How to become an ICO Advisor

Have you ever wondered why there are thousands articles about how to do an ICO, how to invest in ICO and everything else related to ICO, but not a single one about how to become an ICO advisor?

The answer is more obvious and harsh that you would imagine.

Early ICO advisors do not want that new experts would come to this industry. They want to keep “ICO advisor” club as small as possible, so that they will get ICO gigs more easily and could negotiate better payout for themselves.

I’m an ICO advisor myself and have been successfully advising ICOs for almost a year already, but unlike my infamous colleagues I have decided to break the chains and help other to join this industry.

It’s pretty clear that in any industry competition is not very welcomed, but I have never seen the reception to be as rude as in ICO world. ICO is very new industry, it’s only a year old, but at the same time it’s incredibly established already. It’s so established that there is already a group of old ICO advisors that have united to set barriers for new advisors. This is extremely funny, because they think that being an advisor for a year sets you light-years ahead of everyone else. These early advisors are also mostly responsible of the assholeness of ICO industry.

ICO is very new industry, it’s only a year old, but at the same time it’s incredibly established already.

Sure not all early ICO advisors are like that, but you can easily stop them by the way they behave, and here are some signs how to spot them:

1. Acting rude: not answering messages, bashing your ICO or being asshole in general etc.
2. Spreading false myths about what ICO advisor should and should not do. This includes claiming that big client portfolio is bad for advisor or that he needs to be a popular personality in crypto world in order to be an advisor.

If you have read any of their articles don’t be depressed, they are lying on purpose.

But back to the “how to become an ICO advisor”. Before becoming one, you need to understand if you have enough experience and knowledge to be one. Generally you can think about ICO advisory career if you have:

1. Been in the cryptocurrency or blockchain world for few years.
2. Have great knowledge of cryptocurrency or blockchain industry.

Most early ICO advisors will claim that in order to become an ICO advisor you must have had your own successful ICO, which is a nonsense. Jumping straight into creating your own ICO without any experience will result in your loosing most of your money and is incredibly stupid.

After deciding to become an ICO advisor you should study and read everything you find about ICOs. And only when you are sure you know enough and understand how things work, you are ready to offer your services.

Keep in mind that if you are not a tech-person you don’t need to be able to create a smart-contract or if you specialize in smart-contract you don’t need to focus on marketing. Most ICO advisors specialize in specific section of ICO industry and that’s why ICOs usually select few advisors to covers most important parts of the industry.

To maximize your success in getting ICO advisory work make sure you do as many of the following steps as possible:

1. Create good Linkedin profile where you clearly mention that you are an ICO advisor.
2. Get listed on as many ICO listing sites as possible.
3. Be active on other social media like: Twitter, Medium, Facebook groups, Telegram groups and Bitcoin talk.
4. Create your own personal website.
5. Promote yourself on freelancer websites like Fiverr.

Contacting random ICOs directly however does not usually bring result. Most ICOs are busy and will not have time to check your application.

Personally 90% of all ICO job offers I have received have come via Linkedin, but I’m quite active on Linkedin and have almost 31k followers, so make sure you add as many crypto and blockchain people as possible to your contacts.

Understand who the so-called ICO Experts really are.

Most of today’s recognized ICO experts are people like you who just happened to start advising ICOs back in 2017. They don’ really have any special knowledge except doing this for over 6 months. Some of them were part of some ICO, but at that point they were clueless on how ICOs work, it’s only after that they established their knowledge about them.

These early ICO advisors will make everything to make you think that they are super specialist and you don’t belong in the same group with them. That is the biggest lie they spread.

Only a handful of ICO people are actually well known and popular. Being popular is not mandatory for an ICO advisor. And you can very well become popular while advising, like these people became.

When starting as an ICO advisor keep in my following things:

1. At first you should accept every project that is being offered to you, even if the payout is low. This is the only way to get experience as you can learn something only by doing it. Once you have build your ICO portfolio you can start to select most promising ICOs and refusing non interesting ones.
2. Most ICOs will pay you in their own tokens. Once you become more experienced you can ask for payment in other crypto, like BTC or ETH.
3. It’s not ICO advisors job to look for investors. Refuse job offers like that. Those people are not looking for an advisor but for a salesperson.
4. Worst part of being ICO advisor is that you will get huge amount of spam from different ICO listing sites and companies that offer ICO marketing services. Don’t fall into trap of offering their services to ICOs you advice, it will only ruin your credibility.
5. Make sure you read advisory agreement well. Most ICOs will pay you honestly, but many of them will add foul terms into agreement possible by mistake of their lawyers, so make sure you remind them about removing terms what violate your rights.
6. Connect with other advisors. Usually good advisors recommend each other to project where they participate already. This will help you to get more gigs.
7. Don’t get stuck on the white paper. While most say so, white paper is not the most important part of the ICO project. Rather than wasting time on white paper discuss with the ICO about how they plan to execute the ICO sale.
8. Be proactive. ICO founders are usually very busy. They will not have time to ask your opinion on every matter as they have lot of people to manage. Therefore you should advise them yourself when every there is something you think they need help with. Believe me, your pro-activeness will be rewarded.

Good luck with your ICO advisory career, and remember: People are not born to be ICO advisors, everyone can become one!

How to become an ICO Advisor was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.