[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to sup...
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Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your
salary?
I was reading this article (https://themdpreneur.com/purchase-
future-cash-stop-buying-more-stuff/) on HN the other day and it
talks about a hypothetical person who buys a condo and rents it
out, or a vending machine and has it serviced, and a website that
brings in income. I come from a fairly traditional investing
background of purchasing equities or ETFs as my primary
investments, and am interested in learning what else is out there
in a non-traditional sense like the above? What other kind of
passive income or cash flow helping investments are out there?
Author : cgb223
Score : 81 points
Date : 2021-05-10 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
| shawnz wrote:
| Equities and ETFs already give you access to those other
| mechanisms. For example, you can get exposure to real estate
| through REITs
| ribab wrote:
| Start a blog. I spent minimal effort making 5 blog posts a few
| years ago and it already pays for the cost of the domain through
| ads. Imagine what revenue 100 blog posts, or 1000 would bring in.
| https://www.codingwithricky.com/
| nknealk wrote:
| Several considerations to what other commenters have already
| said:
|
| * Rental properties, vending machines, etc have poor liquidity.
| What if you need to get your cash back out in an emergency? This
| poor liquidity is particularly correlated to poor economic
| conditions (ie. it takes longer to sell a condo in a bad economy
| which is also when you might really need cash).
|
| * Many non-traditional investments are not actually passive. Even
| with a property manager, you still have to manage that person.
| Also, many investments can have quarters with negative cashflow.
| What might happen to your cashflows in a given period if a tree
| falls on your rental property breaking the roof and the tenants
| move out as a result? What if your property manager also quits on
| you because that situation isn't worth dealing with?
|
| * There are a variety of ETFs focused on non-debt income (Eg.
| high dividend equity funds). Vanguard's trades under the ticker
| VYM. If you come from a background purchasing equities, these
| kinds of investments might be more comfortable for you.
| PiRho3141 wrote:
| I see a lot of people talking about rental properties and I don't
| think there's enough talk in favor of rental properties so here's
| my shot at it.
|
| My philosophy of being a landlord is not to bank on appreciation,
| but rather find houses where the mortgage is well below what
| tenants are paying for. How do you find those kinds of houses?
| You buy dilapidated houses, renovate them and then rent them out.
| If you don't want to go through that work, there are middlemen
| called "turnkey providers" that renovate houses and then sell
| them to investors for a profit.
|
| From there, you can decide whether to manage the property
| yourself (less passive) or hire a property manager (more
| passive). If you hire a property manager, they do all of the busy
| work associated with owning a house like finding tenants,
| collecting rent, evicting tenants. They do not get paid unless
| there is a tenant on the property so it's in their best interest
| to find you a good tenant.
|
| The thing I like most about rental properties is four fold: 1)
| Positive cash flow (rent minus all operating costs) 2)
| Depreciation (in the US, you can depreciate the cost of the house
| --not land--over 27.5 years which usually makes the cash flow
| stated above tax free) 3) Principal payments (part of the
| mortgage the tenant pays goes into the principal of the property
| --usually around 30% of the first payment goes to principal if
| you put down 20% and it only goes up from there) 4) Appreciation
| (the house & land usually appreciates at pace with inflation)
|
| Graham Stephan talks about this in his YouTube video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8wNUaBgZTk
|
| Also remember, the longer you hold the property, the higher the
| rent will be while your 30 year loan will stay flat. This makes
| holding property much more appealing later on but with higher
| repair bills as well as things start to break.
|
| There's a lot of advantages with owning homes IF you do the math
| correctly. Here's a video of Brandon Turner, the owner of Bigger
| Pockets, discussing how to analyze rental properties for the math
| to make sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uogn4qtZ8U
|
| Also, if there's a downturn in the market, usually people that
| own homes move to rental properties.
|
| If you're interested in rental properties, I'd suggest the bigger
| pockets forums where you can read about everyone doing this type
| of stuff: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums
| chillacy wrote:
| One which I'm curious about is buying software businesses with
| existing user bases and adding new features, kind of the
| equivalent of buying a fixer upper, but it uses my unique skills.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Are there any good sites that do that... seems like they're
| filled with sites that are hard to verify if they're legit.
| bttrfl wrote:
| you might want to check MicroAcquire
| Frypa wrote:
| Require you to have a linkedin account to continue.
| Depressing. I gave up.
| [deleted]
| throwaway088 wrote:
| I have been part of feinternational for sometime and saw their
| prospectuses. In general, if there is an existing user base,
| then the price factors it in already. You must have a plan and
| ability to increase the userbase in order to get a return on
| investment. Otherwise, some competitor may simply attract your
| customers and you are doomed.
| throwaway088 wrote:
| So, about renting, I bought a single family home for $500k in bay
| area. It now is worth $1M. Gets me rent before expenses of
| $40000. So far, I have spent about $5k per year on. Repairs etc.
| So effectively, I make about $20k after taxes, repairs, mortgage
| interest etc. Overall, I spent $350k by way of downpayment,
| mortage interest payment, etc. No major tenant issues.
|
| Hence, I would peg my return on investment of 5% if I do not
| account for increase in price of the house. If I do, it would be
| around 10% which is what FAANG has been giving me, with much less
| hassles.
|
| Decide for yourselves if this is passive enough for you.
| bugzz wrote:
| If you put only 20% down to buy it, that's 100k. So 20k/year is
| 20% returns, right?
| throwaway088 wrote:
| Over the years, I got cold feet and paid off somenof the
| principal. Thats why I said overall I spent $350k so far
| dangwu wrote:
| In hindsight, was it worth it compared to just investing all
| that money into the S&P500?
| theplague42 wrote:
| I think that's his point; that 5% returns aren't actually
| that great.
| hkarthik wrote:
| He stated 5% without accounting for the 100% price
| appreciation in the actual real estate. So the real rate of
| return is actually much better!
| dangwu wrote:
| Well, 10% is great, and he's diversified. I don't think
| it's that cut and dry.
| bluGill wrote:
| Diversity is useful though. Stocks have crashed in the
| past, and they will in the future. As has real estate and
| every other investment. You thus need a backup plan in case
| your investment fails. I make no attempt to predict WHEN
| these crashes will happen, or how big they will be.
| ac29 wrote:
| A single property is not diversification, if anything it
| further concentrates your money into a single asset.
| bluGill wrote:
| That depends on the size of your other investments. If
| the property is worth $100,000 and your total assets are
| $1,000,000 with the rest in stocks, that one property is
| a reasonable level of diversification. If you already
| have a house worth $500,000 then taking money out of
| stocks to buy the rental is a bad investment. The above
| are but two very simplified examples. You need to figure
| out what is correct for your situation though - there is
| no one size fits all.
| throwaway088 wrote:
| Yep. You are right. One thing that it helped me with is
| pickup a few managerial skills and have a nice diversion
| from day to day software stuff.
| plank_time wrote:
| In hindsight not investing in a FAANG was a huge mistake.
| throwkeep wrote:
| And that can quickly disappear for those who end up with
| tenants that don't pay and can't be evicted.
| throwaway088 wrote:
| That's my fear. But can you tell me in what situations I
| cannot evict my tenants. (Honest question).
| ixacto wrote:
| Most states have eviction moratoriums until 6/30 right now
| due to the pandemic.
| throwaway088 wrote:
| Got it. Thx
| yeswecatan wrote:
| COVID?
| ac29 wrote:
| Even when you can evict your tenants, it can take a long
| time, since you have to go to court. Had a friend have a
| property get absolutely destroyed by tenants that took a
| while to evict - 10s of thousands of dollars of damages. Of
| course, you could sue to recover your losses but these sort
| of tenants are usually an empty bag - you can't collect
| money they dont have and a small security deposit wont
| cover much. These situations are uncommon, but hardly
| unheard of.
|
| https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-eviction-
| process...
| polygotdomain wrote:
| FWIW, your returns are likely significantly above the 5% mark
| you're referencing. You haven't factored in the unrealized gain
| of 500k, which would significantly change your returns. All in
| all, you've got a cash flow positive real estate asset who's
| valuation has doubled. Unless you purchased 15 years ago,
| you're likely looking at returns in the mid twenties.
|
| My advice; learn how to actually put together a DCF model and
| get some real insight into your returns.
|
| EDIT: I realized that my last statement might come off a bit
| condescending, but that wasn't my intention. Fundamentally,
| evaluating Real Estate returns is significantly more complex
| than other investments, such as holding stocks, ETFs, or Bonds.
| A Distributed Cash Flow (DCF) model will help you gain some
| understanding that will likely help you to make better
| decisions about your existing investment and make a more
| educated plan for the future (e.g. upcoming maintenance, when
| to exit at what price). You don't have to build a complex
| model, but even a simple one can help. There's plenty of
| resources out there, and you don't need much more than Excel to
| build one.
|
| Source: formerly employed at a national REIT
| caffeine wrote:
| Pretty sure that's Discounted Cash Flow
| hash872 wrote:
| Over the lifespan of owning the building, say a few decades,
| you can expect:
|
| 1. Rare but highly expensive major expenses like a new roof,
| new heating system, etc. It's like a tail risk- you don't pay
| for it most years, but when it comes up, it costs a lot.
|
| 2. Required renovations- just to stay at your current level of
| quality. I.e. let's say you rent to normal middle class tenants
| now. In 10-15 years, you'll need to install a new kitchen, new
| bathroom, overall maintenance- just to stay at a middle class
| level. The building is constantly depreciating! So unless you
| intend to move economically downscale and rent to lower income
| folks, to stay 'middle class' you'll need to refresh the
| building every decade or two. No one wants an ancient kitchen,
| a decrepit bathroom from three presidents ago, etc.
|
| So you have to factor those two major expenses into your total
| rate of return over the decades. How much is a new roof, a new
| heating system, that new kitchen, that new bathroom.... You may
| not see these expenses every year, so you don't feel like they
| count, but over the decades they will.
|
| Source, am actually familiar with the _true_ rate of return for
| properties over a long enough time span to judge. A 1-3 year
| snapshot isn 't sufficient!
| throwaway088 wrote:
| Thanks. This is great insight and one that is missing from
| most online discussions. I am really terrified of this
| situation because it will bring down my ROI. Also, I dont
| like to deal with contractors and related headaches. We will
| see how it pans out.
| patatino wrote:
| _Source, am actually familiar with the true rate of return
| for properties over a long enough time span to judge._
|
| And what is it?
| Ennis wrote:
| Most folks I know that purchase properties are not in it for
| cashflow. Breaking even is enough. The goal is to purchase
| the next one with a downpayment against existing equity. The
| deck of cards falls apart if the property market corrects
| significantly but how is that different than everything else
| happening in this economy.
| yeswecatan wrote:
| What about depreciation and lowering your taxable income?
| throwaway088 wrote:
| My tax advisor said that for our income levels, it will not
| decrease or increase any tax brackets.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Regardless of income, you can defer depreciation to a
| future tax year.
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| I've got a share portfolio that generates a couple bucks a day in
| short share lending.
|
| Literally just tick a box to give broker permission. Nothing is
| risky free but looked into it and as best as I can tell it's a
| pretty good deal. No inconvenience, not much risk etc
| justaguy88 wrote:
| I had always assumed they just did that already without
| permission
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Perhaps they do. If they get caught, though, that's _big_
| trouble with the regulators.
| hash872 wrote:
| As another poster already said, being a landlord is not
| 'passive'- you are essentially buying a part time job with no set
| off hours. The heat could go out on Christmas Eve, while you're
| on vacation, etc. It is a highly regulated (especially in blue
| states) field involving, you know, actual human beings!
|
| Anyone advocating for being a landlord as a 'passive' investment
| vehicle is generally some type of Trump University or 'creative
| real estate' guru trying to sell you something. By contrast
| equities average a 9% annual rate of return, and are truly
| passive
| PiRho3141 wrote:
| You would be correct if you were managing this property
| yourself. This would be incorrect if you have a property
| manager managing this property. You can work with your property
| manager to auto approve any house related work that is under a
| certain threshold. Otherwise, they will send you an invoice for
| you to pay at your convenience.
|
| With that said, depending on the property manager, they will do
| some of the following: find tenants, place tenants, evict
| tenants, collect rent, find contractors/repairperson to fix
| issues, etc.
|
| The property manager makes it mostly passive but probably an
| hour a month of work if that.
| hash872 wrote:
| Sure, but then the property manager charges so much that it's
| probably not a profitable investment, or at least a much less
| profitable one. They typically charge a % of the rent, plus
| another fee for whatever activity they do- x number of
| dollars to visit the site, x dollars to show the property, x
| dollars to go to court, manage the contractors, and so on.
|
| Now it's 'passive', sure, but no longer an 'investment'
| appletrotter wrote:
| > Now it's 'passive', sure, but no longer an 'investment'
|
| ...unless the math adds up and you're still making a
| profit.
| revisa wrote:
| Stake Hex . com which is certificate of deposit. Average person
| receives 40% APR but varies according to how long you stake.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| No investments are "fully" passive, but some are more passive
| than others. For equities, the Dividend Aristocrats (those
| companies that have paid an increasing dividend for 25 years or
| more) are pretty close, and also are somewhat lower risk than
| equities in general (lower beta). The traditional passive income
| investments are bonds, and with as little as $6000 you could
| create a bond portfolio of US government debt that pays a monthly
| coupon (each individual bond is $1000 and pays interest every 6
| months, so with 6 you get monthly income until the bonds start to
| mature). Unfortunately, interest rates are so low right now that
| you probably won't get the sort of income you are looking for
| even with the longest duration government bonds.
|
| Anything that is not as standardized and well-organized as the
| stock or bond markets is going to require more work and thus is
| less passive, or will result in you having to pay others to do
| the work on your behalf (thus leaving you with less income).
| TatersGonnaT8 wrote:
| I own a rental property, and I have a property manager who
| handles the day-to-day operation. The money I've put towards the
| rental would have performed better if it would have gone towards
| an index fund instead and would have been lower stress that way,
| but I like the feeling of having at least some "diversified"
| assets in real estate.
|
| I've also made a couple games in my free time ("Dodge the Wall!"
| on Steam and "Cup Pong AR" on iOS/Android). Those games have been
| a great way to make ~tens of dollars.
|
| The best way that I've made passive income is just through boring
| Vanguard index funds/target date funds.
| lend000 wrote:
| Truly passive income doesn't really exist (and shouldn't exist,
| outside of perhaps some type of state sponsored basic income).
| The exception in recent history is ETF's, which provide a
| relatively high level of reliable growth due to a questionable
| tax exception and government monetary policy that favors stock
| market positions over other economic metrics such as wealth
| inequality. I believe ETF's are bad for the economy, despite how
| popular they are on HN, but if you are looking for truly passive
| income, I think that's about as close as you can get.
| kinghajj wrote:
| Would you mind elaborating on why you dislike ETFs? From my
| point of view, they provide retail trades the opportunity
| easily to allocate a portfolio among various sectors. Does your
| dislike of ETFs extend to "old-school" mutual funds, or is
| there something about ETFs in particular that turns you off of
| them?
| cjohansson wrote:
| I use an automatic saving from my bank-account to a investment-
| robot that my bank provides that automatically buys shares in
| different funds, I would say it gives 10-20% back and requires
| zero effort, took less than an hour to setup
| bluegene wrote:
| Which bank is that? Can you setup a ceiling?
| jcims wrote:
| Chase does this
| Ennis wrote:
| By passive I'll assume you mean less effort and risk than
| starting a new business that requires daily attention.
|
| The nice things about the property market are: 1. High leverage -
| to a very high amount when you put down payments greater than
| 30-50%. 2. Managed or protected by some governments. Gives a more
| consistent rate of growth in many fast growth cities. 3. Cashflow
| and appreciation.
|
| The details matter and there's obviously skill involved in making
| it work. At some point like other businesses you will need to
| hire others to manage the day-to-day if you choose to keep
| growing.
| [deleted]
| nyxtom wrote:
| Here's what we do:
|
| - Max out 401k
|
| - Automated contribution to Roth (up to max), can also use
| backdoor traditional conversion strategy here
|
| - Automated investment into standard index fund, charles schwab
| has a robo advisor that will automate all this stuff for you,
| diversification strategies and keep in line with your goals.
|
| - Crypto (10% risk exposure here, or more depending on your
| comfort levels)
|
| - Own a home, have used market opportunity to take advantage of
| cash out refinance, reinvest into our portfolio, simple upgrades
| to the home and savings.
|
| - Keep debt low or completely gone
|
| - Don't buy expensive stuff
|
| - Take advantage of community supported agriculture if you want
| to save on food (some places will give you discounts if you order
| for the whole year)
|
| - For home expenses and major repairs you'll want at the minimum
| 3% of your loan per year on hand. Try and maximize this so you
| don't have to dip into credit
|
| - Keep a savings around for other emergencies (if your health
| insurance plan includes HSA you can take advantage of growth
| opportunity here, where contributions here will grow against
| index funds if you can find the right product - health equity is
| one, fidelity also offers accounts). HSA withdrawals are tax free
| for medical expenses at any time. When you are over 50 you can
| withdraw from your HSA for any reason at all you just get taxed
| for non-health expenses at the income bracket (similar to other
| retirement accounts).
|
| - save up for goals and things you want like a family vacation
|
| - Minimize your subscription services
|
| - Look into wholesale cell phone plans (Ting, Visible, Google Fi)
| it uses the same networks and generally can save you money on
| your existing plan.
|
| - Build simple SaaS projects that can pull in even 3%-5%/year
| would be a great goal to go for. It's not income replacing
| levels, but it's enough. Use that to reinvest where appropriate
| (back into project, or into other areas of portfolio)
|
| The goal is to try and have a portfolio that can beat standard
| inflation *and* lifestyle inflation.
|
| You would think this is a lot of scrimping and saving but our
| expenses are quite low just using these strategies. One of the
| largest expenses we have is food and mortgage payments.
|
| We are considering looking into rental income at some point when
| the market is in a little bit better buying opportunity. I have
| friend in Utah that owns a startup called Rentler that does
| property management as a service. It works quite well so we may
| end up using something like that to take care of rental
| investments in the future.
|
| I realize not everyone is at this position in life but it's
| basically the same strategy we have used until we could move to
| the next thing. We started out with minimizing our expenses and
| putting money away until we could buy a home. Now we have moved
| onto the standard boring investment strategies that should give a
| nominal rate of return (not looking for anything massive). After
| this, as mentioned, rental income might be next.
| meristohm wrote:
| Cheeky-and-also-serious response:
|
| Soil, for the food you grow to eat, share, or sell. Much about a
| green, growing area is passive income for is.
|
| Another option is lobbying your elected officials to regulate in
| the interest of healthier land, water, and air, which will help
| you and many others.
|
| Making something useful and giving it away (or charging a nominal
| amount for hosting costs, or asking others to help with that to
| keep the use-barriers low) is an investment in other people that
| may continue paying dividends long after you're dead.
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Relationships with people can be considered as an investment. Off
| late I have noticed that any relationship will start degrading in
| the absence of communication. It's better to invest some time in
| people you really value and nurture the relationship over time.
| everfree wrote:
| My advice is this: Think about your unique domain knowledge.
|
| Ask yourself:
|
| * What do I _know_ that gives me an advantage over the average
| joe?
|
| * What other resources do I _have_ that give me an advantage over
| the average joe?
|
| Generally speaking, if your idea to make money sounds really
| lame, boring, risky, complicated and/or esoteric to an uneducated
| layperson - but due to your domain knowledge you know that it's
| not - you're on the right track. Bonus points if it benefits from
| obscure, difficult-to-get resources that you already have (for
| instance, a best friend who owns a niche website you can
| advertise on, or family connections in the X industry, or you
| live in a town that has a huge Y industry.)
| brundolf wrote:
| I would point out that renting out a condo is not a passive
| investment; keeping up with tenants, doing cleaning and
| maintenance, etc. can be a full-time job (maybe less so for a
| condo than a house, but still). And as we here probably know,
| maintaining a website is not necessarily passive either, and I
| would imagine the same is true of a vending machine. These are
| projects, and at some point they become businesses; not simply
| "here's my money, make me more".
| lucas03 wrote:
| some businesses take care of that work for 15% on rent
| setr wrote:
| Passive income is usually "dramatically less work than a full
| time job" -- e.g. 5 days effort per month. Even paying someone
| else to do it means you still need to check up on it (and make
| sure they're actually doing the work, and doing it competently)
| awillen wrote:
| You can hire a property manager who will take a percent and
| turn it into almost entirely passive income. This is what I do
| with my properties, and all I do is approve expenses over a
| certain level and forward tax docs to my CPA at the beginning
| of the year.
| seibelj wrote:
| Compound will give you a risk-free 6.3% APY (other than the risk
| of smart contracts) on USDC (digitized dollars)
| https://compound.finance/markets/USDC
| emouryto wrote:
| What's the difference between this an Aave?
| kinghajj wrote:
| Additionally, BlockFi pays 8.6% APY on stablecoins. If you have
| any BTC, ETH, or LTC, they'll pay interest on those as well.
| Normally interest is paid in like-kind (e.g. a BTC balance
| generates BTC interest), but with the Flex option, you could
| have interest from all balances paid as one token. I chose to
| have everything paid in GUSD stablecoin, for instance,
| primarily to make figuring out taxes easier.
| lgats wrote:
| BlockFi's interest is a very attractive offer, but the risks
| you're exposed to aren't very transparent.
|
| What could happen that would impact the exchange rate of this
| 'Stable coin'? What risks exactly is one taking on for the
| 8.6% interest?
| justinzollars wrote:
| Nothing is risk-free. There is political risk (it gets
| outlawed), technological risk (it gets hacked), theft risk (it
| gets stolen), a comet hits the earth risk etc etc.
| everfree wrote:
| This would have been a good comment if it hadn't said "risk
| free".
| frompdx wrote:
| I help manage some rental units for my family and it's definitely
| not passive income. It's not full time work, but something
| requires your attention regularly. There are plenty of pitfalls
| where you can find yourself losing money instead of making a
| profit. For example, if turning your unit over between tenants
| ends up being costly and time consuming you will still need to
| pay taxes and maybe a mortgage in the interim.
|
| It's not a bad way to earn an income, but it really requires a
| lot of capitol to get started and earn enough to be worth it.
| Once you have enough units to sustain yourself you'll invest a
| decent amount of time keeping the whole operation going.
|
| Edit:
|
| Some people are pointing out you can use a property manager as a
| middle man to keep your involvement to a minimum. This is true
| but they will cut into your profits, which may or may not work
| for you depending on your margins. But it might make sense to go
| this route if you have minimal time or many units to manage.
| logikblok wrote:
| I'm in the UK and there are quite a few services now that invest
| your money into property and infrastructure loans as peer to peer
| loans. I've invested in quite a few and see ~PS50 a month as
| gains across the total set. I usually either reinvest or I pay
| out and buy into other investments. I could increase my exposure
| here but I think I'm at a comfortable level for my risk appetite.
|
| For me this is investing in property but without the hassle of
| long term maintenance. You don't own the property but it's much
| more hassle free and fairly passive as long as you pick which
| things you'd like to invest into.
|
| Services I've personally invested in and would vouch for: -
| https://www.kuflink.com/ - https://www.loanpad.com/ -
| https://www.lendingworks.co.uk/ -
| https://www.abundanceinvestment.com/
|
| You might like to try out some peer to peer loan based
| investments if you're after some fairly passive gains.
| antaviana wrote:
| Is PS50 a sizeable return in the UK?
| simooooo wrote:
| About enough to cover your broadband bill
| jbjbjbjb wrote:
| I opened up a couple of those links and found tax free
| returns of 3 to 4.5%, so not very enticing.
| outro_macros wrote:
| Staking cryptocurrency in a very conservative way has produced
| the following incomes:
|
| $4600 - 2017
|
| $23,000 - 2018
|
| $3700 - 2019
|
| $2500 - 2020
|
| 2021 is shaping up to look like 2018 again but I haven't run the
| numbers
| twox2 wrote:
| Which currencies? How much have you had to stake to make these
| kinds of returns?
| outro_macros wrote:
| I just stake decred. Years ago I was much more ambitious and
| after losing money in multiple exchange hacks, and then
| losing nearly everything again in the ethereum DAO exploit, I
| will never again leave coins around outside of my own
| custody. Few cryptos let you stake easily while maintaining
| complete custody of your coins
|
| Last I checked, I averaged just over the current annual roi
| at about 5%, but back in 2017 roi was higher at like 7% so
| you can do the math to see how much I have :)
|
| It's all a bit of a blessing and a curse though. The year I
| made over 20k staking, I actually paid ~35% tax on that
| without realizing any profit in USD but thankfully I had
| enough money to handle that
| twox2 wrote:
| Cool thanks for sharing. The volatility can get brutally
| expensive. I sell NFTs for ETH, which of course have to pay
| income tax on, but if suddenly ETH tanks.... ouch
| outro_macros wrote:
| Yeah.. After the 2017 ICO bubble popped I had to take out
| 6 months salary in credit just to pay the IRS. (The
| alternative was liquidating every crypto I held at a
| massive loss)
|
| It felt like I wasted everything butttt never again! I've
| already sold 12 months+ salary from a few other cryptos
| this cycle (:
| lostmsu wrote:
| Staking as in PoS?
| outro_macros wrote:
| Yes PoS is _part_ of the consensus algo for this coin
| (Decred) - only 30% of the block reward goes to PoS while PoW
| miners (60%) and the the treasury (10%) receive the rest of
| the reward
| Murgen_90 wrote:
| What's your ROI like? Do you have a big initial investment to
| get this kind of income?
| outro_macros wrote:
| ROI is just under 5% right now
|
| Minimum entry into decred staking is 37,000 USD unless you
| look into ticket splitting
|
| I have over a few thousand decred which I'm already planning
| to never sell so staking is a no-brainer. My cost-basis is
| probably $25 so my initial investment was much lower
| codethief wrote:
| In how far are your investments "passive"? What does
| "conservative" mean?
|
| I mean, with ETFs I'd trust that eventually they will increase
| in value (again) but given the high volatility of
| cryptocurrencies, I'd probably be selling and re-investing at a
| much higher frequency.
|
| EDIT: Never mind, I now see your other comments and read up on
| "staking"[0] and "decred"[1]. Looks like I've been out of the
| loop.
|
| [0]: https://staking.com/
|
| [1]: https://staking.com/decred/
| outro_macros wrote:
| "passive" in that I open up my wallet 1-2 times per week and
| initiate the staking process with my available funds. Takes
| like 15 minutes / week and I'm usually making coffee while
| it's happening, but really I should just setup the auto
| ticket buyer and leave my machine on 24/7. That would bring
| it down to 0 min/week given my rasp pi doesn't randomly fail
|
| Funds that are locked randomly get called to "vote" (where I
| earn my reward) and re-enter my wallet so re-entering the
| lottery immediately would be more advantageous too
|
| Also it feels passive because even though staking nodes need
| to be online at all times and require legit setups, I use
| delegated staking so I can select an operator which I pay a
| fee (0.5% in my case) in exchange for their redundant always-
| online setup so it's a painless ux
| blentrop wrote:
| I've been using Mudrex[0] to rent bots to put my crypto to work.
| They have been very good and open about everything. Creators are
| active in discord server answering questions.
|
| [0] https://mudrex.com/
| deanmoriarty wrote:
| Credit card cash back, it's easy to get 5% on most purchases.
| That's $1,000 tax-free a year for $20,000 expenses you'll have
| either way.
| jonkho wrote:
| Opportunity abounds in the defi crypto space. Being a liquidity
| pool provider on a usd stable coin pair yields ~40% apy
| currently[1].
|
| [1]https://app.beefy.finance/
| impostervt wrote:
| Publish books on Amazon. I've published 4 and make about $3k in
| profit per month, after paying for ads on amazon.
|
| Don't write them yourself, that's a lot of work.
|
| Instead, do key word research about what books sell in non-
| fiction categories (fiction is a whole different ballgame). Look
| for keywords that 1) auto complete in the amazon search bar, and
| 2) have less than 4,000 matching books, and 3) have an average
| Amazon BSR of less than 150k.
|
| The above isn't easy, nor is it particularly difficult.
|
| Once you've found a good keyword, create an outline on the
| subject. You'll have to do a bit of research here, but this can
| be done in a few hours to a few days. The more time you spend
| here, the better your result will be.
|
| Then, hire a ghostwriter to produce a 30k-ish word long book.
| This will run you around $1000, and produce a book long enough to
| turn into a 3+ hour audiobook on Audible (audiobooks over 3hrs
| get significantly better royalties than less than 3 hours).
|
| Get a cover made. This will run from $50ish on fiverr to several
| hundred on 99designs or upwork. Don't cheap out, good covers are
| important.
|
| Publish on amazon. Run ads.
|
| There's obviously more too it than this. If interested, look up
| the Mikkelsen twins or Dane McBeth on youtube.
| Romanulus wrote:
| How did you get into this... I am assuming you didn't come up
| with the idea/method since there seems to be competition out
| there already.
|
| How long have you been at it and, when you decided to take the
| plunge, how long did it take you to get everything set up and
| going before your first publish (as in figuring out the ropes)?
| starik36 wrote:
| Wouldn't the author have to be knowledgeable about the subject?
| 30k words for $1000 sounds pretty low for an expert.
| impostervt wrote:
| They do their own research too, but they're not experts.
| You'll have to get at least mildly informed on the subject to
| make the outline and make sure the writer stays on track. I
| tend to read several book on whatever the subject is to make
| sure my book captures the best information I can find.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Seriously, whatever happened to being an expert on a certain
| domain of knowledge? This sounds like a disgusting startup-
| esque approach to writing a book.
| pjdemers wrote:
| The big reason to get a ghost writer is because writing books
| is easy, editing them is hard. Amazon's search algorithm dings
| books for every little grammar, wording, and punctuation error.
| Unless you were an English major, you will spend 75% of your
| time getting every sentence perfect. Hiring someone to edit
| costs about the same as hiring someone to write.
| impostervt wrote:
| A simple line editor shouldn't run you more than $200 for a
| 30k book.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| What kind of topics do you write about? Is it
| programming/reference material like "Mastering framework X in
| lang Y"?
| impostervt wrote:
| I won't say what category I focus on, but I will say that
| programming books don't sell well, in general. Some do quite
| well, but most don't.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| Thanks yea that's what I figured, it's all about finding
| that niche and going for it.
| bennysomething wrote:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/celinnedacosta/2021/12/28/pushi...
|
| I looked the twins up. Looks like they've figured they can make
| more selling courses on what you describe.
|
| A family member does FBA and does quite well. The book selling
| thing just sounds grim to me.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Incredible. Do you publish under a ghost name?
| impostervt wrote:
| Yes, several. Each pen name has their own "personality" and
| focuses on different aspects.
| twox2 wrote:
| How much do you have to spend on ads to make the $3K? I I
| imagine it's a hefty sum?
| impostervt wrote:
| Around $1000 - $1500. The $3k varies by month too. April and
| May have been slow, while Jan/Feb were really good.
| dotBen wrote:
| There's something about this that just makes me really sad. I
| guess being in my late 30's I hold on to the flawed notion that
| there is sanctity in something that is 'published'.
|
| Does anyone here want to read a book that wasn't written by an
| expert on the topic? How upset or sad would you feel if you
| spend several hours reading a book only to discover it was
| produced by an opportunist who picked that keyword and asked
| someone in a developing nation with no expertise about the
| subject to grok some blogs (which might or might not be
| factually correct) and pad out to make it a 3hr audiobook read.
|
| I'm sorry, I just think it's a shitty thing to be doing. I'm
| not against making money (I'm a VC!) but it just undermines the
| integrity of the medium of books because now you have to sort
| out 'real' knowledgeable authors from this carpet bagging.
| js2 wrote:
| On the one hand, I agree. On the other, Sturgeon's law.
| Surely you remember how terrible most of the books were in
| the tech section of B&N or Borders. Why should some
| publishing house that published a bunch of "X For Dummies"
| books be the only ones in on the game?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Who says the ghostwriter is not an expert on the topic? The
| above is quite similar to a startup incubator, there is a
| demand in the marketplace that's unmet, one hires people to
| meet that demand and develop a product after which customers
| buy it.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| $1000 says he isn't.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Maybe. Looks like the OP says his books are pretty good
| with high ratings and a high volume of ratings as well,
| so they must be enjoyable enough to the people who buy
| them.
| w0de0 wrote:
| I'm sure we can trust the self publisher of a
| ghostwritten unedited cost-first keyword-selected book to
| never employ fake reviews. He's only here to provide
| what's best for his customer.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| That's pretty disingenuous to say they employ fake
| reviews, regardless of whatever your opinions of self
| publishing are.
| dotBen wrote:
| Selection bias. People who see OP's books in the search
| results and conclude it's a shitty book/something is
| off/etc are not going to leave a review (on a book they
| didn't buy) to say so. People who spend $10 and 4hrs of
| their time are inclined to not want to feel like they
| just wasted that and so will positively review something
| to reinforce.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Agreed. Not that Amazon is where I normally buy books anyway,
| but it makes me think twice baout doing so. Feels like a bit
| of a dilution of an otherwise well-regarded art form when
| someone can just be producing arbitrary books. That said, I
| suppose this isn't new, and has been happening with textbooks
| forever.
| foobiter wrote:
| I hate everything about this. Every step in this process is
| about making money and nothing else.
| louissm_it wrote:
| Maybe I'm being dumb - and there certainly is no rule written
| in stone about this - but I expect a level of craftsmanship and
| dedication from _published_ books that only comes from years of
| research /experience. I would _hate_ to spend my dollars and
| hours reading a book only to discover it was written by some
| ghost writer. It 's the kind of thing I expect from a Medium
| article.
|
| I can't exactly point out what, but it feels gross.
| Poiesis wrote:
| Is this $3000 for one book or all four?
| impostervt wrote:
| All 4.
| [deleted]
| laserdancepony wrote:
| You are a Ferengi, we get it.
| louissm_it wrote:
| _" They're greedy, misogynistic, untrustworthy little trolls,
| and I wouldn't turn my back on one of them for a second."_
| cjohansson wrote:
| That does not sound passive to me, ideally a passive income
| should require minimal amount of working hours outside of ones
| regular job
| bugzz wrote:
| Are the books any good? What are reviews like?
| impostervt wrote:
| I like to think my books are good. One has over 900 reviews
| with an average of 4.8 stars. Two others have over 100
| reviews with about a 4.6. The 4th one has about 20 reviews
| with 4.4 stars-ish (I didn't follow the formula on this one,
| my own fault).
|
| I'm not the only one doing this, of course. Most of the books
| I see my competitors make are of lower quality, but they
| probably paid a lot less for them. In general, books made by
| people like me read like really long blog posts - because
| that's where most of the information comes from.
| robmerki wrote:
| They are poor quality and clearly written by ghost writers.
|
| I don't blame people for going for the easy money, but it's
| like paying "writers" to write thousands of articles about
| "best pool equipment 2021" to target keywords on Google just
| so you can soak up Amazon affiliate revenue. Sure you make
| money, but how many people are reading your "blog" as fact?
| lucas03 wrote:
| _What I have_ :
|
| 1. dividend growth portfolio
|
| 2. p2p lending
|
| 3. lifetime affiliate commissions for referrals
|
| 4. SaS website with paid membership
|
| _What I plan to have in the future_ :
|
| 1. crypto lending
|
| 2. real estate
| theplague42 wrote:
| The rate of return on investments is proportional to the risk
| and/or effort necessary to make it work. Contracting out the
| management of things like condos, vending machines, etc. destroy
| the vast majority of any gross profit. Investing in a large-cap,
| high-dividend mutual fund (Vanguard, etc.) will generate
| reasonable returns with 0 effort on your part. Just cash out your
| dividends rather than re-invest.
| mamcx wrote:
| Other say how landlord ON USA are not that passive, but maybe do
| it in other countries? Here in Colombia being landlord is very
| good, because most use an agency that manage the property
| (collect the money and do some basic fixes). I probably have
| called the actual owner 1 or 2 times in a decade for approval for
| some fixes.
| codethief wrote:
| I assume you're talking about being landlord of an apartment in
| a larger apartment complex where a property manager takes care
| of many apartments at the same time? I'm asking because my
| impression is that this scales better and should therefore be
| significantly cheaper than paying someone to manage a single
| apartment or house somewhere. (Besides, with a house or I'd
| imagine a lot more fixes being necessary over time.)
|
| Also, how many tenants has this apartment (have these
| apartments) that you're managing(?) had in those ten years?
|
| PS: Since I've actually been dabbling with the idea of buying
| property in Colombia, may I ask in which city you are? :)
| mamcx wrote:
| Here exist companies and individuals that do it.
|
| In fact is unusual your rent is directly to the owner, is the
| norm you pay the "Arrendadora" instead.
|
| The case of apartment is a bit different. All complex have
| "administration" that everyone pay, but this is mostly in
| "closed complex". If the building is in the open, is more
| common is a person that take the role.
|
| BTW: I'm close to Medellin in a town called El carmen del
| Viboral. Right now exist a lot of demand for out-of-city
| property...
| codethief wrote:
| Gracias, parce, por su respuesta! :) (Incidalmente, el
| lugar donde queria buscarme un apartamento es Medellin.)
|
| > All complex have "administration" that everyone pay, but
| this is mostly in "closed complex".
|
| Would this administration also take care of fixing things
| and taking on the role of "arrendador" if I, as the owner,
| rent out the apartment to someone else? (Provided I pay
| them, of course.) Or would I have to hire someone else for
| that?
| mamcx wrote:
| In the closed ones I lived before they pay for most
| stuff. I don't remember exactly where is the line (but is
| part of the agreements and part of the law what they can
| do. For example, some set a end-time for loud parties)
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