How do you fail to make money passively? (Passive Income)

by fogonthedownson 9/27/2013, 9:13:14 PM with 7 comments
  • by smarticianon 9/27/2013, 10:08:47 PM

    To learn Android development, I created a simple vocabulary learning app, a mash-up of iSpeech, Google voice recognition, and even some Instagram thrown in. There was some interest, despite zero marketing (currently > 20k total installs), and I was approaching $200/month in ad income.

    Then Google disabled my Adsense account because of "invalid click activity", which also meant my Admob account was gone, since they're now linked. I moved to a combination of other ad networks, but ad revenue was slashed to a quarter of its former glory. Appeals to Google were fruitless, and to this day I have no idea why exactly I was banned.

    For my next app, I'll probably avoid the "free with ads" model.

  • by jonaphinon 9/27/2013, 9:18:50 PM

    Instimage.com here.

    We haven't "failed" yet. But we're dying slowly. No one cares for Instimage, and there's no money backing it up.

    No Investors, no angels, just a bootstrap and no boot.

    Reminds me of companies that call themselves "startups" for 10 years...

    Shouldn't one start-up then get moving?

  • by fogonthedownson 9/27/2013, 9:15:23 PM

    Let me get the ball rolling. My first app was called Barcoden. It generated barcodes for science labs. The debt crisis and cuts to schools ensued. Total sales: zero dollars.

  • by AtTheLaston 9/27/2013, 10:20:34 PM

    We built a SAAS product that would allow merchants to build their own coupon landing page or coupon site. It never got any traction. It was a super niche product and none of us wanted to go around selling it. We spent a year building it and simply lost interest in the product as more time elapsed. We should have taken a step back from the project after a few months and realized that it wasn't worth our time to continue working on it.

  • by pdenyaon 9/27/2013, 9:38:07 PM

    http://inspecthq.com/ - clipboard and camera replacement for construction/inspection companies. Had a large (enterprise level) company interested for almost 2 years before we gave up.

  • by coopdogon 9/29/2013, 11:29:09 AM

    I built a tool for visual interpretation of test results against requirements. It was pretty cool and I'm sure large engineering companies would use it if they knew they needed it.

    I learned that you should go niche, but find a niche with a problem that customers KNOW they have. Otherwise you have to educate them before even having the chance so closing a sale, which is too expensive.

    I'm backing up and making simpler tools for the domain, this one could become an advanced feature for big enterprise.

  • by cprncuson 9/28/2013, 2:42:11 AM

    I have been working on a desktop application--not yet ready--since the Bush administration.