Five New and Creative Ways to Make Money with NFTs

Blockchain technology has created a new way of thinking about asset ownership. With non-fungible tokens (NFTs), anything can be turned into an asset that can be traded, swapped, or sold. This is exactly what some artists and even some influencers are doing with their digital art, and with some viral NFTs selling for millions, it’s no wonder why. However, there are other more innovative ways to make money with NFTs beyond selling them for a profit, five of which we’ll cover in this post. Whether you’re looking to create a new revenue stream or just trying to find a better way to use your NFTs, these tips will help you get the most out of your tokens.

What are NFTs?

NFTs are Non-Fungible Tokens, which means that they are unique tokens that cannot be replaced with any other token, no matter how similar they may be. These tokens are crypto assets whose ownership and other features are recorded and tracked on a blockchain. These qualities make NFTs ideal for representing both virtual and physical assets like a small gif image or a certified $1,000 bottle of wine in the evolving web 3.0.

How do NFTs work?

NFTs work through smart contracts, which are pieces of code written on a decentralized digital ledger called a blockchain. These smart contracts track and manage ownership and transferability of the token and manage special features that give each NFT useful qualities that add underlying value to the virtual asset.

How do you create your own NFTs?

Several of the different ways to make money with NFTs start by creating your own through a process called minting. Therefore, before we start with our list of the best ways to make money with NFTs, let’s look at how you can create them. This is a very simple process and can be broken down into the following steps:

Step #1: Select the asset you want to mint.

You can create an NFT from almost anything you can think of, from digital images and videos to audio files, URLs and even blog posts. You can even turn a physical object into an NFT by linking a digital token to it and adding a QR code to the physical good that, when scanned, gives you the info on the token.

Step #2: Choose your blockchain.

The most popular blockchain for minting NFTs is the Ethereum blockchain, but today, there are also others you can use, including Polygon, Tezos, Binance Smart Chain, Solana and more.

Step #3: Choose and set up a crypto wallet.

You’ll need a crypto wallet to receive, store and transfer the cryptocurrencies you buy or sell, as well as the NFTs you create, buy or sell. Two of the most popular choices are Metamask and Coinbase.

Step #4: Buy some cryptos.

You’ll need a positive balance of cryptos in your wallet to pay for transactions and minting fees. The amount and particular currency depend on the NFT marketplace and blockchain where you plan to mint your NFT.

Step #5: Select an NFT marketplace.

You need to choose an NFT marketplace and sign up to it to buy, sell, and mint your NFTs. Today, the two most popular NFT marketplaces are OpenSea and Rarible, where you’ll find general-purpose NFTs. However, other niche markets may serve you better, depending on your particular case.

Step #6: Create a new collection (optional).

This will be more or less relevant depending on how you plan to make money with your NFTs.

Step #7: Upload the file, add metadata and create.

This is the final step. You can add relevant metadata related to utility, royalty and more. It’s important to fill in this information carefully because you won’t be able to change it ever again after creating your token.

How Do You Make Money with NFTs?

Now that you have a new NFT or a whole collection of them let’s see how you can turn them into revenue. Here are five outside-of-the-box ways to make money with NFTs.

#1 Start a hybrid realverse/metaverse coworking space business

The metaverse is an NFT playground where you can do all sorts of things. One creative way to use NFTs and the metaverse to make money is to build a virtual 3D coworking space, leveraging geofencing technology and lease to workers who want to collaborate in VR. This is what companies like Meta, Microsoft and others are doing. But you can take things a step further and link this virtual space with a physical, brick & mortar coworking space.

The physical location will serve as a traditional coworking space you rent out to startups and freelancers, and as a gateway for them to enter the metaverse. You accomplish this by offering VR headsets and a high-speed internet connection as a part of your service. To attract more customers, those who use this service could earn loyalty rewards in the form of NFTs with special features like access to discounts, free VR headset rentals, branded merch, you name it.

On the flip side, you can also reward virtual customers you find in the metaverse with NFTs that grant them lower rates or free trial periods on your physical locations.

How do you set up a virtual coworking space in the metaverse?

There’s an easy way and a hard way.

The easy way – Build it in an existing metaverse

You can buy a plot of virtual land in metaverses like Decentraland, Roblox and Sandbox and build your headquarters there. If you don’t have any cryptocurrency, you’ll need to buy some on a crypto exchange using an e-wallet or credit card, or you can use another crypto like Bitcoin and exchange it for them.

The hard way – Build your own metaverse from scratch

This option implies creating your own virtual reality world with a tool like Unreal Engine 5 or similar 3D design and rendering software and hosting it on a dedicated server. This has the benefit of total customization, branded spaces and the possibility to boost image quality to your heart’s content to make the experience as immersive as you want.

#2 Create digital versions of your physical products and sell them as NFTs.

If you make and/or sell any kind of merchandise in the real world, you have the chance to increase revenue for your business with NFTs further. The way to do this is by scanning and making virtual 3D models or representations of your physical goods and minting them as NFTs. You can then sell those NFTs on different markets, enhancing the customer experience for new or existing customers.

One great way to make this work is by creating unique wearables for avatars in all major metaverses. Many fashion brands like Gucci and Balenciaga are already doing this.

Another way to offer more value to your customers is by linking each actual physical product you sell to a unique token. That way, when someone buys a physical product, they get their own digital copy of it, and they can do with it whatever they want, even sell it.

The biggest perk of creating these virtual versions of your products is that they help increase brand awareness in the metaverse when users use, wear or show off your products in these virtual worlds.

#3 Mint original music tracks and charge royalty for their use

NFTs offer a great opportunity for creators of all kinds to be rewarded fairly for their work. This includes composers and musicians. The most straightforward way to do this is by minting your compositions, but you can take things further by splitting an entire song into tracks (vocals, guitar, drums, etc.) and then minting each track separately.

While this opens the door to more possibilities than before, your revenue doesn’t have to stop at the initial sale since NFTs can be programed with royalty fees, so you receive a percentage of every sale your buyers make after you sell them the track.

This is, hands down, the best way to turn your creative work into passive income, and it wouldn’t be possible without NFTs.

#4 Join an NFT affiliate program

While this option doesn’t imply working with NFTs directly, it’s a very profitable business model considering how popular these digital assets are right now. Many NFT companies, artists and others are launching affiliate programs to catch as much of the market as possible early on and make a name for themselves in the NFT space.  But these aren’t the standard software affiliate programs that you’re used to seeing around the web.  Instead, these are affiliate programs based on blockchain technology.

Some of the most popular and profitable ones are:

• Binance, with a recurring commission of up to 50% paid in crypto.
• Crypto.com, which offers a $10 or $20 commission upfront or a recurring 10% commission, paid either in crypto or cash.
• FTX, which offers a 40% recurring commission paid in crypto
• Nexo, which pays a 10% commission in Bitcoin.

However, there are plenty more to choose from, and every new NFT project that hits the market is likely to offer juicy rewards to its affiliates to beat the competition.

#5 Run an NFT raffle

Their uniqueness is part of what makes NFTs so valuable and sought-after. This also makes many NFTs, especially the popular ones, very expensive and out of reach of most consumers. This is where you, as a business, step in. After investing in a popular NFT, you can then run a raffle, so others have the chance to win that NFT at a minute fraction of its original price. If you spread the word far and wide, there’s a good chance you’ll not only earn back what you spent on the NFT, but you’ll turn a profit as well.

You could even issue NFTs as the raffle tickets. That way, those who don’t win will not go home empty-handed. They will have an NFT that may not be worth much now but that could increase in value in the future as your business grows.

The bottom line

There’s a world of possibilities beyond making money by buying and selling NFTs for a profit. While these unique digital assets will always be as good an investment as a collectable work of art, they offer much more value than sole ownership. By exploiting the many possibilities of adding special features to each NFT, you can add underlying value that people will appreciate. This space is still in its infancy, and there’s a world of possibilities beyond these five ideas we just explored. It’s up to you to come up with new ones.

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