It might sound too good to be true, but the truth is there are surprisingly many ways for crypto investors to earn passive income. But how do you do it and where do you start? Wizardia’s team of crypto experts will guide you through the very best ways to earn a passive income from crypto projects and platforms, including a few ideas from Wizardia. Of course, active trading and investing in cryptocurrencies is one obvious way to profit, if you have the time, the will and the knowledge. But today we’re going to investigate three key ways to make passive income online in the crypto space: through affiliate or partnership programs, through referral bonuses, and through staking, guiding you step-by-step through the options.
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Affiliate / partnership programs
Image source: Unsplash.com
Affiliate programs are common throughout the crypto and wider online sales industry. They’re a key way that businesses engage (and reward!) their own customers for their help promoting and growing the business. How does it work in practice? Similarly to referral programs (which we’ll get on to later), partners share a tracking code and/or tracking link with their audience. What’s in it for you? Purchases made using the code or link will each pay the affiliate partner a commission, usually a percentage of future sales that are tracked back to you.
Affiliate programs can be especially rewarding if you already have an established audience of social media followers on Twitter or Telegram who are interested in the right kind of topics: crypto, investment, NFTs, gamefi, etc.
Another bonus to both referral and affiliate programs is that, once you’ve created your links and shared them (on your social profiles, website, youtube description, etc), they can keep earning long after the initial posting. Something to keep an eye on is how long after the first click on your affiliate link you can still count the affiliate sale - most programs use a cookie to track affiliate referrals between 30 and 90 days.
Some crypto services, like Paxful or Bybit, offer multi-level affiliate programs where the affiliate signups from your affiliates also help you earn. Paxful’s Bitcoin Affiliate Program pays out a 50% escrow fee cut when a referred user buys Bitcoin on the platform. When your friend’s friend buys, you can still earn a 10% commission. Once you earn over 10 USD worth of Bitcoin as commission, you can withdraw your earnings to your wallet. On Bybit, referrer and referee both get a $20 bonus (to use as margin for derivative trading), plus the referrer can earn Reward Cards worth up to $1000.
Referral and affiliate programs for NFT platforms are not as widespread as for crypto trading platforms. Leading marketplace Opensea actually closed its Bounty program recently. While several crypto platforms are working hard on developing their NFT trading platforms, it currently falls on NFT projects themselves to develop and manage referral and affiliate programs in-house.
At Wizardia’s partnership program, we offer:
- A commission of up to 30% on NFT sales when a new buyer uses your code.
- The buyer gets 5% off their NFT purchase.
- Commissions are paid out twice per month, with the biggest single payout so far over $40k.
You can sign up for Wizardia’s partnership program via this link here https://partners.wizardia.io/register.
Referral bonuses
Many crypto businesses including well-known operations like Binance or Crypto.com host their own referral programs. How does a referral program work? Basically, you share a tracking code with your friend or contact who wants to sign up and use the service. When they sign up, the referral system tracks that the new sign up used your referral code and makes sure you, the referrer, get paid for bringing in a new customer. Rewards can be a fixed amount per referral or a percentage of future service fees. How’s a referral program different from an affiliate program? It’s fair to say there’s quite a bit of overlap, but generally referrals deal with friends and family, while affiliates sell to a wider network.
Back to the bonuses, they can also run both ways, with new signups who use a referral code netting their own signup up bonus as well as benefiting the referrer. On Binance, you have the option to share 5 or 10% of your referral rewards with the friend you refer, when they begin to trade. Overall, the platform offers a 20-40% share of trading fees for referee signups, paid out every 24 hours. You can share a link or even a QR code. Referees need to trade on Binance’s Spot (margin) or Futures market for you to earn.
Image source: Binance.com
Make sure you carefully check the terms and conditions because every referral program has its own specific requirements. On Crypto.com, referral bonuses come in the platform’s native CRO token and arrive instantly, when the conditions are met. Make sure you check the small print though - everyone you refer will also have to go through the full KYC checks and then have to stake 1000 CRO of their own.
Referral programs tend to be a bit more personal and have simpler signup processes, where you open an account and register your basic details. With affiliate programs (and the potentially bigger rewards available), signup often requires confirmation and onboarding from the corresponding partnerships team. Gathering a little more information about who will be helping sell their products helps optimize the program and means they can better support you as an affiliate.
Staking
One more great way to earn without a whole lot of effort: staking. Staking means committing your crypto token holdings to a project’s own staking platform, through a DeFi staking service or on an exchange, often for a set period of time. Staking can also be for a flexible time, but time locks usually get you a better return on investment: the longer you commit, the more you earn.
Many staking programmes work to support proof of stake (PoS) mechanisms. An alternative to energy-intensive proof of work (PoW) blockchains (like Bitcoin, where new tokens are mined), PoS blockchain transactions are validated by nodes created by token stakers. A randomly chosen node of the blockchain will validate a transaction and is rewarded for the validation. If the node approves a fraudulent transaction, they lose part of their stake. The more people who stake and become validation nodes, the safer and more secure the blockchain will be, as well as benefiting stakers with rewards!
Staking brings big pluses both to token holders and token minters. From the project side, it means tokens are held and not sold off, which is especially important in the early stages of development. On the staker side, owners are incentivized to keep their tokens with rewards. Staking programs can often pay out in excess of 15% APY, some even higher! There are many places to get started with staking (across the wider DeFi landscape), but staking directly with a crypto project or on an exchange (Binance, Coinbase, etc.) is probably the easiest way to get started.
Image source: Binance.com
A staking platform like AQRU could give you returns of up to 12% APY on stable coins like USDT, USDC or DAI, as well as 7% staking rewards with major crypto currencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. Interest is paid daily and can compound. Binance’s staking platform could earn you up to 52.34% when staking their native BNB token, with a grand total of 110 cryptocurrencies you can choose to stake across 30, 60, 90 and 120 day pools.
We’ve talked a bit before about how Wizardia’s $WZRD staking program works and it’s a good example of the variety of ways in which crypto holders can benefit from holding onto their digital assets. There are three staking pools on offer, locking coins for four, eight or twelve months. The pay out is 31% APY for the 4 months staking pool, 53% for our 8 month pool and a 114% APY for the12 months taking pool. Generally, staking programmes reward stakers more generously when locking up their tokens for longer time periods. On top of paying out more $WZRD based on the amount of $WZRD holders stake, Wizardia adds to the mix a regular raffle of NFTs for the top staking tiers, where stakers have the chance to win almost $20k worth of Wizard and Arena Genesis NFTs.
Passive Crypto Income Tips
- Choose a quality project and/or token you believe in when it comes to referral programs or affiliate sales. Do your research and your followers and friends will appreciate it.
- Make the most of your existing connections and find good ways to communicate your offer. Partnership teams are there to support your efforts in affiliate marketing.
- Shop around different staking platforms and exchanges. Stablecoin staking can bring you super-secure investment opportunities that rival savings accounts, but an exciting new project on the up might be an even better risk/reward opportunity.
- If a staking pool pays out in the same token you’re staking, keep an eye on the market price of the token. It’s possible the staking rewards might not offset a decrease in token price. You’ve heard it before, but we’ll say it again: crypto markets can be volatile.
William Smith
Weaving together blockchains and threads of fantasy lore, William identifies as a chaotic-good copywriter. His abilities include battling bad grammar and upholding a consistent tone of voice.
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