How to get gigs in Crypto (and how NOT to)
I’m a community administrator for a couple of cryptocurrency projects and some other social media based groups. I thought I would write this article to help people offering legitimate services get through to the people they are trying to reach.
Before we start, I want to give you some idea of what you are up against. Scam artists inundate social media groups for cryptocurrency projects. After scam artists, offers for mediocre services are the next most prolific.
I can’t stress this fact enough.
“Full Stack”, above, fails every guideline I will give below and is most likely a scammer. How can I make that assumption?
Because we already know them. We know them because over the years, we have dealt with carbon copies of their approach hundreds of times. At first, yeah, we fell for it. We gave them $100 and they ran away with it. Or they did some half-assed link dropping. Or they went into 25 telegram channels and said “<INSERT COIN HERE> is pamping! Woot!”
We, the social media administrators, the team members and the community for a crypto project, already know them. We know their awful approaches, their terrible You-tube channels, their fake <INSERT COIN HERE> communities.
This article isn’t for them, it makes fun of them.
This article is for people who legitimately try to provide services (it’s usually marketing) for crypto projects. I started this article this way to help explain why we don’t believe you when you come into a community with your “Marketing Idea”. It’s why, when you send me a direct message, I will use my keyboard shortcut to tell you to “Die in a Fire”. Then I will block you. Then I will remove you from the community and from every other channel associated with the project.
This article answers the common question:
“But how does someone starting out get the information they need if you won’t give it out?”
Trust is a bucket that is filled a drop at a time
The rest of this article is about filling the bucket. Most people kick it over in the first 10 seconds. Projects will listen to you, when they trust you.
We do not care about you
Most projects have experienced leadership, advisors, and the community administrators are pretty quick to spot and remove spam and scams. So why would you drop into the telegram chat and say “I have a marketing idea I would like to share with the team. Who do I contact?”
Who the hell are you? Why would anyone care about your desires? You have spent zero minutes building rapport, why would you assume that people would give you the time of day? 99.9% of the time, these ‘ideas’ are grifting methods, extremely low quality services, or outright scams. So why would we assume that your effort is something special, when we are inundated with this every single day? If you want people to think you have something special, then be special!
We watch how you act
So many times, people come into a chat, and say something like “Who do I contact to….” and what they are asking for is someone to serve them the information on a silver platter with a cherry on top. As if other people must do their work for them. We intentionally put up small roadblocks to filter out the scum. When these folks are treated as a scammer, they do one of four things:
- They keep repeating themselves, nicely of course, hoping that someone will give them an answer. (hint: we do not give out contact info for project leaders on social media because, as mentioned, 99.9% of the ‘offers’ are awful, useless, or scams). These folks usually get muted for a day.
- They throw a tantrum. They get angry. They point fingers. Like a child who doesn’t get what it wants. Why would we spend any time with you, when you threw a fit in the first five minutes of joining the community? These guys get banned after we screen capture the tantrum. Shockingly, they never get hired for anything.
- They threaten. As if a tantrum isn’t enough, they send messages to me from one of their alt user accounts. They will threaten to use their amazingly mediocre skills to tank the project on social media. Then they will try to, somehow, amplify my “die in a fire” comment, and tell me how they are going to harm me. But they didn’t read this article, so they don’t know that I literally do not care about them. They too, get a screen capture, block and global ban from the communities.
- Improve. It is such a wonderful feeling to see someone change course, or at least really understand why we administer the groups the way we do. The improvement comes in the form of actually listening when the admins tell them how to get the information they are looking for. They will engage the community, ask for help, share relevant information, maybe describe some work they have done. They work to fill the bucket.
If you are a seasoned business person, marketing or otherwise, then nothing I have said so far is a suprise. We assume that if you are a professional, then you will act professionally.
That means, that you have the interest, and the drive, to familiarize yourself with the project you are marketing yourself towards. That also means that you don’t need to be spoonfed everything, such as: who to contact for you to throw your pitch to. But for those starting out, here is a possible workflow.
Check the project’s website
Read through the entire thing. Since, I mentioned that we do not care about you, we also don’t care about what you have to say. So when you say something regarding hiring you, it better be relevant, or we will show you to the door in the form of a ban. So read the website. You don’t have to understand how the technology works, you DO have to understand what it is for and what the project is trying to achieve.
On the project’s website, you will usually find contact information. It will be generic, something like “info@cryptoproject.com”, but it IS usually read. You may also find a forum. You will find social media platforms that the project participates on.
You may also find team leaders. This is where other social media platforms, such a LinkedIn are useful. You may find information about how to contact specific people there. But don’t get ahead of yourself. Sending a DM to Elon Musk on LinkedIn likely will result in your message getting totally ignored. At best, it will be filtered through the lackeys he hires to manage his social media. It’s the same for crypto projects. I wouldn’t assume sending direct messages through LinkedIn are going to get you what you want. But it WILL likely get read by someone, so: Be special. Be direct. Be succinct. Be specific. Show that you aren’t just throwing spaghetti on the wall hoping something sticks.
Be an actual person
No one will respond to you if you have spent zero minutes creating your account in a way that identifies you as a human with emotions. I’m not going to work with some random on the internet. Use your name. Give your icon some personality. Have a description of yourself. Join the relevant channels.
Build Rapport
OK, you became familiar with the project, and you know who is who and I have a way to know that there is a human behind your account. Now what?
Talk.
On social media, you can simply engage with the community. Provide interesting ideas. Help people who know less than you. Tell people what you do. Tell a funny story. Tell people about something you are working on that is relevant to the project. Steer clear of sexual innuendo and racism. Steer clear of cryptobro talk like “Pump it!” or “Wen Moon?” or “This coin just needs an bigger exchange”. You are being boring, and you aren’t filling the bucket. You want your conversation to be inclusive to as many people as possible.
On social media platforms, you will likely find announcements of when and where project leaders will be. Further, good project have their team leaders drop into the chat. That’s your chance! Talk to them in the chat!
Go to a conference, in person or online.
Crypto project leaders are extremely accessible at these event’s and most will be happy to talk in person. By talking in person, people can evaluate your communication, your confidence and your dedication FAR better than they can in text on a messaging app. So get face to face with the project leaders you want to market towards.
Go to crypto specific events
There are tons of these everywhere. There are crypto nights in every city. There are educational meet-ups. There are crypto charities who try provide help in your area. Go to them, join in, and you will be meeting crypto-people who will eventually want your services. Networking in person, in general, is your friend.
What NOT to do
This is a pretty easy list. It’s obvious to anyone who isn’t a scammer or terrible at what they do.
- DONT try to skip appropriate channels for communication (as highlighted above). You will be ignored.
- DON’T Direct Message. For the love of anything holy, DON’T SEND DMs unless specifically asked to. If you are thinking, “It would be faster if I message the admin directly”, smack yourself in the face and don’t do it. Unless you like to be told to die in a fire.
- DONT whine and be abrasive when people aren’t giving you what you want, when you want it. Why would anyone want to work with you after that? You are demonstrating what the experience will be like.
An example of what not to do
Just for fun, I thought I would share my most recent experience with this. This person broke every single rule.
This project has a whole marketing department. They would know this if they went to the website. Most ‘influencers’ are a total joke, pure cringe for 30 minutes. Why Lloyd? How can I possibly think there is anything special here at all? Why would I waste any time at all on this? This doesn’t violate any rules to post in our community, but it went unanswered.
Then, these two lovelies DM’d me.
The DM was the exact same contentless text from above, but with even more contentless content. Jeesh, exhausting. Told them to die in a fire, waited until the read it, screen captured, blocked, and banned from the main chat. DMing people without solicitation in the main chat, is against the community rules that they signed up for when they entered. Instant ban.
Well, the next part is rare, but it does happen. Usually a scammer will just go away. They try to hit up dozens of people each day, it’s not in their best interest to bitch and moan when they have already been exposed. But not these two Crypto Kings!
Within one hour “Crypto_Power” and “Bitcoin_Mole” sent me threatening DMs that referenced the previous messages. I mean, talk about auditioning for Captain Obvious!
They referenced my comment, but not the project. It’s entirely likely they hit up so many projects that they have no idea which one they are threatening. Never mind, that I don’t run a project. I help run a telegram group. Go ahead, take down Telegram, you sooper skary cryptoh inturnet hakkor.
Wrap up
Anyway, I hope this article has been helpful to those of you who ask “But how to I get in touch with the people who I want to sell my services to?” I also hope, for those people legitimately trying to market services to the crypto sector, you may understand why you get such terse, even offensive, responses.
If it were easy, everyone would do it….and then it wouldn’t be profitable.
Note to other Telegram and Discord community administrators: Let’s make “Die in a fire” a standard de-facto response to these requests in direct messages so I don’t look like a weirdo.
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