If you’ve been surfing the Internet during the last 10 or so years, you have probably chanced upon articles talking about ‘How to buy and sell bitcoin?’ or ‘How to invest in bitcoin and get large returns down the road,’ or something along those lines.
The thing is, bitcoin and various other cryptocurrencies have been around for many years at this point, so it’s no wonder that you’re hearing about them everywhere you turn.
Initially, this type of investment was only reserved for secretive societies that didn’t get much exposure other than through their online outlets.
Nowadays, on the other hand, you can probably tune in to debates about Ethereum and blockchains, for example, on your national TV!
So, even though many people still aren’t sure what on earth bitcoin is and how it can be used in the real world, this type of online ‘monetary system’ is getting more and more popular.
Now, if bitcoin comes across as confusing (even for millennials and folks who are fairly Internet-savvy), imagine how confusing a concept would be that combines cryptocurrencies and art?
In this article, we will talk about how to sell nft art that has its marketable value and is closely linked to the invention of cryptocurrencies.
To be more precise, we’re going to talk about how you can create and then sell the NFTs you make online. As you will see, the process of creating such an online asset isn’t that difficult, but learning how to protect, market, and sell it can be quite challenging.
Here’s the deal.
How To Sell NFT Art
What is an NFT in the first place?
First things first, let’s point out that an NFT stands for non-fungible token.
A non-fungible token represents an online asset that you can create fairly easily yourself, somehow link it to a part of a cryptocurrency, and then sell to someone else online.
To understand what non-fungible means in the name of this asset, let’s take a look at the world fungible itself.
If something is fungible, you can exchange it for something else of the same value as the initial item you’re exchanging.
One of the best examples of a fungible asset would be money.
If you have a 10-dollar bill, you can exchange it for 10 1-dollar bills, and the value of your newly acquired asset will not change. (The only difference will be that your wallet will be full of paper bills, of course.)
Now, if something is non-fungible, it means that you cannot change it for something else because it’s unique.
For example, if you have a beautiful work of art, you cannot change it for ten smaller works of art. You can sell it for money or try to swap it for something else, but then you are trying to estimate its value without being sure if you sold it for less or more than its actual value.
In other words, if something is non-fungible, determining its value can be difficult because it’s unique.
The working principle of an NFT
As we explained above, an NFT stands for a non-fungible token.
This means that it’s a unique digital asset that cannot be replicated so that whoever owns it owns the unique original of that asset.
Of course, copying digital art is not that difficult nowadays, but what makes an NFT special is that the art itself is linked to a part of a cryptocurrency, which is unique.
So, even if you can take a snapshot of a digital piece of art, you cannot copy its cryptocurrency code, which means you won’t be able to copy that token in its entirety.
This uniqueness of cryptocurrencies makes them such an attractive prospect for an increasing number of people interested in owning an original piece of art that no one else has.
As far as creating an NFT is concerned, the process is surprisingly easy, as all you need to do is some program where you can draw, or create music, or make video games – whatever medium you choose to go with, so to speak.
The thing about how to sell nft art is that the image you make itself (if it is visual art you want to use) doesn’t have any special properties. It can be just the regular art you’re already making, if you’re an artist, for example.
Once you finish the artwork you want to turn into an NFT, you will need to access a special website where you will attach a part of cryptocurrency code to that image, making the whole thing unique and marketable as an NFT.
We will talk about this process of creation in more detail in one of the passages below.
Where can you buy NFTs?
As this type of digital asset becomes more and more popular, you will be able to find more and more online places where you how to sell nft art.
These NFT sites all work on pretty much the same principle – you have an online wallet that you need to top up to buy something on that platform.
On the selling platform itself, you can see various NFTs sold in various categories and different forms.
You can buy and sell digital trading cards and different gaming digital assets such as skins for game characters, avatars for your profile picture, and other things such as customized weapons, for example.
Generally speaking, in-app purchases in video games are a great example of how to sell nft art work. A piece of art in a game, such as a cool-looking sword for a game character, can be bought using your digital wallet. (The digital wallet, of course, can only be topped up with real-life money via a bank or PayPal.)
Here are some of the sites where you can buy NFTs:
- SuperRare
- OpenSea
- Foundation
- VIV3
- Rarible
- NFT ShowRoom
… and many others.
How to make NFTs?
When it comes to the question of who can make NFTs, we’ve already partially answered it in one of the paragraphs above.
As long as you know how to make digital art, including gifs, images, music, games, or edit videos, you can rest assured that you can make NFT art, too.
Let’s take a simple digital pixel art gif such as the famous Nyan cat, for example.
To make such a gif, all you need to do is draw a simple pixelated picture of a cat using a drawing program such as Photoshop, Medibang, or something similar. (There are plenty of free programs you can use for this purpose.)
After you’ve completed the drawing, you will need a program to make a short video – or a gif out of it. Again, here you have plenty of free options online, as making gifs only requires a handful of pictures to make an animation.
Once you’ve completed the animation, all you need to do is export it in a format that can be opened as a gif, and the artwork part of the job is done. Next, all you need to do is open a profile on one of the aforementioned NFT selling platforms, attach a piece of cryptocurrency to your art and then hope someone will like it enough to buy it.
So, in terms of qualifications you might require for making NFTs – you don’t need any.
All you need is a simple program for making digital art (you can use any free drawing software for this purpose) and a starting fund to be able to attach a piece of the code to the file in jpeg., png., or some similar format you’re uploading your artwork in.
The controversy surrounding NFTs
If the idea of earning massive amounts of money for simple art sounds too good to be true, it’s probably because, partially, this is the case.
Somewhat oddly, however, one of the biggest controversies nowadays revolving around NFTs would be their impact on the environment.
Now, if you’re wondering how on Earth can selling and buying digital art hurt the environment, you’re not the only one.
Here’s an explanation:
While making and uploading digital art uses negligible amounts of energy, the part where you attach cryptocurrency to it is troublemaking.
The thing is, the so-called cryptocurrency ‘mining’ is a process that requires a massive amount of energy. So, even though the artist how to sell nft art is not using that much energy for the art itself, the fact that an Ethereum piece of cryptocurrency is linked to the art makes the whole thing fairly energy-inefficient, so to speak.
It all goes back to the way cryptocurrencies are mined and created.
The thing is, valuable pieces of information are extracted from a wide variety of sources through a process called ‘mining.’ If we take a look at the most rudimentary mining setup or ‘rig’ as it is often called, you can see that it consists of a simple computer that has to have a strong graphics card, or usually – multiple graphics cards.
The graphics cards are the most important part of this equation, although the computer’s power supply comes in as a close second.
Now, the trouble with these two components is that they use up a lot of electricity while working, which means that your energy bills will go through the roof if you’re doing this from home.
At the same time, you also need to worry about cooling these two components (because they will get boiling from working around the clock), which means you’ll have to spend even more electricity on setting up a strong cooling system.
All of these factors do tend to make mining for cryptocurrency a pretty energy-inefficient thing, so if you’re concerned with the global carbon footprint and saving the polar bear cubs, you may want to think about engaging in cryptocurrency before it becomes more energy-efficient and ‘greener.’ (Like many people in charge of these buying and selling websites are promising.)
How to Sell NFT Art – A step-by-step guide
1. Choose a cryptocurrency
Assuming you’ve already created your art, or at least you have an idea of what sort of art you want to use for this purpose, the first thing you need to do to start selling NFTs would be to get on a platform where you can generate an NFT for yourself.
This mining process for your small part of a cryptocurrency is called ‘minting,’ and you can only do it on some specific websites that deal with Ethereum, a blockchain cryptocurrency. (Similar to Bitcoin, for example.)
Now, the thing with Ethereum is – its value can fluctuate massively, so it can be quite difficult to figure out how much money you would need to invest in the minting process we described above.
The unit of the Ethereum cryptocurrency is called ETH, and its current worth in US dollars is something like $2,000.
It would help if you bought first; even to start the ‘minting’ process would be a digital wallet. Many websites allow you to do this, and the process is fairly straightforward, so you don’t have to worry about making this happen.
2. Make a digital wallet
… by visiting a site such as MetaMask, where you can create a digital wallet and directly buy pieces of digital blockchain cryptocurrency fairly easily.
The wallet-creating phrase only takes a couple of minutes, so even if you’ve never made a digital wallet before, you don’t need to worry because the process itself couldn’t be simpler.
If you are using the MetaMask website, all you need to do is visit their website, then click on the large blue Download button situated in the top right corner, and that’s it.
(You will also have some options to add an extension to your browser and some other common installation prompts.)
Once you’ve done this, you will have to create a new account, which is also a pretty simple process that doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes. (Make sure to create a strong password that would be tough to crack and you can rest assured that your account will be safe and sound and ready to use.)
3. Add funds to your new digital wallet
Although you can postpone this step, it’s a good idea to have some funds in your wallet, so you can start creating your first NFT right off the bat.
At the same time, if you’re not in a hurry to start doing this, you can also wait until later to add funds.
Once you decide it’s time to add some money into your digital online wallet, the procedure for this couldn’t be simpler – all you need to do is click the Buy button.
After you’ve done this, an option will pop up for you to buy ETH using Wyre, so when this happens, you can click on it to use Wyre to complete the purchase.
As far as the paying methods are concerned, you can complete this purchase using an Apple credit or debit card.
4. Connect the wallet with an NFT platform
Once you’ve set up your wallet, you are now in a position to make cryptocurrency purchases online, which means it’s time you can move on to making an account on an NFT platform such as Rarible.com, for example.
Of course, as we already explained above, there are many other platforms where you can ‘mint’ for NFTs and sell them, so you might want to look into all of them before making a choice of which one you want to use.
Anyway, pretty much all of the platforms that allow you how to sell nft art have an option where you can connect your online wallet to their platform.
On Rarible.com, a large button in the top right corner says ‘Connect wallet.’ After you click on this button, a prompt will ask you to choose your wallet, and then, after some button-pushing and confirming that you agree to the terms of service, you will have added your wallet to the platform.
5. Upload your art
Once you’ve set up everything from your wallet to your Rarible.com (or some other platform you might be using), you can start adding the art that you want to make an NFT out of.
On Rarible.com, you have two options that you can work with regarding what sort of NFT you are trying to make.
The first option is to make a unique, one-of-a-kind NFT that can only be sold once. The second option is to make a re-sellable NFT that you would be able to sell over and over again.
The choice is up to you, but it mostly has to do with pricing and how many customers you think you can attract.
As far as the format that you need to upload your art in, you can upload in MP3 (if it’s an audio file), in MP4 (if you have a video and audio component to your art, so to speak), or common formats such as PNG, GIF, or WEBP.
Rarible.com also has a preview option, so you can rest assured that you will be able to see in detail what your NFT would look like in advance, so you can fix any problems with it before you hit the Upload button.
One other thing to keep in mind is that websites where you can create and sell NFT art often impose limitations in terms of the upper limit for the upload size. (For the record, if you’re using Rarible.com, this value is set to about 30MBs.)
6. Organize an auction
While you’re still in the form for uploading new artwork, you can choose different options you have for selling your artwork.
This is all a part of setting up a so-called ‘auction.’
If you put your work of art up for an auction, this means you’re selling it to the highest bidder, or according to one of the rules of sale that the platform you’re using allows you to choose from.
For example, on Rarible.com, you can choose from three different ways of selling your NFTs.
The first method is that you can sell it as a fixed price sale. This means that the price is the same for everyone, so the first person to get to the art will buy it.
The second option is the unlimited auction mode. In this type of sale, what happens is that there is an auction for the NFT you want to sell. The auction can go on indefinitely, so as long as there are people who are interested in buying your work of art and who are willing to compete against each other for the buying rights, so to speak – the auction can last for months or longer because there is no time limit.
Once you’ve satisfied with the amount of money someone offered for your work of art, you can accept that offer, and the auction will be over.
The third option would be the option of the timed auction. As the name of this model suggests, in a timed auction, you can only buy an NFT within a certain period. After this period elapses, the auction is over, and the NFT is sold to the highest bidder.
7. Create a description and pay the fee
Last but not least, you need to create a suitable description for your NFT that both describes what it is and is also attractive enough for potential customers.
Other than that, you will have to pay the fee to create a listing of your NFT (with the description and all), as well as another fee of creating an NFT in the first place, which can cost around $50 or more – depending on what sot of NFT you’re making.
Also, platforms such as Rarible.com take several other fees, such as a commission fee when you make a sale, as well as a transfer fee for completing the transaction from the customer’s wallet to yours.
Conclusion
All in all, the world of NFTs may seem exciting and lucrative. Still, many hidden expenses on the platforms where you can buy and sell these and the massive daily and hourly fluctuations of cryptocurrencies make both buying and selling NFTs a fairly risky business. (Unless you have money to burn and want to have some fun online by buying quirky art.)
We hope you found how to sell nft art in this article helpful, and if you decide to make and sell NFTs, we wish you the best of luck.