Making money in the metaverse: Inside the new digital side-hustle

Brands and investors are pouring money into building virtual worlds, and solopreneurs are following in search of fresh income. Enter the metaverse side hustle.

Most days, Nikki Fuego hurries through her day job duties in just a few hours, squaring away customer service issues for an exercise equipment startup before settling down to her real work — designing horned bodysuits and glimmering geometric helmets that can’t be worn or touched.

Fuego is among the growing cohort of people turning to the metaverse for extra income, parlaying hobbies into sometimes lucrative side hustles across a series of virtual spaces that proponents see as the future of the internet.

Betting that the metaverse will soon become the main place where people shop, work and play, businesses and investors have poured money into building out its digital and physical infrastructure — which ranges from virtual reality headsets to video-game-like environments like Roblox and Decentraland. As gamers, tech wonks and deep-pocketed advertisers have flocked to the metaverse, aspiring solopreneurs have followed.

Nikki Fuego says she earns more selling digital apparel in the metaverse than what she makes in customer service for a startup.Courtesy of Nikki Fuego“I am gagged every single day that I wake up and remember I make money from this,” said Fuego, a 29-year old artist in Kansas City, Missouri.

For more than 40 hours a week, Fuego sits in front of her computer with the design software Blender. She uses the program to manipulate points on a mesh graphic, sculpting original accessories to be donned by avatars, the animated characters that people steer through virtual spaces. Her own, which she uses in Decentraland, wears a skintight red and black bodysuit, a black visor and red hair that splits into horns.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/metaverse-make-money-avatars-decentraland-rcna41336

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