Top Methods to Start Earning with Crypto for Free (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series, we explored the easiest ways to start for free: airdrops, staking, and crypto lending, and how AI can simplify the process. But once you’ve tried those beginner-friendly methods, the next step is to level up.

In this part, we’ll dive into more advanced strategies to make money with crypto. They aren’t completely free, but they don’t require massive capital either. What they do demand is sharper research, more discipline, and the right tools.

Let’s break down the most effective advanced methods and see how AI can help you manage risks while boosting returns.

💻 Yield Farming & Liquidity Mining: High Risk, High Reward

Yield farming is one of the more complex ways to generate income. You deposit tokens into liquidity pools on platforms like Uniswap, Curve, or PancakeSwap. In return, you earn fees from traders plus extra rewards (often in governance tokens).

Think of it as renting out your crypto to keep decentralized markets liquid, and all you need is a DeFi wallet, token pairs like ETH + USDC, and some native coins to cover gas fees.

• Advantages: Potentially very high returns (sometimes hundreds of % APY during peak seasons). Multiple reward streams at once.

• Disadvantages: Impermanent loss (when asset prices shift), contract risks, and token inflation. Rewards can disappear as quickly as they appear.

• Difficulty: Medium to high. Requires constant monitoring and rebalancing.

💰 Revenue-Sharing & Dividend Tokens

Another way to make money with crypto is through revenue-sharing or dividend tokens. These tokens give holders a share of income generated by a platform, business, or protocol.

Think of them as digital stocks that pay out rewards whenever the project earns revenue from music streams and blockchain games to tokenized real-world assets like real estate or commodities. Not every token offers dividends, but you can check the project’s whitepaper for terms like “revenue share,” “profit share,” or “dividends to holders.”

• Advantages: Passive income tied to real-world or platform-generated revenue, not just speculation. Provides diversification compared to trading tokens alone.

• Disadvantages: Returns depend entirely on the project’s performance and sustainability. Many tokens lose traction if the business model fails.

• Difficulty: Low to medium. Success hinges on choosing the right project and platform.

🎨 NFT Royalties

NFTs have evolved beyond just digital art speculation. Today, many platforms allow creators to earn ongoing royalties whenever their NFTs are resold on secondary markets. This means that if demand for your NFT grows, you continue to receive a percentage of each transaction long after the initial sale.

For example, if you mint an NFT and set a 10% royalty, then sell it for $100, later the buyer resells it for $1,000, you would automatically earn $100 from that resale.

• Advantages: Passive income every time your NFT changes hands. A direct link between your work’s popularity and your earnings.

• Disadvantages: Relies heavily on trading activity and market hype. If demand fades, so do royalties.

• Difficulty: Low, provided you use established marketplaces.

To get started with NFT royalties, all you need is access to marketplaces like OpenSea, Blur, Rarible, Foundation or Magic Eden, along with a compatible wallet such as MetaMask or Phantom. These platforms let you mint, list, and sell NFTs while automatically tracking secondary sales. Each time your NFT is resold, you earn royalties directly to your wallet and make money with crypto.

⛏️ Mining: The Classic Way to Earn Crypto

Mining is one of the oldest and most recognized methods to make money with crypto. In Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains like Bitcoin, miners compete to solve complex mathematical problems that validate transactions and secure the network.

In return, they receive newly minted coins and transaction fees. While traditional mining has become more resource-heavy, it still plays a big role in the ecosystem.

• Advantages: Direct rewards in native coins like BTC or LTC, plus the satisfaction of contributing to network security. Mining remains one of the most transparent ways to earn money with crypto.

• Disadvantages: High entry costs for equipment, ongoing electricity expenses, and intense competition. Mining profitability also drops as block rewards decrease (like Bitcoin halving events).

• Difficulty: Medium to high. It requires technical knowledge, reliable hardware, and access to cheap power.

Mining requires some technical setup, including specialized hardware like ASICs or GPUs, reliable mining software, and a stable internet connection. To improve your chances of steady rewards, most miners also join a mining pool, which combines computing power and distributes payouts more consistently.

🧪 Testnet Incentives & Bug Bounties

Another underrated way to make money with crypto is by joining testnet programs and bug bounties.

Particularly, you interact with a project’s testnet (a trial version of their blockchain or dApp) by performing simple tasks like bridging test tokens, minting NFTs with fake coins, or testing DeFi features. Developers collect your feedback, patch bugs, and track user activity.

Once the mainnet goes live, early testers are often rewarded with free tokens, sometimes worth thousands. Bug bounties work similarly but focus on security: if you identify vulnerabilities, you can make money with crypto directly from the project.

Some of the most popular bug bounty platforms in crypto include Intigriti, Hackerone, Bugcrowd, and Synack. These platforms connect white-hat hackers with DeFi protocols, exchanges, and NFT projects, often paying out rewards in stablecoins or project tokens.

💡 Tokenization: Create and Launch Your Own Crypto

Instead of only investing in existing assets, you can create your own digital token, launch it on a blockchain like Ethereum, Solana, or Binance Smart Chain, and make money with crypto. Tokens can represent almost anything, such as utility within a dApp, governance rights, community rewards, or even tokenized real-world assets...

To create a token you have to define your token’s use case and then select the right blockchain platform to build on. Before going live, the token should be tested carefully, after which it can be officially created. Once ready, you launch your token and begin distributing it to users.

Success, however, depends heavily on marketing. Strong promotion not only generates attention but also builds the community that gives your token real value. From there, ongoing maintenance and regular updates are key to keeping the project relevant, functional, and sustainable over the long term.

• Advantages: Total creative control, potential to build a loyal community, and multiple ways to monetize.

• Disadvantages: Requires strong planning, compliance with regulations, and continuous community engagement to maintain value.

• Difficulty: Medium. Easier with modern tools but still demands strategy.

🤖 The AI in Advanced Methods

All advanced ways to make money with crypto share one weakness: they take a lot of time. Researching and filtering yield farming projects for the best APYs or browsing endless bug bounty lists is draining, and most investors can’t keep up.

AI can change that. Instead of spending hours, you can use simple prompts to speed up the process. In Part 1, we showed how to customize prompts for filtering projects. In this section, let’s look at something different: building your own NFT collection with AI.

Start by using ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas. For example, you could ask:

I plan on creating an NFT AI Art collection. The collection size will be 5 NFTs. Give me a topic and create 5 NFTs for this.

Requirement
- Pokemon 
- Game theme
- HD-2D pixel sprites 

Once you have your theme, just ask the model to generate copy-ready prompts for each image:

Can you create an easy to copy prompt to create these images in Sora

Paste those prompts into Sora inside ChatGPT

In seconds, you’ll have your first AI-generated NFT.

AI helps cut down the time from idea to final product, making creative projects like NFTs far more accessible. For anyone looking to make money with crypto, many AI-made NFTs have sold for thousands of dollars. why not give it a try?

💡 Key Takeaway for Part 2

Advanced methods like yield farming, NFT royalties, and trading can significantly boost returns, but they demand skill and discipline. By pairing them with AI, you reduce risks and increase efficiency, turning complexity into actionable ways to consistently make money with crypto.