Honestly, I've found the return I've gotten on various endeavors to be pretty baffling. Wholly dominated by external factors as far as I can tell, many of which are themselves dominated by random contacts. My most profitable projects have been totally random things I put very little work into, and I could not have predicted they'd be the ones to take off.
I used to have that i couple times in my life. Related to SEO and online betting. But those holes are usually closed in 1-2 years. It's not a startup, not even a lifestyle business, just a sort of an intellectual game.