This guide explains step-by-step how to create your own NFT art and also how to sell your freshly minted NFT artworks.
This is a generic guide created to work with all the popular NFT marketplaces so you can choose one that suits your specific artstyle best.
Video guide
Things to know before you start
How we define NFT art or CryptoArt
At this moment there is no universally accepted definition for NFT art or CryptoArt. So for now, let’s use the following definition:
NFT art is art that uses blockchain technology in its creation and/or distribution.
NFTs quickly explained
NFTs are a way to verify true ownership of a digital item by attaching a unique key to it via a process called minting.
When an NFT is minted, data that represents ownership is stored on a blockchain network and whoever started the minting process is given the key that unlocks the ownership data on the blockchain.
When you buy an NFT, you buy the only verifiable version of the item. This naturally increases its value because the item is unique in comparison to it’s copies that are non-NFT versions.
Copyright
Minting artwork does not automatically mean you own the rights for publication, unless it is your own artwork.
We therefore strongly advise you to only mint artwork you created yourself and of which you have full ownership in order to avoid any copyright claims from other parties.
Overview of all steps
Minting NFTs requires no extensive knowledge of cryptocurrency or blockchain technology and you can start right away by following this video.
Step 1: Set up a crypto wallet
Step 2: Add funds to the crypto wallet
Step 3: Create a digital item
Step 4: Choose an NFT Marketplace
Step 5: Upload your artwork
Step 6: Decide on royalties
Step 7: Tokenizing the artwork
Step 8: Wait for Bids
Step 1: Set up a Crypto Wallet
You need a personal crypto wallet to store the cryptocurrency that is required by NFT marketplaces to pay for the minting fees and auction fees.
A crypto wallet is also needed to connect to the NFT marketplace and serves as your personal account.
When choosing a wallet for minting, buying and selling NFT artwork, the wallet has to support:
- Ether currency. At this moment the Ethereum blockchain is most commonly used for NFT artwork and Ether is it’s native currency
- Compatible with the NFT marketplace for connecting
Taking that into consideration, we advise you to use either MetaMask or Trust Wallet since these two software wallets are supported by all NFT marketplaces, are safe to use and support the Ether currency.
Step 2: Add funds to your wallet
There are fees to pay when minting, buying and selling NFTs. These fees are paid from your wallet that is connected to the NFT marketplace.
Add funds to your wallet by transferring Ether from any other exchange to your personal wallet receive address and wait for the transaction to complete.
Step 3: Create a digital item
For this step we assume you already have a general idea of which item you want to tokenize into an NFT artwork.
It can be any file format the NFT platform accepts such as GIFs, pngs, jpegs, videos, and 3d Models.
Take note that there’s no rule or guideline for what and how NFT art should look like. You get to decide how and what kind of art you want to create.
The only restriction is the file size limit imposed by the NFT platform. A larger file size means the network requires more computational power to register and data check the ownership data on the blockchain, which increases the mining fee.
Step 4: Choose a NFT Marketplace
With the explosive interest in NFTs, along comes a wide variety of new marketplaces.
Most NFT marketplaces offer the same options, however some have become associated with a specific artstyle or NFT type.
You need to consider which marketplace you want to pick as it affects your NFT sales, because some audiences are more present on certain marketplaces.
For example, some NFT marketplaces focus more on NFT artwork and others more on collectibles or music.
We advise you to browse the NFT marketplaces in the description of this video and make a choice based on the type of artwork you want to sell.
The top 5 most popular marketplaces specifically for NFT art at this moment are:
- OpenSea
- SuperRare
- NiftyGateway
- Rarible
Once you have chosen a marketplace, sign up by connecting your crypto wallet to it and complete the registration process and confirm the connection between your wallet and the NFT marketplace.
Once your wallet is connected, your NFT marketplace account is instantly created.
Step 5: Upload your artwork
Depending on the marketplace you choose, the general way to start is by clicking the Create button.
You are presented with a few options such as a single file or multiple files that are part of a collection, the name of the artwork, the sale price, item attributes and the listing price.
Step 6: Decide on royalties and commissions
Another important step to consider is whether to enable royalties or not.
After minting a new NFT, most marketplaces offer the option to enable commissions at a percentage you desire.
This means that over all future sales of that specific NFT, you are paid a commission.
At this moment, commissions work when NFTs are bought and sold on the same marketplace, but not when exchanged via a marketplace other than the marketplace it was originally minted on. This will however most likely be solved in the future.
Step 7: Tokenizing the artwork
This is the step where the actual minting happens.
When all required fields are filled in, you are ready for the final step: tokenizing the digital file and minting it into a Non-Fungible Token.
Click the create item button and wait for the process to complete. What happens in the background is attaching the unique ownership data to the file that becomes the NFT and giving you the ownership key, which will be stored on your wallet which is connected to the marketplace where the tokenization process takes place.
The ownership data is registered on a block in the blockchain and constant data checks are done by miners via a process called Proof-of-Work.
This process costs computational power, which you pay for in the blockchains native currency in the form of a fee and is in turn paid to the miners for lending their computer power.
Step 8: Wait for bids
After listing your artwork on a NFT marketplace, anyone can easily place a bid on it.
This means however that interested buyers have to be able to find it first. You will most likely need to promote your art as discoverability varies significantly across different NFT marketplaces.
Some of the more popular NFT marketplaces have a large community or associated Discord to assist in your efforts. You should check them out to promote your art.
Step 9: other options
After listing your artwork you have a few other options:
- Transfer the token to another platform. This is helpful when you discover your ideal audience is present elsewhere.
- Adjust the listing price. This is especially helpful when you see that a certain type of art is trending, and this will positively affect the sale price.
- Burn the token. This means the token is sent to an inaccessible wallet address. Remember, the token data itself can never be removed from the blockchain as that is part of the ‘immutable’ mechanism inherent to blockchain technology. You can however remove unwanted tokens from your collection by burning them.
Outro
Are you ready to create NFT art and sell it on a NFT marketplace?
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