If you trade profitably and consistently, selling signals is the obvious way to earn from it without managing anyone's money. It's also a crowded market full of screenshots and promises, which means the providers who last are the ones who can prove their results and deliver signals reliably. This post covers both.
A note before anything else: in many countries, giving trading signals for a fee can count as investment advice, which is regulated. Whether you need a licence depends on where you and your subscribers are and exactly what you provide. Check before you charge anyone. This isn't legal advice.
Three ways to sell trading signals
1. A signals marketplace (e.g. MQL5 Signals). You connect your MT4 or MT5 account to MetaQuotes' signals service, set a monthly price, and subscribers copy your trades automatically through their own terminal. The marketplace handles billing and shows your verified statistics.
- Pros: built-in audience, automatic copying, verified track record, payments handled.
- Cons: the marketplace takes a share of every subscription, you compete on a ranking page with thousands of others, and subscribers need the copying to run in their own MetaTrader terminal.
2. A broker's copy trading program. Many brokers run their own copy trading or "strategy provider" programs, often paying providers a share of spreads or a performance fee.
- Pros: the broker brings followers and handles payment.
- Cons: your followers must all be at that broker, and you're tied to its rules and payout terms.
3. Your own signal service. You sell subscriptions directly (through a website, Telegram, Discord or Patreon-style platforms) and deliver signals yourself: as messages, as automated trade copying, or both.
- Pros: you keep the revenue, own the audience, and work with followers at any broker.
- Cons: you have to build trust, handle billing and support, and make delivery reliable yourself.
Most serious providers end up combining them: a marketplace or broker listing for discovery, and their own channel for the relationship.
What subscribers check before they pay
Subscribers have been burned before. The providers who convert are the ones who answer these without being asked:
- A verified, live track record. Not screenshots: a third-party verified statement or a live dashboard. At least several months, ideally a year.
- Maximum drawdown, not just return. A 300% year with a 70% drawdown tells an experienced subscriber "this will blow up". The Sharpe and max drawdown post shows how to calculate both honestly.
- Win rate and average win vs loss. A 90% win rate with tiny wins and huge losses is a red flag; the expectancy post explains why.
- Trade frequency and hold time, so they know whether they can follow manually or need automation.
- No martingale or unbounded grids. Many subscribers screen these out instantly; the martingale post shows why they're right to.
If you can put a live performance page in front of a prospect that answers all five, you're ahead of most of the market.
Delivering signals: messages vs copying
Telegram or Discord messages are the most common format: "BUY XAUUSD 2331.50, SL 2310, TP 2360". Easy to start, works for any broker. The weaknesses: subscribers enter late and at different prices, many miss signals entirely, and you can't easily prove their results match yours.
Automated trade copying places the trades on the subscriber's account for them. Entries match yours closely, nobody misses a signal, and results track your account. The trade-off is that you need copying infrastructure, and subscribers need to connect an account. The copy trading internals post explains how a copier replicates trades and where latency comes from.
Many providers offer both tiers: a cheaper message channel and a premium auto-copy tier.
Automating signal delivery with MetaKit
If your trading account is connected to MetaKit, two pieces do most of the work.
Instant Telegram or Discord signals from your actual trades. MetaKit sends
a trade.position.opened webhook the moment you open a position, with the
symbol, side, volume, entry, stop and target. A small handler formats it and
posts it to your channel, so the message is generated from the trade itself:
no typing, no delay, no "forgot to post the close". trade.position.modified
and trade.position.closed cover stop moves and results. The
alerts post has working code for
Telegram, Discord and Slack, and the
trade grading post shows how to
mark each signal as a hit or a miss automatically. Post the outcome too;
publishing losses is the strongest credibility signal there is.
Copying to managed accounts. For accounts you manage, a cloud copier replicates your source account onto follower accounts at any broker, with lot sizing per follower (fixed, multiplier or proportional to balance). It needs the follower's account connected with trading access, so it suits accounts you're authorised to manage rather than an anonymous public subscriber list. The copier setup post walks through it, and PAMM vs MAM vs copy trading compares the models.
A public track record. The performance API returns the same equity curve, drawdown, win rate and per-symbol breakdown the MetaKit dashboard shows, so you can publish a live results page on your own site instead of screenshots.
Pricing a signal service
There's no standard price, but a few patterns hold:
- Monthly subscriptions are the norm. Price relative to the account size your subscribers trade: a signal that makes 3% a month is worth more to a $50,000 account than a $500 one.
- A free tier (delayed signals, or a handful per week) is the usual acquisition channel.
- Don't price on past returns alone. A high price on a short track record attracts exactly the subscribers who'll leave at the first drawdown.
Before you launch
- Build at least several months of live, verifiable history.
- Write down your rules: instruments, max risk per trade, max drawdown you'll tolerate before pausing.
- Decide delivery: messages, copying, or both.
- Sort out the legal side for your jurisdiction and your subscribers'.
- Publish results continuously, including the losing weeks.
And if you'd rather earn by recommending tools than by running a service, the MetaKit partner program pays recurring commission on referrals.