
Ask HN: What is your side hustle? How much money does it make you? - good_vibes
Just curious and wanting to learn how you started and scaled.
======
meric
Trading cryptocurrency - in stock markets charting, Elliot wave don't really
work as well (or not easy to use), you're trading against hyper experienced
investors. In Bitcoin, ethereum, there is broad participation by less
experienced investors and speculators, and there is much more emotions in the
chart. It makes technical analysis very easy, because the patterns are
obvious, easy to spot, much less likely to be manufactured. The transaction
fees are also low allowing small positions. So when I see an opportunity I
just put $500. Next thing you know I'm up $200 and I cash it out. One more
thing is if I'm ever wrong, cryptocurrency is in a bull market, and the
position would always get rescued as long as I am patient. Of course I do have
discipline and do cut my losses. Transaction costs is cheap, and opportunities
are frequent, so it's easy emotionally to do it. I have a few grand this year
which is nice.

I do have a lot of money in stocks and with those I don't do nearly as well
but clearly I learned enough to make a quid or two in crypto markets.

~~~
calpas
Hello meric, where can I learn to trade cryptocurrency? Do you have any
advices for learning?

~~~
random_comment
Hello, I don't trade crypto and I never will.

I'll give you one tip.

Look at a graph of bitcoin, litecoin etc. that extends past the last bubble
and collapse and ask yourself if you are willing to eat those kinds of losses
if they occur again.

[https://99bitcoins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/bitcoin-
ma...](https://99bitcoins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/bitcoin-market-value-
chart.png)

~~~
avianbc
Looks like your link is broken due to some hotlink prevention stuff. :(

~~~
random_comment
That's a shame. Good news is that any graph of bitcoin's historical price over
the last 6 years will serve just as well :)

~~~
meric
Yes, if the purpose is to make money as opposed to learning or for fun, I
agree it's better to ride the trend. :)

~~~
random_comment
> I agree it's better to ride the trend. :)

I think you haven't looked at a 6 year graph if you think the 'trend' is only
ever going up. The point of my post was to highlight the risk of (another)
crash.

------
rasmus1610
I flip stuff on ebay and/or craigslist (or the german equivalent). I want to
experiment a little bit with retail arbitrage on amazon fba too.

It is really easy to get started (just sell stuff that you can find in your
house and don't need anymore) and I really like this treasure hunt feeling
when entering a thrift store or looking for clearance.

made me so far around 300€ in less than 30 days and still have inventory left
for about 150€. and I'm still learning what might sell and what not.

~~~
vram22
>It is really easy to get started (just sell stuff that you can find in your
house and don't need anymore) and I really like this treasure hunt feeling
when entering a thrift store or looking for clearance.

Interesting. What is the process for getting started and then doing it? Can
you provide some links? And by flip I suppose you mean buy and then sell?

~~~
rasmus1610
Well I just looked around in my house for stuff I haven't touched for 3 months
or so. I just looked it up on ebay and craigslist and posted it there. that
was how I did my first 300€ bucks now. And then for flipping (buying and
reselling higher), look for thrift stores, garage sales, yard sales and so on.
If you want to know what to buy look for some youtube channels e.g.:
Ralliroots, 10konthebay, rockstarflipper

Just one tip for eBay: don't do auctions. You will usually get low-balled.
research the market price and price the item accordingly.

~~~
vram22
Interesting, thanks for the tips.

------
ryan21030
I do freelance coding work in my spare time and try and combine it with some
open source stuff too as a way of boosting my web presence. I recently made
£500 in a month doing work in my spare time, not a huge amount but add on a
full time job, it's nice to have the extra income.

Link to my latest project -
[https://github.com/DrRoach/DynamicImage](https://github.com/DrRoach/DynamicImage)
(It's a dynamic image generation library if you're interested)

~~~
malux85
Nice work Ryan - This is how I started too! Keep going my friend!

------
faet
I pay people to ghostwrite books for me. I then list them on Amazon and market
them. I started 2 years ago and have been putting out about 1 book/mo.

Last month I made ~$4.5k

~~~
_jdams
Not expecting you to share one of the books with me, but I was looking to get
into this as well. I am assuming they are small, niche-specific books.

Do you perform all of the keyword research ahead of time (before finding your
writer), and build out an index/table of contents so that every chapter in the
book is planned ahead of time, or do you leave all of the research, chapter
creation, and writing for the ghostwriter?

~~~
faet
Much of it depends on what I am looking to publish. I mostly focus on popular
romance niches.

For instance I publish a lot of LGBT erotica/romances. I write up about 1-2
paragraphs of what I want the story to be and pass it to the ghostwriter. I
have a few different pen names and each stick with one genre. Example: "Mary
Sue" _only_ publishes BDSM Gay Romances. That way if you find one of my books
and like gay bdsm romance, you're more likely to buy the others or subscribe
to learn when new books come out.

I have a simple wordpress site for each author with an email list. I provide 1
book free for signing up.

I've used the same ghostwriting service for ~2 years so they're pretty
consistent.

I'm currently working on a nonfiction politics book. I basically provided a
word doc of research (news articles/etc), and a theme. I only specified 2
chapters and a word count. The other chapters are up to them.

------
nitramm
My experience is that hardest part is marketing.

Yesterday I have launched [https://submit-sitemap.com](https://submit-
sitemap.com) and I have shared link to it on various platforms. How much
traffic I got:

\- reddit - side project - 4

\- hacker news - 11 (+2 from different aggregators)

\- I have added link into 2 communities on Google+ with around 200k people - 3

\- producthunt - 3

\- Facebook where I have shared it in group with 5k people - 5

\- StumbleUpon - 1

And I think that I can subtract 1 from these numbers since I have clicked on
them myself to test if those links works. :)

~~~
nitramm
Explanation for StumbleUpon is, that I am sending X-Frame-Options DENY, so it
never loads there. This explains no traffic from there.

------
csixty4
[https://statetable.com](https://statetable.com)

~ $30/month from donations covers my Digital Ocean bill for the month.

I'm also trying to get some sales & affiliate revenue going with athletic wear
designs on Zazzle. Starting with a niche to get rolling then probably
expanding to more general designs. The biggest problem I've hit so far is
their fulfillment times & prices.

~~~
shanecleveland
Any revenue from the ad?

~~~
csixty4
After 6 or 7 years I think I finally had enough for Google to drop a direct
deposit in my account. That's, what, $100?

It's pretty unobtrusive up in the corner there. I'm sure it suffers from
banner blindness. But I don't want to load the page up with ads. It's a tool
for other devs, not really a revenue source. But the donations are nice.

------
Artlav
Making various things, explaining various misconceptions, playing with
blockchains.

Makes me zero money and some knowledge.

------
angryasian
NL holdem live only. This month I'm at about +$80 an hour.

~~~
mod
Stakes? Rough location?

------
cdiamand
[https://oppslist.com/subscribe](https://oppslist.com/subscribe)

Started charging this month.

~ $40 / mo

------
richardknop
Trading forex CFDs (contract for difference), gold, oil, grain futures.

------
le-mark
A rental property, earns about $400 a month in principal paid down.

------
SirLJ
algo trading and I am pretty happy with the profits...

~~~
idoh
Thanks for filling out your profile! Helped give some background.

~~~
SirLJ
No problemo, let me know if you have any questions...

~~~
idoh
No questions, algo trading is not something I want to get into. But it was
interesting to read about your approach

~~~
SirLJ
cool!

------
bradknowles
I'm curious as to why you call it a "side hustle"?

Is the term "hustle" not extremely negative to you?

Merriam-Webster defines "hustle" as to push or shove someone in a rude way.

Urban Dictionary says "Anythin you need to do to make money... be it sellin
cars, drugs, ya body. If you makin money, you hustlin."

Obviously, you don't seem to think that the word "hustle" has negative
connotations, so I'm wondering how you came to that view?

~~~
le-mark
I hired some movers once, these guys really 'hustled'; they moved quickly and
worked efficiently. You can say this of a sports team as well. It is a
colloquialism with good and bad connotations. Someone who has hustles can be
seen as getting things done. The negative is a 'hustler' someone who gambles
on games of skill pretending they're worse than they are to draw people in[1]
ie crooks or con artists.

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054997/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054997/)

