NFTs and Making Money In The Metaverse

How excited are you about the Metaverse? If you’re in business, there will be many opportunities to make money in what’s commonly referred to as the new internet. However, are NFTs and the Metaverse still popular? How can businesses use the Metaverse and NFTs for marketing their offerings? In this blog post, we answer these questions.

If you’re still wondering what the Metaverse is – see this article. Or, for a more detailed explanation, it’s hard to look past this blog post.

Two traits that stand out with the Metaverse are freedom of movement and decentralized commerce (DeFi) with cryptocurrencies.

No Barriers

One characteristic is the Metaverse is genuinely open and without boundaries. There are no limits to what you can do, where you can go, and how many people can participate. No one can say precisely how the Metaverse will evolve. In its alpha, there are still millions of users but not billions!

The wild-west

Once again, it is the wild west, and the lack of rules around social etiquette is challenging. For example, in Meta’s Horizon Worlds, users feel vulnerable and harassed. Some users say they believe they have been virtually violated!

How to get around anti-social behavior in the Metaverse? According to Meta, tools and features can keep users safe. For example, a part creates a bubble around an avatar to ensure personal space, and no other avatar can touch them.

Decentralized

The Metaverse is exciting in the freedom it promises users. This is the best trait since no one can claim to own the Metaverse. Plus, virtual economies have created marketplaces for buying and selling powered by cryptocurrency blockchain technology.

Think about how restricting and closed the social media platforms are, plus users lack absolute control over their data! The Metaverse is the opposite; you can create, sell, and invest between metaverses via your avatar.

There is still a lot of investment happening in 2023.

Brands and Celebrities

How can you make money in the Metaverse?

First, you need to know how to access metaverses. While you can freely access metaverses like Decentraland, Felicia Hou says other platforms require hardware, software, and a crypto wallet. For example, The Sandbox is a virtual world for gaming, and you’ll need a crypto wallet to get in.

For the whole 3D immersion experience, you’ll need more than just your smartphone to access an app. Hence the need for hardware like AR glasses and VR headsets. You may have a headset if you’ve been gaming for a while. A few players in the VR headsets space with Apple also eyeing it up.

Gucci Garden on Roblox YouTube

Create immersive brand experiences.

Brands can use the Metaverse to create immersive experiences that allow customers to engage with their products and services in new and exciting ways. For example, a clothing brand could create a virtual store where customers can try on clothes using their avatars.

Events like Gucci Garden on Roblox need the hardware for total 3D immersion. The Metaverse is all about activities – participating in:

• Events, shows, exhibits, tours
• Games, sports
• Meetings, training, learning, work
• Collaboration – projects, design

Many brands are all over the Metaverse creating and selling virtual goods and services, including:

• Virtual real estate
• Digital clothing and products (NFTs)
• Virtual experiences

These virtual offerings can provide a new revenue stream for businesses while also providing customers with unique and exclusive experiences.

Celebrities

Celebrities are also in on the action, with Snoop Dog and Paris Hilton leading. The sky really is the limit to what will be created as NFTs.

For example, a Forbes article mentions Jadu creating a game called The Mirrorverse – using AR and involving 3D NFTs. To play the game, you need transport, so you bring your own NFT avatars but buy NFT transport like jetpacks and hoverboards.

Celebrities including Lewis Hamilton, Grimes, and Snoop Dog (also investing in land in The Sandbox metaverse) have NFT hoverboards.  Jadu usually sells them for the same price – which is relatively low.

Buyers fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time can resell the NFTs in the secondary market, where the profit is made.  It’s a sellers’ market, and they can name their prices.  The same NFTs can be bought and sold continuously, making each owner a profit.  Investors or some may call them speculators, can make their money trading in the Metaverse.

Like celebrities and businesses, there are a few ways to make money.

Create and Sell NFTs

Creators can mint their creations as NFTs on marketplace platforms like OpenSea, Nifty Gateway, and more.

Non-fungible tokens are unique data units that use cryptocurrency blockchain technology (mostly Eth) to register and authenticate digital content. For more information on Blockchains, see this article.

Use NFTs to create scarcity and exclusivity.

NFTs can be used to create scarcity and exclusivity around digital assets. Brands can create limited-edition NFTs that offer exclusive access to products, services, or experiences. These NFTs can be auctioned off to the highest bidder, making sense of competition and exclusivity.

Creating and selling NFTs. To name a few, Nike, Gucci, Ralph Loren, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell. For example, Nike bought a virtual shoe company that makes NFTs and sneakers ‘for the metaverse.’

The competition to be first in mind is heating up.  Nike sends a stern message to competitors to avoid any activity that threatens their brand position. For example, did you know Nike is suing StockX for copyright infringement, i.e., using its logos in creating its sneaker NFTs?

Copyright infringement litigation will be a booming business, with brands going all in to protect their NFTs.

Collaborate with artists and creators.

Brands can collaborate with artists and creators to create unique NFTs representing their brand. These NFTs can be used as marketing tools and sold to customers as limited-edition collectibles.

NFTs have grown in popularity like wildfire with artists, musicians, writers, and poets! However, like with everything new, technology still has challenges.

NFTs Explained

NFTs are in two parts – the smart contract and the asset. Both can be stored on the blockchain as on-chain NFTs, or the support can be stored on a decentralized storage network, an IPSF, which aims to be a peer-to-peer network for file storage much the same way the BTC is a peer-to-peer currency.

You can choose where to store the digital asset, and the gas fee associated with using the blockchain reflects where the help is stored, e.g., on-chain or decentralized. Don’t be put off by the technology, as non-techies can create NFTs.

Types of NFTs

Some of the different types of NFTs include:

• Virtual land
• Artwork
• Collectibles
• Music
• Virtual items, e.g., wearables, games, currencies
• Virtualized real-world assets – e.g., real estate, cars, stock, race horses

Virtual Land vs. Virtualized Real Estate

Some NFTs are just for the Metaverse, like virtual land in The Sandbox. While virtualized real-world assets are something completely different. Asset Tokenization is real-world ownership turned into a digital token. For example,
Your home could be turned into an NFT, and you, as the digital token owner, have a real-world legal claim to the house. It is the same ownership as owning the title deed.

Did you know NFTs are not exclusively for the Metaverse?

You can create and sell NFTs without ever entering the Metaverse. The NFT uses the blockchain, and when you use the NFT marketplaces like Rarible, Mintable, OpenSea, and so on, you’re using your Ethereum-based wallet. With an NFT wallet, also known as a non-fungible token wallet, you can store, manage, and interact with non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Do your research on the best NFT wallets.

It gets fascinating when you can use the Metaverse and Web 3.0 for marketing your NFTs to millions of users.

Most Notable NFT Collections

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BACY) tops the most popular NFT collections list. Being a limited collection of just 10,000, the average cost to purchase a BACY NFT is circa $330,000 but don’t be fooled by that low number, as recent sales are 1.4 million and rising.

Other collections selling well include:

• Clone X
• CryptoPunks
• Azuki
• The Sandbox
• World of Women
• Decentraland

Virtual Land

Worth a mention here is buying and selling virtual land NFTs. This may seem a bit of a stretch, but virtual land plots in The Sandbox are selling like hotcakes, and it’s not just celebrities getting in on the action. If you have a piece of the action with a virtual real estate NFT in The Sandbox, you’ll be comforted by the knowledge that global consulting firm PwC is a neighbor.

When you buy a virtual land plot in The Sandbox, you can develop it or land bank, i.e., hold it in its undeveloped state and sell it later for a premium price far more than what you paid.

PwC intends to develop its virtual land plot, and that’s good news for all landowners in The Sandbox. Development attracts users, and it’s why The Sandbox has free tools available so landowners can develop their plots as they see fit.

Secondary market

The secondary marketplace for land plots in The Sandbox is heating up. If you paid 2 Eth for your standard 1 action a few months ago, it’s likely to get four or more times that today.

As an investor, the buy-and-hold strategy works for capital gain, and if you rent the plot and earn a rental income, it’s even more valuable. For a business, you can see the opportunity in developing it to sell services or products, which may be real-world or NFTs like art or wearables.

Metaverse Jobs

There is already a massive market for designers, developers, and architects for developing NFTs and the Metaverse. Plus, techies with skills and experience with everything to do with cryptography, private vital wallets, and safety. Within a few years, there will be new roles for the Metaverse, too, like:

• Metaverse planner
• Ecosystem developer
• Metaverse research scientist
• Metaverse hardware builder
• Worldbuilder
• Metaverse storyteller
• Metaverse cybersecurity specialist

Watch This Space

The more we learn, the more we need to know about the Metaverse, so watch this space as more articles come online for your knowledge and interest.