Digital Real Estate | How the Metaverse is Transforming Real Estate
– Digital Real Estate –
From buying websites as assets and reselling them for money, to owing real houses but on the metaverse or virtually, you can own lands and houses on the Internet.
This article will tell you the differences between selling websites like real estate and buying lands and houses on the metaverse, why to invest, how to invest and how to make money from digital real estate.
What is Digital Real Estate?
The terms virtual real estate and digital real estate are interchangeable. Digital assets like domain names, social media accounts, and digital currencies can all be referenced as virtual real estate.
It’s as simple as buying a house or land to rent or sell for profit. Digital real estate works the same way.
Every domain name, every website, and every blog you see online is internet property. It’s digital real estate you can buy and sell just like those houses, apartments, and lots.
In fact, there are people making a living buying and selling domain names and websites full time. Some domain names sell for millions of dollars, and websites often get acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars.
And yes, you can make money with digital real estate too.
How to Make Profit From your Website
After buying or making your website, you need to create content on a consistent schedule to attract visitors to your website and generate traffic. Use Google’s Keyword Planner to brainstorm ideas for your blog using words that people are searching for.
If you’re too busy to write blog posts and promote your website, you can easily hire freelancers to write content on your behalf. You can find freelancers from sites like Upwork at affordable prices.
Once you’re generating enough traffic to your website, you can monetize that traffic to generate revenue from your website. Here are a few ways you can make money from your traffic.
- Advertising: You can sell ad space on your website or use an ad network like AdSense to monetize website traffic. When people click on an ad, you earn money.
- Affiliate marketing: This involves promoting and selling products created by other businesses. Whenever someone buys a product through your recommendation, you earn a commission off the sale.
- Selling products: You can also create and sell your own products, like e-books, online courses, and software on your website.
- Sponsored content: Advertisers will often reach out to you to sponsor blog posts that promote their own brands and products. They will pay you to write about their products on your blog.
Buying vs. Building a Website
There are two ways you can invest in digital real estate: You can either build a website of your own from scratch or buy an established website.
Each strategy comes with its own benefits and downsides. Building a website from scratch requires a very small investment, but you have to put in a lot of work to make it successful, and it will take a long time before you can sell it for profit.
If you decide to buy a website, it will cost you a lot of money, but since the site is already making a profit, you can get a return on your investment much sooner.
Metaverse Digital Real Estate
Metaverse real estate is just starting to show up on the radar of many real estate investors. The metaverse is made up of different platforms that allow people to interact with others and build their digital dreams.
Those dreams can be anything, from miniature games in haunted cemeteries to advertising billboards or commercial districts and metaverse HQs for businesses already established in the real world.
There are currently only four platforms in operation that offer significant opportunities for purchasing virtual real estate.
Decentraland, The Sandbox, CryptoVoxels, and Somnium Space (Decentraland and The Sandbox are currently soaking up most of the spotlight and the commercial interest).
How Does Metaverse Real Estate Come?
Land in each metaverse platform is limited to a set number of lots. The number varies, depending on the platform.
In that way, land in the metaverse is a limited commodity, which is why investors are currently interested in getting their foot in the door before the best spots are taken.
They secured virtual real estate on these platforms with very real deeds in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
When you buy a piece of digital real estate, your purchase is recorded on the blockchain and the NFT is transferred to your digital wallet, the same place you store your cryptocurrency.
This is similar to how real estate in the real world is held: there’s a title for each individual parcel of land, it’s recorded in a registry, and you get a copy to prove your ownership.
You can buy virtual real estate either in the platform’s marketplace where it exists or on a third-party NFT marketplace like OpenSea.
Digital Real Estate Transactions in the Metaverse
The top individual real estate sales have all taken place in Decentraland. Although there have been a few newsworthy purchases to the tune of millions of dollars, many of these were packages of lands, not individual lands or estates.
Digital land is exactly what it sounds like it should be: a big empty space.
The size of a digital land parcel varies by platform but measures the equivalent of 52 feet by 52 feet in Decentraland and approximately 315 feet by 315 feet in The Sandbox.
Estates, on the other hand, are properties that contain virtual land plus something extra. That extra thing could be a structure, such as a building, billboard, or additional parcels of land.
They’ve been semi-permanently joined into a single unit with a single NFT deed and a new description. They’re considered single properties.
Will Virtual Real Estate be Worth Investing In?
It’s important to note that while metaverse real estate is exciting and new, and a lot of people are very into it right now, it’s still a speculative investment.
Think of it like buying land in a newly formed town when America was pushing westward. Some of those towns ultimately made it, but many of them are buried under the literal sand of the desert and the figurative sands of time.
There’s no great way to predict if your platform will make it or not, but proto-metaverse platforms like Second Life have been in operation since 2003.
The proto-platforms that have survived have very engaged and committed communities, so if you plan to buy land in the metaverse, it could be a good idea to help make the community more engaging.
Is Digital Real Estate Investing Really a Serious Thing?
Absolutely. Just to give you a snapshot of how serious this is:
- Decentraland (a metaverse) had an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) and sold more than $24,000,000 of MANA (the Decentraland currency that allows users to buy and sell virtual land in this metaverse) in less than 35 seconds.
- Genesis City is a plot of virtual land, roughly the size of Washington, DC, that investors can buy slices of for obscene amounts of money. Even a simple 1,100 square foot plot can go for as much as $200,000, according to Bloomberg.
- Prices are growing aggressively. That hasn’t stopped people from forking over truly mind-blowing amounts of cash. Back in January, a plot of LAND in Decentraland went for around $2,000. But just two months later, prices shot up to over $175,000 for the same amount of virtual land.
What are NFTs?
NFTs are also known as non-fungible tokens. So what does that mean? In the simplest terms, NFTs are digital token that represents something. It is stored on a blockchain so it cannot be replicated.
For example, it’s possible to purchase an NFT for digital files like pieces of art. This gives you exclusive ownership of the file that no one else has.
Top 10 NFT Marketplaces
Here are some of the best NFT marketplaces right now.
1. OpenSea
OpenSea is the leader in NFT sales. Also, OpenSea has all sorts of digital assets available on its platform, and it’s free to sign up and browse the extensive offerings.
It also supports artists and creators and has an easy-to-use process if you want to create your own NFT (known as “minting“).
The marketplace supports more than 150 different payment tokens, so the platform’s name is appropriate. For an introduction to the NFT world, OpenSea is a great place to start.
2. Axie Marketplace
Axie Marketplace is the online shop for the video game Axie Infinity. Axies are mythical creatures that can be bought and trained and then pitted against other players’ Axies to earn rewards.
On Axie Marketplace, players can buy new Axies, as well as entire lands and other items, as NFTs for use within the game.
Axie Infinity tokens (called Axie Shards) are built on the Ethereum blockchain. As such, they can be bought and sold on a variety of other NFT marketplaces, as well as on some cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase Global (NASDAQ: COIN).
3. Larva Labs/CryptoPunks
Larva Labs is best known for the viral CryptoPunks NFTproject. They were originally given away for free back in 2017, but some CryptoPunks have sold for millions of dollars since then.
Larva Labs has other digital art projects going such as Autoglyphs, as well as other Ethereum blockchain-based app development projects.
Larva Labs’ CryptoPunks NFTs are sold out, but they can be bid on and bought from various third-party marketplaces.
Nevertheless, Larva Labs’ various projects are worth keeping tabs on — including the Meebits, which can be bid on directly from the company’s built-in marketplace.
4. NBA Top Shot Marketplace
NBA Top Shot is the National Basketball Association and Women’s National Basketball Association’s foray into the NFT world.
On its marketplace, collectible moments (video clips and play highlights) and art can be purchased from the world’s premier basketball leagues.
The NBA built it as a closed marketplace (you can only buy and sell on Top Shot) using the Flow blockchain built by Dapper Labs.
It’s easy to sign up and buy directly on the Top Shot marketplace website. Collectible moments can be purchased for as little as a few dollars.
5. Rarible
Rarible is another large marketplace for all sorts of NFTs, similar to OpenSea. All kinds of art, videos, collectibles, and music can be bought, sold, or created on the platform.
However, unlike OpenSea, you’ll need to use the marketplace’s own token Rarible (CRYPTO: RARI) to buy and sell on the marketplace.
Rarible is built on the Ethereum blockchain (although artwork can be managed on OpenSea as well using Rarible tokens).
The company has partnered with some notable companies. Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM) Taco Bell has listed art on Rarible, and cloud software giant Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) recently partnered with Rarible to help secure NFT artists’ and creators’ work.
6. SuperRare
Similar to Rarible, SuperRare is also building a marketplace for digital creators. The site includes art, videos, and 3D images, but collectors can purchase artwork using Ethereum.
SuperRare recently announced its own token of the same name based on the Ethereum blockchain. The tokens will be used to find and curate new talent for the marketplace.
Like Rarible, SuperRare NFTs can also be bought and sold on OpenSea.
7. Foundation
Foundation.app was designed as a simple, no-frills way to bid on digital art. Sales are made using Ethereum. Since the marketplace’s launch in early 2021, it has sold more than $100 million of NFTs.
The Foundation community invites artists to the platform, and buyers simply need a crypto wallet funded with Ethereum to start making purchases.
If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to start creating your own NFTs, Foundation probably isn’t the best place to begin, but the marketplace has plenty of artwork that can be perused in a simple format.
8. Nifty Gateway
Nifty Gateway has facilitated the sale of some of the most popular digital artists such as Beeple and singer/musician Grimes.
It’s an art curation platform powered by the crypto exchange Gemini (controlled by the Winklevoss twins). The NFTs, known as Nifties, are built on Ethereum.
Besides being a curated platform, Nifty Gateway also hosts any NFTs purchased — meaning the NFTs aren’t stored in your own wallet but are actually stored for you by Nifty Gateway and Gemini.
While that may not work for NFT collectors who want more flexibility with their art investments, Nifty purchases and sales also can be made in fiat currency (e.g., U.S. dollars) without making a cryptocurrency purchase first.
9. Mintable
Mintable, backed by billionaire Mark Cuban, aims to be an open marketplace similar to OpenSea. To participate in buying and selling NFTs on Mintable, you’ll need Ethereum.
The platform also supports the minting of NFTs for creators of all types (from photographers to musicians) who want to sell their work as digital assets.
An aspiring NFT collector or creator will need to purchase Ethereum from a crypto exchange first, then connect their wallet to Mintable to facilitate bidding and buying on the marketplace.
10. Theta Drop
Theta is a blockchain platform built for the decentralized distribution of video and TV on the internet. The NFT marketplace Theta Drop made its debut in 2021 with the World Poker Tour’s digital collectibles.
The World Poker Tour was an early adopter of ThetaTV and uses the platform to stream content.
Theta utilizes its own blockchain technology. To participate in the Theta Drop NFT marketplace, you’ll need to purchase Theta Token (CRYPTO:THETA).
Various crypto exchanges such as Binance support Theta, and the tokens and NFTs purchased with them can be stored in a crypto wallet, as well as in Theta’s own crypto wallet app.
This article explains everything you should know about making money from digital real estate and I hope this was helpful. If it was, do well, please do well to share with others.