pic credit: play crazy games
Hello, everyone, welcome to Comprehensive Minds once again. So today we are going to have a discussion on jobs of the future. Now, please don't drop off because your future is determined by what you learn and do in present. So please understand these opportunities.
In this article, I'm going to discuss three very specific work-from-home opportunities that can help you make a decent living. This will sound a little bit futuristic, but I'll break down these career options for you and also read this article from the perspective that your future becomes your present very quickly.
So if you're not aware of it, then it can lead to suboptimal outcomes. If you zoom ahead in the future five years, ten years from now, there might be a better version of this work from a home economy that we need to understand and curate our skillset towards it.
First Opportunity
So let me start talking about option one of Work from home where you can make a decent amount of money. This has been a proven model in the Philippines where people started playing something called P2E: Play-to-earn games. So what exactly are these? And can you also play to earn? What is the model like? Let me help you understand and break apart this argument.
If you are a video game lover, you will absolutely love it. If you're not a video game lover, if you're a kid watching it, then learn more about it. This might actually be very useful and your mom might allow you to play video games more. So it's a very fun, very interesting concept. Learn about it.
It's super exciting because even if you don't want to play, play to run games, for example, I don't have the time to do it now, but there are a range of peripheral businesses that are being built around play-to-earn games. So to understand play-to-earn games, let us first understand the concept of centralized games.
For example, if you play Call of Duty or God of War, what is that? It's simply a centralized game. Or if you are playing FIFA, then it's a centralized game run by Esports. These are centralized gaming companies. For example, EA Sports run FIFA. What is the objective of these centralized games? They simply form a closed economy.
For example, if you are going and buying a skin or a gun on Call of Duty, then what would happen is that you can just use that particular asset within the game itself, and the company that is running that particular game corners all the profit.
Now let me give you a parallel example here. So I'm sure that all of you had funfair in your school. Now in the funfair. Usually what used to happen was that you go, you give $10, you buy FunFair tokens, right? With those tokens, you play certain games, you eat food, all that stuff. But if you're left with those tokens, those were pretty much useless because you can't convert that token back into money.
So essentially the centralized system becomes the school or the funfair. Where if you want to enter, pay your real money, get tokens, then those tokens can only be used in the funfair game. And that is it. Now, with the adoption of Ether 3.0, Ether versus Cryptocurrencies, what has started to happen is that there is something called decentralized games that have come up and these are play-to-earn games.
For example, there are games like Axie Infinity. There is decentraland. There is a sandbox. All these are play to earn games. If you go and play these games well, there's massive potential for you to make money. A parallel case study is of the Philippines, wherein in 2020 a lot of people lost their jobs. Then they moved on to playing Axie Infinity, which is a decentralized play-to-earn game.
Now here people ended up making more than $1500 every month, which was much higher than their base salary, what they were making through their real job. So to say so, a great option is to go play games like Axie Infinity, Sandbox, and a range of Metaverse games that are being launched.
So let's understand that if you're interested in exploring this play to earn economy, what is it that you need? And how do you go about taking your initial steps towards it? So let us decode a game called Axie Infinity, which is one of the most popular games. This game got so popular in the Philippines that the Filipino government is now trying to figure out how to tax the earnings from this game. So it is that hot a topic in the Philippines, right?
So let us quickly understand what Axie Infinity is and how you can make money by playing Axie Infinity.
pic credit: Axie Infinity
So as you can see that these are called axies. So Axies, these are cute pets, somewhat cute pets. And these are the things that you need to buy to participate in the Axie Infinity game. Now, I am not a gaming expert. I have not played this game personally because of the paucity of time, but if I could, I would definitely do it. So I'm just explaining to you the broad concept. For some of the details, please go and double-check.
So there are creatures that you need to buy in a way to start playing this game. The more you play, the more SLP or smooth love potions you buy. So this is the energy that you get by playing the game. So this becomes like a tradable commodity. So this is an asset that you will end up gaining. If you are playing more and more of this game and then you can take this asset off and you can sell it. I will tell you where you can sell it also.
So this is one way of making money by playing Axie Infinity. The second key thing is that you can breed and sell Axies. So these creatures are called Axies and you can breed them. They will grow in size and you can sell them off. So these become like digital pets.
So to say, I don't know what type of people will sell their pets, but the bottom line is that in Axie Infinity, you get the option of selling these pets. So you make money from that as well, creating an Axies scholarship program.
Now, what happens is that this game became so popular, the cost of buying these axies became slightly higher. So, people who already had their Axies could loan you their pet. Right. So you go take their pet and start playing the game. So that is a loaning process. It is like owning your car to a driver who can then pick it up and start driving a car for Uber. So it's like a similar model in the MetaVerse game.
Now there are some advanced options that you can buy more, NFTs, etc., which will not get into, but I just wanted to drive home. The point there are multiple ways of making money by playing the Axie Infinity game. Now let me take you through briefly as to how you can start playing the Axie Infinity game.
So the first thing that you need to do is that you need to get an Ethereum based wallet to store cryptocurrency. For example, there is a wallet called as MetaMask.This is a wallet that you need to have because this is an Ethereum based wallet. So you need a wallet that can store Ethereum as a currency.
For example, in Indian Bank accounts, you can't store US dollars. Because Indian Bank accounts are a wallet that does not allow USD as a currency. It only allows INR as a currency. So in order to store USD, you probably need to open a bank account in the US somewhere or some other country. Similarly, to store Ethereum, you need a MetaMask wallet.
Now, in the second step, you need a ronin in your wallet. So this is another wallet that you need to purchase. Because Axies is connected to Ronin Wallet and Ronin is connected to something like MetaMask. So this is another wallet that you need to have. Wallet to wallet one.
Once you have done this back-end process, you simply need to go to Axie Marketplace and set up your account, and then you have to buy 3 Axies to play the games, the cute pets that we had to discuss earlier. So in order to buy these three Axies, you need to have those two specific wallets. And once you start playing the game, you start making money through that game.
Now, at the time of writing this article, the price of the Axies was roughly $300. Therefore, the owners of Axies started a scholarship program. Scholarship program simply means that take our pets and start playing the game. So this becomes like a great decentralized system. Rather than having centralized games.
This has become a decentralized system where if you invest $300 into the Axie game through your Ronin wallet and through your Metamorphic wallet, what you can do is that you can start playing this game. You will get some SLPs, smooth love portions, and then you can convert back this money into $300 or even much higher than $300, depending on your game performance and a bunch of different things.
Second Opportunity
Now you will say acceptable. You know what this video gaming stuff is? Not for me. I'm not a good gamer. And if I go and ask my mom that, hey, let me play like Axie Infinity. She'll say no. Go study. Right this that then what are some of my other options? Okay, so let's move on to option number two.
So option number two is that you can create an e-commerce platform for NFTs or MetaVerse assets. Right now. You see this has already been done. Yes, it has been done. But let me help you clarify and understand this idea. More. For example, here is the most popular Metaverse platform for trading NFTs. It is kind of an e-commerce website.
So what happens here is, for example, you started playing Axie Infinity and you want to sell some of its Nfts. So let's say that you started paying Axie Infinity. You are winning some rewards. You are getting some NFTs what do you do with it? So you go on Axie Infinity, right. And you see that. Hey, these are some of the NFTs that you can go and buy. And similarly, you can sell.
So Open Seas becomes like an eBay type of platform where you can list your NFTs from different Metaverse games, play to earn games, and a bunch of different things here. If you would like to buy sell some pink pets, then you can go check more of this information and you can bid for it and try to procure or sell it. So this is a simple concept around e-commerce, and a lot of firms like OpenSea are already experimenting with it.
Similarly, with MetaMask Wallet, that's the collection of financial products that you own on the blockchain network. Similarly, with OpenSea, it simply becomes an eBay for selling and buying NFTs.
So why am I talking about this idea? And has it already been done? Yes, a lot of companies are already experimenting with it, but the ideas are getting more and more niche. So let me walk you through one of the ideas with which you will resonate.
For example, virtual shopping is a very prominent concept that is coming in retail. A lot of companies have started to create their Metaverse-oriented stores. So this concept is not far off. Why? Because this idea has a lot of merits. You might have heard of the word omnichannel. So omnichannel simply means that the brands try to create a seamless experience between their different distribution networks.
For example, almost all the companies sell through their brick-and-mortar store, which is physical stores. Then they sell through e-commerce like Amazon, Flipkart, etc. Then they also sell you through social media. So these are different distribution channels.
Similarly, metadata will become one major distribution channel for a large chunk of retailers going forward. Now again, rewind the time around 20 years back, people could not have imagined that we will be buying more stuff from Ecommerce rather than physical stores. Similarly, a time might come when people might buy more stuff in the metaverse compared to eCommerce. Why? Because there are a lot of positives in terms of e-commerce shopping in Metaverses.
Now let me detail that out. So what happens is that if you are buying online, then it is easy to buy things online. It is convenient to buy things online, and therefore we buy online. But what happens in physical format is that the physical buying experience is much more immersive. You can actually try on your shoe before buying it. You can touch and feel things before you purchase them. And this is something that you can't do online.
Now, Metaverse is trying to integrate one and two. So they are trying to bridge both things. Will it become as good as physical? The answer is no, but it will become as convenient as buying something online. Yes. Because for example, when AR-VR headset cost comes down, it will become easy.
People can just put on their hardware device, transport themselves into a meta. Worse, take their friends along. And the buying experience in Metaverse will be much more immersive compared to the buying experience that is online. So from that particular perspective, this seems like a very thriving idea and a lot of companies are experimenting with it.
For example, there is a company called Charlotte Tilbury. They started their first virtual store in 2020, and now they have migrated to virtual beauty gifting Wonderland. Now you'll say, this is super futuristic. How am I going to compete with companies like Chanel and companies like P&G, which might open their metaverses? I can't do it.
You can and you can actually do a lot of different interesting things in it. For example, you can become a virtual shopping assistant. This becomes a work-from-home job. You can help people shop better. Number two, you can start creating integration websites like Nyka. Now, that will not be super complicated for you to do. If you know a little bit of tech.
Third Opportunity
If you say that I even cannot do that, then you can learn more about this technology and you can help meta shoppers shop. You can literally create a customer support service, which you can run from home. So this becomes like an excellent work from the home idea where you can make a lot of money as more and more people try to move from online to meta versus customer support service becomes like a great idea for students.
So let me speak more about this in my third career option in Metaverse which is creating a customer support service or a call center. Now, whenever a new technology comes up, there is a lot of friction with it. For example, even till today, a lot of people in the US, can't operate computers, laptops.
And a large part of that tech support is outsourced to India and other countries. And there are people who just literally work from home and provide support to American customers. The very simple business model that a lot of Americans have trouble powering on their laptops and a bunch of easy-to-do things because people are not tech-friendly and it becomes like a challenge for them to execute these things. But they have to do it right.
For example, if grandparents have to speak with their grandkids, then they need a laptop or they need a phone which they can operate easily, but they might have trouble. So if you have a customer support service or a call center that can help you with that, then, of course, it becomes like a great money-making option from home.
Now you say, hey, you know what? That type of stuff does not happen in my country. No one is going to pay. Okay, so here are Kiosks.
So this is a picture of a kiosk, and here people literally help you fill out an online form, and these are still going on in a country like India. And fraud also happens. So, there is a fraud that happened at Kiosk Center in India, where the kiosk owners charged more amount compared to the money that they were supposed to charge for filling out these forms.
So this type of stuff keeps on happening. The point that I'm trying to make here is fairly simple that as we migrate from online systems to the metaverse, a lot of people would need help in terms of availing tech support. And that becomes like a golden opportunity for four or five friends to get along and create a range of businesses.
From telling people how to open up their Metamask, call it how to buy Ethereum, how to go online and shop, how to avail that item in a physical world and build security around it. These are not super complicated ideas.
I know that I'm speaking about it, and some of you might find these ideas to be a little complex, but I can assure you that five years from now, a lot of college students would be building ideas around this simple narrative, which will kickstart work from home 2.0 economy.
