I see where you'e going with this, but I might change your examples a little bit. There's a very fine line between just a simple Google search and a lot of what you're showing there. It might make sense to demonstrate something that requires more human intervention. The file conversion example is a good one, and maybe expand more on assembling trip itineraries, etc. IOTW, things that actually would take up a lot of time, where the value of the site would be more clearly demonstrated.

Hmm, that's really good feedback. In reality, most of the things people have used it for have been truly complex multi-hour projects.

ie: Input: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=nzW2Fmpx Output: https://docs.google.com/a/fairtradework.com/document/d/1jzhw...

We'll update the examples to make them more robust. Thanks!

Nice service! Seems similar to Amazon's Mechanical Turk. You can find more examples here as well: http://aws.amazon.com/mturk/#bus-case

At this point, mentioning gun legislation is almost an extension of Godwin's law.

This is a pile of conjecture - devoid of any useful analysis or data-driven conclusions.

If you have the Karma to, please vote this rubbish off the front page.

Your point would be more clear if the article wasn't troubled with spelling and grammatical errors. Just like a programming language, English has a syntactical and grammatical form for a reason: it makes it less likely to be interpreted incorrectly.

You forgot to include the picture of you charismatically laughing and showing how lighthearted and simultaneously laser-focused you are.

Passive income is a myth. It's the HN equivalent of an infomercial.

Cue stories of the masses who had wealth rained down on them by doing very little work:

I don't see passive income like that. I see passive income as something you can gain by spending some of your free time to get recurring money.

Agreed. I think it's better to say it takes time up front. But the upfront work may take a while.

I spent six months last year writing explanations for a standardized test. It was extraordinarily boring. But now I get $1000-$1500 per month in licensing fees.

I think there are lots of passive income opportunities for developers to make passive income in non-technical niches.

For instance, I've only been learning programming for a few months, but I have a Wordpress blog. I'm probably going to buy that plugin. Always wanted to track that, but didn't know how.

That seems less "passive" than just "small". But then again, as the poster noted, there are many ways to define passive income.

Ah, your problem is you haven't yet bought my book on passive income success.

Ah yes, that is the problem indeed. I assume it's published by RonCo?

It isn't a myth, its just poorly defined.

I've had adsense sites making a few hundred $ a month since 2005. Its hands off to the point I don't even know what they made until I get the 1099 from Google each year.

However every (or nearly every) business that makes money truly passively is an under performer. They are like boats without captains that have not sunk yet. Those same sites, along with the A list domains some are on should be earning $200k+ a year by now.

In that sense, I would define passive income as doing a terrible job on a stellar business model.

Of course, there are also businesses employees or partners can run. Those absolutely can be done. I have one project like that right now. But, just like a dividend paying stock or bond, you are going to have to put in a serious asset to minimize the chance of the people running the show from fleeing.

I have passive income thanks to Adsense, in comparison with the average salary in USA is kind of low; but is bigger than the average salary in my country (Colombia).

And I also want to point out that nobody is talking about "wealth" around here, just about a few more bucks.

Google's lack of customer service never ceases to amaze.

I think you mean

"No, others sources are available."

"No, money down!"

Works for me.

I'd like to discuss how so many NYTimes and WSJ articles (mostly mediocre) keep showing up on the front page of HN.

Maybe it's time to upgrade the intelligence that's monitoring for ballot-stuffing.

I would hypothesize that It's because they are easy to find/submit. It's a lot more work to go to some obscure blog and find some really great article then it is to open up news.google.com find a top trending story and submit it.