Balancing Sensationalism to Drive Sales and Clicks, with Realism Needed to Understand Risks
The current territory.
The current territory.
A few weeks ago I published my first book, and I’ve also been writing stories here on Medium documenting my adventures in automated trading.
Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Crypto Trading Bots
Amazon.com: Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Crypto Trading Bots eBook : Morton, C.W.: Kindle Storewww.amazon.com
Readers, along with family and friends, keep reaching out wanting to get started, which is why I wrote my Beginner’s Guide. I am stoked that so many people are interested and responsive!
I also made a few YouTube short promos, because in todays world, if you aren’t promoting in short form video, you are barely getting any attention.
These initial reactions and responses have made me realize early on, there is more writing to be done to make clear the real risks of the adventure I’ve embarked upon. Some folks - I get a good feeling that they understand a few things and have read my book or at least grasp the risks, and it is easy to tell especially when they say they will take my advice and start small.
That always makes me breathe a sigh of relief.
Others…. I am more concerned. These are the people who get excited and seem to be running off the fumes of my story titles and shorts, who probably only had a loose scan/fast read of my content and they are convinced they want to do whatever they need to do to set up a livable income right NOW.
Red Flag City.
I can immediately feel from their energy that they might just get ahead of themselves and trip on the pitfalls.
It’s great to have enthusiasm, but did you spend at least SOME time trying to understand what these things are, how they work, and what the risks are?
Then there are those who ask me to invest their money for them…these folks are straight up telling me without saying it “I don’t want to learn, or take responsibility, I just want you to do it for me”.
Sir, I didn’t start an investment service.
I have no interest in taking your money.
I wrote my book to help people understand what trading bots are and how they function, but now another book seems to be needed to share how I actually got here, because it wasn’t overnight. I didn’t just wake up and stick $10,000 into a trading bot and have a livable income. I started small, played in the sandbox for a while, and took time to learn about what I was doing. My investment levels weren’t increased until I had gained confidence.
I’m a big believer that we need to learn about, immerse ourselves, grasp, and gain confidence in what we are doing, or disaster only follows.
If we walked into the woods without any tools, without knowing how to create landmarks to find our way back, we’re going to have a bad time.
If you start running trading bots without learning what they are or how to use them, how to manage risk and leverage it, you’re going to have a bad time.
Yes, I have experienced losses along the way in my learning process, and continually as an inherent part of the territory. There is no such thing as a trader who doesn’t take losses.
I learned early on that trading on BTC, ETH, or LTC, were easier and more predictable for me to manage, and that running bots on other coins like DOT, stand a bigger chance to end up with losses that do not get recouped.
The Cold Hard Truth
When I title my stories something like this:
If You Could Buy Yourself An Income Instead of Working For It, Would You?
It only takes about 1 years worth of pay…..
I get FAR more clicks and reads.
Let’s see what happens if my title was more true to the reality:
“If you could spend a year or two learning and mastering a new hobby that can become very profitable, would you take personal responsibility for your gains and losses, both of which will happen, and learn to become a day trader whose primary tools are automated bots that allow you do other things while you trade instead of being tethered to a computer?”
That story won’t get any clicks all.
But that’s just it — there is no way to put the entire context of a subject into every title, and even if I did, it would lead no where.
On The Importance of Novelty
Human beings seem to need novelty and mystery to compel desire, and I also feel that some people might not get involved in automated trading if not for reading an article that created the sense of novelty and interest that leads to TRYING something new, which leads to learning and testing, and eventually…. maybe a new useful tool for that person.
My entire journey was inspired by a single sentence in a book written by someone who had reduced their workweek down to 4 hours. His book title was pure click-bait and his perspective, totally bombastic, but it changed my life for the positive.
That book was The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, and the sentence was “Our goal isn’t to create a business that is as large as possible, but rather a business that bothers us as little as possible.”
The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of…
The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content. …amzn.to
I literally automate everything I can get my hands on now, and I owe it to the novelty that planted a motivational seed, all because Tim and his click-bait-ass title led to me buying and reading his book and absorbing a new perspective. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Mr. Ferriss.
Click-bait can therefore….. change lives.
“Loads of Laughter”, but also, “For Real, For Real”
The Reality
I do my best to inform people on the realities of using trading bots.
But I also want them to get excited and be enthusiastic because that is the energy we have to bring to anything if want to engage and master it.
I write about my losses and my thought processes in responding to them to keep my bots in action, etc.
Challenging Month — Crypto Trading Bot Update July 04, 2024
Ridin’ the dip!medium.com
I share my bigger losses to help people learn, and also to scare away those who haven’t yet tried to grasp these tools. If someone can be discouraged by seeing a loss, they don’t really understand what the bots are doing, and they will either be motivated to learn, or they won’t be.
If they do not learn, then they just won’t have the cahones to stay in the game when the losses happen, nor will they have the confidence to know how to respond, ultimately.
My strategy is still developing and I am still learning. I take losses, but overall, the losses don’t compare to my gains, and that truly does surprise me.
For someone with no prior day trading experience prior to crypto, for me to be seeing returns I am seeing still blows me away. I can’t help but get excited when telling family and friends about this, because it is still essentially true.
The missing context is that I am very obsessive when I learn something, so I did what it took to grasp and gain my confidence to “see a path forward”.
If it’s still all cloudy to you and you don’t know what to do, don’t invest too much too soon. Learn. Test. Gain Confidence.
Rainy Day Fund
This June was the most difficult month for me in over 18 months of running these bots.
So much so, that — if I were to seriously keep this going as my primary income, a “rolling reserve” will be created that will be on hand to pay bills during those months when profitability takes big downturns.
Which basically means that instead of starting my 5th 10k trading bot soon, I will keep that 10k as USDT and keep that on hand for bills, and then start over working towards the 5th bot.
This way, during months where the general trend is downward, I can still pay my bills while my bots are not as profitable without having to dig into other resources. This will be separate from my savings or anything else, it exist as a buffer to pad the less profitable months using these bots.
Until now have not adapted a strategy for actively profiting (or paying bills) during downward trending periods, as the particular bots that I am using (Martingales) are not the best tools for a downtrend.
My next book will be about how I manage to earn a livable income from trading bots, outlining what I am doing and what my process was when learning, and also, how to stay in the game when some months are not profitable.
Most of my bills have been paid with my bots for about 10 months. I have been paying them periodically for 18 months, and have been actively using and testing different crypto trading bots for 4 years.
When I get to the 2 year mark of using bots to pay most of my bills, then it’s time to release the next book outlining my process/strategy.
I want to make sure I don’t get ahead of myself. I don’t want to be running on the fumes of my last 10 months of massive successes during a fairly bullish trending market, only to find out the party is over if a downtrend is sustained for much longer periods.
What comes after the Bitcoin halving?
A bull market rush.
What comes after the bull rush is over?
The BIG DIP.
I kind of want to wait until after the big dip happens to release my next book, so I can also share how I responded to it, and what my strategy was to overcome and keep my bots active, or if I just eat a big ole’ loss burger.
I think I have an idea forming, but it’s the kind of idea that comes from someone with their skin in the long game.
Kind of like having a rolling reserve as a rainy day fund, I might keep more USDT in staking reserves too, and whenever the market shifts so dramatically as to put my bots at more than a 30% loss, I will just let them stay in the red or close out and keep the crypto, then start another bot so I have an active bot while the other is down for the count.
Keep in mind, this sounds crazy if you don’t know what the bots are doing, or if you don’t know that being in the red is only IMPERMANENT LOSS, provided you don’t stop at a loss and sell at a loss.
This is also something only someone with enough resources and confidence would even think of.
I’ve arrived here, and it didn’t happen overnight.
Sorry if modern online need for click-bait titles make it sound like I woke up and quit my job and started a trading bot. That isn’t what happened.
Thank you for reading!
Until next time….
Onward and Upward Everybody!
-Chris
Automated Income Lifesyle w/ C.W. Morton
I'm just a regular guy who automates everything I possibly can. A few years ago I automated my primary business to the…www.youtube.com
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