Make passive income with a server? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bazpaul · 2023-12-29 17:08 I saw a post on another sub about a guy who hosted game servers and made passive income from doing this. Is this possible, are there any other ideas about how to make some side money by hosting something? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AmINotAlpharius · 2023-12-29 17:15 You can't beat hosting provider prices if you plan to host something legal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SeirWasTaken · 2023-12-29 17:20 I don't think so. this would just be donations to cover the cost of running the game server ---------------------------------------------------------------------- uprightanimal · 2023-12-29 17:23 "passive income" can turn into "full-time active work for very little income" real fast. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- roman5588 · 2023-12-29 17:38 As someone who hosted game servers, never again. Had everything from huge ddos attacks, legal threats and in one case borderline swatting. I stick to web hosting now and now just get bundles of Dcma notices 😂 Server power is cheap to almost free through 2nd-3rd tier providers. Why would I trust some guy hosting out of his shed? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KickItWATastyGroove · 2023-12-29 17:39 The first time I read about the ability to make passive income off a self-hosted server was on this site: [https://greenfrognest.com/earnwi thlmds.php](https://greenfrognest.com/earnwithlmds.php). It was also convenient because I was looking into ways of rebuilding a Jellyfin server and this LMDS (Linux Media Delivery System) looks like it has a common set of tools recommended by other media server builds. A quick Google search yields plenty of sites with similar "self hosted passive income" recommendations. I haven't tried any, personally. But I'm tempted to give it a go and setup nodes at friends & family member's houses. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lesigh · 2023-12-29 17:41 🤣 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AnApexBread · 2023-12-29 17:52 Why do you get so many DCMA notices? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fliberdygibits · 2023-12-29 17:54 I run a jellyfin server that a handfull of friends use. I tell them if they want to get me something for Christmas I like cheesecake and large hard drives. That's about as close as I want to get to trying to turn a profit on this. The legalities and logistics (never mind expense) of trying to run something WORTH charging for from your home are IMHO way beyond being worth the hassle. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- roman5588 · 2023-12-29 18:01 Have quite a significant footprint now. Most are just automated junk I shred from agencies that scan the internet and automatically send out a letter of demand to prove they have a license to use a certain graphic etc. 99.9% are emails but some are posted, people even send fake court documents from time to time. Either way shredder go brrr ---------------------------------------------------------------------- faxattack · 2023-12-29 18:16 Hosting is the LEAST passive way to make money. There will administration, support, maintenance (sw & hw), angry and abusive assholes will wreak havoc. If it gets hacked, paying people will be pretty pissed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EasyRhino75 · 2023-12-29 18:18 I host a storj node with extra hard drive space. It takes like a year to get really up and running but eventually a few TB of space nets you several dollars a month. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mrkesu · 2023-12-29 18:23 I don't mean to be rude, but are you qualified to do something like that? By how you are asking I somehow think there are probably better (and simpler) ways for you to earn some passive income. Personally, I enjoy passive index funds. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bazpaul · 2023-12-29 18:47 No I’m just curious that’s all ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bazpaul · 2023-12-29 18:49 Yeh good point. So has anyone bought you a large hard drive yet? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fliberdygibits · 2023-12-29 18:54 One jellyfriend did retrieve a stack of 7 unused 2.5 inch ssds from their work a few years ago for me. It was a mix of 180 - 600gb intel drives. And I get the occasional cheesecake. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-12-29 19:12 Run a PoS validator on a crypto project you like and earn passive income like that. I earn a few thousand like this every month. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sousavfl · 2023-12-29 19:19 I will chip in here, I do host two websites for a couple of customers. Like many have said it, if you want to do it legally and declare earnings there’s normally hassle. More than a decade ago I sold two websites and provided hosting (off the books and for reasonable price). Since then I was hosting in OVH until back in 2020 or so, when one of their datacenters burnt down in Strasbourg and I was affected by this. I gave them the finger and started hosting myself. Since these two websites do not require a lot of resources, I have my HA and development server running along with the webhosting. Each of them in a specific VM. These websites are in a separate vlan with no routing to home network. My hint would be, do you know any business or someone looking for website hosting or so? Make a symbolic price and then you get your electricity and internet provider costs covered. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mtetrode · 2023-12-29 19:53 Can you elaborate on this? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bazpaul · 2023-12-29 20:17 That sounds cool. That’s the kind of project I was intrigued to learn about ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bazpaul · 2023-12-29 20:18 > Jellyfriend I’m stealing that ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fliberdygibits · 2023-12-29 20:49 lol! Do it:) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TryNotToShootYoself · 2023-12-29 21:03 The only people that can make passive income are the people who don't need it. It might start off as a small project but if you want it to last longer than a few months it'll turn into a lot of work. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- WhiskeyZuluMike · 2023-12-29 21:12 My kindof webhoster right here I can see why youre popular ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -my_dude · 2023-12-29 21:45 hosting isnt passive at all, just mine chia or bitcoin ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pussylover772 · 2023-12-29 21:54 do you have a static IP block? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bazpaul · 2023-12-29 22:10 I have a single static IP ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pussylover772 · 2023-12-29 22:14 do you have an nvidia GPU? Try Vast.ai ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pussylover772 · 2023-12-29 22:16 Try to find a technical customer that you can provide specific services to. Don't try to manage too many customers either... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- xemulator · 2023-12-29 22:25 He's mining crypto. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TheQuantumPhysicist · 2023-12-29 22:40 Some cryptocurrencies use proof of stake for creating blocks, which can be done on something as simple as a raspberry pi, unlike mining, which requires too much electricity. Ethereum now is an example, but it has a minimum, or you can do it through a third party. Basically you own some cryptocurrency and you use your stake to create new blocks and you earn money. Research "cryptocurrency proof of stake", you need to learn a few things before you start. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- reddit-toq · 2023-12-30 01:02 It is a cool project, but you won’t get rich with it. Like OP said it can take a year or longer to get a full set of data to host. I have 7TB on storj and am currently making about $10 a month. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- syscomau · 2023-12-30 05:08 Take a look at smartnodes. There is a guy on the raptoreum discord who started running a shared hosted smartnodes service. He has done well from it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- faxattack · 2023-12-30 09:07 I cant see anyone mention this, But your ISP does probably not allow you to host commercial services on your consumer connection. Instead they want you to buy their assexpensive bussiness connection with SLA. Usually they dont care much if your connection is down for a few days otherwise. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mrjmgreddit · 2023-12-30 09:50 That's including electricity bills to keep the bandwidth and all that flowing? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- blind_guardian23 · 2023-12-30 10:29 why is activly wasting energy and/or storage better? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DayshareLP · 2023-12-30 13:13 who said something about legal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BraveNewCurrency · 2023-12-30 16:12 It's very hard to make money that way because hosting is a **commodity**. The big guys are thinking hard about their cooling costs and energy efficiency. If you don't compute those costs into your model, you may be just raising your A/C costs without realizing it. It's possible you could make money from friends who want you to host a server (non-friends would require advertising, which is unlikely to pay off). But as others have pointed out, if you will expect you to "work" for your money. How many hours of troubleshooting will kill your profits? To me, the biggest bang for the buck would be to use it as an excuse to learn: Anything from Linux to Docker to Kubernetes to MySQL/Postgres to Home Assistant. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Financial-Issue4226 · 2023-12-30 17:10 This will depend on what kind of servers they host I host some web servers and email servers it's just a few minutes to hours a day / week depending on the workload and the time of year and size of projects Ask for what Roman asked not only would you have the problems he cited you would also have the compatibility issues and due to that no I would host a game server for myself maybe family but unless you're paying me a lot more than the competition no I agree with Roman never again As for the DDOS attacks and other that partially depends on what you host how you hosted and how you choose to mitigate I have my own IPS and my own auto block and drop scripts when DDOS attacks happen where those IPS do disappear from the internet on my end for weeks at a time to make sure they don't attack me again is it foolproof no for example China and Russia they just switched to different servers but after a while you just block out all 256 IPS of the / 24 and continue My opinion if you going to DDOS me I don't need you as a customer because you're not just block them a few months later I may unblock you but at that point you've already forgotten about me One major caveat of this statement if you're doing this in home you probably only have one IP address most likely not static I have my own IP subnets by what Roman cited he probably has his own IP block as well or access to an IP block without this he will get very expensive with this it is very expensive in short you need to determine what the cost is including the IP address hosting and others you may also need to have a dedicated business internet connection not residential this does have a difference you will probably also pay four times as much just for a business class internet connection because it guaranteed up time SLA requirements in my case because I host my own IPS I must have an SLA or I can be waning days for them to fix a broken circuit on their end instead of less than 20 minutes Is it a good way to make passive income yes I've done it for years do you need to pick and choose what services you offer clients and other otherwise it can get to nightmare level of work also you need to understand that the cost of hosting a server is not the whole cost there are a lot of other overhead costs that regardless of you having or not having a client will cost you per year month or replacement of hardware most of which you won't calculate into your cost until you lived the problem that caused it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- reddit-toq · 2023-12-30 19:18 No. Thats $10 gross, not net. But I would be using the electric anyway as this is just 'extra' space so those are already sunk costs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rez0n · 2023-12-31 18:04 Passive income it is cancel the server. Everything other activity with hosting something it is work for very little price.