How to Make Money in the Metaverse (a Guide 2022)
We haven’t reached the point of Ready Player One just yet. Still, the metaverse is well on its way to combining virtual worlds and environments with entrepreneurship and legitimate ways to make real money or virtual in the form of cryptocurrency. How can you tap into this potential money pool? So, how to make money in the metaverse?
In reality — there are several ways to make money — being in and integrating with the metaverse in various forms, creating and selling NFTs, freelancing, flipping digital real estate, virtual tour guides, gaming, and setting up and running your own virtual business.
The metaverse has sunk its virtual claws deep into the financial infrastructure of nearly every country in the world. It’s a booming business comprised of thousands, possibly millions of digital enterprises. The virtual world is ripe for the picking, and if you don’t get on board now, you risk getting caught behind the times.
How can you make money from the Metaverse?
The metaverse is in its infancy, yet several terrific opportunities exist to dive right in and start making money. However, don’t make the mistake of believing this is one of those “get-rich-quick” deals. Outside of winning the lottery, there are no schemes for getting rich quickly; otherwise, everyone would do it.
Like everything else, making money in the metaverse requires time, patience, hard work, creativity, a drive to excel, and the will to dust yourself and get back up when you fail. If none of those things apply to you, you’re probably not going to get rich trying to make money in the metaverse.
Create (mint) buy and sell NFTs
NFTs, as commonly called, stands for ‘Non-Fungible Tokens.’ They are essentially a digital representation on the blockchain. They can create 3D paintings, pictures, abstract artwork, digital cards, 3D renderings of real-world objects, and much more.
Purchasing an NFT conveys ownership to you and you alone. No one else can own your NFT at the same time. There is value in an NFT because people give it the power of having value.
It’s an incredible boon for struggling artists who can now harness the power of design apps like Procreate, Pixelmator, Adobe Fresco, and ArtStudio Pro. All artists have to do is create their art, join an NFT marketplace, and upload and pay the “gas fees,” which can be expensive or cheap, depending on the market.
It doesn’t end there. You can take 3D renderings of physical objects you create and sell those renderings as NFTs. Right now, the possibilities of what can be an NFT are nearly limitless, but it’s a good idea to get in on the trends.
Invest in digital real estate
Investing in digital real estate is one of the more practical ways of making money in the metaverse. Games like Upland, Decentraland, The Sandbox, and Axie Infinity allow you to purchase digital real estate. What you do with it afterward is entirely up to you, within the game’s parameters.
The only downside to purchasing digital real estate is that it usually involves substantial money upfront. However, once you have broken through, you can build homes, farm the land, construct a palace, build and open an NFT-selling business, and on it goes.
Building and improving your digital real estate is the key to making money. For instance, if you purchase property on Upland in an upscale neighborhood and spend the Spark necessary to place a large building on it, you can turn around and sell it for four times the value in UPX (Upland’s in-game currency) or US dollars.
Freelancing
With the work-from-home industry on the rise, from the ashes of the pandemic, freelancing is becoming a monumental industry for remote workers. Thanks to the metaverse, you can now freelance for cryptocurrency. Like stocks, the value of specific cryptocurrencies rises and falls, so there is a degree of risk.
Right now, one of the more popular platforms for freelance writers is HIVE. But there are many more opportunities to freelance in several industries and for several cryptocurrency-paying clients.
There is a growing demand for digital architects, writers, interior designers, fashion designers, coders, graphic artists, and community managers.
Gaming
The gaming industry is slowly but surely beginning to get behind the metaverse. The Axie Infinity, as mentioned above, is a game as much as a digital real estate platform. Many other games are available now, such as Splinterlands, Gods Unchained, and Thetan Arena.
Before the metaverse, pay-to-win games had taken over the mobile gaming industry, with every new release containing microtransactions. With play-to-win metaverse games, those microtransactions now mean that you are the actual owner of NFTs from the game, and you can sell them for a premium.
You can also create a dual income stream, earning and purchasing in-game NFTs while streaming on Twitch or another gaming stream venue.
How do you get rich from the Metaverse?
If you want to get rich from the metaverse, all of the rules that apply in the real world apply here. Put your creativity to work, and create value for customers through your art, photography, projects, or even the written word.
Maintain multiple revenue streams
Never put all your eggs in one basket — diversify.
Create multiple income streams for yourself. Pump your artwork and content into the NFT marketplace, freelance, game, flip real estate, whatever it takes.
Some of the best money-making ventures involve creating NFTs and flipping real estate. Be the first to sign up. You can bide your time until you’re ready.
Be warned, however, that jumping into new games is much like investing in a new cryptocurrency. It’s risky, and you don’t have much outside of the marketing for the game to tell you whether this new venture will be a massive success.
Is the Metaverse a good investment?
That’s like asking if investing in the stock market is good. In many ways, the metaverse and the stock market are two sides of the same coin. You invest in either because you think it will bring real value to people, grow, become popular, and return your investment a hundredfold.
The metaverse is the same way. Before you jump into any one thing, understand that the in-game currencies are currencies backed by real-world cryptocurrencies. You can get a healthy idea of what you might be able to take advantage of in a given virtual platform based on your knowledge of the crypto lurking behind it.
You have nearly limitless potential if you are into the app design game. Apple and Android platforms make it simple to create and publish your apps. However, Apple is a little more convoluted and potentially expensive.
The critical thing to do is choose your platforms like you would buy your cryptocurrency. It’s always a gamble, but an informed risk always has better odds.
How to make passive income in the Metaverse
There are several ways to make passive income; the more revenue streams you have going at one time, the better. In almost every digital real estate game, your property earns a set value per hour or day, so the more property you own, the more passive income will roll into your wallet.
Freelancing is another way, such as freelance writing for HIVE. You don’t necessarily have to be a good writer either. HIVE is like a social media writers’ site, akin to Medium but with more interaction.
You earn HIVE for every vote that your blog receives. The key to more votes isn’t necessarily in writing good content but in marketing yourself and becoming a friendly member of the HIVE community. If you are a good writer, you can make decent passive income from HIVE, writing about whatever you want, as their categories cover many topics.
Build a business
Many platforms in the metaverse will allow you to create your own digital business, especially if you create it on your digital property.
What you choose to do with that business is entirely up to you. You can run virtual tours, open up a pay-for-work service, be a digital real estate agent, or buy and create NFTs that you can flip and sell.
How does Facebook Metaverse make money?
Right now, Facebook has done little more than change its name to Meta in October of 2021. However, “Meta” also owns Oculus Rift and Quest, the virtual reality console platform starting to grow in popularity.
Meta still makes most of its revenue through ad support, but it’s just a matter of time before Meta reveals its next, true play to dominate the metaverse like it once dominated social media, before the market saturation of so many competing social media platforms.
It would be a safe bet to say that Meta is probably looking to develop its own space that is accessible to Facebook users, new users, and Oculus Quest users. Oculus Rift and Quest consoles are not dominating the gaming console market, but it’s easy to see that there is potential.
Facebook didn’t pave its way to fame, glory, and riches by being the boring, secondary option when everyone got tired of Twitter and Instagram. While their exact pathway moving forward is still a little hazy, it probably won’t last much longer.
As for now, ad revenue dominates Facebook’s fiscal portfolio, and not much has shifted to change that. Ad revenue will also play a large part in their plans for the metaverse, as a highly successful and addictive business model shouldn’t be fixed if it isn’t broken.
How much is the Metaverse worth?
No set and known monetary value can be attached to the metaverse. It is widely considered that the metaverse, as a whole, is valued between $500 and $800 billion. The reason behind the obscurity is the fact that the metaverse is both ill-defined and it is not a whole concept.
There are a significant number and variety of platforms to engage with. Still, the problem is that they are all separate entities. Looking back at the movie, Ready Player One, their digital reality was a single, cohesive world, with different universes all interconnected.
The real metaverse is not like that, so it is difficult to attach a value to thousands of separate brands and call that value “one, whole metaverse.”
What is the point of the Metaverse?
To have a point, it has to matter. If it doesn’t matter, then there is no point. The metaverse has a point that matters because it is a new escape from reality, much like movies and video games.
However, the metaverse separates itself from movies and gaming because now you have an intrinsic value with that ecosphere. You can buy digital real estate, own one-of-a-kind artwork, and engage in new brands of social media.
Perhaps one of the most significant points of the metaverse is its opportunities. It’s mind-blowingly expensive to open up a corner shop downtown and try to sell real-world art. You may never sell enough to pay the debt you incurred.
In the metaverse, you might be able to open up a shop doing just that and only be out $5. Sell a few digital art pieces, and you’re making a profit. There is a point in that the metaverse is a source of economic freedom or, at least, a much higher level of financial freedom than the real world.
All Things Considered
There are many ways to make money on the metaverse, some with a higher upfront cost and cheap ones. The pathways are endless, so long as you are willing to put in the effort. The bull markets predict the metaverse will be worth $13 trillion by 2030.
Where will you be?
