Ive made a living making off the wall business decisions and investments and for the most part it’s been successful for me.
So though intrigued my friends and family were not surprised when I told them I wanted to race digital horses for a living.
Especially my partner and kids who have happily come along with me on this Zed Run journey.
I heard one of the Zed content creators quote Chris Ebeling who said “Horse racing is the sport of kings, at Zed we will make kings” or something to that effect.
Well in the Metaverse I would certainly like to be a successful stable owner.
One of these “Kings” Chris spoke of.
So can it be done?
Can a Zed Run stable be the main source of day to day income for a family of four?
I believe so and I’ve set myself the deadline of July 1st 2022 in which to prepare for that life.
From that day onward I will be full time Zed.
Full disclosure, I’m not 25 years old and still establishing myself in the world.
I’m 42 and I’m at a pretty cruisy stage in my life.
I have other investments and projects so should things all go pear shaped with Zed I will be fine and more importantly so will my family.
I’m basically leaving my days as the owner and sole staff member of a boutique wine label and dedicating my work time to Zed Run.
In all honesty I’m full time Zed now anyway I just squeeze deliveries and paperwork in between races ha ha.
I actually made the decision to go Zed full time a few months ago and have been planning and building the stable through what was a perfectly timed depressed market.
Though we paid quite high prices back in July and August we made up for that with cheaper prices as we increased our investment over the past couple of months.
From here the new Zed roadmap is about to be released and I’m confident that will light a fire under the market.
The in game or Dez token information alone will be huge, especially if somehow tied to Genesis horses or gameplay.
An easier new user onboarding process and all the unknown announcements that will be in the roadmap should usher in a massive new era!
From there we move in to Q1 2022 and I believe Zed will then move out of beta and on to it’s next incarnation.
Flying on the wings of a full marketing campaign I expect the user numbers to increase dramatically and the number of tournaments and purse sizes to scale with it.
By July 1st and in to the future there should be plenty of money floating around the Zed ecosystem hence my deadline.
To invest in early stage projects you have to see someone else’s vision and have faith that they can make that vision a reality.
I’m playing Zed, researching the game, consuming content and in general living in the eco system for 40 hours plus a week and feel I have a reasonable perception of what the vision is and what it could grow to be
In my opinion we are only at the tip of the ice berg and I’m ready to ride the wave for many years to come.
The time is now!
So how exactly will we make an income?
After building a stable of good breeding horses and learning as much as we can about the racing and breeding environment over the past 6 months we can see 4 avenues of possible income.
Broken down as follows;
1) Breeding to race.
As it stands the biggest prize purses are to be won in tournaments.
Prize money and tournament frequency will grow along with the game and I’m sure we will also see leagues, cups, seasons, sponsored races and so much more.
All complimenting the paid racing format.
I won’t get in to our breeding strategies in this post but basically when we have 5,000,000 plus players in the game the top DNA is going to be near impossible to get.
When the big whales come to town they will lock up all the top breeding Genesis horses so options for buying proven racers or proven breeders will be very expensive and very limited.
With that in mind we have accumulated good breeding Genesis pairs of almost all bloodlines.
Once we secure a Z1 mare to go with our Z1 stallion we will have a strong breeding pair of all 4 bloodlines.
Being able to create this in house talent in reasonable numbers at low cost will be an absolute super power in the future.
Not just for winning the big tournaments but for placing in finals and sponsored races etc, a large stable picking up fractions of ETH across the board in any paid competitive environment.
This will be the main source of our income for the stable.
Hopefully complimented by the odd big money purse.
2) Breeding to sell.
When we find our rhythm and have learnt our breeding stock inside out we should gradually become more and more successful on the track.
This will enhance the reputation of our stable and our breeding horses.
The by product of that should be plenty of demand for both our raced and unraced foals along with demand for our studs.
We plan to keep sales and studding to a minimum as the game grows.
After all we are a breed to race stable however we expect the secondary sales market and stud market to be a good second source of income for our stable.
With just 35,000 current players we are already seeing horse sales of up to $500,000 AUD and we have paid up to $1,600 AUD for stud services in the past.
One can only imagine the prices when we have millions of players and million dollar tournaments.
A Z1 stud could fetch 5 figures for breeding while a proven million dollar winner might go for several million dollars at sale.
All exciting possibilities.
3) Sponsorship and merchandise.
The third income stream we can currently see is in the form of sponsorships.
Though it may sound strange now I can see a time where a horse wears a custom skin to promote a brand, product or website.
Sports betting companies spring straight to mind as the ideal candidate
In fact any forward thinking company will see the metaverse as the new frontier for advertising and the only way to reach the people who no longer frequent Facebook or newspaper and TV.
We are not factoring this revenue stream in to our planning yet as it will be some ways off but down the track we hope to breed some champions that go on to bring in sponsorship dollars just like real life pro athletes.
4) Value increase.
The final piece to the income puzzle is value increase.
We paid $100,000 AUD for our Z1 Nakamoto and people I have told are shocked that we would spend such an amount on a digital horse.
Personally I feel like we bought a $1,000,000 plus horse at a discount.
In the future as the game grows so will the value of the Genesis horses, the proven breeders and the proven racers.
We don’t plan on selling our original horses but as values reach the stratosphere it will add intrinsic value to our stable that can be cashed in if the need arises.
In summing up it’s time for a change in my life and this is a dream that I hope I can turn in to my new reality.
As a kid back in the 80’s we joked about playing video games for a living.
Perhaps all these years later I can make it so.
My kids are a few years away from finishing school now themselves and by then if the dream comes true and the planets align we will be moving to the Gold Coast and I will be sipping a cold drink on the beach while racing digital horses for a living.
Wish me luck!!
