How do you build a system that makes you money while you sleep?
This is not going to be a post about "passive" income completely. 😀
It’s more about how you started making money without selling your time. Tho still investing a little bit of it.
From my perspective, I’ve mostly seen this work for 3 types of people around me:
investors and traders (who usually automate something in the markets),
people who delegate (you have other people doing the work and making money for you when it comes to services),
product makers – this one applies to us, makers.
Once you manage to scale your product, money can come in from morning to morning – including while you’re asleep.
And the main ingredient that makes this possible is...
DISTRIBUTION.
👉 How do you handle the distribution of your product so that money can keep coming in without your direct time investment?
For example, I have SafeLimit – a LinkedIn activity tracker that helps protect you from account restrictions.
I haven't promoted it that much during the past week because I've been travelling, but people have still been installing it because of ~2 things:
1. On Product Hunt, I linked the product in the store from my 2 most successful discussions. [Discussion 1: 16k views, discussion 2: 2.6k views – so I'm probably getting some people coming from there.] Of course, I still spend a bit of time managing the community and replying to comments, which keeps the discussion visible.
2. On Twitter, I keep sharing things from my life and pin the tool in the comments.
Now imagine what would happen if I:
– turned on well-optimised ads,
– started talking about the tool more across all available channels + including LinkedIn mostly (now, I am not doing that much) – aka viral topics,
– finally built a website and launched it here and other directoriesI'd love to learn about other good techniques that have helped you make money online while you sleep.
Replies
RunEvr
@busmark_w_nika Can't really give advice about making money while you sleep, because at our stage we’re basically always awake =D
For product makers, I think one of the most important qualities is endurance.
Especially if you’re bootstrapping - consistency and the ability to keep going are the keys. Just keep building, improving, and showing up.
The other way to move faster is joining an accelerator program and then raising funds to scale.
Maybe then we're finally be able to sleep a little =))
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@adana I got you, but I have seen founders who already earn money like that and now, I am pissed off myself that I am not able to do that as well :D
RunEvr
@busmark_w_nika That's exactly why I'm here in this thread too - I'm curious as well! 😄
I think the main point today is building something that makes money without your direct time. You need to decide if you want a system that depends on your daily input or one that runs no matter the time. Digital products or dropshipping can work, but if something breaks, it still needs you or your team. In the end, distribution is what keeps the money flowing while you sleep.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@askim_stucki Wasn't dropshipping a thing in 2016? :D Now it feels outdated.
@busmark_w_nikahaha, true but many still use it. Dropshipping was strong around 2016, and even until 2023 it worked well, but never fully on its own. Now TikTok makes fast money possible, but the model itself isn’t as powerful anymore without strong content behind it.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@askim_stucki To be honest, I do not use TikTok so much, maybe that's why I am missing that trend :D
Dial
the thing you already did is the answer honestly, most makers treat a PH discussion as a launch day thing and then abandon it, but yours are still pulling views months later because you kept them alive. that's not really passive, you said it yourself you still spend time on community, but it's a much better return on the same hour than posting a new tweet that dies in six hours. a good discussion keeps getting found long after you stop promoting it, a tweet basically never does unless it goes viral once. so if I were prioritizing where to spend the little bit of time you mentioned, I'd put it into making 1-2 discussions genuinely worth returning to over spreading thin across more channels
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@galdayan True, but daily discussions, on the other hand, can keep your activity streak and visibility. People should see you literally everywhere!
The compounding point matches something I measured directly. Same comment, posted in four different threads over a month: 221 views, 15, 12, 9. Same effort every time, the spread came entirely from which thread I picked.
Distribution stopped being a channel decision for me. It became a five minute research step before I write anything.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@abdullah_javaid3 was the comment within LinkedIn or X? Because on PH, I cannot see views for comments :)
@busmark_w_nika Neither, it was right here on PH. Four separate forum threads, and the view count I meant is the total thread view count shown at the top of each post, not a per-comment number, PH doesn't expose that to me either.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@abdullah_javaid3 aaa okay, got you
Great framing. Distribution really is the whole game.
The thing I'd add: for most makers the bottleneck isn't figuring out where to distribute, it's producing enough content to keep those channels alive. You can, for example, only hand-cut so many videos before you go back to shipping features and the channels quietly go dark. Which is the sneaky part. Distribution doesn't fail loudly, it just fades.
That's the piece we ended up automating. My co-founder and I are building Adable, which turns a product page or a handful of assets into ad videos across formats and platforms, so the creative side keeps running without us. Our tagline is literally "Videos while you sleep" so your post title made me do a double take. 😅
One non-paid technique that's worked for us: instead of writing six new posts, we take one piece of content and cut it into six native formats. Same input, 6x the surface area, and each channel gets something that actually looks like it belongs there.
Curious about your ads point. Have you tested anything on the LinkedIn side for SafeLimit yet, or are you holding off until the site is up?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@kim_lindberg_adable To be honest, I do not want to spend much for ads when the product is not earning money :D But good you mentioned videos, it is on my list as well to market the product :)
@busmark_w_nika Fair. Though I'd argue the thing that makes ads expensive early on usually isn't the spend, it's the creative. You need maybe 5-10 variants before one works, and if each one costs an afternoon or a freelancer invoice, a small budget never gets a fair test. You end up running two mediocre videos at $5/day and concluding ads don't work.
That gap is basically why we built Adable. Make production cheap enough that testing ads is affordable at hobby-budget scale, instead of something you postpone until the product already earns.
The other half of it: a video isn't only an ad slot. The same asset runs on your own channels for free, and that's where I'd start with SafeLimit anyway, a 20-second screen recording of the counter climbing while you scroll does more than any copy, because the value is invisible until you watch it run. Ads just become one option for content you'd want to have regardless.
What's your main channel right now?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@kim_lindberg_adable For me it is LinkedIn and Product Hunt for now. But haven't invested money into it :)