Letter 79: More Ways to Make Money in Crypto

13 ideas that don't require any capital, are not based on trading, and have nothing to do with airdrops

I’ve written a lot about making money in crypto, but most of it has focused around airdrops and trading or investing. A little while back a premium subscriber made the following topic suggestion:

would also love to read your thoughts about making money in web3 besides farming airdrops - many of the people I know want to live from web3 but they still rely on an IRL job to pay the bills

So that’s what we’ll be looking at today. When most people think about “making money in crypto” it is almost always exclusively focused on the buy low sell high side of things, and then when it isn’t, it’s usually about airdrops. And for good reason, airdrops are an incredible way to make money (check out my Ultimate Guide to Airdrop Farming) — but they’re far from the only way.

I’ve hired over 30 people myself for various crypto-related roles. I’ve been hired for plenty of roles too, and I know so many friends who have found work or created their own work. If there’s one single piece of advice I could give to anyone who wants to make it in crypto, to find a job, to work in this space, to create your own job, to be successful, it’s this:

BE SO GOOD THEY CAN’T IGNORE YOU.

It’s really that simple. I’m going to share 13 ideas of ways you can make money in this space, but your ability to succeed at them all comes down to the same thing: can you be so good they can’t ignore you?

These are all ideas that don’t require any capital to get started too. Some require expertise in different domains, but almost none of it is difficult to come by. If you have an internet connection, some time on your hands, and the motivation, you will be able to do many of the things on this list.

this is normally a premium-subscriber only post, but I am making it free and available to everyone because I think it has a lot of value especially to those out there without the funds to subscribe to my newsletter. If you do get value out of it and can afford a subscription though, I appreciate any and all support and it helps me to continue to write these types of pieces. You will get access to my latest portfolio breakdowns and updates, among much more premium content.

Alright without further ado, and in no particular order, 14 ways to make money in crypto:

1. Find value for whales

Time for a funny (sad funny, not funny ha ha) story. When Rollbit the massive crypto casino first launched, they airdropped these VIP cards NFTs to a bunch of prominent people in the space. I was fortunate enough to receive one. They had different tiers: bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, etc. I don’t remember them all exactly but I had either the highest or 2nd highest tier.

Depending on your tier, you could claim a bunch of $RLB tokens. There was a cutoff date though when they stopped allowing people to claim — it was a considerable amount of time after launch, but it was there. I somehow had no idea I had received this card. I get sent a lot of spam NFTs all the time, and so it must have gone to my hidden folder on OpenSea or maybe it didn’t but I never saw it, or maybe I saw it but just assumed it was junk. Either way, I had no recollection of ever receiving it.

I got a DM out of the blue one day from someone who was basically saying that he saw that I had it, and I was eligible to claim a bunch of tokens, and if I did so, he would appreciate 10-15% of the value of the tokens as a reward for finding this for me.

I saw the message one day too late. My tokens would have been worth somewhere around $50k-$100k I think. Sucks for me, sucks for that person who messaged me too, because I definitely would have given him his reward.

But the point is: if you can find ways to find money for others, then very often you can ask for and will receive a modest reward for your troubles. There are so many airdrops in crypto with claim deadlines, if you can do some work and connect blockchain addresses with people’s social media accounts and see who can potentially claim something but has yet to do so, there’s a lot of money to be made by making a list of these people and proactively reaching out.

2. Find arbitrage opportunities

Similar to the above, but instead of finding value for specific people or accounts, look for general arbitrage opportunities. Arbitrage is effectively free money when you have the capital. It might be as simple as buying a token on one platform for X and selling it on another for X+5%.

I remember back in 2021 there was some NFT bundle auction where 20 or 30 Chromie Squiggles were up for sale. It was on a relatively unknown platform so not many people were aware of it, and based on the auction price and the floor price for the NFTs, there was a significant opportunity for someone with the capital to buy the bundle and then sell them individually. I think the bundle was being offered for a 40% discount or something.

I messaged one of my friends at the time who was a giga whale, and he ended up buying it and said that he would send something back to me when he sold for a profit.

That’s one example. There are many similar examples, and the nice thing about these are that you don’t have to tie it to a specific person. The opportunity was there for anyone — so if and when you find something like this, you can put out the feelers on social media and reach out to your network (and your network’s network) and just be like “hey I have found something I think is free money, will share the details in a DM” or something like that.

Once you make money for someone once like this, it’ll be much much easier to get them to listen to your opportunities moving forward.

3. Land a biz dev or partnership role

Probably one of the highest value jobs in the space, and appropriately, one of the toughest to do well. But if you’re good at this you can make an enormous impact for companies and protocols and that can lead to earning ridiculous sums of money.

Being good at this role is all about people skills. You obviously need to understand the space too and be able to negotiate and broker good deals, but it ultimately comes down to being able to connect with as many people as possible and find and bring win-win situations to high value people and companies.

The easiest “start from zero” version of this job is to do something like find a hyped upcoming NFT mint or new launch and connect them with a community that they’re looking to give some whitelist spots to. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but if you can do this just once, you’ve now got your foot in the door with two communities and can look to work with them and bring more value to them and expand your network from there.

Like most things in this list and the world, it all comes down to being able to bring value to people. If you can do that, you’ll be just fine.

4. Be a Discord moderator or community manager

This is a role that requires almost no capital or training, and can often pay surprisingly well. The best way to get these roles is to join Discords and simply be an extremely active and helpful person. Basically: do the job before you have the job.

Welcome people to the server, answer questions whenever anyone has them, direct people to where to get assistance, start conversations to keep the server active, make friends, have fun, etc. It’s a lot of time, but if you’re time rich and capital poor then it’s one of the best ways to get your first job in crypto and get your bankroll started. Beyond that, it’s a great way of building your network.

Every moderator I hired for ZenAcademy was directly because they were already active and helpful members of the community. Many of those people ended up getting more substantial roles down the line too, either in ZA, or moving on to other companies.

5. Work for a DAO

DAOs are notorious for having poor engagement — even the ones backing 9 or 10 figure protocols. They’re looking for people to discuss proposals, vote on them, drum up votes and support from other holders/members, and generally just be active participants in the organization. And they’ll often pay people to do these things (either in USDC or in their native token).

Not the most glamorous option on the list, but some of the best opportunities are unglamorous. Find a DAO you jive with and that has an abundance of funding, and see if you can land a role with them.

6. Offer professional services

There is a severe lack of professionals that understand their real world industry and that understand the crypto space. Lawyers and accountants are the two big ones. With the regulatory landscape constantly shifting, both are constantly in extremely high demand and there are never enough people with the sufficient expertise who also understand crypto.

Obviously this is pretty niche and most people don’t have the qualifications to take on these roles, but I think there’s space to be a middleman and act as the conduit between crypto people or companies and the regulatory world.

For instance, crypto tax is a nightmare to deal with and even the best accountants can only work with what they’re given to them. Being able to use crypto tax software well and reconcile transactions to generate the reports for people to then give them to their accountants is an excellent way to service a demand for money.

7. Be an alpha curator, hunter, caller, etc

Ever feel like you know what the next big thing is going to be time and time again, but you don’t have the money to capitalize on it? Or are you consistently getting it right, but only have $50 or $200 to work with, so you’re not making that much money?

If you’re good at discovering new projects and spotting trends, there’s always a demand for you. Finding alpha to share with Discord servers, Telegram chats, or other groups, is a job that plenty of people will pay well for. It’s also the type of thing you can create your own group and following around.

I will say that it’s very hard to do well. It requires a very strong understanding of the space, and the ability to do deep research, and communicate it well.

The best example of an alpha caller I’ve known in this space is Resaang, she has brought untold amounts of alpha to the Underground discord server/group and from there many other doors have opened up for her.

She also has ethics and morals, an unfortunately rare sight for alpha callers. It’s so tempting and easy for people to call a token and then dump on people from hidden wallets when they buy in after your call.

Don’t do that please. Be like Resaang.

8. Be a blockchain data analyst

This doesn’t (necessarily) require the ability to do hard data science, though that would help. Ultimately what this comes down to is being able to read the chain. Being able to parse through etherscan, dune dashboards, Nansen and Arkham data, and make sense of what it’s all saying. Who’s buying? Who’s selling? What are the whales and funds doing? Who’s farming what airdrops?

This information is hugely in demand and you can do a lot with it, from working for a hedge fund to working with an individual whale, or even creating content with it and building your own following.

9. Build and sell tools for crypto related apps like discord, telegram, etc

If you have the coding knowledge (or are willing to learn — something relatively easy in today’s day and age) then building bots or analytical tools or dashboards can be a significant money-making avenue. Basically, sell picks and shovels.

Some extremely successful companies came from solving extremely simple problems — like verifying NFTs for discord/telegram servers, or being able to run giveaways and raffles based on a person’s holdings.

Then there are much smaller lifts like NFT sale bots or alert bots which track wallets, which plenty of people have paid for over the years.

10. Offer crypto translation services

Admittedly this is less of a thing in today’s day and age with how good AI and digital translation tools are getting, they’re still not perfect. Even if a company uses tooling to translate a document, it will still require some tidying up and editing by a native speaker — especially for the more technical documents such as white papers. If you speak multiple languages, this could be a good way to start to earn a bit of money.

11. Create Content

Either for yourself, or for someone else (as a ghostwriter or copywriter). The world today runs and thrives on attention, and more and more of how that attention is generated and directed is coming down to individual content creators.

Becoming one is one of the most surefire ways to make money in the world, but especially in crypto. The monetization possible for a crypto content creator are genuinely an order of magnitude (or more) higher than for content creators in basically any other industry.

It’s not for everyone; being in the limelight is not without tradeoffs (as I wrote in my Letter on a behind the scenes look at being a content creator). But if you’re willing and able, there are few better pathways to monetization. Check out this post I wrote on the topic as well:

Letter 71: Growing your following from 0 to 1m+

If you don’t want to be in the limelight, then ghostwriting or copywriting for someone else is a great option too.

12. Assist others in content creation

Given how large of an industry content creation is — there are entirely new jobs popping up to support it. One recent example is the role of “clipping”, basically, finding 15 to 60 second clips from existing video content that are likely to go viral on instagram / tiktok / youtube and editing them.

This is probably one of the highest value roles you can fill and not only can you get compensated well for it, you’ll make some amazing connections as well.

It’s also another one of the type of jobs that you can just do before even having any sort of official job. Just start making amazing clips for creators you want to work with and sharing them; either they’ll notice and get in touch, or someone else will notice and also get in touch. Or both.

Provide value, and be so good they can’t ignore you.

13. Help run the social media for a crypto company

I cannot tell you how much demand there is right now for people who can fill this role. It’s inarguably one of the toughest roles in the entire space. But if you’re good at it, or can become good at it, you can basically name your price and will be in such high demand at all times.

Being able to “speak the language” of crypto twitter, while knowing how to generate attention and engagement, while also being able to work in a professional environment and adhere to all sorts of legal and other regulatory requirements… it is not an easy feat.

But if you can do it, you’ll have them eating out of your hands.

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Alright so there’s 13 different avenues for making money in crypto that don’t require much (if any) initial capital, are not based on trading or investing your own funds, and have nothing to do with airdrop farming.

As I keep saying: there are a million ways to make a million dollars in crypto. It all comes down to providing value for others, showing up, putting in the work, paving your own path, and being so good they can’t ignore you.

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Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered as investment advice. I’m not a financial adviser. These are only my own opinions and ideas. You should always consult with a professional/licensed financial adviser before trading or investing in any cryptocurrency related product. Some of the links shared may be referral links.