The crypto market capitalization went from $540 billion (November 2020) to an all-time high of $3 trillion (November 2021).
It didn’t stop there.
It went from its all-time high of $3 trillion (November 2021) to $850 billion (November 2022).
Each trend(uptrend and downtrend) happened within a year.
What does that signify?
Action points.
You cannot invest your way out of poverty. I would do this if I were to start my financial journey today without wealthy parents, a connected uncle, and a rich aunty.
- Learn a high-income skill.
- Get a job.
- Leave a modest lifestyle to enable me to have enough money to save.
- Invest my savings in well-researched crypto degens.
- Use my crypto profit to invest in Real Estate.
There is High Demand for Skillful Personnel in Crypto.
You need a skill if you are among those who weren’t lucky enough to make a shitload of money during the previous bull cycle.
This is the only way you can do crypto without risk. Even people who made money from the previous cycle and didn’t have a skill need to get one.
Web3 projects are looking for skilful personnel such as;
- Community moderators are needed to moderate Web3 Telegram and Discord communities.
- Social media managers are needed to manage and engage Web3 social media channels.
- Graphics designers are needed to create compelling visuals and infographics for Web3 projects.
- Technical writers are needed to simplify complex topics about Web3 projects so that a layperson can understand the project. You know that for blockchain to go mainstream, laypeople should be able to understand complex topics.
These are the few low-barrier-to-entry skills anyone can learn and offer to any Web3 project and earn up to $2,000 monthly.
Interestingly, these skills can be acquired in less than 6 months.
While this may serve as a crypto strategy for a bear market, this is also a life skill that can earn you money in any more lucrative industry.
It is essential to offer these developed skills within the crypto industry. The reason is that you would learn more about the industry as you work on projects and do more research.
This will build your knowledge and experience to make a better decision whenever you are ready to invest money.
In addition, Web3 is not limited to buying a coin low and selling it higher. Not everyone has the money for that.
This article aims to give you insight into various opportunities in the crypto space.
Get a High-Income Skill
When it comes to skills, there are low and high-income skills. Low-income skills require the application of physical energy to solve low-income problems.
In comparison, high-income skills need mental energy to solve high-income problems.
Some people settle for low-income skills because they need more confidence, information, courage, and mindset to develop a high-income skill, not because they don’t have the ability.
Suppose you are among the few people who came across this post. At the end of this article, you will develop the confidence, information, courage, and mindset to develop a high-income skill.
Low-income skills include apprentices, service workers, drivers, cleaners, bartenders, etc.
High-income skills include content writers, copywriters, SEOs, Facebook ads experts, programmers, etc.
If you would spend time acquiring a skill, why don’t you acquire a high-income skill since you would spend the same time and effort developing a low-income skill?
The young man selling chicken to you at KFC doesn’t spend lesser time and effort than a programmer, yet a programmer earns more than him.
Escape Competition Through Authenticity.
According to Naval Ravikant, “Escape competition through authenticity.”
We are unique in our ways. There can never be another version of you. You may see someone with your name and face, but your thought process and personality will never be the same.
When you embrace your uniqueness and put your content on blog posts and social media platforms, people will be attracted to you because your value is unique and can’t be found anywhere else.
It is essential to mention that you should develop a skill around what you love doing. Someone who loves coding will do better in coding compared to anyone who doesn’t love it. You will do it daily if you love it because it makes you happy.
Your Mindset is Your Greatest Enemy
The difference between the rich and the poor is their mindset. The rich have an abundance mindset and take action, while the poor have a scarcity mindset and believe there is still tomorrow.
One thing about the mind is that it feeds on what you give it. If you have an abundance mindset, you will see the abundance of everything. If you have a scarcity mindset, you will see scarcity in everything.
You have to have this mindset as someone who wants to learn a skill.
- Focus on your goals
- Get comfortable with always learning.
- Put yourself out there.
- Put in the effort and exercise patience to see it germinate. Make your goals your daily habit.
- Accept failure as a lesson, not a defeat.
- Have enough sleep.
- Strive to grow at all times.
- You either make excuses or execute.
There are numerous opportunities in Web3.
Looking closely at each Web3 project, they don’t create their project from thin air. Real human beings are working there and developing usable applications.
VCs also invest a shitload of money in these projects to keep them running.
The least you can do is switch to the administrative part of crypto by offering your skills and getting paid a ton of money. The opportunity is there; you must be competent enough to charge a reasonable fee.
I would mention some of these high-income skills. You must double down on one skill and learn how to be better on that skill every single day for six months before you expect a result.
Six months is enough time to develop a skill. And if you are confident in the craft, you will scale it.
By now, you must have absorbed enough information on mindset. Now it is time to talk about these skills.
How to Make Money in Crypto Without Money.
Many people want to make money from crypto but do not understand it or have a strategy. Below is how you can make much money from crypto without investing your money.
However, you have to invest your time and energy.
1. Content Writer
Generally speaking, writing is an invaluable skill as long as the generation of social media and Web3 exist.
People need to write every day to address their audience. On a personal level, If you want to reply to a tweet or post, you have to write. You also have to be articulate about it, or else people will ignore your content.
Instagram is a picture and video-based social media; you must add a caption to your pictures to provoke your followers’ thoughts.
If on Instagram you need to write to be successful, how much more Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook that was created for writing?
They need a lot of writers on these social media platforms. And this is where you come in.
If you are a good writer, there are crypto projects that are willing to pay you more than $2,000 per month to produce content about their projects. All you must do is get familiar with their product.
And if you love writing but need to learn how to write good content, you can learn from Julian Shapiro. As a newbie, who doesn’t know how to write, you can learn from Julian Shapiro too.
Writing skill has a very low barrier to entry. It costs no money to start. You are already a content writer with a pen, paper, smartphone, and medium profile.
The low entry barrier is one reason 90% of writers suck.
The problem in this social media generation is that amazing people are creating different valuable content about a topic. The reader gets stuck with information overload and needs to know which guide to follow.
Practice that one content by Juliana Shapiro. It is enough to make you belong to the 10% competent content writers.
There are crypto content writers that charge $1 per word. Some content writers charge $0.10 or below per word. What you charge depends on your confidence and proof of work.
As a newbie who is thinking about how to get a good job in crypto with no experience or proof of work, I am sorry to tell you this; nobody will be willing to hire you.
If you eventually get hired, you will be paid peanuts while you do a demanding job.
It would be best if you did not go that path. Take time to build your portfolio and show that you can write by creating a medium profile or substack.
Publish content at least once per week. Write about anything in Web3 that interests you.
Content writing is all about educating your audience about your product and services. It also includes giving helpful information to your audience, which may be outside the context of your product or services.
When Web3 projects do a long thread on Twitter about how wonderful their projects are, it is said that they are doing content marketing and a content writer wrote all those threads.
Content marketing is sharing valuable content about your project and how it will improve users’ lives without promoting it. It aims to stimulate people’s interest in your product.
Some project founders need more time to create daily content to post on social media and blogs. Instead, they outsource it to a content writer.
There are different kinds of content writing.
Ghostwriting
Ghostwriters produce valuable content for their clients without mentioning elsewhere or publicly that they created such content.
Some founders outsource their content writing to ghostwriters on social media platforms and post them as if they created the content themselves.
Alex and Leila Hormozi spend $70,000/month on social media marketing. A Twitter thread writer, Blogpost writer, and LinkedIn Post writer can also work as ghostwriters.
There is nothing wrong with being a ghostwriter, so long as you are getting paid. People make a career out of it.
Some book authors also use the services of a ghostwriter.
Blockchain Technical writer
Some crypto projects pay about $200-$2,000 per article to blockchain technical writers.
Web3 projects want their community(users and developers) to understand the technicalities of their project.
A blockchain technical writer takes complex subjects and simplifies them such that non-technical members of their community and laypeople can understand their project without spending much of their precious time being confused.
This also makes it easier for all crypto users and investors to understand.
2. Solidity developer
Usually, when you want to build a website, you use CSS, Javascript, HTML, etc. These are coding languages.
In the blockchain industry, blockchains use different coding languages to deploy smart contracts.
For instance, if you want to build a Smart contract on Cardano, you must use Haskell coding language.
To create a smart contract on Solana, you must use Rust, C++, or C. If you want to develop a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain, you have to use Solidity.
The most popular coding language in Web3 is Solidity. Some new blockchains are written in Solidity.
Therefore, if you become a solidity developer, there are many high-paying job opportunities in Ethereum or other blockchains using Solidity.
You can get some of these jobs on LinkedIn, Upwork, Indeed, Third Party Recruiters, etc.
I mentioned you should become a solidity developer because you do not want to spend months of dedication learning a skill with limited job opportunities.
3. Airdrop hunting
An airdrop is a marketing campaign by crypto projects to distribute their tokens to loyal members.
Airdrops are free of charge, you do not pay money to get them, but you could be given some tasks to accomplish to be eligible for an airdrop.
Airdrop hunting is one of the most lucrative business models in crypto. It is one of the quickest ways to generate capital in crypto.
People borrow funds to interact with new protocols. When rewarded, they move from borrowed funds to $5,000 or more.
Times have changed. People with no money get a lot of free money from airdrop hunting. But people with more money get more free money than people without money. I will explain this with the DYDX airdrop example below.
In 2020, Uniswap gave 400 $UNI tokens to users who used their protocol to swap tokens or provide liquidity. This 400 $UNI at an all-time high of $44.97 per $UNI was worth $17,988.
That’s a free $18,000 by just GENUINELY interacting with Uniswap protocol.
This has opened more opportunities for traders to genuinely trade on new protocols that don’t have a token for a chance to get their airdrop.
Nevertheless, new protocols now understand that not all users genuinely use their protocol/product. Instead, users use it to stand a chance of getting an airdrop when it drops.
What did these projects do to curtail ingenuine users?
Some of them have various criteria, but the most predominant two are.
1. They judge genuine users by the volume of their transactions. The more trading volume you do in dollars, the more chances you can get an airdrop.
A person who did a cumulative trading volume of $1,000 can get a different reward than someone who did a cumulative trading volume of up to $100,000. DYDX used this strategy
2. The number of transactions or tasks you performed is seriously being considered. This varies from one protocol to another. Ask questions or research what a project wants from the user. They may not say it directly, but if a protocol has various services, it is expected that you use these services to learn more about their services. The more you use their protocols, the more chances you have to get their airdrop.
This was Optimism airdrop criteria. Obviously, they want you to use different services on their protocol. They don’t want you to do a $100k transaction volume.
New crypto projects launch almost every day. Find these projects, research their criteria, and interact with their protocols.
The purpose of hunting for airdrops is to use these innovations launched in the crypto space, learn about them, and spread the word if they have a good product.
Airdrop hunting doesn’t end in interacting with protocols. It includes any task created by any protocol with a reward, such as testnet interaction, minting NFT on the protocol, getting Discord roles, etc.
Developers may build a new version of a protocol and would want the public to interact with it and give them feedback before making the final touches and launching the mainnet. As an airdrop hunter, if there are no rewards, save your time, energy, and money to interact with such a protocol. Start your airdrop hunting journey by following this account.
Study their tokenomics to gauge if each individual’s number of airdrops will be worth your time and energy.
4. Crypto Copywriter.
I have seen several crypto projects ask this question “why hire a copywriter?”. Because it seems to them that Copywriting doesn’t apply in crypto since useless products sell during a bull cycle, and excellent products don’t sell during a bear cycle.
A copywriter has the skills to sell products or services by writing compelling words. Irrespective of the market cycle, Crypto Copywriting involves selling crypto products, such as ICOs, IDOs, CEOs, etc., by writing persuasive words.
A crypto copywriter writes copies for course creators, advertisers, and anyone that needs to sell a product or service within the crypto industry.
There are different types of copywriters. They are
- Direct response copywriters
- Salespage copywriter
- SEO Copywriter
- Email copywriter
- Technical copywriter
- Social media copywriter
The intriguing thing about Copywriting is that you can work outside crypto projects. The psychological aspect of Copywriting works on all human beings, irrespective of the industry.
Can you guess what brings in the most sales?
It is not the sales page.
Not the webinar.
Neither Instagram, nor Instagram reels, nor Copywriting, or ads…
It is NONE of that.
There were great salespeople before the invention of the internet – long before, there were sales pages, webinars, and copywriting. Yet they sold thousands and millions of stuff without any fancy things we have now.
And the best way to figure out how to sell better is to forget all the tricks, hacks, and shortcuts and focus on what these great people did before the internet.
It is simple. For instance, you must first learn the alphabet to learn how to write.
But for sales, the BASIC is “sales psychology.” You must learn how the buttons in people’s minds work, how to press these people’s buttons & make them DESIRE SOMETHING so bad.
Sabri Suby did a great job teaching sales and marketing, including the psychological aspect. You should get a copy of his book.
Don’t get distracted. This one book is enough to make you a good Copywriter.
5. Social media moderator.
When you join Telegram and Discord groups, there exist moderators that respond to questions about a project. This set of people is there 24/7. Sometimes the founders, core team members, and community members answer questions.
On the other hand, it is the duty of the community moderator to maintain an active and engaging atmosphere within the group.
If you are an extrovert or conversationalist, this job is for you. The salary ranges from $400 and above per month.
You don’t need to go through a course for this, but if you need help articulating your points, you should learn how to do it from experienced people.
6. Crypto Graphic designer.
The services of a graphic designer are needed in Web3. Several crypto projects require a good logo design, posters, billboards, social media accounts, and any marketing material that requires visual concepts.
A cryptographic designer can create NFTs and sell them on NFT marketplaces like Opensea. If you are creative and enjoy designing things that look attractive to the eyes, you should learn graphic design.
It is important to mention that graphic designers, Web designers, and UI/UX designers sound similar and are closely related. However, their job descriptions are different.
Graphic designers create logos, billboards, and other visual materials.
Web designers build websites.
UI/UX designers design website interfaces to give users a good experience when they visit your website.
You must focus only on one and develop it.
While it is common for people to feel motivated after reading blogs like this, only taking action sets you apart from the rest.
I encourage you to start now, using what resources you have available, as they are likely sufficient.
As you think about your long-term goals, remember that the skills mentioned here are all valuable in career development.
It is advisable to focus on one of these skills for the next ten years rather than constantly switching to new ones.
Consider doubling down on a single skill for six months and scaling up if you are passionate about it.
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. This is for educational purposes. Before taking any action, it is advisable to contact your financial advisor.