The fastest way to make money in Web3: build a community
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The fastest way to make money in Web3: build a community
The entire premise of Web3 is to give creators greater ability to earn money—better than Web1 and Web2.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: Onyedikachukwu Czar
Translated by: TechFlow intern
The entire premise of Web3 is to empower creators to earn more—doing better than Web1 and Web2.
But across all generations of the internet, there are typically two ways to make money online:
Method 1: Earn directly from your audience.
Method 2: Earn from centralized platforms.
Web3 aims to move creators as far away from Method 2 and closer to Method 1 as possible. To earn via Method 1 and embody the spirit of Web3, you need to build a loyal community of followers who can invest in your content.
How Communities Work in Web2
Web2 platforms initially allowed creators to use them to build audiences, but offered little support for those looking to monetize.
In today's landscape, there are two primary ways to earn:
Find, negotiate, and secure brand deals for sponsored content.
Link to external sites like Patreon or OnlyFans.
With the introduction of creator funds by YouTube and TikTok, the rules changed—creators now get paid by social apps for building communities and driving engagement on their platforms.
In Web2, creators still need to build communities to earn, but they don’t own what they build.
The Problems with Building Communities on Web2
Monetization in Web2 may seem attractive, but Web2 platforms come with several issues:
Lack of transparency: Web2 platforms do not disclose how much they actually earn from creators.
Moderation/censorship: Once a Web2 platform determines your content violates its policies, it can ban your content.
Policy changes: Worse, these platforms can change their policies at any time without notice.
Unfairness: Platforms rely on user-generated content yet do not share most of the revenue with creators!
The larger your community becomes on Web2, the more income you generate—but the greater the inequality you face.
How Communities Work in Web3
Web3 believes that layering creator monetization on top of existing social applications is fundamentally flawed.
Web3 enables creators to capture the value they create by truly owning their audience and content. This allows creators to profit from their work without interference from any central authority.
This creator-centric Web3 ethos currently functions in three main ways:
NFTs: Creators can turn their creations into NFTs and monetize them in multiple ways.
Social tokens: These are cryptocurrencies designed to monetize a personal brand. The value of a social token revolves around the brand issuing it, and holders use it as a way to feel part of a group.
DAOs: Decentralized autonomous organizations—groups of people agreeing to follow certain rules for a shared purpose. These rules are encoded in smart contracts.
In all three cases, fans pay to "own" a piece of a creator’s digital content. This grants them access to a community, and this sense of belonging benefits both the creator and community members.
For creators, earning comes from selling digital content—such as NFTs or tokens—to their community.
In return, community members receive rewards for investing in the content, as their investment (the creator’s digital asset) has the potential to appreciate over time.
It’s similar to buying shares in a company. You become a partial owner and can later trade your ownership on secondary markets at a higher price.
Building a Community in Web3
You need to create a digital asset like an NFT to earn from Web3, but before that, building a community is usually essential.
Here are some tips on how to do it:
Have a Clear Purpose
Before anyone wants to join your project, they must understand what it stands for—and you achieve this through a clear purpose that you can easily communicate within your community.
Without one, it will be difficult to attract people and grow your community. Additionally, a well-defined purpose makes managing your community significantly easier.
Choose a Community Platform
After defining your purpose, you need to choose a base.
The two most widely used platforms for community-building in Web3 are Discord and Telegram. This is because major social media giants like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter often impose restrictions on NFTs and Web3, which creators avoid by using these two platforms.
On Discord, you can host contests and giveaways to promote your project. On Telegram, the anonymity and encryption of chat features are key reasons why NFT users prefer it.
Know Your Community Members
This doesn't mean knowing their names—it means understanding their interests.
In practice, your vision won’t resonate with everyone, so your strategy should focus on finding people whose interests align closely with your project.
Once you’ve identified this, promotion becomes easier; knowing your audience helps you determine where and how to reach them.
Promote Your Community
Promoting your community with a compelling sense of purpose helps the right people discover it.
Effective promotion is one of the most crucial parts of your building process. When you have a strong mission, it’s tempting to overlook marketing—but resist that impulse.
A great purpose only makes promotion easier; it cannot replace it.
Here are some tips to help you effectively promote your community:
Send invitations: You already know your audience and how to find them—now send engaging invites through your preferred channels, including a join link and a brief overview of your community’s focus and benefits.
Be consistent: Whether promoting or creating content to keep your audience informed, consistency is key. It keeps your presence active and increases the likelihood of engagement.
Host giveaways: An excellent way to boost visibility, grow followers, and drive engagement.
Create a hashtag: Two rules apply: keep it short, and use it consistently. All your posts and uploads should be searchable under your community hashtag.
Host AMAs (Ask Me Anything sessions): These showcase your authenticity and help people connect with you more deeply.
You cannot skip these promotional activities.
Deliver Value
No community can survive long-term without sufficient value.
Being able to continuously deliver value that your audience appreciates—and keeps them engaged—is a direct result of knowing your community members. Value can take the form of exclusive content access, product or service discounts, or early access to future offerings.
The point is, while big platforms profit from large audiences, Web3 now gives creators the same opportunity.
Whether you seize it or not is up to you.
In Web3, the easiest asset to create, sell, and profit from is the NFT. Once you’ve figured out how to build a community, it’s time to create your asset.
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