I've spend about 2 years of full time work on the bot. In the end it was not worth it in monetary terms (was making maybe $1000 per month while requiring very heavy support), but it rekindled my interest in maths and programming. Also, the experience gained allowed me to catch some highly paid long-term contracts (most of them boring as hell). Now I spend maybe 60% of my time doing those and 40% regaining my sanity, toying with side-projects etc. I'm dreaming of switching to doing interesting work as a full-time job (as opposed to a hobby), but the competition in such fields (computer vision etc.) seems to be dramatically higher than in what I do for money today. I'll probably do the switch in the next couple of years anyway, as I'm slowly approaching mini-FU money.