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How to launch your first NFT - creating, minting, and marketing your first NFT project

By Tha Noodle in NFT —

If you're looking to start launching your own NFTs, then you've come to the right place. This guide covers the creation, minting and marketing of your very first digital collectible. So sit, back grab a beer, and read this so you can go back to being creative.

What is an NFT

An NFT or Non Fungible Token is a cryptographic asset that lives on the blockchain. Each token has a unique ID and metadata that distinguishes one from another. NFTs can be used to represent digital assets like art or music, and by tokenizing them it enables the asset to be sold on a marketplace.

What can I turn into an NFT

Almost any file can be turned into an NFT

First, you need to decide on the asset you would like to turn into your very own token. They can be basically any multimedia file, so your options are basically limitless.

Common examples include:

  • Digital art
  • Music files or albums
  • Text files
  • Game assets

Once you've made the decision about the item you want to turn into an NFT, it's time to start minting it.

Minting your NFT

No it won't leave your breath fresh, but it does enable you to launch your NFT.

Not to be confused with the leaf

What is minting?

Minting is the process of turning your digital asset into a token and adding it to the blockchain, so that it can be sold and traded on a marketplace.

You can mint your NFT using a variety of blockchains technologies. The most popular and widely used blockchain is currently Ethereum. Once a complicated and expensive process, minting can now be very reasonable and even free.

Minting on OpenSea

OpenSea is the leading NFT marketplace and lets you mint directly on their platform. OpenSea uses a system called 'lazy minting' that enables you to mint your item completely for free. However, selling an item or transferring it requires fees to be paid.

A quick run down of the fees:

  • The fee is known as gas, and changes based on a number of factors.
  • First-time sellers must pay 2 transaction fees to setup their account
  • Returning sellers do not have to pay fees to 'mint' each item. However, whilst creation is free, you will still need to purchase cryptocurrency as there are fees to pay once your item sells.
  • OpenSea also charges a 2.5% fee that is deducted from your total sale price.

Enough chatting about fees, let's get down to business...

Head over to the OpenSea platform: https://opensea.io

Then you're going to want to hit that big create button in the hero or on the navigation bar. You're going to see a window popping up asking you to agree to their terms of service. Then you'll be asked to sign in to your wallet.

Your wallet stores your NFTs, along with cryptocurrency to pay for any sales fees.

There are many different wallets you can use to sign in to OpenSea. The easiest and by far our favourite is MetaMask, again it's the most widely used and I'd highly recommend it over others.

Head over to https://metamask.io and hit that big ol' download button. You can use their Chrome Browser extension (easiest), or even download their app to your IOS or Android device. Follow the sign up steps and you're ready to start minting.

OpenSea will take you to a token creation screen that you will fill out with your NFT's details.

Now add your media file that you would like to link to your token. Your file must be under 100Mb and acceptable formats include: PNG, JPG, GIF, SVG, WEBM, MP4, MP3, WAV, OGG, GLB, GLTF.

For this example, I'm going to be minting an invisible Giraffe on a black background.

Enter the name and description of your token, along with a link to a site where people can learn more about your project.

Add properties, levels, or stats if you're creating a larger collection that will include different variations. You can also tie unlockable content to your NFT that can be revealed when your item sells. Make sure you have Ethereum selected under Blockchain, then hit create. (You can also mint on the Polygon blockchain for free, but that's a post for another time)

Congratulations! Your token has now been created 👏 🥳

When you're ready you can now sell your NFT on the OpenSea marketplace by clicking on the sell button in the top right.

Enter a price for your piece and adjust any settings that you require for your listing, click 'post your listing' and confirm in MetaMask. Note: You will need to confirm the gas fees if this is your first listing

If you've followed all the steps so far, you now have your very own NFT for sale 🎇

Now you just need to get your project out there - It's a great thing this post doesn't end here, let's get to marketing.

Marketing your NFT

It’s time for the hard part. Yes, creating and minting NFTs is a fairly straightforward process, but unless you have an audience already staring at your socials waiting for your NFT to drop, this is going to be the harder part.

Waiting until someone notices your precious token is unlikely to result in any actual sales. You will need to be active in the space to build a community of people that are interested in your item.

Here are a couple of tips on how to promote and market your NFT project so that the world can hear about it and find your beautiful Non-Fungible Tokens.

1. Building Your Community

For most crypto and NFT projects, the community behind it is arguably the most important piece of the puzzle. They are the people who will share your project, support you as an artist, and trade your pieces.

I recommend using any existing social channels that you have to kickstart your community. Create a post about your drop and let people know where they can buy it.

A great place to start is Twitter, the crypto and NFT community is huge, and every encounter you have with other users has the chance of going viral.

Creating your own Discord server is a great way to keep track of your community, you can instantly message and update your followers on your projects and create rooms for different purposes such as giveaways, general chat, and anything else.

2. Promoting your NFT on Telegram and Discord groups

Telegram and Discord are definitely the most popular communication channels for the crypto community. As Telegram is the number one platform for crypto users, you may find Discord slightly less saturated and slightly easier for you to promote on. Nevertheless I still recommend creating accounts on both, joining some servers with active communities, then begin interacting with people.

Make sure to get involved in discussions about other crypto projects, answer questions the best you can, give compliments and voice your opinions. The most important part of this step is to genuinely immerse yourself in the community.

A couple of extra tips

  • Many servers have a channel specifically for self-promotion. By posting links to your work in channels not created for this purpose you run the risk of being banned from that server.
  • Spamming the groups you are won't net you great results and other users will start associating you with spam. Stick to posting a maximum of once per day.
  • Your community will grow slowly at first but will compound over time. It grows faster if you've built yourself a decent reputation that people like and respect it will impact your work positively.

3. Ask Me Anything sessions (AMAs)

AMA sessions work very well because they help to introduce the community to your project.

You create a post your audience to ask you any question they want. It can be massively beneficial for your potential buyers to see what the project leader is like, how they respond, and what their plans are for the future.

At first doing an AMA session in smaller, more niche Telegram and Discord chats would be the most beneficial as it will attract new interested users to your work. As you progress on your journey and build your community, you can begin to run AMAs in larger groups to accelerate your growth.

4. Reach out to Influencers to promote your NFT

Having influencers promote your work can get a large number of eyes on your collection within hours. You can approach anyone on TikTok, YouTube, or any similar platform that could be interested in your project. I recommend to make sure they show a genuine interest in what you're creating because if they don't really love it, their audience probably won't either.

Start small, aim for micro-influencers with 5-50k followers at first and try to build a solid network that you can reach out to if you launch another project.

Conclusion

You should now be pretty up to speed on the NFT creation and minting process, now all you need to do is sell it! Or keep it, I'm sure your art is awesome.

We're going to dive deeper into the details and show you how to mint on different exchanges and blockchains in an upcoming blog post. Make sure you subscribe to be notified when we launch a new blog post or newsletter.