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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

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141–150 of 866 posts

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am working on a program to backtest it. Honestly, I still have much to learn. I do things visually. So I take the little fib retracement chart tool in trading view and make the anchor at the beginning of a price movement and align the lines to the closing prices of significant support/resistance (defined mathematically as any 5 bars such that the the middle bar has the lowest low or highest high in like pyramid for…

No hate. But just remember that when you think that something is a good BUY, the other side (the seller) think that it is a good SELL. Hence, before trading in the stock market (or in any other market which is a zero sum game, e.g. used cars, NFT), you must be sure that you have more information than the seller.

Of course. Part of the fun is also considering why a trade will go the wrong way too. There are infinite scenarios and part of trading is sketching why scenario X's probabililty is more likely than scenario Y's probability. And this can all be a wash when the completely unexpected happens too.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#142

I bought a coffee farm in Colombia. Annualized it makes around $800 / month and growing. Should double to $1600 / month next year as we’ve doubled our production. It’s barely profitable, but is profitable nonetheless. The more we plant the more profitable it will get, and we’ll be planting 10,000 more trees soon!

I am dying to hear more about this. Please, if you have time and are inclined, write up a longer comment like some of the others in this thread describing how you got into it and what the process has involved. For starters, how much did it cost to buy the farm?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#143
post #22

I built a board game in 2021 that has been just breaking the cutoff for this post, all I do is mail out a few games a week as we get orders. We do all our own fulfillment to save money. Currently trying to design a real video game. I got lucky with the board game because it targeted a really niche audience (rock climbers) and so we weren't really competing with the full board game market, which is honestly super satu…

On a discussion thread like this one, I think there is no shame in providing the homepage URL. Here it is after using your Google hint: https://five15game.com/

Keep up the good work!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#144
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you ELI5 how making small amounts of money in crypto works? I thought it was a "winner take all" kind of arrangement where whomever solves the "puzzle" (for lack of a better word) first gets all the bitcoin as a reward, until the next block is up and ready to be solved. You're talking about making $100 a day - a very tiny fraction of one bitcoin - how does that work?

Back in the early times, 'solo mining' was trying to find actual block target values and would yield the full reward, winner takes all. Mining pools were invented, that aggregate a whole bunch of miners all working on the same thing. Although there is only one true winner a block, the rewards are shared among all the miners, prorata their submitted hash rate. Care was taken by miners not to use one big pool, and keep…

One of the problems I have been thinking about, people can still solo mine when they have lots of capital to buy hardware. Now, most crypto miners are using pools that reward them for their hashrate. However, there are only a handful of pools that the majority of miners use, which means centralization.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#145
post #10

I have an android app ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.algeo.alge... ). It brings in right around $500 a month. It is fun to develop, especially that I can dabble into frontend and UI design which is quite far away from what I'm doing daily. Interestingly, it used to bring in much more but the heydays of apps are over.

This is really cool. Thank you for sharing. It's kind of shocking though that 1 million downloads equals "only" $500 in ad revenue. I would have expected a much higher value. May I ask what the install base is?

Right.. only. I'd be happy with 50 bucks. I can scale that. Zero doesnt.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#146

My little hardware book, Computer Engineering for Babies launched on Kickstarter a few months ago and blew my mind by raising almost $250k. It’s a simple book with buttons and LEDs to demonstrate different logic gates. I just shipped out the first batch of books a week ago and now waiting for the next batch of books. It’s gotten pretty demanding pretty quickly but I’m really excited about it. I’m hoping I can soon em…

Annnd order placed for my nieces. I love it.

Their parents have no interest in turning their kids into programmers (to my great dismay!) but this looks like something they'll have a blast with anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#147

I don't know if I can even call it a side-project any more. I stopped working professionally 3 years ago. Bought an e-commerce business that was making ~$2k/mo profit and ran it on the side while I had my DevOps job. That project has now turned into ~$30k/mo profit, and I've bought two more e-com businesses that average ~$10k/mo between the two - these are early and I expect them to scale up once I smooth out a few b…

At which point can you just hire someone to manage it and then retire?

I know if I was making that much money via passive income I would never work another day in my life.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#148

I own 4 shares in the S&P 500. I developed trading strategies to sell my shares and buy them back at key points using Fibonacci retracements. Best business ever. And if I leave it it still makes money. I’m nowhere near $500/month but learning to trade simply has taken me years and I’m very proud of my smol accomplishment.

What is the reasoning behind why Fibonacci retracements should work? Did you backtest it?

I will also admit I am perhaps overconfident about my strategy. It accurately lined up to when the omicron announcement happened and then I sold my shares in the market and bought them back once I "felt" the market had finished pricing in the information. So I have half a strategy right now. My buy back strat is not great but my timing to short the S&P 500 was absolutely impeccable. And that's why I'm inspired to work on this now.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#149
post #45

I mine cryptocurrency and make about $110/day. I have two L3++s, an AvalonMiner 1246, six RTX 3080s, an RTX 3090 and a couple older cards. It more than pays for the mortgage, and after electricity (residential rate) my profit is about $100/day. I also have the GPUs in a grow tent (designed for growing marijuana) with an 8 inch in-line fan hooked up to the supply of my home’s HVAC system. I’m heating my whole house wi…

Biggest question that comes to my mind - if you can make this profit so consistently, why not triple your rig? Or even x10, or x50?

That’s the plan! But I’m already at 80% maxed out on a 30A 240V breaker. Sure I could add more breakers, but I really don’t want to turn my basement into an industrial mining zone (not to mention the HOA might have a thing or two to say). I’ve already used some soundproofing (Rockwool) in the room that all the mining equipment is in, the noise is real!

Also I need more airflow, I’m exhausting extra heat out a small basement window. If I want to expand I need to consider intake fans from a second window to keep airflow moving seamlessly.

I’m in a peculiar position where if I lease out a warehouse for $3000/month I literally deplete all the profit and break even until I expand more. I’m not sure where to go from here, suggestions welcome! So far the best plan I have is just wait until I can afford a bigger house with a big backyard, so I can build a mining shed out there.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#150
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am working on a program to backtest it. Honestly, I still have much to learn. I do things visually. So I take the little fib retracement chart tool in trading view and make the anchor at the beginning of a price movement and align the lines to the closing prices of significant support/resistance (defined mathematically as any 5 bars such that the the middle bar has the lowest low or highest high in like pyramid for…

I'm sorry to say you're seeing the future in tea leaves, but I guess you're learning some stuff along the way.

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