Over winter break, my project has been to dream up some digital art & story collections that I can list on NFT marketplaces. It’s a way to make sense of what these marketplaces are like, how much it actually costs to sell art there, and whether there is any market for my work in this land.
My first collection’s theme has been about creating people, dinosaurs, and cats. I make drawings of them, and then I use random name, story, and dinosaur generators to create their life stories. I have tried out OpenSea as my NFT marketplace of choice, because it has fewer fees (gas fees, transaction fees, etc.) up front — as well as no pre-screening waitlist to enter onto.
The basic process of getting set up on selling was as follows:
- Open up a Coinbase account to buy some cryptocurrencies, putting my US dollars into the ether.
- Create a MetaMask wallet that I use to sign into NFT marketplaces (like OpenSea), transfer money, and sign transactions.
- Create an OpenSea account, where I can create collections by uploading my art, titling it, minting it, and listing it for auction.
- Set my preferences: what percentage of royalties I would want to get for future sales of my art. To auction or to sell? To list on which blockchain, for which kind of cryptocurrency. Figure out how I can sell without sinking huge amounts into transaction fees.
- Pay my initial transaction fees for my first listing, to get started! I had to shop around for gas prices, waiting for them to go down, go down, go down — they bounce around dramatically.
- Then list new pieces of art for free upfront (the transaction fees come later, upon any sale).
I have been creating stories and images alongside each other, and listing them in my first collection.
Now I must see if there is an NFT market for my work, or try again with another.