How I Sold My First Collectible NFT
A Narrative on the Beginning of My Journey in the NFT World
Earlier this month, I woke up to an exciting email from OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace on the internet at this time. “Congratulations, your item sold!” It had been 12 days into my newfound hobby, and I was ecstatic.
Although I’m not new to selling creative content online, selling an NFT is a whole new experience.
I’ve documented all the steps leading up to the sale of my first NFT. Read on to find out more.
A Short Introduction to NFTs
If you are reading this, chances are you know something about NFT already. If you are inclined to learn more about NFTs like me, there’s also a good chance that you’ve already heard the name “Beeple.”
“CROSSROAD,” a digital artwork by Mike Winkelmann, a digital artist who goes by the alias “Beeple,” was sold for 6.6 million USD on Nifty Gateway, a digital art auction platform. The sale happened on February 25, days before “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS,” another piece from Beeple went on auction at Christie’s, a world-renown art auction house, making the price sky-rocketed to 1.8 million USD within an hour. The piece eventually fetched more than 69 million USD.
Beeple sold his digital art pieces in the form of NFTs (Non-fungible tokens). Essentially, an NFT is a unit of data on a blockchain, a decentralized digital ledger that can keep track of every transaction on it. Because an NFT on a blockchain is unique and non-interchangeable (non-fungible), we can verify ownership of an NFT with blockchain technology. And because an NFT is, in essence, a chunk of data, various formats of digital files can be made into NFTs, including video, text, audio, image, and 3D model files.
The NFT concept has given birth to a new digital economy where ownership of “digital information” can be bought and sold. And, according to the Beeple auctions, there’s much money to be made in this economy. So, it’s not surprising that the online interest in the search term ‘nft’ rose drastically all over the world since February.
Jumping into the World of NFTs
My curiosity about NFTs grew stronger every time I read or watched something about Beeple auctions on the internet. As someone who’s been creating creative digital content (mostly digital photographs) for years myself, I decided to jump into the world of NFTs in late March, admittedly also FOMO-stricken.
When a new technology offers an opportunity to pursue what I love as a hobby and an opportunity to earn more, I naturally jump to it.
Choosing a Marketplace
There are many NFT marketplaces on the internet. As far as my opinions go, I decided to go with OpenSea for many reasons. It is the biggest NFT marketplace at this time. It offers a user-friendly website design and a one-time entry fee (gas fee).
OpenSea also allows you to create your own ‘collection,’ which is basically a smaller marketplace within OpenSea. You can add collectible NFTs to your collection, creating your very own cryptocurrency in the form of NFTs in the process. You can also determine your commission for every resale of the NFTs in your collection. This means that you’ll get a commission for every resale of your NFTs in the market.
To keep this article concise, I will not discuss how to open an account on OpenSea here. If you choose to follow in on my path and open an account on OpenSee, you will be creating NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, and the gas fee is also another topic worth looking into, but I won’t discuss it here either.
Creating Collectible NFTs
To sell an NFT, you’ll need an NFT. Profiting from an NFT is the same as profiting from any physical object of economic value. You can either buy an NFT from another artist and resale it at a higher price, or you can create your own NFTs and sell them.
I chose to create my own NFTs in sets of digital collectibles for two reasons. First, I like collectibles. I enjoy collecting physical items such as rare stamps, used photographic film cartridges, and books. Second, collectible items tend to have more value over time, especially those with a limited number in circulation. My initial plan is to create a set of collectible NFTs with a hundred pieces in the complete collection.
What to create, what style should I follow?
I like retro-pixel-style graphics. Although made popular by obsolete video games of the 80s, the style has become iconic in today’s pop culture. And, judging by the success of the Punks and their variants, the retro-pixel art style most likely has a bright future in the NFT world. I decided to go with this style.
I set off to design digital collectibles, and I devised a strategy that consists of only 3 rules:
- They must be unique and not related to any established brands or figures to avoid any potential legal problems in the future.
- They must convey some aesthetic value, at least on the level I’m content with, in both visual and narrative manners.
- To create capital value, they must be SUPER RARE! Each set will contain 100 unique items, and that it.
No matter how much I would love to have a Punk in my wallet, I don’t prefer their aesthetic style. So, instead of creating a variant of the Punks, I came up with something different.
I came up with the idea of the Cryptisects and the Pixel WhaleCats, the initial two of my pixel art collectible NFTs projects with unique hand-drawn pixel art collectible items representing colorful insect-like creatures and adorable ‘WhaleCats,’ respectively.
Specialized software for creating pixel arts are, for example, Aseprite and Pyxel Eidt. They are not free software but very affordable. Some pixel artists are comfortable with Adobe Photoshop which is also a popular software for creating this pixel art. All of them are capable of creating animations.
“The Cryptisects” is a pixel-art-style collectible NFTs project with 100 unique hand-drawn imaginary insect-like creatures. They are carefully crafted, colorful, and rare. There will be only 100 of them in this set, and each cost only 0.025 ETH.
The short passage above describes the Cryptisects project as seen on the project’s page on OpenSea. As described, the Cryptisects are imaginary creatures. Therefore, I can make each piece unique. And, because they are imaginary, the limits to the design are only my imaginations.
Logically speaking, each Cryptisect is unique, so each is equally ‘super rare’ as another. However, as a project’s gimmick, I decided to categorize them into different levels according to their ‘perceived rarity.’ The 5 level-1 Cryptisects are the first five that came out (discovered) first, and so on.
“The Pixel WhaleCat” is a collectible NFTs project with 100 unique “WhaleCats” designs in pixel art style. Each WhaleCat is hand-drawn, carefully crafted, and animted. Adopt your own today and give him a sweet home! The adoption fee for every WhaleCat is only 0.039 ETH.
Even though the Cryptisect project is still a work-in-progress when I write this article, I feel that I have gathered enough experience to start another project in parallel.
The idea of the Pixel WhaleCat came to me as I was trying to see what can be added or improved in my first project. At this time, I’ve already seen countless adorable pixel art characters on OpenSea. That’s exactly what my Cryptisects are lacking — character. I may be able to put wonderful details in a Cryptisect, but it will always lack a ‘character’ relatable to the human viewers, my potential collectors.
I love cats, and a lot of people do. I thought that a cat-related character would be a good idea. There are many cats in the NFT world already. The iconic ones, for example, are the legendary Nyan Cat and the CryptoKitties. Again, mine must be something different.
I thought of mixing a cat with some other animal, and I came up with a character that seems viable — a whale with a cute cat face and a little pair of wriggling cat ears — the WhaleCat. The slang ‘Whale’ in the cryptocurrency circle also means an investor who holds a significant percentage of a specific token circulated in the market. A WhaleCat is both cute and wealthy!
The Pixel WhaleCat concept is also suitable for collectibles because there can also be as many WhaleCats as the imagination goes.
Pricing Your Pieces
I’m not an established artist, so this is a difficult topic for me. I decided to explore the market and observe the prices of collectibles that fall in the same category, have similar complexity and rarity. Then I set a single fixed price for every piece in each set. I’ll let the market decide their values as time goes.
Marketing Your Project (for free)
Although there are many social media channels to showcase your projects, Twitter is your best friend! People in the world of cryptocurrency live their lives on Twitter.
I tried to follow as many threads and accounts about NFT as possible. Some collectors allow content creators to ‘shill’ (advertise) their projects in the comment section of the threads they started. Find as many of this kind of thread as possible and let the world know what you are creating. Comment in the threads with links to your work, and the right collector will eventually ‘match’ with your creation.
This being said, you have to spend some time on Twitter yourself, scanning news feeds. The good point about this is you have a chance to build relationships with fellow artists, collectors, and grow your audience in the process. A possible caveat is that some people will always pretend to be a collector, asking you to follow them while allowing you to shill your work. There is no harm in that apart from you potentially wasting some time. However, if you look on the bright side, your work will surely get some more exposure.
Getting Your Creation Sold!
You create, you list your creation for sale, and it will be sold.
Judging by the relatively small number of pieces I have on the marketplace, I was lucky enough that BobAmorMusic found my first Cryptisect. However, as mentioned earlier, it took more than a week and not after many shillings.
I got a chance to take a bit to my first collector and, from his point of view, a collector buys an NFT when:
- He sees that buying the piece is a good (speculative) investment.
- He likes that piece (obviously!)
- He wants to support emerging artists and projects.
- He buys pieces that make him laugh (this can be the most important reason!)
Collectors and investors like BobAmorMusic are important to the ecosystem of the NFT community. Artists and creators need support and exposure provided by investors and collectors like him. Sometimes, an artist can also become a collector and support the other artists.
Conclusion
NFT is an exciting new space in the world of cryptocurrency today. Of course, there is much money to be made in this space, but it’s essentially another online channel to sell your digital creative content.
Digital artists and creative content creators like myself find good applications in the space, not only in distributing the pieces but also in expressing and managing copyrights.
I entered the space in hopes of earning more money. However, the most important experiences for me have become the interaction with the community and the joy in the process of creation.
Selling collectible NFTs is still far from becoming my sustainable source of income, but it does have the potential of becoming.
Even though I’m not an established artist. I’m always excited to learn when people appreciate my creations. Thanks to them, I can keep on creating.
An art piece is what it is, an art. It is not a ‘beautiful’ piece, neither is it a ‘mediocre’ piece. It exists for someone to admire and collect.
— The author
Find out more about the Cryptisects and WhaleCats Collectible NFTs here: https://linktr.ee/pkx8326
