What I’ve learnt so far from 1 month of creating NFTs

About a month ago I decided to get into the NFT game. It looked like it was on the rise and I have a bunch of skills in visual art that enable me to create everything I needed to on my own without much investment other than my time.

I’m going to share with you the steps I’ve taken to get into this game and what I’m doing to become successful. Now, before I take this further, I’ll tell you I’m not yet a **“success”** by the means, not for what I want to achieve anyway… So this is by no means an experts *“How to get rich from creating NFTs”* guide. This is merely my experience so far and I’m sharing with you what I’ve discovered. I’m hoping it will benefit some of you aspiring NFT creators out there, or possibly just be an interesting read…

So, now that’s over let me take you through the steps I’ve taken to get started in this business and why I think it’s worth trying if you have the means to do so.

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#Step 1 – Research

The first thing I did was to look at the current market to assess my competition. What’s out there and how can one improve on it?

Well, the first thing I noticed was that there were a LOT of avatar style NFTs and to be fair they seem to be doing well. However, they seem to copy one another. I’ve never seen so many laser eyes, yacht clubs and different kinds of ape in my life!

My view on this was to look at a completely different approach and come up with an original idea that doesn’t have a ton of competition.

The NFTs that seem to really take off have good websites, some backbone and story behind the project and are very active on social media. It’s clear if you want to achieve something out of this you need all of these things.

There seem to be a lot of rug pulls out there, projects that promise a lot and reel in the crowds, only to disappear into thin air with everyone’s investment.

Looking as professional and committed as possible is paramount to gaining investment.

A lot of the 10,000 NFT collections are generated with AI. The artists usually create a set of different mouths, eyes, accessories etc and set the AI to combine them into various unique avatars. Clever. I was wondering how they can create 10k pieces of original art in no time at all. They also then use a script to upload these to the marketplace instead of individually minting each NFT.

Like me, you may not have access to this kind of knowledge or tech. It’s clear that collections do really well as opposed to throwing random single NFTs on the marketplace and hoping for a sale.

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It’s clear now that to be successful you really need to make a **collection**. I’m going to have to do it by hand and upload them myself and make the project unique, so it stands out, with a website and social media accounts in place and active.

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#Step 2 – Ideas

Coming up with an original idea is tough. I used influences from my gaming days to generate the idea for my project. It’s a good idea to focus on something that interests you, otherwise you’ll lose focus. Trust me when I say, there’s a massive road ahead with a LOT of work to be done.

My idea: A bottle cap collection. Depth: Create an entire world that these caps lie in with a lore and as much detail as I can add. Influences from Fallout and various games ive played in the past as well as some tv shows and work I’ve previous done.

I think it’s important to add some story behind the project. Art doesn’t always have to just be a pretty picture. Something with depth and meaning can add a lot of value to the work and gives you an angle to work when promoting the project.

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#Step 3 – Creation

Time to drop the gaming, watching sports and time with the wife and concentrate on this project!

*cracks fingers*

This is the hard part, but the fun part too! As long as you’ve selected a cool subject to work with that interests you and are genuinely excited about getting the project up and running, the time you put into it will be enjoyable.

It took me a few weeks to put the website together, generate the first set of 25 caps and establish my social media accounts.

Once I had the first things in place I was ready to roll out.

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#Step 4 – Marketplace

There’s a few decisions you need to make here before choosing a marketplace. The first decision is to chose which crypto currency and blockchain you want to sell your project on. You can’t put the same NFTs on different market places, that would make them fungible. Not unless you give them something visually different for each marketplace.

I chose to go with OpenSea and ETH on the Etherium block chain. There’s a few reasons why I did this and not on the Polygon chain. Most of the serious buyers out there *seem* to be operating on the Etherium blockchain, so as my target audience will be these investors I want to make sure im accessible to them.

That being said, there’s a LOT to say for Polygon. The lack of gas fees is amazing and I am personally utilising that for the unlockable content on my caps. It’s also great if you want to do giveaways as it wont cost you $100 in Gas to send someone an NFT for free.

If I started again, I might have chosen the polygon chain, but a few things make me nervous about it, 1 being the release of ETH 2.0 and the second being that it’s really hard to transfer your crypto over to it in the first place. None of the steps are actually hard, but you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get there and it’ll cost you gas each time you transfer it.

If you guys want I can explain how to do this, just let me know in DM or i can edit this post and add the information to it.

Other marketplaces that seem to have a good following are CNFT using ADA and Solanart. For me they didn’t feel established enough yet to go there, although I want to try them out in the future with new projects.

With OpenSea you want to connect a compatible wallet > Create your account > Create a collection > Upload your art to this collection.

Within the collection options, I advise you set a re-sale creators fee as well, anything from 2.5% to 10% is allowed. This way if you do well and anyone re-sells your art on opensea you claim some money for any future sale.

When you upload your art, make sure to add some unique properties. These properties will determine the rarity of the NFT and make some more valuable than others depending on the properties **uniqueness**.

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#Step 5 – Sell, Shill, Promote

So now you’ve chosen your marketplace and uploaded your art to it you need to get active on the following social media platforms and sell yourself, your idea and your artwork.

Having a decent website will help here as you don’t have to explain the in-depth details about your project every time you talk to someone, just a neat summary to gain their interest.

The platforms you need to be as active as possible on are:

Twitter, Instagram & Discord. It also helps to be active on others too, but those three are the most important.

The most important thing is to stay active, post everyday and **engage with the community**. You’re not just trying to attract the attention of big investors. Artist buy from artists. I’ve invested in a few different projects myself just from chatting to other artists and talking about their work. If I know they are working hard and determined to do well it’s worth throwing a bit of crypto at and seeing what happens. It’s just like investing in your favourite alt coins. They will feel this with you, so if you engage frequently and show you’re committed to the work they may take a stab at it.

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#Step 6 – Your first sale

It feels amazing when you get that sale, like all the hard work is amounting to something.

Don’t worry if it doesn’t come quickly. The best advice I have is to stick at it, keep posting, try and enjoy the work and be persistent with NFT releases and putting new work out there.

Like anything in life, 90% of people give up because they don’t see instant results. Don’t quit!

So far I’ve been up and running just over 2 weeks and have 6 investors buy into my project. It’s not rocketing, yet, but I wont stop until it does! Just like HODLing into your favourite crypto currency, HODL into yourself and your desires to achieve something with NFTs. You can do it!

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If you’re interested and want to understand what I’ve been yapping about in this thread, my website is https://digi-caps.com I’m posting it here so you can have a look and get an idea for the work I’ve had to put in to get to this stage. I’m not here looking for a sale from you guys, I just want to help, so I’m not linking my OpenSea account, but if you do want any information like that just DM me.

Hope this helps.