Blog post • 2 months ago

#008 How to Scale a DePIN Hobby to a $50K per Month Side Hustle👷‍♂️

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In the last issue we showcased some key DePIN devices paving the path forward to worldwide crypto adoption. Today we’re following up with a closer look at the people who purchase and install these devices: the DePIN deployers. Not corporations, or foundations, or large scale miners, just regular guys building their side hustle out into something meaningful. 🙋‍♂️

If being your own boss and working on some of the most cutting edge decentralized solutions sounds exciting to you, you’ll want to stick around for this one! 🚀

In this issue

🏅 DePIN Hub Leaderboards
📝 Featured Blog Post
📰 In The News
👷‍♂️ How to Scale a DePIN Hobby to a $50K per Month Side Hustle
🎙️ Podcast Updates
👋 Parting Words

DePIN Hub Leaderboards 🏅

Growth statistics of some standout DePIN projects based on social metrics and token price

Featured Blog Post 📝

ICYMI, here’s a must-read article from our DePIN Hub website 👇

🔗 Solving Last Mile Internet Connectivity with Wicrypt: Click Here

Wicrypt is a Web3-powered mobile internet project based in Nigeria. Its innovative Share2Earn model rewards the hosts of its decentralized WiFi network. Want to earn crypto for sharing your bandwidth? Grab your Wicrypt hotspot here.

In The News 📰

AI-powered DePIN project UpRock triples their daily active user count 👀

Uprock is the leading depin candidate for the Jupiter LFG launchpad The recent Jupiter Exchange candidate announcement and a partnership with Koii Network has helped increase their DAU from 22k to 130k! if you hold JUP tokens, you can vote for UpRock, and to entice voters, Jupiter is giving back 75% of the launchpad fees to voters! (pretty awesome, right?) 🚀

Download UpRock’s app with our link to score bonus UPT!

Stake with Hotspotty on IoTeX’s DePIN Liquidity Hub

IoTeX has launched the DePIN Liquidity Hub, to address token liquidity challenges in the DePIN sector. The hub leverages mimo, IoTeX's decentralized exchange, to create liquid token markets and improve overall ecosystem stability.

You can help strengthen one of DePIN’s most active and dedicated networks, all while earning yourself some juicy APY on your tokens! 🤑 Stake with Hotspotty to support the newsletter, our website and the DePIN Hub vision 🚀

ATOR Giveaway - Win 500 ATOR by joining our giveaway!

ATOR's mission is to build the privacy layer for DePIN. We believe the project will be huge over the next couple years, so don't miss out on this chance to grab some tokens early! 🫳 🪙

Feature

How to Scale a DePIN Hobby to a $50K per Month Side Hustle👷‍♂️📈

If you’ve been on the lookout for DePIN content recently, you might have come across Bradley Meyer and his DePIN Connection YouTube channel. 🎥

Well it just so happens that Brad himself is a highly successful DePIN deployer. We got in touch with him to pick his brain on how he got started in this space, what motivates him to do what he does, and what advice he has for those looking to emulate his success.

And yes, that $50K newsletter title is the real deal, as we’ll soon found out below. 🚀

Every success story has its humble beginnings

Brad’s DePIN story brings us back to 2020, when he found himself in a 14 day quarantine. With extra time on his hands, he took the opportunity to dive down the blockchain rabbit hole. He went on to discover Helium and eventually set up shop in the DePIN space.

Brad is a long-term fan and customer of Hotspotty which helped him manage, optimize, and scale his Helium hotspot operations, all guiding him on his way to further success. And what a path he's carved for himself! Brad's now running 4 DePIN business lines. 3 are built around deployments, while the 4th revolves around his DePIN-focused YouTube channel.

Here are the latest stats for his installations and fleets:

-Helium (60 rooftop installs) 📡
-DIMO (170 vehicles connected) 🚗
-Hivemapper (55 full time drivers) 🗺️

Daily logistics and fleet management

For someone who’s got his fingers in multiple pies, we were curious to see what a typical week looked like for a deployer such as Brad. As you can imagine, there’s no such thing in DePIN!

“Every week is very different which is one of the things I love about building out businesses in this space. Some weeks I will set up 15 DIMO devices and travel across multiple states; other weeks I will be at home in Chicago, shipping out dashcams to hosts and recording content for my channel.”

Being a DePIN Depolyer can be lucrative but it’s not without its challenges. This however is precisely what makes this line of work so exciting and rewarding.

“I did an install in Central IL where the cable run from their internet to the rooftop was a complete nightmare and the best position to install their hotspot was atop a huge chimney. That said, this hotspot has routinely performed as a top 5,000 hotspot globally for multiple years now so it was very worth it.”

It’s not all rooftops and chimneys though. There are plenty of sensor projects like DIMO and Hivemapper that are much simpler to install and manage. The ease at which fleet equipment such as DIMO Macarons or Hivemapper Dashcams can be unplugged and reinstalled makes it instantly manageable for anyone looking to get started in DePIN today. Or, in case you’d prefer to mine street view data without the upfront hardware investment, an alternative is NATIX. You can download their app here. Don’t forget to use code hotspotty to enjoy 70,000 bonus points!

DePIN earnings and tactics

What started as a simple hobby for Brad has quickly scaled into something very profitable. 👀

“At current values I am making roughly $40-50k per month in total across my businesses in the DePIN space, so certainly not bad for a side hustle.”

These are extremely good figures but Brad remains level-headed as earnings and token values can fluctuate. It’s important that any DePIN deployer does their due diligence on a project’s tokenomics to understand the implications of the reward distributions. Earnings can be tricky to predict, especially when working at scale for popular projects with extended delivery backorders.

Brad’s professionalism and entrepreneurial approach have propelled him to the level he’s currently operating at. There are a number of aspects that have been key to his growth, tactics you can put to use yourself if you’re looking to get into DePIN deployments.

One of the main components of fleet management is the hosting model, an aspect that’s essential to the growth of any DePIN project. This is how Brad first scaled his Helium operations and where Hotspotty's best-in-class fleet management software played a critical role. (Fun fact - over 50% of Helium hotpots belong to a fleet.)

For vehicle-based DePINs like Hivemapper and DIMO, the hosting model takes a different form, yet there are still several key tactics you can execute upon.

Referrals have acted as a powerful multiplier to Brad’s growth, with good ol’ word of mouth spreading news of his helpful services.

“Having a good referral program is critical as roughly 40% of my hosts were referred from other hosts.”

Talk about network effects! 🚀

Going the extra mile with your customer support is critical to maintaining a good working relationship, especially with those who may be new to crypto. Things to consider here are crypto to fiat off-ramping, tax tool advice and best practices regarding seed phrase management and all-round cyber security. 🪙

Being a deployer requires interpersonal skills, as you’ll be partnering up with numerous people such as homeowners and professional drivers while you build out your fleet of devices. It’s entirely up to you whether you want to reach out to either private or professional customers. This all begins with working out an ideal partner profile for the project at hand and defining a recruitment strategy, something Brad explains in this Hivemapper video. 🫂

Once you’ve partnered up, it’s time to talk revenue share. Things to consider here are payments in crypto or fiat, and what percentage split to offer your partner. It’s also worth noting that depending on the project, some partners may deserve a bigger reward for their active participation.

“If it is completely passive like Helium, the reward split to the host is going to be less than if they are actively participating like Hivemapper where they need to drive, and download/upload imagery, etc.”

Finally, with multiple projects looking to improve their coverage, it’s worth noting that the geographical region of your deployments can also be a significant differentiator in your earnings, something Brad broke down into detail in his Hivemapper 2024 strategy video.

Choosing the right DePIN project

With so many DePIN projects to choose from, it can be challenging to find a suitable one to invest your time and money into.

Brad uses a super helpful 4-step checklist to evaluate potential projects:

Utility: What is the use case? How much revenue can the project generate? What is the differentiator that will capture market share?

Participation: Who is the target audience? What are the barriers to entry? Can the project gain enough participation to generate the necessary infrastructure or data?

Team: Are they doxxed? Do they have proof they can execute?

Tokenomics: How are the tokens distributed between the participants, the team, investors and other categories? Are there any red flags?

Looking ahead and staying motivated

Following his success with DIMO and Hivemapper, Brad is particularly bullish on sensor devices. Alongside their ease of management, he expects the data from this type of hardware to become increasingly valuable thanks to the proliferation of AI and machine learning. 🤖

But telematics, mapping, IOT, and mobile are not the only verticals he’s got his eye on as there are a lot of interesting use cases being worked on in DePIN at the moment.

Here’s what’s on Brad’s radar:

Cloud Computing/Storage: Filecoin, Arweave, Render, Akash, Nosana

Geo-Positioning: Geodnet, Onocoy

Noise Pollution: Silencio

Weather Stations: WeatherXM

Flight Tracking: Wingbits

Decentralized Rideshare: Teleport

As for Brad's motivation, it's clear to see that his work has sparked something powerful within him. The desire to get out there and make a difference is what led him to where he is today, yet he shows no signs of slowing down. His hosting model allowed him to make lots of new friends and has brought hundreds of new people into the DePIN space. These opportunities have made a significant impact on people's lives but most importantly, nobody needed to change their daily habits in order to participate.

There have been some incredible stories along the journey, including a stolen car being recovered thanks to its DIMO device, mapping rewards improving numerous Uber drivers’ financial situations and even covering unexpected medical expenses. The rewards for one particular driver have enabled them to send money home to Africa, making a huge difference to the lives of their family members.

Brad’s side hustle has not only improved his own financial situation, but the impact it’s had on his partners is equally as impressive. That's the beauty of DePIN and people-powered networks. Deployers like Brad are putting crypto on the map (quite literally), connecting with people from all walks of life to tackle real-world issues. 💪

Expert advice from a serial deployer

To wrap up, we asked Brad whether he thinks this is a sustainable career and what advice he has for those looking to get into professional DePIN deployments. Here’s what he had to say:

“My advice is to only do this if you are willing to invest your time and energy into doing research and really diving in/committing. You also need to have a relatively high risk tolerance and be realistic about all possible scenarios (avoid wearing rose colored glasses). There is a ton of upside if you do it right and choose the right projects. If you find a project you like, the earlier you can participate the better, but start small to get your process down and expand from there.”

There you have it folks!

These are all actionable insights that should help you no matter where you’re at on your DePIN journey. ✅

DePIN Hub Podcast 🎙️

Brought to you by Peaq Network, harnessing the home of DePIN projects! 🚀

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Tune into our latest podcast episode featuring WiCrypt, a game-changing platform that's revolutionizing internet connectivity through decentralized networks. 🌐