A year after Beeple’s collage art sold for $69M and set the NFT market on fire, the market continues to surge. Now approximated at a $44B market value, non-fungible tokens are opening new paths for creatives to make more money than ever. Meaning, regardless of your creative craft, it may be time to learn how to make an NFT.
1. Choose What to Make an NFT
First you will need to determine what your NFT will be. It can be any unique digital asset, e.g. a song (.mp4), image (.jpeg) or document (.pdf). It could be a photograph of an original painting, a meme, a voice recording, even a tweet. The crucial factor is that your digital file is original and you are the sole owner of the intellectual property.
Learn more about What NFTs are and Why Creators Should Care
2. Choose a Blockchain
After you have determined what original digital asset you will make an NFT, it is time to choose a blockchain to mint and sell it. The most popular blockchain for creatives and NFTs is the Ethereum blockchain, but other popular alternatives include Binance Smart Chain, Cosmos, Palm and more.
3. Set Up Your Digital Wallet
If you haven’t set up a digital wallet or purchased cryptocurrency yet, you will need to do so in order to make an NFT and sell it. Just like there are different blockchains, there are a variety of digital wallets you can use to hold your cryptocurrency and NFTs. Some of the most popular options include MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet or Trust Wallet.
Learn more about How to Protect Yourself When Investing in NFTs
4. Choose Your NFT Marketplace
Once you have your digital wallet set up and you have funded it with some cryptocurrency, it’s time to make an NFT and monetize your creative work. Just like the different blockchains and digital wallets, there are many different NFT marketplaces too. And research is necessary.
Each NFT marketplace has different fees associated with minting (or making an NFT) and buying / selling NFTs on their platform. Meaning, depending on your goals one marketplace may be better for you over another. For example, Opensea and Rarible offer “gas-free” (aka fee free) minting but buyers of NFTs on the platform have a fee or tax added upon purchase.
5. Connect Your Wallet and Make an NFT
Okay, you’ve set up your wallet, chosen your NFT marketplace and connected your wallet to it. Now it’s finally time to make an NFT. This process is called “minting”. Each marketplace has a slightly different minting process, but once you are connected it usually goes something like this:
- When logged into your chosen marketplace look for a button that says something like “upload”, “create” or “mint”.
- Upload your digital file and choose to sell a “single” one-off work or sell multiple additions of the same digital file.
- Add a title and/or a description to your NFT
6. Determine How to Sell Your NFT
The last stage of minting an NFT is determining the type of auction you will sell it through. Depending on the marketplace you chose, the options most likely include:
- Fixed Price: Set a fixed price for your digital asset and the first person to pay that price is the winner of the auction.
- Timed Auction: In a timed auction, bidders have a specific time period to submit final bids for the NFT. Highest bidder in the time period wins.
- Unlimited Auction: This type of auction has no set time. Bidders can submit offers and the owner of the NFT can end the auction upon acceptance of a bid.
Setting the Price of Your NFT
As we mentioned above, it is important to understand how the marketplace you chose applies fees. Some platforms add “gas” or fees to the minting process, some add fees to the buying and selling process and some do all three. These fees should be kept in mind when determining the minimum price you will need to sell your NFT.
Why Should You Make an NFT?
Sales prices on NFTs continue to soar as the market continues to expand rapidly. Meaning, there may never have been a more lucrative time to be a creator. If you have done your research and are interested in monetizing your creative work, creating an NFT could be a path to expanding your audience and interest in your work. However, not all NFTs will be successful, let alone sell. Therefore, it is important to understand all the costs that come with not only minting your first NFT but selling, transferring or trading it.
This article is meant to help you understand the process of turning your creative work into an NFT. Of course, getting involved in a new unregulated technology is a big decision. But as Gary Vaynerchuk states in his recent episode of the Chase Jarvis Live Show, the best way to learn is by starting small and creating.
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