How to make money from blockchain technology
The advent of bitcoin made possible by blockchain technology has no doubt made lots of founders wealthy as the value of their coin/token soar especially the early adopters of the ideology behind the paradigm shift of leaving money in the hands of government-controlled establishments and the clamor for privacy and anonymity.
This has also created a new niche of money-making opportunities for those keen on making extra income but are not programmers or incline to create their own blockchain solution. Below are some of the money-making niche you can freelance or work for a blockchain startup.
Blockchain Developer
Currently, blockchain developers are greatly needed in the nascent industry making it hot skill to add to your programming ‘kung-fu’ as a developer. According to Upwork; a freelance talent marketplace, their platform saw the rise of blockchain demanded talent by over 35,000% and the salary scale range between $120,000 to $180,000/year. With basic programming skills, a newbie programmer can be part of the windfall by either working as a Frontend developer using javascript/ReactJS to display data from smart contract or work at the Backend of projects which involves the development of Blockchain or Smart Contracts using C++, Java, Javascript, Python, GoLang or Solidity for the Ethereum Blockchain. Depending on your choice of language and learning speed, you can become a sort-after blockchain developer because the opportunities are endless. See sample code to create a blockchain via this medium post
Whitepaper copy-writing/Translation
This is for those that have eyes for details and explanation of algorithm and schema especially breaking down technical jargon to conciseness for the average investor. Whitepaper plays a huge role in the marketing of a blockchain solution as it explains the problem, what the solution is about, how it will be achieved, project timeframe and the team. Most whitepaper now comes with market analysis/size of the market the solution is intended for and potential investment return for investors. Kindly avoid doing Crtl A, Crtl C and Crtl V of other project’s whitepaper to avoid the embarrassment that greeted projects like TRON.
I have seen greatly crafted whitepapers that end up raising miserable fund from their ICO thereby killing the project due to lack of fund and I’ve also seen poorly crafted whitepapers that raised ‘lambo’-Lamborgini money for the founders. As a blockchain whitepaper copywriter, you need to understand the technical details of the project in order to be able to effectively communicate with the readers or potential investors. Also, you can make money by translating a whitepaper to other languages and get paid for doing so. Some blockchain startups setup a bounty system for this purpose.
Cryptocurrency Investment
This is where the money is for the majority especially the n00bs(new people in the space). Startups wishing to raise funds for their blockchain project creates a coin or an ERC20 token through Ethereum platform and ask cryptocurrencies investors to buy their coin in return for a share of the organisation’s profit (Security token) or access to the organisations products/services(Utility token) through Initial Coin Offering (ICO). An Initial Coin Offering is the process of selling the coin/token to the public at a certain price to raise fund. Some startups make their fundraising private for the first round of sales through a Presale or Pre-ICO offer before the main ICO sales which is always at a higher price.
Most often, investors end up making a kill as the coin/token increases in value after the ICO sales. Some investors that believe in the project hold onto their coin longer than others believing that the value will go higher with time. These set of Investors are called the #HODLers. Not all investors get their coins from through ICO as some ICO ended before it even began. Note that ICO has a limit to the number of tokens they intend selling and a detailed explanation of what they intend using the funds raised to accomplish is in their Whitepaper.
Community management
Communication is key to the success of any project and building a community of loyal followers helps blockchain startups with an army of users to sell to. Managing the communication channels before, during and after ICO takes a lot of effort and dedication as you have lots of requests and questions from the community and prompt reply shows the seriousness of such project and the team behind the project. Most blockchain startups outsource this process to PR agencies while some have in-house social media managers/Communication team. Whichever category you want to fall in, you will need to work closely with the project core-team because questions will be asked from technical to exchange listing, token allotment, vesting, road map completion, when moon, when exchange, when lambo, etc.
As a community manager, you will need to be conversant with tools like Hootsuite, twitter, facebook, bitcointalk, reddit, discord, telegram and slack as these are media used in keeping the community abreast with happenings concerning the project. Also, blog posts are used for official announcements and technical explanations.
Bounty hunter/ICO Marketing
Bounty haunting is free money on a platter of gold for those that can complete the assigned task of blockchain startups. Bounty hunters look out for task that startups want done but don’t have enough manpower to complete such task. Bounty task could also be used to create a viral post or project publicity. A publicist with access to media houses with high reputation reaches out to have startup featured in the publication for a certain fee or through bounty.
Bounty tasks range from debugging in the blockchain code or smart contract, joining social media handle, re-posting tweets and announcements, completing or working on a project module in the scrum, content marketing of project, making an ICO or coin go viral, referring others to buy a coin, changing your bitcointalk signature to project’s link and any other task that could be assigned by the startup. For your effort, you get paid in the token/coin of the startup which you can sell through an exchange.
Crypto-Influencers
During my course of searching for Social Media Influencers for my team at Superdao, I found out that some crypto-influencers are making a kill from this niche of the ecosystem. Influencing their followers and subscribers to get in on an ICO or to buy a particular token. Organizations pay for such services either in tokens or outright payment in other cryptos. Some of these influencers specialize in Pump and Dump of coins like McAfee who has been criticized severely by the crypto-community for pumping ‘Shit Coins’.
Interview/AMA Sessions
Forming a community of crypto-enthusiasts and constantly feeding them with relevant information helps create a sheep-like following. One way of monetizing such community is conducting podcast interview sessions or Ask Me Any question with the founders of Crypto-projects. This helps the followers to know more about the project and to ask the founder any question. Before such a platform be granted to the founder, payment would have to be made. Ivan on Tech charges as high as $20,000 to get an interview slot on the show. However, some of these platforms are free but ask for donations to help keep the platform alive.
You can make use of Youtube, do a podcast or a live session AMA on twitter, Reddit thread.
Trading Signal Platform
Running a trading signal group is a bit risky and can soil your name. Why? Giving wrong signals or assurance or certainty about a coin and your subscribers end up losing their money will earn you cuss. I have been in a trading signal group that kept on giving wrong buy signals and eventually went silent for a long while after they realize your subscribers dropped. If only Subscribers were allowed to comment or reply to the signals being posted, the administrators would have been tongue-lashed out of business faster. So before creating such a platform, know you’re risking investors fund indirectly if it goes wrong because they paid to belong to such group to get profitable and timely trading signals.
In Conclusion
These are just a few ways you can venture into the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies and earn a living but first, you will need to learn, read, follow and inebriate yourself into any of the niches before offering such service.
Thank you for reading. Now go out there and make your money. Don’t forget to come back to drop some of it here. This is my Ethereum address: justcharles.eth (0x0ceA66A0e60a3c4A70D2194450a367fC46513112)😃
Charles is coFounder of VesselTrust, a blockchain solution architect, full-stack and mobile developer with over a decade experience in the IT world creating applications and running several startups. Passionate about great ideas that have “Proof of concept” and scalability. #Fitfam gym dude and enjoys swimming when he is not in front of his laptop, bar, cooking, playing ping-pong or snooker.
Twitter: justcharz
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/justcharles
