How I sold my First NFT (and how you can, too!)
The NFT craze is a baffling phenomenon to even the most seasoned Futurist. Digital art is selling for millions, and a New Wave Gold Rush is well underway. But unlike the very simple, grueling process of panning for Gold — NFT Minting and selling is decently technical, and requires a fair bit of chump change just to get started.
But it is absolutely possible to learn how to make, Mint and sell your NFT. I should know, I’m a sold NFT Artist myself. My first NFT sale of .1 Ethereum, no bigger than 640 x 640 pixels, eclipsed a lifetime of profits from my Etsy store.
Here’s how I made it happen, and how you too can absolutely achieve your first NFT sale (and what to do afterwards!).
Q: Before we begin, just who the heck are you?
A: Hello there! My name is John Burnett, an Art Director, User Interface & User Experience Artist and international Mentor in the video game Industry for nearly 20 years. I’m also a Polymath, evenly(?) skilled in Art, Music, Acting, Writing, and Coding — with an emphasis on cross-pollinating those talents.
I was first introduced to NFTs working with a lovely little Blockchain company for a year learning what I consider “Web3 Green Beret Training ”. Learning blockchain, crypto and NFTs — all while pioneering these Industries was mind-bendingly difficult in the early 2021’s. But it did give me the unique perspective of the Blockchain Developer rather than your average “get rich quick” low-effort schemer.
I’m not saying I have the best advice or even a median of an experience — but I’m coming from, at the very least, a place of some tutelage and study in Art, Sales and Blockchain. I’m here as a semi-competent Blockchain Dev, not some rando, and I’m here to help.
But at the end of the day, I also want to make money off of my talent and my labor. I hope we’re not so different in this regard… because this is about getting paid in a way we never could in the Meatspace.
Q: What kinds of NFTs did you first create and Mint?
A: My first instinct was to take my back-catalog of digital art and Flash projects and start carving them into NFT-friendly pieces. Later I thought better of my initial strategy and I created The New Gods of Crypto, pixel art skulls made exclusively for the Crypto Art Market.
The New Gods of Crypto collection seemed more tonally appropriate at the time (Cryptopunks and Cyberpunk 2077 were big in ‘21). I also included little Blockchain axioms into the art itself, hoping to cash in on the Culture — as it was far more insulated at the time than it is now. In fact, take this as a cautionary tale: Crypto moves so fast it may be impossible to predict trends outside of being the trend.
But in the weeks after Minting The New Gods of Crypto, I wanted more varied works to capture a larger Market — whatever that looked like — and maximize sales. So I added in:
Crypto Ascendant — Golden Abstract starships made in the Renaissance Caravaggio tradition. These ships were actually the boss battles from a Flash game I was making for myself in the mid 2000’s. Got pretty far in development too before I hit a wall or moved on — can’t remember which. I couldn’t get over how gorgeous the ships looked once I rediscovered them. So I redesigned them a bit and Minted them from their decade’s long slumber.
The New Forge — Speaking of Flash, back in the 2000s, I also wrote a quick little random name generator program that helped people create amazing Fantasy names for items, locations, enemies, whatever. Back in 2018, I completely redesigned the app, leading to the highest organic traffic on my website. It made perfect sense to leverage that big traffic. So I generated Fantasy Names and inscribed them onto animating NFT plaques.
1st Worlds — Crypto Art is also very much a world of cutting-edge tech and New Media. It doesn’t get more New Media than creating art in Virtual Reality. 1st Worlds is a collection of “demi worlds” you can walk around in, made entirely in Virtual Reality on Google Tilt Brush. The NFT themselves are 4k videos, but upon purchase, buyers will find a Google Drive Link with the source .tilt file — which will allow them to walk around their artwork in virtual reality!
That means I have digital art, 3d art, AI generated Art, pixel art and New Media so new it requires a headset to truly appreciate. An excellent spread for a fledgling metaverse art empire. An okayish foundation for a first sale.
Q: Is there any Subject or Genre you avoided?
A: Absolutely! I avoided anything aggressively derivative from a popular work, and absolutely no monkey business; no gorilla or ape Art. No deifying Crypto Influeners either, like Musk and the like.
One major part of my strategy was to avoid the cliches that would molder quickly -and remember, Crypto moves even faster than Internet Speed. Nobody is going to want the knock-off of a long-forgotten meme months from now, let alone years, let alone the deathless span of Blockchain. Whatever you are planning to craft, make it your own. You deserve to be perpetuated into the future in perfect detail.
Q: How did you price your first NFT pieces?
A: One of the most sage pieces of advice I was ever given on contract and salary negotiations was, “John, they’re all made up numbers.”
So I priced my earliest Minted work accordingly.
At the time (and perhaps this will be an evergreen problem), insanely low-effort artwork was raking in the money. I’m a professional artist in the video game industry, and have been my entire professional life — so I’m used to high 5, low 6-figure salaries. Coupled with the fact that I was working for a Blockchain company, and therefore knew just how much stupid money cascaded on the Chain — I priced my NFT artwork very high… at least it felt that way as a relative unknown.
It didn’t help that Ethereum ballooned violently since the time I Minted my original 1st wave of NFTs. When your piece gets marked up by 250% simply by being on the shelf, you’ll have to reimagine the world of sales as a world full of self-inflating balloons. Without a vigilant eye, off that red balloon soars, untouchably high…
Not that my original pricing worked in the first place. Until I become “established”, anything less than an accessible price won’t help my popularity. And if this is a numbers game, the popularity must come first. So the original prices came down by nearly 75%, sometimes more until things hovered around $500 for digital and $1000 for virtual reality art.
Q: In What Marketplaces did you put your first NFTs?
A: Early 2021 made NFT sales seem like the Wild West — so I made sure to diversify my work and Mint a broad portfolio of contracts to understand the Frontier a little better.
The majority of my work made specifically for the Chain is on Opensea.
My Opensea contracts are all ERC-721s, although I tried to “game” the system by making multiple editions of The New Gods of Crypto. They are individual 721s, but in their Details you can read Edition: 1 of 3, 2 of 3, 3 of 3… and so on.
For Crypto Ascendant, I didn’t want to hand-key all the minutiae like I had to in Opensea and I wanted to experiment with the ERC-1155 contract’s capabilities. The only marketplace at the time I knew of that could handle that was Rarible, and one sizeable gas fee later, I had my 15 NFTs: 5 Pieces with 3 Editions apiece.
The Private Marketplaces like KnownOrigin, Foundation and SuperRare have yet to return my calls — surely a clerical error on their part.
I have had a few ideas for NFTs (and a soft-spot) for the marketplace Async. Async allows you to Mint your NFT in layers that are affected by time or even the buyer’s personal tastes. I made a painting of a flower and in the morning, noon, evening and night, the image changes. I didn’t Mint it because of gas fees and the art didn’t present well in Social Media — which meant it didn’t present well, period.
Q: How Long Did it Take You to Make Your First Sale?
A: About 8 months from first Minting.
The “average” amount of time for a sale varies wildly and depends on a legacy of data that simply isn’t there. I do know the ability to sell increases dramatically once you make your first sale — a breaking of the seal, as it were.
Elitist as it is to say, this also opens the door for you as an Established Artist to talk to and about other Established Artists. Decentralized platform of the future or not, it still has the egos and echoes of the Old World.
At the very least, your first sale opens a new social platform to you in the form of other 1st time or longtime sellers.
Q: How much money did you make on your first sale?
A: .1 eth, which at time of sale was about $400 usd.
To give you a sense of how wildly that number accordions: if the buyer had purchased the piece two months earlier, it would’ve been $600. If I had minted it a year earlier and he had bought it shortly thereafter: about $40. If Ethereum matched Bitcoin at the same time: $4000.
We should talk about that original $400 for a moment, though.
I have a modest little patch of Etsy to myself and it’s made me less than $100 in its entire lifespan — most of those initial sales by friends and family. The idea of selling a 640×640 piece of digital art on Etsy for more than free would be insane.
In the world of Crypto, where pixels sell by the college education-full, my $400 sale would be seen as an equal quantum of madness.
But in my world, $400 won’t make me rich and its loss will not make me poor. That’s another important note to pause and reflect upon. A first time NFT sale is a challenging, achievable, and pleasurable goal to hit. But getting filthy goddamn rich feels self-defeating, and definitely self-effacing, and I love being my goofy little self.
So for me, the cryptocurrency is important, sure — but it’s more about establishing a presence in this space as a Pioneer and a Light. Once that’s established, I can start to make the cryptocurrency work for me, never the other way around. Please consider a world where money is supposed to wear a suit and tie around you.
Q: Did you do anything special to make your first sale?
A: I connected to others and made myself available. Yes, it’s an insanely unsatisfying answer to give because you could hear it anywhere (no, no, no, please don’t leave, sit back down). But cliches also have withstood the test of time, and networking is as classical as the Arts themselves.
Always remember: does your perfect buyer have an opportunity to see you? Are you available, and not as some annoying shill, but as a real person with real contributions? Are your connections coming from a shared background or a shared goals? Would you friend yourself online and have a great time afterwards?
In the Social world, engaging in meaningful conversation is more important to the almighty Algorithm than hoisting jpegs every hour and liking every image you see. If you form relationships, alliances, exploratory conversations — that’s how you make a sale.
And the Great Paradox: it will take a frustrating amount of time to make that first sale and then quite suddenly, as if by accident, *poof*
It’s done.
A random crypto nouveau riche dropping thousands on your work is far from far-fetched in the Crypto world. But why not maximize your odds by also encapsulating the non-Whales as part of your strategy? Be a part of the rising wave of new artists; write, support, or try completely new ideas to elevate the NFT Art World. You have Direct Messages, be open, honest, and give it a shot. Connect.
Q: What did you do after the sale?
A: You mean besides celebrate?
No, but seriously — one of my first initiatives was to reach out to the buyer, who made himself known before the sale. That won’t always be the case, and some buyers may not really want to talk to your goofy ass (loveable though it may be).
But again, this particular buyer found me on Twitter before the sale (network!), and I made sure to thank him profusely, to which he was also very gracious. In the end, the most sage advice I’ve heard about building your brand is: look after your people.
I figure anyone who hands you money and creative self-satisfaction are close enough to kinfolk to at least write thank-you letters to.
