u/Icy_Palpitation9187

trying to get realistic numbers here.

my use case is pretty basic: agent handles admin work like identifying relevant emails, sorting/prioritizing, drafting replies, and sending compliant cold outreach. Assume ~8 hours/day of work.

What are people actually PAYING per month for this?

Looking at APIs like:

• MiniMax
• Claude
• Gemini
• DeepSeek
• OpenAI
• GLM / Qwen etc.

Main questions:

1. What’s the cheapest API that’s still reliable for boring admin/email tasks?
2. Do you pay purely per use/tokens, or are people running monthly plans somewhere?
3. For this type of workflow, do you route cheap model for 90% and only use Claude/Sonnet/etc. when it needs reasoning?
4. What’s a realistic monthly cost if this runs daily?
5. What stack are people actually using in production-ish setups?

Not trying to burn money using frontier models for email triage. Just want the lowest-cost setup that doesn’t hallucinate or loop itself into a token bonfire.

Curious what everyone here is using.

Trying to avoid the classic “cool agent, $400 API bill” situation.

yo reddit,

I’m thinking about starting a finance YouTube channel, but my biggest question is: how do I actually build trust with people?

I’ve been trading/investing for the last 5 years and averaged around 30% annual returns, which I know sounds crazy and also sounds exactly like something a fake finance bro would say in a YouTube ad lol.

I don’t wanna come across like:

“buy my course bro, financial freedom in 7 days 🚀”

I want the channel to be entertaining, Gen Z-friendly, but still credible. Like finance content that’s actually useful, not just me yelling “THIS STOCK WILL 10X” with a shocked thumbnail.

My idea is to show my trading/investing journey, explain my thought process, break down wins and losses, and maybe talk about what I learned from the last 5 years.

But how do I prove credibility without being cringe or looking like I’m flexing?

Would people trust:

• screenshots of brokerage performance?
• full portfolio breakdowns?
• explaining every trade after the fact?
• sharing mistakes and bad trades too?
• doing live portfolio updates?
• showing risk management and drawdowns?
• third-party verification somehow?

Also, what would make you immediately think “this person is legit” vs “this is another fake finance influencer”?

I’m not trying to give financial advice or promise returns. I just want to make content around my experience and trading mindset.

Be brutally honest: how should I build trust from zero without sounding like every other finance YouTuber with a rented Lamborghini?

how do you actually make money as a youtuber lol

like do people just use youtube or do you sell videos somewhere or what
i feel like i am missing something super obvious

also how are you guys getting closer to your audience
like is it instagram, youtube comments, stories, lives???
i feel like i post and then just disappear and that is probably bad 💀

do you just talk to people more or is there some smarter way to do it