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Ask HN: Sub-$1000/mo passive income in 30 days?

40 points by beatpanda ↗ HN
I'm a university student trying to pay off debt and save for a few specific goals.

My rent, groceries, and utilities are paid monthly out of my college fund, leaving me with roughly $500 to earn on my own each month to cover debt servicing, cell phone, car payment, and entertainment.

I do freelance work, but I'd like to reduce the amount of time I spend on it as I'll be taking 18 units next semester and I don't want to jeopardize my GPA (currently a 3.9!)

I'm a proficient programmer. Based on what I've read, that should be enough to generate a small amount of passive income given a setup time of right now to January 26th, when the semester starts.

What would you suggest? What can be set up with that kind of lead time to generate just $500-$1000/month?

Once I get some ideas, I will keep HN apprised of my progress.

10 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 37.2 ms ] thread
IVirOrfeo
look into building a web-app, cloud-based way of doing something you don't see already. Something as simple as a word count site app, or something as complex as a VLSM-CIDR calculator are good options. Think about what you would need to live completely on the internet with no local apps, in fact, try it! What's missing that you need. Build it.
IVirOrfeo
Try making a very useful app for the chrome web store, It is building in market share and people will likely accept ads or a flattr donation supplement. Good luck! Passive income is the best! I, personally like renting, but, find what works for you.
byoung2
Check out http://www.kreci.net/ for some ideas. He's posted on HN about his experiences quitting his job (in Poland, I think), and various ways to earn over $1000/mo online. He had success with iStockPhoto (still earning a few hundred per month), website flipping, and more recently Android app development (which has eclipsed all other money making efforts).
metachris
Mobile apps -- huge audience and very limited scope of the apps. Take the next best idea, get a designer for a few hours for design and images, spend a week or two on development and put it into the Appstore. It's a lot of fun too! I further recommend releasing for both iPhone and Android -- once you have the idea, the algorithms and the design, it takes very little extra effort to reach the other platform.

For one of the first steps: register a domain, setup email and a wordpress with a nice theme, start blogging and have all your future apps be part of your 'business'. You can flexibly expand from there.

ja27
I'd skip iPhone and just focus on Android, mostly to save time. Browse around the iPhone app store though and find some corny apps like a fake fingerprint reader. "Steal" that idea and build an Android equivalent with mobile ads. After your first couple of apps, you could probably crank out a new one in part of a weekend.

I don't know if time spent blogging about and promoting your apps would pay off when instead you could be building more apps or possibly improving the existing ones that are getting good download numbers.

semanticist
Over the longer term, time invested in writing about what you're doing can pay off with future contracting gigs or even full-time employment.

Even if the goal now is 'passive' income, at some point he's going to graduate and will have the time to spend on contracting.

tutmeister
Look into some of the Envato websites, CodeCanyon springs to mind as you say you're a proficient programmer. I actually reduce my overhead by using CodeCanyon snippets and GraphicRiver designs where possible and I know a lot of other developers that do that too. It allows me to sell affordable websites without sacrificing my time and money and you can benefit from that. Don't re-do the stuff already there, but think up some simple, but often-needed snippets to sell and you could be onto a small income. Probably not enough to allow for $500 a month, but it's a start. Mobile Apps probably make more if they become popular, but there's a lot more time involved and with Apple, a $99 up-front charge to become a member of their developer's community.