I am a Ruby on Rails developer from Bangalore, India. Currently working for a startup in Bangalore as a full time employee.
Few months ago there were lots of posts on HN related to passive income. This gave me thought about having passive income which will give enough freedom to work on my own ideas/project fulltime.
In India one can easily live on $500/month, so keeping that in mind I have setup a timeline of 12-18 months(which I think should be enough) to generate that much amount.
Right now I don't have any savings which I can invest to earn and I've free time available around weekends.I am working on few ideas of my own, but those will not necessarily generate income.
So what would you do suggest me to do?
How? Here are a few things that have helped:
1) I got lucky - I jumped on something early and got picked up quickly and rode on the back of a giant gorilla as it kept getting higher and higher - right place, right time
2) I keep costs low - I use Tumblr (free) and cheap, pluggable services like Campaign Monitor, Wufoo, Buffer, and IFTTT to automate a lot of the process.
3) Don't be afraid to ask for money - I started doing this very early on, but even that wasn't soon enough! People will pay if there's a benefit, so don't be afraid to ask.
4) Keep it simple - I write brief emails, I don't respond to everything and I only spend a few hours each week on the site - updating content, checking stats, emailing etc.
5) Get multiple sources of revenue - I use a number of affiliates as well as offering traditional advertising.
6) Be social - Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google+ - BWB is on all of these. I try to engage with people and respond to things
7) Start a mailing list - this is not to be overlooked!
I hope this gives you some helpful ideas :) don't be afraid to ask any questions.