How To Create Your Own NFT: A Detailed Beginners Guide
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An NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is a collectible art piece or item with the basis of blockchain tokenization. NFT storage is in the blockchain for fast verification, and you can certify digital authenticity and ownership.
NFTs were first brought into the limelight by Logan Paul, Mark Cuban, and the NBA, but they’ve become quite popular.
You don’t have to be a famous billionaire or celebrity to create an NFT. Companies like Rarible, OpenSea, and Nifty Gateway have made it easy for ordinary people to own NFTs.
The potential for making lots of money has led many people to create NFTs with the hope of cashing in on the craze.
Here’s our step-by-step guide on how to create (mint) your own NFT and sell it.
Contents
- How to Create Your Own NFT
- How Do I Make My NFT Account Free?
- What Makes a Good NFT?
- Can You Create Your Own NFT?
- How Do You Make an NFT and Sell It?
- What Kinds of NFTs Sell Best?
- How Much Does It Cost to Create an NFT?
- How Can I sell NFT Art for Free?
- Why is My NFT Not selling?
- How Can I sell an NFT Fast?
- Who Buys NFTs?
- Are NFT Like Stocks?
- How Do I Start Selling NFT Art?
- Why is NFT Art So Expensive?
- How Do I Create an NFT Art Design?
- How Do I Start an NFT Business?
- FAQs
- The Bottom Line
How to Create Your Own NFT
It’s surprisingly easy if you want to create your own NFT.
Rarible and OpenSea are the two leading platforms in the creation of NFTs. Rarible deals with the cumulative sales figures, while OpenSea is an NFT webstore.
Accordingly, the two platforms allow you to upload your art and develop collections.
Let's look into how to create NFTs.
Pick the Digital Asset
Determine the digital asset you intend to convert to an NFT. It’s the first step to creating your NFT.
The digital asset can be a tweet, GIF, meme, video game, music, picture, or a custom painting.
(Image credit: NFT, Andrey Metelev, Unsplash)
An NFT has a single owner, and there’s no duplicate of the NFT. That’s what gives the NFT value. Also, ensure that you’re the owner of the item’s intellectual property rights.
Select Your Blockchain
Once you’ve decided on the digital asset, you need to begin the process of minting your NFT.
Therefore, you need to select what blockchain technology you’ll use for the NFT.
The most common blockchain technology among NFT creators is Ethereum. Other common options include Cosmos, Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot, and Tezos.
(Image Credit: Ethereum, Kanchanara, Unsplash)
Set Up Your Digital Wallet
If this is your first time hearing about a digital wallet, you’ll need one before minting your NFT because you need cryptocurrency to fund the initial investment. Plus, the wallet provides access to the digital assets you own.
Some well-known NFT wallets include Coinbase, Trust Wallet, AlphaWallet, Math Wallet, and MetaMask.
Once your digital wallet is ready, you need to buy cryptocurrency. A majority of NFT platforms accept Ether.
Choose Your NFT Marketplace
Once your wallet has cryptocurrency, It’s time to mint and, hopefully, begin to sell the NFT. And for this, you’ll need a marketplace.
The best NFT marketplaces include ThetaDrop, Mintable, Nifty Gateway, Foundation, SuperRare, Rarible, NBA Top Shot, Cryptopunks/Larva Labs, Axie, and OpenSea.
Therefore, you should research the NFT marketplace that’ll suit your NFT needs.
For instance, NBA Top Shot is a marketplace for basketball-oriented NFTs, while Axie marketplace focuses on Axie Infinity, an NFT game.
OpenSea is the best pick if you’re just starting out. It gives you room to create your NFT, and it’s leading in the sale of NFTs.
Once you’ve chosen your NFT marketplace, you need to link it to the digital wallet. That way, you’ll pay for the fees required to create the NFT and, at the same time, hold your proceeds from NFT sales.
Upload the File
You’re officially ready to begin minting your NFT. The NFT marketplace of choice will guide you on uploading the digital file to the platform.
Once you finish this process, you’ll have turned the digital file into an NFT.
Set Up Your Sales Process
The last stage in minting your NFT is deciding how you intend to monetize the NFT. Therefore, depending on the platform you’ve chosen to use, you can do the following:
- Sell the NFT at a fixed price: When you decide to sell the NFT at a fixed price, you sell the NFT to the first person willing to buy it at the stated price.
- Setting an auction with a time frame: When the auction has a time frame, it lets those interested in the NFT propose their bid within the set duration.
- Have an auction with no time limit: In this case, you’ll have the ability to control when the auction closes.
If you’ve chosen to set up an auction, you’ll need to decide the minimum price. Accordingly, if you’ve sold the NFT to a secondary market, set it so that royalties continue to trickle in on the NFT.
Iconic crypto queen by Paris Hilton (Image Credit: Rarible)
Depending on the pricing and platform, there could be charges such as transaction fees when moving money to your wallet from the buyer’s wallet, commissions for the sale, minting fees, and a listing fee.
Additionally, fees may fluctuate because of how volatile cryptocurrency prices can be. So, take a close look at the fees for minting your NFT so that the sale can be worthwhile.
How Do I Make My NFT Account Free?
Here’s how to mint NFTs for free on Rarible:
- Connect Rarible.com with your wallet
- Click on ‘create’ and fill in all the necessary information about the NFT
- Select the option for ‘free minting’
- Click on “create item’ as you sign the free authorizations using your wallet
- And that’s it! You’re good to go.
Once there’s a purchase, the NFT minting takes place in your wallet, which then gets automatically transferred to the new owner's wallet.
If you want to mint for free on OpenSea, follow the steps below:
- Install the MetaMask wallet
- Connect the wallet to OpenSea
- Create your NFTs and mint them on OpenSea for free
- Go ahead and list the NFT
What Makes a Good NFT?
These are the top five indicators of a good NFT:
- The NFT's unique properties: Look into how rare the properties of the chosen NFT are.
- Seller verification: Like social media sites, platforms like OpenSea have a blue checkmark to show verification.
- The transaction fees of the market platform: Before you make a purchase, ensure you’re aware of the current fees.
- Market volume and the NFT liquidity: Experts advise that you split your NFTs into smaller portions to increase the rate of liquidity.
- Performance of the other NFTs on sale by the seller: Check your seller's account to confirm how the other NFTs are doing. It helps to ensure that the NFT you’ve chosen is worth the investment.
Can You Create Your Own NFT?
Yes, you can create your own NFT.
Several online platforms can help you mint and sell your NFT. Therefore, if you want to make an NFT out of a piece of art, select your NFT platform of choice and create a wallet.
The wallet helps you pay any required fees while also paying for sales made.
How Do You Make an NFT and Sell It?
To make your NFT on OpenSea and sell it, follow the steps below:
- Set up a MetaMask account: Having a wallet is one of the most critical steps in creating your NFT and selling it. Head over to metamask.io and for the sake of recovering your wallet in the future, take note of the seed phase.
View of MetaMask account (Image credit: MetaMask)
- Tokenize the art: Upload your file to give it the required stats and properties to distinguish it from other NFTs.
- List your NFT in the marketplace: To sell the first NFT, you need to pay the gas fee as part of the blockchain transaction.
What Kinds of NFTs Sell Best?
The best NFTs to look out for are those with an excellent first introduction into the NFT space and their potential use in the future.
Here are some of the NFT projects to look out for:
- Decentraland
- Autograph.io
- Claylings
- Adam Bomb Squad
- Creature World
- Nouns
- Meka Verse
- Moon Boyz
- Invisible Friends
- Cryptoon Goonz
- Propertys
- Women Rise
- Flyfish Club
- Crypto Baristas
- VeeFriends
How Much Does It Cost to Create an NFT?
The cost of minting an NFT depends on your chosen blockchain. Here are the three most popular blockchains for creating NFTs and their costs.
Polygon
Polygon is one of the blockchains you can use to mint NFTs while using OpenSea. So, you can create and list the NFT for free with the polygon blockchain.
Accordingly, there are no upfront charges when you mint NFTs on Polygon. This is possible because there’s the lazy minting option when you choose to mint your NFT with Polygon.
However, you’ll incur a 2.5% service charge, which gets deducted from the selling price of the NFT after the sale. Remember that you determine the selling price based on Ether when using Polygon.
Solana
Solana ranks as the 2nd most popular blockchain used for NFTs. Furthermore, Solana is an affordable alternative for creating NFTs.
There exist three transactions when minting on Solana – two minting approval transactions and another transaction for when you list the NFT.
So, one transaction costs 0.00045 SOL. 1 SOL translates to $95. Therefore, the transaction fee is $0.04.
For the three transactions, the cost adds up to 0.00135SOL. By January 2022, the cost of minting the NFT rose to $0.12 at $95/SOL.
Ethereum
As mentioned earlier, Ethereum is the most common blockchain for minting NFTs. But what would it cost you to create an NFT on this blockchain?
Initially, minting on this platform would have a transaction fee of $50 to $100, which depended on ETH price and the time of the day.
That’s no longer the case. Nowadays, you can mint your NFT on this blockchain free of charge.
So, if you want to create an NFT on this blockchain, you can select your best marketplace. Once you’ve connected the wallet, you may choose between lazy and regular minting.
What is Regular Minting?
Regular minting involves paying upfront costs such as transaction costs. For example, creating your NFT via Ethereum is quite expensive, and it all is dependent on Ethereum's current price, day of the week, and the time of day.
What is Lazy Minting?
Lazy minting is when creators and artists create NFTs without incurring upfront costs. When you opt for lazy minting, you don’t register your NFT until there’s an NFT purchase.
How Can I sell NFT Art for Free?
You can list the NFT you intend to sell without the need to pay any fees as long as you’re using Polygon blockchain on OpenSea or the Mintable marketplace.
Why is My NFT Not selling?
Here’s why your NFT may not be selling:
- The artist may not be well-known
- There’s a lack of social media presence to market the NFT
- You lack community-building skills on social platforms
- When supply for the NFT exceeds demand
- The NFT isn’t rare enough
- Marketing too hard and leaving little to the imagination
- Choice of blockchain
- Pricing where the price might be too high or too low
How Can I sell an NFT Fast?
To get your NFT selling fast, here’s what you need to do:
- Promote your NFT on social media platforms: Keep in mind that social media platforms play a significant role in showcasing your artwork.
- Add your NFT collection to the NFT calendar: An NFT calendar advertises the best NFTs from different marketplaces.
- Provide a backstory: If you’re serious about gaining relevance in the NFT community, then you’ll need to tell a story about your digital art.
- List your NFT on different marketplaces: Upload the NFT to as many marketplaces as possible.
Who Buys NFTs?
Research shows that most of the buyers of NFTs are high-income earners between the ages of 20 and 30.
Their sole intention is to make a profit, while those over the age of 60 generally have no interest at all.
The survey showed that average NFT buyers have an income above $150,000. So, the sole aim of those who buy NFTs is to cash in on short-term profits.
Are NFT Like Stocks?
No, NFTs aren’t like bonds or stocks where you’re already aware of the investment's intrinsic value. The market value of NFTs is driven by the amount the crypto community wishes to pay.
How Do I Start Selling NFT Art?
Want to start selling your NFT art? Here’s your step-by-step guide:
- Buy Ether because most NFT marketplaces use the Ethereum blockchain — thus, the need for Ether to perform transactions.
- Create your wallet for Ether storage. Also, it’s advisable to have two wallets for ease of transaction.
- Transfer the Ether to your wallet.
- Mint your NFT and select the best NFT marketplace, such as OpenSea.
- Finally, market and sell the NFTs.
Why is NFT Art So Expensive?
There can be several copies of the same piece of art, but only a single original piece exists. Therefore, this makes the original piece of art irreplaceable and valuable.
In addition, other factors that add to the value of an NFT include future value, liquidity premium, buyer’s perception, underlying value, ownership history, and utility.
How Do I Create an NFT Art Design?
- Choose your NFT marketplace: You can choose the marketplace from two different categories of marketplaces: curated and self-service platforms.
- Set up your digital wallet: You expect to store the NFTs and your cryptocurrencies in the digital wallet. You’ll need Ether for minting the NFTs.
- Create a collection: You’re not yet creating the digital art tokens at this point. Click on ‘my collections’ on your OpenSea account. Doing this creates the foundation for you to show the artwork you’ve created.
- Create the digital art tokens: You have the option of creating stand-alone or edition tokens. Once you’ve added all the necessary details about the tokens, click ‘create.’ You’ll have added the NFT to your chosen blockchain.
- List the artwork so that you can make the first sale: You can either state the price of the NFT or a fixed price. If it’s your first time selling NFTs, you need to pay gas fees.
- Promote the NFT on social media: To increase the chances of selling your NFT artwork, you need to create a substantial list of fans on social media platforms to create an awareness of the NFT.
How Do I Start an NFT Business?
Here are the top ideas for those who want to join the NFT world. Remember, the sky's the limit regarding the amount of money you can potentially make with NFTs:
- Create an NFT-based online course: You may consider creating a masterclass to enlighten people about NFTs.
- Write a blog about NFTs: The internet is hungry for rich NFT-related content. After that, you can monetize your blog through ads.
- Create an NFT forum: There’s a need for a forum suitable for NFT enthusiasts, sellers, and creators.
- Become a broker for NFTs: Because of the high demand for NFTs, you can start your brokerage services for sellers and buyers to transact these tokens.
- Create a newsletter for NFTs: There still aren’t many newsletters that dissect the NFT subject well.
- Write an ebook about NFTs: There’s potential to earn up to seven figures in royalties if you write one of the best cryptocurrency ebooks.
FAQs
What is the Most Expensive NFT?
The most expensive NFT ever sold was the Merge. It was a creation of Pak, a renowned artist. The NFT sale was on Nifty Gateway in December 2021, and it fetched a tidy sum of $91.8M.
Can I Make an NFT on My Phone?
Yes, you can make an NFT on your phone. Some of the apps you can use to make an NFT include Token.art, 8bit Painter, SuperMe, Pixelchain, NFT Creator, Sketchar, and GoArt.
Do You Need to be Famous to Sell NFTs?
No, you don’t need to be famous to sell NFTs. However, you need to build your reputation. So, getting your first break may seem like an almost impossible task.
How Do I Make Anything NFT?
To make anything NFT, you first need to figure out what an NFT is. Then, choose the platform on which to sell your NFT. After that, set up your wallet where you’ll store the NFT you want to mint.
Can You Display NFT Art?
Yes, you can display your NFT art on platforms such as Meural. The platform allows connection from your wallet.
The Bottom Line
The sale of NFTs is gaining popularity, and so are the prices. Consequently, as an NFT creator, there’s lots of money you can make.
However, some NFTs aren’t marketable.
So, you need to be prepared to experience losses in creating your NFT. One of the ways to avoid losses is through selling valuable NFTs. Plus, you’ll need to set the minimum cost to generate profit after offsetting all associated fees.
The NFT you intend to mint might be the next big thing. There's only one way to find out!
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