Start an ebay business?