How to Start Minting NFTs – A Complete Guide for Beginners
As interest in crypto and NFTs continues growing exponentially, more people want to know how to create NFTs of their own. In the past, minting NFTs was complex and only for the very brave. Today, popular marketplaces make it easier than ever for NFT beginners to create digital assets and list their NFT art.
Read our Beginner’s Guide to NFTs here for more context.
NFT creators across the globe are gaining recognition as NFT artists by minting NFTs. As crypto and NFT technology advances, it enables more simplified processes for NFT creation. The NFT artist can mint their first NFT, create NFT collections, and sell NFTs for a profit on some of the biggest NFT marketplaces in the world. The Internet culture is shifting to digital content consumption, with many people now wanting to own NFT or collections of NFTs as a potential passive and fun income source.
Most NFT marketplaces have the functionality for digital creators to mint NFTs, but for this guide, we will focus on how to mint NFTs on OpenSea, which is the largest and most popular NFT marketplace.
This ‘How to Start Creating your Own NFTs Minting Guide’ shows you the best NFT marketplaces for NFTs where you can create an NFT collection of your own.
What are NFTs?
NFT is an acronym for Non-Fungible Token. It’s a type of digital certificate that is built on a blockchain, usually the Ethereum blockchain, that registers authentic proof of ownership.
An NFT can be anything such as a GIF, a photo, video, an artist’s work, writing, music and even a tweet. As long as it can be converted to a digital asset, anything goes.
When something is fungible, it’s an item that can be exchanged for the exact same thing. For instance, you can exchange $1 for $1 dollar or 1 $ETH token for another $ETH token. With NFTs that isn’t possible. You can’t exchange one particular NFT for the same NFT. Each digital file has one unique owner registered as a digital signature on the blockchain and recorded in the digital ledger.
Digital and tangible assets cannot be compared. For instance, non-fungible tokens such as the NBA Top Shot trading cards are all one of a kind, which is why when an NFT project becomes popular with collectors, the prices of a digital asset can skyrocket.
Why do NFTs Sell for High Prices?
A digital asset is only worth as much as the value of market demand and supply. As all NFTs are unique digital assets, the value arrives from popularity and status. For instance, a new NFT from an unknown artist is unlikely to receive much attention in an NFT marketplace. However, as an easy way to make passive income, many NFT collections today are launched by celebrities. Those, and crypto art projects with proven sales history, will attract attention from collectors. Unless the digital artwork lists at a fixed price, regardless of the minimum price for opening bids, collectors can push the bidding into a frenzied scramble to own the NFT.
Examples of Notable NFTs
- The most famous NFT is Mike Winkelmann’s digital art, “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”. Mike, known as “Beeple”, created a digital picture every day for 13.5 years before selling the art at Christie’s Auction House for $69 million. It was the first NFT sold by Christie’s, an auction house that sells artwork by Leonardo Da Vinci and other renowned artists
- Actor William Shatner created a collection of NFTs from over 60 years of personal memorabilia. In less than 10 minutes, Shatner sold 125,000 NFTs, one of which was a photograph of Leonard Nimoy (Spock) and himself hugging
- If you have a Twitter account, you might know that Jack Dorsey sold his first public tweet for $2.9 million
- The digital rendition of Nyan Cat sold for $590,000 in an online auction
- RTFKT sold virtual sneakers for up to $10,000 per pair. The sneakers are for adding extra capabilities to game avatars. RTFKT, together with Fewocious, another digital artist, sold a series of sneakers for over $3 million in March 2021.
- Fewocious sells his highly colorful and funky digital art at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Some of his art pieces have fetched over $500,000
- NBA Top Shots collectibles is a basketball NFT marketplace – sporting items and physical trading cards have always been popular with collectors. The platforms highest earning asset was The LeBron James dunk against the Houston rockets, which sold for $387,000
How Much Does it Cost to Create an NFT?
Before you begin minting, it’s essential to check gas fees. Ethereum gas fees can be expensive for the minting process. You could pay upwards of $70 in fees, and in some cases, your gas fee could run into hundreds of dollars. The Ethereum blockchain is known for higher gas fees. In the future, these fees are likely to be more competitive as the Ethereum Network upgrades to faster transaction times.
How to Mint an NFT on OpenSea
NFT beginners may have concerns that creating an NFT requires technical and developer skills. Is it true that creating NFTs is only for techy nerds? Not at all. The joy of creating an NFT is that your chosen marketplace converts your digital upload to an NFT and you don’t even need to know how they do it.
The Simple Structure for Creating NFTs
- Open a secure wallet like MetaMask
- Buy $ETH from a cryptocurrency exchange*
- Load $ETH to your wallet to cover transaction fees
- Go to OpenSea marketplace
- Upload a digital file to OpenSea marketplace
- Pay your fee and confirm
*Binance offers the best liquidity and trading options for Ethereum.
Binance
You can create an Ethereum NFT using the Ethereum network, or the Solana blockchain. However, if you’d prefer a less complex guide that doesn’t make you want to poke your eyes out, we suggest using OpenSea for your first adventure into creating an NFT of your own.
OpenSea is the largest NFT marketplace globally with high trading volume and liquidity and the broadest range of NFTs. Whether you are minting an NFT, an NFT buyer or seller, you have unlimited access and can link a non-custodial wallet to the OpenSea NFT marketplace if you wish.
Open a Secure Wallet
Before creating your first NFT, you need an $ETH wallet compatible with OpenSea to store your digital assets. The most popular digital wallet is MetaMask, which is also compatible with other NFT marketplaces. The MetaMask crypto wallet is a Chrome browser extension or a mobile app. If you choose the latter, you connect to your wallet with a QR code scanner.
You need Ether (ETH) in your crypto wallet to cover the gas fee and service fee for producing your NFT because $ETH is the currency used for NFTs on most marketplaces. OpenSea offers a choice of compatible wallets. If you already have one of the other crypto wallets listed, like the Coinbase wallet, link it to your account.
Click on the top right corner of the OpenSea wallet and click on MetaMask. From there, follow the online instructions. MetaMask gives you a recovery phase. It’s essential that you save the phrase in a safe place. Without it, you lose access to your MetaMask wallet.
Once you are connected, you can browse the OpenSea marketplace and complete your profile.
Creating your First NFT
Be creative. Before you decide upon what you want to convert to an NFT, browse multiple NFT marketplaces. Look at what’s trending, study digital studio collections and new artists’ work. Which collections are raising the highest prices? Also, what interests and appeals to you. For instance, you might have a French Bulldog and be inspired to create NFTs from images of your dog doing goofy or funny things.
On the marketplace homepage, click on the “Create” tab in the top right corner. Here, you can upload a digital file and assign a name to your NFT. There are other options to complete like:
- Which blockchain do you want for your NFT – Ethereum chain or Polygon blockchain
- A description of your NFT
- A link to your NFT website if you have one
- Royalty payments – if your NFT resells, you can receive a small ercentage of secondary sales, usually 5-10%
When you have completed all the data, you have successfully minted your first NFT. If you have $ETH deposited in your wallet, you are ready to sell your NFT creation. You need enough $ETH in your account to cover fees. If you aren’t sure of costs at this stage, the next step should help.
Selling your First NFT
On your NFT description page, click on the “Sell” button in the top right corner. Select the type of sale you prefer, either fixed-price or timed auction. OpenSea has a 2.5% service fee for handling the listing and marketplace fees should now be disclosed.
Click on “Complete listing” and wait for the calculation of fees. Be prepared that you might pay a few hundred dollars in fees so your NFT for sale needs to be priced accordingly. Fees can vary from moment to moment and you could find it less expensive at different times of the day. When you approve the fees, your NFT is listed on the marketplace.
Generating Interest in your NFT
Just because you’ve listed your NFT doesn’t guarantee a sale. Start building a social media presence if you don’t already have one. Post links to your NFT listing page and ask your friends and family to help drive interest. If you have the funds to create an NFT collection, it increases the chances of attracting interest from digital art collectors.
Returning to the theme of your NFT being that of your French Bulldog’s antics, you could create a Facebook page with stories about your dog, photographs and videos and links to your NFT. Across the globe are hundreds of thousands of French Bulldog lovers. If they also happen to be interested in NFTs, voila, you have a captivated audience. The more data research you do before minting an NFT, the better.
Treat your NFT minting as a business. Always be present and engage with your followers. Build rapport and with each new NFT creation, you can generate excitement for your project. Find the best social media channel for your style and personality and go all in making it work.
Every popular digital artist started in your position, not knowing if an NFT collector would pay $1 or $100,000 for their creation. Create something unique, funky, artistic or weird and you probably stand a good chance of success.
The good news is that now you have created your first NFT on OpenSea, you can transfer it and sell it on other marketplaces if you wish. You might notice that another platform has more NFTs similar to yours and where collectors may be more inspired by your work. Initially, gather the data from OpenSea and test the marketplace for a while before dashing off somewhere else. Every time you move your NFT to another platform, you incur more fees.
What if your Art Creation doesn’t Sell?
Despite the acceleration of online creation, it’s still early days. People are clamouring onto the marketplace, hoping to create and sell NFTs.
The idea you can get rich quick from converting an old photo on your laptop or a funny pose of your dog is appealing. Certainly, for musicians, artists and other content creators, digital content is a potential game-changer. Monetizing content has previously been at the mercy of centralized organisations with middlemen taking their cut. On these platforms, content creators never truly own their work. Clawing back control of the distribution of art is a dream come true for artists creating or converting their work to digital format.
Our Verdict on Minting
It’s not cheap to create and mint your NFTs. There are upfront costs that you may not recover because there’s no guarantee that a collector will find your art, let alone like it enough to pay a significant price.
The opportunities for making money from selling NFTs from your artistic efforts are promising, especially if you are a gifted artist of some kind. For instance, take a look at the New Yorker digital entrepreneur, Fewocious. His artwork is original, unique and, although each piece is different, there’s a similarity between each picture.
On the about page of Fewocious website, the content begins with the statement, “I Love Art” and the pictures represent “snapshots of his memories and a mirror into his heart”. According to the website, within one year Ferocious grossed $17 million from successful NFT drops at the age of 18.
The success of Fewocious replicates many other successes in the NFT space. The majority of the top-selling NFTs have a distinctive quality, making them stand out amongst the ever-growing crowd of (poor quality) NFTs descending onto the marketplace. If you plan to create an NFT of your own, don’t rush into it. Create something unique and fabulous and then market it like your life depends on it.
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