How to Make, Mint and Sell NFTs for beginners, a Crash Course for Artists
Blockchain technology, crypto economics, and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have taken the world by storm.
And like all novel technologies, NFTs are a blend of the poorly explained and the poorly understood — of miracle fortunes and ambusher grifts.
As a sold NFT Artist and a Senior developer in the Blockchain space since 2020, I wanted to help all the soon-to-be NFT Artists looking to “Ape Into” the NFT market share. This light and breezy primer will help you with the absolute basics of understanding what’s involved in making, minting and selling NFT art.
What is an NFT (for an Artist)?
NFT stands for Non-fungible token, a unique, un-splittable piece of data (art, music, code, anything really) that is attached to the Blockchain.
The Blockchain, for the purpose of teaching Artists, is a kind of super-password that we attach to our work. This super-password is difficult to spoof and allows for anything attached to the chain to be easily authenticated — thereby creating value. And that value is at the heart of what makes Crypto work: it’s not just any .jpg anymore, it’s now THE .jpg
The Blockchain allows us to authenticate mathematically (and pretty aggressively) what is and is not our very special .jpg. So you can screen capture an image all you want, it doesn’t work like that. You have to take that image and Mint it — or attach it to that special Blockchain password — in order for it to count as an NFT.
So if I took a screenshot of a Banksy, I don’t own it, but I have a copy of it on my harddrive.
But if I Minted that Banksy .jpg, it would be on the Blockchain and would be a proper NFT at that point. It’s not on your harddrive, per se — but rather stored inside your Wallet, a mixture of a Bank and the Bank Vault (more on that later). If anyone else puts that exact same Banksy on the Blockchain, we have easily methods to both differentiate and authenticate the two. We can even trace the transactional history of these two pieces all the way back to their original minting — and follow its ownership in the future, indefinitely!
But what does selling NFT Art mean to an Artist new to Crypto?
For you, NFTs represent a chance to capture a brand new market-share and make strong returns on your artwork (and no, the subject doesn’t have to be some ape, monkey or other erstwhile primate).
While it isn’t complicated to start selling NFTs, it does require a savvy, technical mind. If you’re good with software like Photoshop, Maya, Unreal — or solved some minor calamity with your PC, you’ll be right as rain to get started. Conversely, if you’ve accidentally installed Bonzi Buddy on your computer, Crypto is decidedly not for you. You’ll need to be technical, patient, and adaptable to compete in this new arena.
That said, NFTs represent an exotic new frontier for Artists who would’ve otherwise been ignored in the classical artworld — or would’ve produced meager sales on Etsy and the like.
How is selling my Art as an NFT better than an Art Fair, Gallery or Social Media
NFT Art is new and very hot right now, so it’s popularity can carry you much farther with its media churn. NFT Art sales also have a natural cascading effect where one sale turns into many — and secondary sales for your work are embedded in NFT Art Marketplaces.
Profit margins are vast in the NFT market. A $100 piece that would be scoffed at in the “Meatspace” can sell for $1000 in the Crypto world, easily — perhaps even comically. And thanks to the digital nature of the art, you can make multiple versions of the same piece, or carve up a single piece into 5 vastly more profitable variations.
Your work will also live on indefinitely. Paper fades, harddrives fail — but the chain will last as long as we do. That means if you put a single piece of art on the Chain, you are as creatively immortal as any one human in the history of the human race could be.
…If you’re one of those Artists with an ego, of course.
The New Forge, AI-generated Fantasy Names set on plaques and animating videos.
Making, Minting and Selling NFTs — Learning about cryptocurrency Wallets
Selling your Non-Fungible Token is Not as easy as selling Digital Art
Posting artwork on Etsy or other digital marketplaces is a fairly easy setup with tedious minutiae to input per piece. Crypto can be very difficult to set up without proper instruction… and is tedious all around! You’ll need the absolute basic apps and knowhow:
You won’t be getting anywhere without a Wallet; a chimera of an App, your Bank account, that Bank’s vault, and the banking headquarters itself(!). There are a few Wallet programs, but the most popular is Metamask, and it will be the Wallet we’ll talk about defaultly here.
You’ll also need a decent amount of Crypto currency to start to have a chance of making any more of it. It’s one of the dirty secrets of the Crypto space: you’ll need Ethereum to move Ethereum, not just make it!
Oh! And that brings up an important point: Crypto currency is not just Bitcoin! In this space, it’s almost exclusively a currency called Ethereum that will be your mouth-watering MacGuffin to horde. Remember: if you’re rolling in the Art NFT space, you’ll be dealing in mostly Ethereum!
What is a Crypto Wallet like Metamask?
Your Wallet is a complicated idea and a bit of a misnomer. A Wallet isn’t just your money. Your crypto Wallet contains your crypto-currency, crypto digital goods like NFTs and all your transaction history. If you’re a D&D nerd, think of your Wallet a Magic Bag of Holding.
If something happens to your Wallet, or somebody accesses it without your permission, they have your entire “bank account”: all the crypto currency and all the NFTs too, so your security in the Blockchain space is of the utmost importance
The most popular Wallet (because monopolies are what we’re all about in Decentralized land) is Metamask, and it’s the one I have the most familiarity with, so let’s stick with that while I teach you some of its absolute basics.
1st time set up of your crypto Wallet
Download Metamask. On Chrome, it’ll live in the upper right of your browser that you can click on anytime (you can disable this too in settings).
Rather than making you a password, Metamask will give you a sizable phrase-password. Do not lose this! It’s the only way to recover your Wallet in case of… well, any calamity. Metamask itself will ask for a traditional password that you’ll enter to access the app and see your account and approve transactions — but to recover your Wallet in an emergency, you’ll need that complicated Seed Phrase
You won’t be doing much of anything in Crypto without a decent chunk of Ethereum in your Wallet. So you’ll have to head to Coinbase (a popular money-to-crypto solution) or use Metamask itself to pump fiat currency into crypto currency, Ethereum specifically.
Making, Minting and Selling NFTs — Learning about NFT Marketplaces
The Differences Between Public and Private NFT Marketplaces
You’ll need to figure out which of the many marketplaces you’ll want to sell your art. For our benefit, let’s split the Crypto Art world into two spaces: Public and Private.
Public Marketplaces are vast, popular stops where quality control is minimal and the catalog is vast. With no barrier for entry except Gas Fees, it’s a similar experience to an Etsy.
Popular Public Marketplaces for NFTs are: Opensea and Rarible
Private Marketplaces are like private Art Galleries in the real world: exclusive, and usually by invitation only. Quality tends to be high across-the-board and all-but-impenetrable to the outside Artist. That said, Private Marketplaces are where you’ll find the highest quality of Art and Artistry… with a symmetrical price tag to boot.
Popular Private Marketplaces for NFT Art include: Maker’s Place, KnownOrigin and Foundation.
Watch out for Gas Fees on NFT Marketplaces
Gas is one of the strangest, most annoying and important concepts to learn as a new NFT Artist.
Gas is like a “tax” for using up processing power to run your request on everything from selling to buying to even moving cryptocurrency around. Faster requests (with a guarantee of not stalling and simply not being processed) tax you more.
Gas contracts and expands wildly from many external factors. One day it may take $10 to upload a .jpg, the very next few hours, $100 — is not an uncommon occurrence. Make sure you always have enough Ethereum to cover lurching Gas costs!
…Or don’t. Sometimes Gas can be so prohibitively costly that you’d be better off just not performing any transactions for the day. Smaller companies and Dealers can be paralyzed by Gas fees — ensuring only huge companies and entities can make trades. This impacts what is popular which in turn, affects what Artists tend to me make — for better or worse.
The point is, in the Crypto Space, patience isn’t just a virtue. It’s a business model.
Uploading is not Minting — Know the Difference!
Although the process is similar, when you upload your artwork, it’s not on the Blockchain yet. You have to Mint the art into an NFT, a somewhat complicated process that involves you “linking” the artwork to the Blockchain, thereby giving it authenticity, and of course, value.
Minting almost always requires a Gas Fee, and even on Opensea (which boasts free-ish Gas Fees), you’ll have an initial set up cost that will be substantial — and difficult to estimate as of this writing because Ethereum is that volatile
Once you upload and pay your Gas Fees, the art is officially Minted and ready for sale from a perspective buyer! Now all you have to do is market yourself and your work and before you know it, you’ll be a crypto-savant in no time!
And if not, I can always write another Blog.
