Udemezue John
Introduction.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have been making headlines recently as a new way to buy, sell, and trade unique digital assets.
NFTs are digital assets that are verified on the blockchain, making them one-of-a-kind and impossible to replicate.
They can represent anything from digital artwork and music to virtual real estate and collectables.
NFTs have become a popular way for creators and artists to showcase their work and earn money, and for collectors to invest in unique digital assets.
In this article, we’ll explore what NFTs are and how you can make money with them, whether you’re an artist, collector, or investor.
What Is NFT?
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. An NFT is a digital asset that is verified on the blockchain, making it unique and impossible to replicate.
Unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which are fungible and can be exchanged for one another, NFTs are one-of-a-kind and have a unique value.
NFTs can represent anything from digital artwork and music to virtual real estate and collectables. They are often bought and sold on blockchain marketplaces like OpenSea, and payments are made using cryptocurrency.
NFTs have become a popular way for creators and artists to showcase their work and earn money, and for collectors to invest in unique digital assets.
Why Should I Create NFTs?
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have taken the world by storm, with record-breaking sales in the art world and beyond. But why should you, as an individual, consider creating NFTs? Here are some reasons to consider:
1. Showcase Your Creativity.
NFTs offer a new way to showcase your creative work, whether it be art, music, or even memes. By minting your work as an NFT, you can prove ownership and authenticity, and potentially sell your work to collectors and enthusiasts.
2. Monetize Your Work.
NFTs have opened up a new avenue for artists and creators to monetize their work. By selling your NFTs, you can earn a percentage of the sale every time your NFT is bought and sold, potentially leading to passive income over time.
3. Build a Community.
The NFT space has a strong community of collectors, artists, and enthusiasts. By creating and selling NFTs, you can connect with this community and build a following for your work.
4. Access New Markets.
NFTs have expanded the market for digital art and other creative works, allowing artists to reach new audiences and potentially sell their work for higher prices than traditional art markets.
5. Experiment with Technology.
NFTs are still a relatively new technology, with new applications and use cases emerging all the time.
By creating NFTs, you can experiment with this technology and potentially pioneer new ways of creating and selling digital works.
Of course, creating and selling NFTs is not without its challenges. The space is still evolving rapidly, and there are questions about sustainability, environmental impact, and accessibility.
Additionally, the market for NFTs can be unpredictable, with prices fluctuating rapidly and some NFTs selling for millions while others struggle to find buyers.
6. Create Scarcity.
NFTs create digital scarcity, which has traditionally been difficult to achieve in the digital realm. By creating a limited number of NFTs, you can make your work more exclusive and valuable, potentially driving up prices.
7. Protect Your Work.
NFTs can help protect your work from unauthorized use or infringement. By proving ownership and authenticity on the blockchain, NFTs can make it easier to enforce copyright and prevent others from using your work without permission.
8. Increase Brand Awareness.
NFTs can help increase brand awareness and visibility for businesses and individuals. By creating NFTs that represent your brand or showcase your work, you can potentially attract new customers or followers and build a stronger online presence.
9. Support a Cause.
NFTs can also be used to support charitable causes or social movements. By creating NFTs that represent a cause or donating a percentage of NFT sales to a charity, you can use the power of NFTs to make a positive impact.
10. Future-proof Your Work.
As the world becomes increasingly digital, NFTs offer a way to future-proof your work and ensure it can be preserved and accessed in the years to come.
By creating NFTs that represent your creative work, you can help ensure that it is not lost or forgotten over time.
11. Boost Inclusive Growth.
In a traditional setting, when an artwork is created and sold at an auction, the art creator gets to make money on that instance only and knows nothing about that art as soon as it leaves their custody.
This is entirely different in the world of NFTs because you get to collect artwork from the initial creator of the artwork at a specific cost which is made directly to that person.
On the other hand, buyers have the option of liquidity in different types of assets with the help of NFTs. If you intend to sell that artwork for a higher value, the original creator of that art also gets a specific royalty.
How do I Invest In NFTs?
You can start benefiting from the wonders of NFTs as an artist or collector. NFTs have exploded in popularity during the pandemic, leading many investors to wonder how to buy them.
Digital art from the artist Beeple and the famous pixelated CryptoPunks character portraits have been sold as an NFT worth millions of dollars.
Artists, collectors, and speculators alike have gathered to the movement as cryptocurrencies and other digital assets have skyrocketed. This section will spell out how to start investing in NFTs from both sides.
NFTs live in a blockchain; this is to say that there are various ways of creating NFTs. I find it shocking when people only talk about a sing;e way method for creating NFTs native to Ethereum and leave out other Blockchain platforms such as Solana and Binance Open chain.
There are various ways to start creating NFTs. It all depends on the blockchain in that you want your NFTs to exist. To begin creating NFT, you need to get the following setup.
1. As a Creator/Artist.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are among the hottest things in the world of creators, particularly in digital art.
People spent more than $300 million in the first two months of 2021 alone, and that was before Beeple shocked the world with a $69 million sale in March.
Are you a creator? If you have a talent in art, music, or Videography, you are just one step toward actualising your million-dollar dream.
1. Get Creative.
The first thing you want to do before venturing into the world of NFTs is to get your house in order; this also means that you need to ensure enough creative work is deployed.
Most NFT artists do their artwork in collections, making them more valuable and eye-catchy, and if all you have is just a single piece of art, they are still good to go; just make sure to have enough on your plates.
Moreover, you should remember that all NFTs are digital artwork; this is to remind you that if you have only physical paintings available, you need them to be converted into digital files such as images, audio, or Video files.
If you are new to going digital with your art, Digital art for beginners doesn’t have to be that difficult. Digital art is a talent that is perfected through time and practice.
There are, however, a few steps that you have to check off before you start getting familiar with digital art.
You will need a tablet or computer to work with when creating digital art. It can be an Android or Apple tablet. I suggest you purchase a pen with it, such as an Apple pencil or a Digiroot Universal Stylus for Android devices. (Digiroot Stylus Link opens to Amazon to find out the price).
1. Choose an illustration software, program, or app on which you want to make your digital art; I prefer Adobe illustrator
2. Sketch and decide what you want to create.
3. Practice, practice, and get yourself familiar with the software you are using.
4. Watch videos and tutorials, or join courses to learn more about how to create digital art and start creating till you get perfect.
2. Choose your preferred Blockchain platform.
The next step to creating NFTs is deciding what blockchain platform you want your NFT to live on. The most popular by far is Ethereum, but you can try out other blockchain platforms like Binance and Solana because they support NFT too.
3. List your NFT on a marketplace.
NFT marketplaces are platforms where NFTs can be stored, listed, traded and, in some cases, minted (created).
It would help if you had a place to store your digital art as soon as you finish making them, the same way you also need a platform to be able to invest in potential growing digital skills.
These marketplaces are just like conventional marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and Alibaba. To access and use these marketplaces, you will need to have the following on the ground.
1. A crypto wallet.
A cryptocurrency wallet is an app that allows cryptocurrency users to store and retrieve their digital assets.
As with traditional currency, you don’t need a wallet to spend your cash, but it certainly helps to keep it all in one place.
When a user obtains cryptocurrency, such as bitcoins, she can store it in a cryptocurrency wallet and, from there, use it to make transactions.
For example, if you plan to buy or sell NFTs based on the Ethereum blockchain platform, you will need to use a compatible Ethereum wallet such as MetaMask.
For NFTs sold on the Solana platform, you will need to use a wallet service such as Sollet, Phantom and so on, depending on the individual blockchain service.
2. some coins in the wallet.
A small amount of coin is needed in your crypto wallet before buying, listing or minting an NFT. Again, you will need to find out which cryptocurrencies are supported by the marketplace you intend to use.
For example, if you plan to list on Opensea.io, you need some ether; you need some SOL to list on Solnart.
3. A user account registered on the Marketplace.
You will need to set up an account in the marketplace you wish to purchase NFTs. It’s worth noting that, for the most part, listing and creating NFTs on a marketplace platform incurs a blockchain network fee.
The fee differs depending on which blockchain-based system you decide to use. For example, Ethereum boasts the largest ecosystem of NFT dapps (decentralised applications). But it has the most expensive fees.
4. Choose your preferred Marketplace.
However, various marketplaces can help you with listing your NFT art as a creator; in this section, I am going to be dropping a few ones that would be useful to you.
1. Opensea.io.
OpenSea was the first decentralised non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace for buying, selling, and trading NFTs.It was founded in January 2018 by Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer.
OpenSea brands itself as the biggest marketplace for digital goods. Since its development, OpenSea has experienced significant growth, as have NFTs in general, accumulating sales of over $6.3 Billion and still counting.
In this section, I will be giving you a walk-through guide on how to get started with listing your first NFT on Opensea.io.
1. log in to opensea.io.
After signing up on opensea.io, you would be prompted to link your crypto wallet to be able to make payments and also be asked to fill in your profile details as recommended by the platform.
Doing this makes your profile appear genuine to collectors; you would be shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t do this.
2. Create a collection on Opensea.io.
A collection on opensea allows you to group similar arts in one place. Creating a pool is not compulsory, but it makes sense to group similar skills in a collection to be able to attract collectors to the platform.
It is common practice for every serious NFT creator to group their artwork into a collection to compete in the crypto market, as successful pieces of art are correctly collected in the NFT marketplace.
To create a collection in opensea.io, you need to navigate the section shown below and fill in the details appropriately.
A critical part of the collection section is the choice of Blockchain, as shown below. This section allows you to choose which blockchain you want your NFT to live on, and opensea.io comes with two options: Ethereum and Polygon.
If you want to be able to sell your NFT for free without paying any Gas Fee, then I recommend you select Polygon as your blockchain.
Choosing Ethereum will make you spend over $300 in gas fees before your NFT can be listed on the marketplace.
Also, remember that when you choose a specific Blockchain for your collection, you will not be able to change it anymore; you have to delete that collection and create a new one with the appropriate settings in mind.
3. Start adding your art to opensea.io.
After creating the collection, the next step is to start uploading the individual pieces of art at your disposal and tag them to the group that you previously created.
You can do this by clicking the create button in the Opensea.io dashboard and filling up the details as listed to you.
Also, make sure that you set the default blockchain as a polygon so as not to pay a Gas Fee; you can as well decide to choose Ethereum because it is widespread, and ROI is guaranteed because your NFT is automatically Supported on Opensea, Rarible, and Cargo App, which makes it a better option.
4. Mint Your art.
Minting is the process of validating information, creating a new block, and recording that information into the blockchain.
Mining and minting terms were created from real-world coin making. For example, gold and silver are “mined” out of the ground and then “minted” into coins for circulation; the same goes for how cryptocurrencies are brought into existence.
The next and final step to list your art on the NFT market is to mint it to a blockchain; this automatically makes your NFT available on your preferred blockchain, either Ethereum or Polygon, which ultimately makes it open to the entire public for purchase.
All you need to do to be able to mint your NFT is to set up how many pieces of your art you want in circulation and how many you want to be able to release. So, looking at NFT for the first time, I see it as creating and listing a token.
5. Promote Your NFTs.
The NFT market welcomes all artists world-famous with a million audiences on social media channels and other promotional channels, to begin with.
A lot of creators release their NFT collections or individual artworks every day. We believe that you are a great artist and your paintings are unique. However, sometimes it is not enough to get your art to suitable collectors.
By promoting your art, you attract the attention of more people who are likely to spend their means on it.
Nevertheless, some artists, especially beginners who do not have a marketing team, just mint NFTs and stop there; these particular individuals get their art dumped in the junkyards.
Now that you have succeeded in creating and listing your NFT, the next thing is to employ the necessary steps to get your NFTs to go viral, making you money.
In this section, I will list out possible promotional channels to help you successfully position your NFT for success.
1. Start a website(SEO).
A business’s online presence, regardless of industry, can have a massive impact on its success. Unfortunately, in this day and age, some companies still don’t realise that most of their customers will visit their website before purchasing.
Having a solid online presence, particularly a website, can be a make or break for generating more revenue. Yes, the quality of your website impacts results, but the purpose of this article is to stress the importance of making sure you have a website.
Owning a website does not automatically allow you to generate sales as an NFT artist; you also have to optimise your website for search engine optimisation effectively, where blogging needs to be utilised alongside your website.
Blogging is fast becoming the quickest way to express yourself online. With it being both accessible and potentially valuable to start a blog, more people are joining the blogging community.
These days, not all companies have embraced the blogging world; what the majority of them do is own a professional website and not bother about optimising it for search engines like Google, using a blog that is regularly updated to show current offers and promotions, potential clients and readers will see you as more approachable, present, and most importantly more involved in your business.
For instance, as an NFT art, you can create a website that describes what your art is all about and, at the same start blogging on the side, which helps you rank on Google and attracts potential readers who will eventually collect your art.
I wrote a comprehensive guide on this blog to help you start owning your first website/blog; click the link below.
- How To Start a Blog And Make Money
- 15+ Best SEO Tools You Need To Know
- 13+ Best Website Builder For Business
2. Use Twitter.
Twitter is working on diving into the rising market of NFTs, which has seen digital artworks take on a new life of their own, which has gone viral and also generated billions in sales.
If you are following the trend on Twitter, users switching their profile images to portraits of animated monkeys, cats, trolls, and a broad range of other creations are ways to showcase their NFTs.
Twitter is seeking ways to integrate a feature that allows NFT artists to link NFTs with their purchase activity which would then enable Twitter to provide a mark of ownership on any NFTs displayed (an ‘Ethereum checkmark’ as Twitter refers to it); this coming feature will make it easy for it NFT artist promote their collections.
Twitter is also developing a new ‘Collectible’ tab, where users could display their owned NFTs to profile visitors (note, too, the ‘Reactions’ tab instead of ‘Likes’, which is connected to Twitter’s ongoing.
The founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, has been a significant advocate for cryptocurrency over the last decade. He has pushed for the development of the crypto community on his platform; this remains the primary reason why Twitter has a more vast cryptocurrency community than every online community on the internet.
I wrote a comprehensive guide on growing your business on Twitter; click the link below.
3. Create a Discord.
Discord is a web-based communication app like Slack, which many users are familiar with due to its widespread use in the business world. Therefore, discord is in the same category.
Over the years, Discord has grown in popularity and has evolved from a tool for gamers into a full-fledged service for anyone looking to chat or join online communities.
Discord was first released by Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy in 2015, and the app quickly became popular with gamers.
On Discord, users can engage in voice and video chats, send private text-based messages, and participate in communities called “servers” on the platform.
Users can even begin their communities, aka servers, and invite users to join. Inside each server, users can set up channels assigned to specific topics so that users on each server can discuss with others the issues they would like to discuss.
Discord is completely free to join. Yes, other chat services like Slack have free tiers with messaging limits.
Discord does not have any such limits. It’s completely free to use with complete access to your messages, history, communities, etc. Furthermore, it’s free to start your server too.
Discord enables you to Check out as many servers as you can and engage with the community. Share your art, discuss ideas, and make some friends. Getting pretty personal will go a longer way than just spamming links everywhere.
4. Telegram is Awesome.
Telegram is a social chat platform with more than 400 million active monthly users currently present on it. The platform’s growing popularity allows marketers to enjoy many of the following advantages, such as allowing marketers to keep their audience informed with the use of Telegram channels, which can create either a public or private channel and invite your current customers to join it.
Telegram groups are another feature on the Telegram platform that allows you to interact with your customers directly. A Telegram group is a chat where you can communicate with your audience, and your group members can interact with one another. You can also add administrators to manage your group more efficiently.
You can let your loyal customers help new leads by answering questions about your product or service with a group. Telegram Groups are an excellent opportunity to build a community.
Chatbots remain another fantastic feature present in Telegram that allows you to Delegate answering FAQs, handle orders, and consult clients to chatbots, which are available 24/7.
This way, your customer support team can work on more complicated issues and develop auto-reply flows to send messages after a user enters a keyword specified by you, for example, “delivery,” “price,” or “refund.
Finally, you can leverage Telegram to drive traffic to a website. For example, share links to your landing pages, invite your customers to check out your new collection or share a link to your client reviews.
This way, you get to increase traffic to specific site pages, which can be your NFT collection.
I wrote a comprehensive guide on getting started with Social media tools necessary to drive growth; click the link below to get started.
5. TikTok Helps a Lot.
There are over 1 Billion users on TikTok, with a majority of these users coming from the US alone; if you own a business, TikTok marketing can be an excellent channel for your brand, as there is relatively little competition on the platform. However, if you’re new to TikTok, you may not know how you can use it to market your company.
Using TikTok for marketing is much easier than you think. There are currently three critical options for brands looking to utilise TikTok for promotion, and some of them include; Creating your brand’s channel and uploading videos relevant to your business that stand a chance of going viral, making use of social media influencers to open your content to a much broader (but well-targeted) audience or better still Pay to advertise utilising TikTok’s new campaign options.
Combining these three options makes it easier for you to go viral on this platform and attract sales to your NFTs.
I wrote a comprehensive guide on how to get started with TikTok; click the link below to get started.
6. Facebook is Great.
If you’re a brand hoping to thrive on social media, mastering Facebook marketing will be critical. More than 2.8 billion people use the platform every single month. That’s a lot of potential eyeballs on your business.
If you are working with a limited budget, you can set up your Facebook Page for your business free of charge on Facebook.
This business page can be used to showcase your NFTs and every activity behind their development, including a link for prospective collectors to begin collecting.
Then, once you have created your Page, you can create content, share your contact information, link to your website, build a product catalogue and communicate with your customers, which is also free.
If you have some cash to spare, there is an option to use paid marketing strategies like Facebook ads and sponsored posts from your Facebook Business Page.
As of the time of writing this post, Facebook just announced a change of brand name, which came alongside tons of development to the future, amongst which includes the company’s metaverse support for non-fungible tokens (NFT) in a possible boost to the Ethereum protocol, where the digital collectables format has thrived which will, in turn, will it easier for people to sell Limited Edition digital objects like NFTs, display them in their digital spaces and even resell them to the next person securely.
I think this is good news for cryptocurrency enthusiasts worldwide; with the previous efforts being used to fight against cryptocurrency advancement by the government, this is a sign that, in the long run, cryptocurrencies are going to become mainstream.
I wrote a comprehensive guide on how to get started with growing your business on Facebook; click the link below to get started.
7. Instagram Works Fine.
Instagram as a social media platform has moved to an entirely different level making businesses of all sizes in every industry capable enough to hold a vast base of potential customers through their posts at every opportunity.
Just look at the numbers. Instagram, started in 2010 and absorbed by the social media giant Facebook in 2012, now has one billion active monthly users and 700 million daily active users. Of these, 400 million users check out Instagram stories regularly.
One of the essential stats concerning Instagram for business is? 72% of Instagram users have purchased a product or service they saw on their feed, making it a win-win for cryptocurrency enthusiasts who intend to make a voice out of it.
You can decide to publicise your NFTs via Instagram by optimising your Bio and showcasing your NFT, which will, in turn, create and generate awareness.
I wrote a comprehensive guide on how to get started with promoting your business on Instagram; click the link below to get started.
2. Become an NFT collector.
NFT marketplace such as Opensea.io brings about two categories of people: collectors and artists. NFT artists create the artworks as stated above, while the collectors are those who shop this artwork at an early stage and resell it later for a profit.
All you need do as an NFT collector is to able to spot a lot of these arts in their initial stage and purchase them as soon as possible before they go viral and begin to appreciate.
Most NFT collectors will be on the losing end because they don’t know how to identify a profitable project. However, you also must understand that not all NFT projects will be a success.
There are significant factors that drive the success of any NFT; you need enough information to discern which one helps you hit the jackpot.
In this section, I will list signs you should watch out for when collecting NFTs for profit.
DYOR stands for “Do Your Research” — it is a term and acronym that gets bandied about a lot in Crypto.
Essentially, the statement suggests that in Crypto-economy, your success in the crypto-world depends on you studying the projects and discovering their viability before investing in such projects.
If you have no idea how cryptocurrency works, I recommend you click the link below to get started.
Here’s a list of essential factors to consider while investing in NFTs.
1. The Influence and Size Of Community.
The driving force of any successful cryptocurrency project is mainly dependent on the size of its community; the more influence a crypto project can gain over time, the more profitable it becomes; that is why cryptocurrencies are called community economies, meaning that it takes like-minded people coming together to make it work.
Suppose people see that Ethereum is not going to be sustainable as they feel and find a mind-blowing new cryptocurrency with more futuristic potential. In that case, you will rapidly see the value of Ethereum go down.
Your first step should be investigating the community strength of NFTs. The most reputable NFT collections usually have thriving collector and fan communities that define the NFTs’ influence.
If an NFT brand has little to no community, it is already sure that it will not make money.
2. Identify The Creator.
The major downside of NFT is plagiarism. For example, you may find a specific art intriguing. Still, that art might have already been created by a popular creator somewhere, defeating the entire purpose of investing in that NFT.
You are dealing with a severe and legitimate NFT project; if it has been formally launched or endorsed by a big corporation, well-known people or established NFT artist.
The traceability of NFTs is one of the things that attracts artists, brands, and creators. You can find out who created the NFT when it was issued, how many individuals have exchanged it, and even how much it has sold in each trade.
This will prevent you from acquiring fraudulent NFTs from con artists who just right-click and save JPEGs and then sell them off as “originals” to ignorant art collectors.
3. Use Twitter.
Twitter remains the only online space where cryptocurrency enthusiasts are free to air their opinions just because the founder, Jack Dorsey, is a crypto fanatic.
Twitter remains the only social platform where NFTs and NFT art is discussed; it is the finest and best platform to find plenty of NFT projects and market and promote your NFT art and collectables.
The NFT community is very active on Twitter rather than on any other social media platform, including Instagram. This is to imply that in the NFT community, details matter and Twitter allows users to share specifics about their art in a manner that other social media platforms can’t. In the future update, Twitter plans to integrate NFTs alongside its platform.
4. Go on Youtube.
YouTube is another excellent platform for profitable NFT initiatives; there are NFT creators with a massive following on YouTube whose NFT projects are successful because they have a considerable following.
You should regularly subscribe to YouTube personalities who make videos on NFT and NFT artworks and collectables. They would guide you on which NFTs are worth your time and money. Watching a few videos can be refreshing, and it would be easier to understand the concept of how it works.
5. Follow up on cryptocurrency Niche Blogs.
Following up on a reputable cryptocurrency blog is essential for successfully investing in NFTs. Most NFT projects featured on major media outlets like Crypto Punks, Tech Crunch, CoinTelegraph, The Verge, and Mashable develop in size and value immediately.
Remember that NFT sites with a massive community are suitable NFT investments. These Media Sites are influential so that any NFT project featured on these outlets gets attention which leads to huge profits; hunting for NFT Projects on these sites will help you discover unique profitable NFT projects.
Pros and Cons of NFTs.
NFT has suddenly become an internet sensation causing it to become one of the significant innovations of our time.
The value of some NFTs has skyrocketed in the past year and attracted a lot of attention from the collector community.
Despite all the hype around NFTs, you still need to understand the pros and cons of NFTs. In this section, I will state the pros and cons to know when starting with NFTs.
Pros
1. Some physical collectables (such as art) have a long track record of appreciating value, making them one spot for innovation.
2. Buying and selling digital assets as NFTs generates profit to potentially far more buyers and sellers because they appreciate over time.
3. Smart contracts in blockchain technology can ensure that artists and creators get paid based on the use and resale of their work in the future.
Cons.
1. Since most NFTs represent static assets that don’t generate any income on their own, they are primarily valued by buyer demand. Consequently, sky-high prices may not last forever, and NFTs could lose substantial value.
2. Creating and selling NFTs is not free; you need to know how much to pay in gas fees, and in most cases, gas fees can add up to more than an NFT valued by other users on a marketplace.
3. NFT requires a vast community to make them profitable.
Conclusion.
The NFT movement is still in its early stage but has portrayed itself as a potential saviour on how cryptos can make the digital economy work for more people.
One thing about NFT is that it makes sense to create and sell digital assets as a creator. But when it comes to buying NFTs for their value as a collectable, it becomes a gamble because the matter is uncertain and will constantly fluctuate based on demand for the artwork itself.
Identifying a new NFT trend early can pay off big later on. For example, some digital works of art initially sold for nominal values have sold for thousands of dollars, which made lots of money for the creators.
If you have an eye for art, music, etc., and enjoy collecting, diving into NFT investing might make sense.
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