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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#461

Post by pyrrhotech »

kolbe wrote: post #457
pyrrhotech wrote: post #278

Monetizing the algotrading models I've built over the last 2+ years: https://grizzlybulls.com I've traded them with my own capital successfully since April, 2020, and I've averaged 75%+ annual returns with much lower volatility than the overall market. My starting capital was small (500k) so in addition to growing with my own capital, I'm now providing the signals (3 free, 4 premium). 105 total members, MRR is curren…

So, let's assume you started on April 1st with $500k. That was 1.8045 years ago. At a compounded 75% returns, you now have $1,936,655 and you expect to make $124,904 this month alone on invested capital. And yet you bother to broadcast your secrets and (waste your time by selling subscriptions for $1397/month. If you did this for 5 years, you'd have $82mm, and you want to risk getting that edge traded away for $1397…

Healthy skepticism is warranted and welcome of course! My account is currently at 1.4M. Taxes and living costs are taken out regularly. I'm not giving anyone access to the source of the models, only the output signals and trade history. I do give brief descriptions of some of the indicators that each take into account, but none of the details of how the complex system works which is the tricky part. You can find huge list of potential indicators for algotrading for free lots of places online.

Lastly, the 75% is a bit of an anomaly. As you can see, the top model is only expected to return about 60% pre-tax. It's unusual that in live trading we have exceded the back test--2020 was a bizarre year and we also started after a big bear market so we benefited for a huge bull that year + nailed the June and September crashes (check the trade history). 2021 was a below average year by contrast, and over the long term, any algotrader should expect the live results to be a bit under the backtest as despite our best efforts (and I consider my anti-overfitting engine to be the biggest accomplishment here), all systems are to some degree overfit to past data.

Lastly, as I mentioned in another comment, I make no guarantees of always publishing this site and signals. If I decide in the future (perhaps once my account is to that 50-100M range) that the site is more of a liability for me than an asset, I may close it, with or without grandfathering. However, obtaining 1% of Seeking Alpha's userbase would be 5M+ per year in revenue from the site which is a few multiples of my current net worth. Even with a hypothetical 50M net worth 10 years from now from 40% post-tax, post-living expense returns, 5M is still meaningful. If we fail to gain that much traction, or the bot does so well that I hit that kind of figure much earlier than expected, I may halt the publishing.

As of now, and for the forseeable future, the site makes financial sense to me, and it's been a lot of fun, so it also makes pleasure sense for me. Life is about more than money of course.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#462

Post by mockingbirdy »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #458
mockingbirdy wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The performances of the models are almost unbelievable. I only saw something similar with alphahub.us in the past (but higher max. drawdowns) - what do you think of them? I'm interested in running the Gold Plan, are there any resources on how to set up a fully automatic trading system with it? I'd love to connect.

Alphahub looks interesting, but their algorithms are quite different from mine. Theirs are picking individual stocks and sending out a signal at a regular frequency, every day, telling you what they think will be the best performing for that day. By contrast, our models only send out signals on average of once per 2-4 weeks depending on the model. Our signals are always macro signals--they have an opinion only on whe…

You talk in plural form, but I can only find information about you on the page. With this kind of alpha, I'd expect a team of quant traders and physicists working on it (I actually talked with the creator of alphahub.us, he's a physicist). Are you intending to work full-time on it and what are the other plans (I saw you started a job at a new company)? Not trying to be skeptical, but this could be something life-changing if it works - already pretty hyped tbh.

The alphahub.us strategy has execution problems because some of the smaller companies in the NASDAQ have low trading volume, so it doesn't scale as easily as a macro strat. I've talked with people who run it and it runs into scalability issues even with limited amounts of capital. Still trying to find the catch with your offer because it looks amazing.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#465

Post by pyrrhotech »

mockingbirdy wrote: post #462
pyrrhotech wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alphahub looks interesting, but their algorithms are quite different from mine. Theirs are picking individual stocks and sending out a signal at a regular frequency, every day, telling you what they think will be the best performing for that day. By contrast, our models only send out signals on average of once per 2-4 weeks depending on the model. Our signals are always macro signals--they have an opinion only on whe…

You talk in plural form, but I can only find information about you on the page. With this kind of alpha, I'd expect a team of quant traders and physicists working on it (I actually talked with the creator of alphahub.us, he's a physicist). Are you intending to work full-time on it and what are the other plans (I saw you started a job at a new company)? Not trying to be skeptical, but this could be something life-chan…

I do have the habit of talking in plural form. The site was built by my wife and I together, but I built 100% of the models myself. I did work on this full time for over 2 years before recently starting a new job. Now, I've got the models to a place where it becomes very difficult to improve them. I used to be able to make huge progress in a week, now I can spend 100 hours trying different theories and may not end up with any progress. That can be frustrating, so I decided, the models are fantastic right now, the execution framework is very stable, I'm happy with how they are performing, I'm going to let them run.

As mentioned, I'm not rich (1.4M in bot, ~2M total net worth), a SWE job paying 400-600k is quite meaningful to me even with 40-60% returns on my portfolio for the time being, just as potential profits from this website (also perhaps in that range within a year or two?) are also meaningful. If the website fails to generate significant revenue, I may shut it down. Also, I enjoy working on satisfying things, and now that the models are mature and the website is mostly finished except minor details, I'm happy to have a team and a project for now :)

That's also a good call out on the scaling problems--another reason our models trade the SPX futures, literally the most liquid financial instrument in the world. By my slippage calculations, the models don't need significant scaling updates until at least 1B+ is being traded.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#466

Post by mockingbirdy »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #461
kolbe wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, let's assume you started on April 1st with $500k. That was 1.8045 years ago. At a compounded 75% returns, you now have $1,936,655 and you expect to make $124,904 this month alone on invested capital. And yet you bother to broadcast your secrets and (waste your time by selling subscriptions for $1397/month. If you did this for 5 years, you'd have $82mm, and you want to risk getting that edge traded away for $1397…

Healthy skepticism is warranted and welcome of course! My account is currently at 1.4M. Taxes and living costs are taken out regularly. I'm not giving anyone access to the source of the models, only the output signals and trade history. I do give brief descriptions of some of the indicators that each take into account, but none of the details of how the complex system works which is the tricky part. You can find huge…

> If I decide in the future (perhaps once my account is to that 50-100M range) that the site is more of a liability for me than an asset, I may close it, with or without grandfathering.

I'd like to offer to take care of it and manage all aspects of it if you ever get annoyed by it. These algorithms are life-changing and the more (and especially lower income) people have access to them, the better.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#467

Post by grwthckrmstr »

I have two such side projects that run almost passively, neither is an app though.

1- An extremely simple habit tracker spreadsheet template that I also use myself - https://www.preetamnath.com/habit-tracker-template

Makes ~$100/mo but this month it's on track to make $200, probably due to new year's enthusiasm?

2- Learn Programmatic SEO, a straightforward course to help people identify repeatable keyword patterns and use that to drive traffic to their business, website, projects etc. SEO beginner-friendly - https://www.preetamnath.com/programmatic-seo

The course makes between $300-$500/mo.

I don't have any costs other than website hosting and Gumroad fees. I do think these projects have scope to improve and grow. Would love feedback from anyone who finds them interesting!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#468

Post by grwthckrmstr »

rozenmd wrote: post #156

I'm not quite there yet, but I'm up to $300/mo iteratively building an uptime checker: https://onlineornot.com/ I started with literally just a Lambda function that checks if static websites were still online, added an email alert if it's offline, wrapped authentication around it, integrated Stripe, and shipped it. Eventually, I added Slack/Discord/SMS alerts, team invites, support for checking APIs for both uptime a…

Love your focus and commitment, especially the 2 hours a day every weekday for nine months streak.

I'm going to try building a similar discipline with my side projects. Not much would get done in 1 day obviously, but the amount of things that can get done over a longer timeframe like 6-12 months is huge!

Thank you and wish you the best!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#469

Post by grwthckrmstr »

terrancem wrote: post #464

https://www.goodbooks.io Books recommended by successful and inspirational people.

Always curious about book recommendation sites. If you don't mind sharing, how much revenue and traffic does your site generate?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#470

Post by nunez »

bmitc wrote: post #378
nunez wrote: post #282

I made two LinkedIn courses. One has paid off its royalties; the other is on its way there. Should be >$500/month combined soon! I'm also working on an app that allows you to set a universal status across multiple platforms. I use it to automate my Slack statuses from my TripIt trips, but I want to add integrations for Google Calendar and WhatsApp. It's really rough right now but my future intent is to find a way to…

What does it mean that one has "paid off its royalties"? Do you have any description or advice for the general process for teaching a LinkedIn course?

I meant “paid off its advance through royalties”. Sorry!

Everyone’s path is different, but generally speaking, if you publish enough blog posts (especially on LinkedIn), someone from a content shop will notice and ask you to write a book or create a course. Both flows are similar, but I’ve only done courses and can speak to that in detail.

You propose a course. The content manager you work with decides if it fits their learning plan or whether there is demand for that kind of material. If they think people will view the course, you’ll be asked to come up with a course summary. DevOps and Kubernetes are super hot right now, so these were easy for me to think up.

Here, you’ll pitch the course. What is it? Who’s meant to view it? What will you cover? This gets reviewed. If it looks good, you’ll be given a producer, and they will ask you to write scripts.

Sometimes the content manager will ask for a demo of how you’d present a course. Here, they want to see whether you have enough “presence” to instruct. Sometimes they’ll provide feedback for you to fix, but this didn’t happen in my case.

You’ll also get an advance, with the first half being paid out around this time. These advances aren’t like the music industry where you use the money to pay for production and marketing. It’s literally money in your pocket.

Script writing can take FOREVER. especially the first time. It took me three months to write enough scripts for a two hour course. There’s a lot of back and forth. Since my courses are very hands-on, I also write lots of code and test everything while putting the scripts together. Very difficult to do all of this with a full-time job, doubly so when that job is demanding!

Once the scripts are cleared, you’ll be asked to record. There are lots of different ways this can go. Mine are audio-only with a terminal walkthrough, so I just recorded and screen capped everything. Some courses have live-action and acting. These require studios. I haven’t done one of these yet, so I can’t speak to it.

Beta testing happens after recording. People internally go through your course and make sure that everything gels. Sometimes you’ll need to fix stuff after this.

Once beta tests complete, your course goes live and starts racking views! You also get the other half of your advance.

You get paid royalties for every learner who views your course. I don’t know the specifics of this, but it’s kind of like YouTube’s ad platform. However, you don’t earn anything until the grand sum of your royalties exceeds the advance you were given. Depending on how your course performs, this can either never happen or it can happen very quickly.

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