Ep 108 Artists NFTs for Beginners Part 1

Today, we are talking about artists’ NFTs. First of all, I do want to stress that neither one of us are experts. But sometimes I think it’s better actually to get guidance from someone who is not a beginner but not yet an expert, because you’ll more likely get the information you need in simple terms, without being blown away by a whole new language.

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SANDRA

Now Tara has been doing it for longer than I have and has sold quite a few NFTs, so she has a much better understanding of how it works than I do.

I started only recently, but I’m getting a bit better at understanding it as I go. And believe me, if I can understand it, then anyone can!

So, anyway, we thought we would share what we have learned so far along the way.

First, what is an NFT?

TARA

An NFT is a digital thing for example a digital piece of art in our case which has proof of ownership. So just like you might buy an original piece of art and it could come with a certificate of authenticity, you get the same thing digitally

NFT actually stands for Non Fungible Token which doesn’t explain anything.

SANDRA

Why would someone buy an NFT?

Why would anyone want to own a piece of digital art when they can just download a jpeg on the Internet? I still find that side of it a bit puzzling.

TARA

1/1 art vs multiples and big projects – In the case of art you can get very big projects which are a bit like trading cards with pieces of art like characters where each one is slightly different, so people buy those to collect and as a potential investment. They are basically collectibles. 1 and 1 art which means that you sell only one of that specific jpeg of your art. Someone might buy that to support the artist and also as a potential investment

Unlike just downloading something from the internet, you have proof that you own that bit of art.

NFTs can be bought and sold, so once you buy one you can sell it on later

Some artists and projects give perks with their NFTs. So in the case of a 1/1 artist that might mean they also sell the physical art or a print with the NFT.

SANDRA

What does it mean for an artist when they sell an NFT?

I remember Tara when I thought I’d sold one the other day and immediately went into panic mode, because although I knew how to put one up for sale, I realised didn’t know how to ‘hand it over’ if you like…

TARA

It’s another avenue to sell your art. You can sell your art digitally as well as physical and prints. So even if you have previously sold a physical piece of art if you have a good photo or scan you could sell it as an NFT.

You can also build a royalty into an NFT, so if it gets resold you automatically get a percentage.

You can sell just the NFT or optionally add prints and the original

SANDRA

How do you put an NFT up for sale?

TARA

First you need a good quality digital file, this could be a scan or photo of your art or of course if you created it digitally then you can output that as a jpeg.

We only have experience using Opensea, which is an NFT marketplace so that’s what we are going to focus on. Think of Opensea like an Etsy for NFTs.

To join Opensea you need a digital wallet. There are different ones but we used one called Metamask. This is the confusing bit for a beginner, but once you get past thism things get easier and there are Youtube videos on how to do it. Metamask is a place where you can hold digital cryptocurrency ready to buy and sell things. You can get Metamask as a browser extension for Chrome.

SANDRA

Explain the two Options Polygon and Ethereum on Opensea

TARA

To sell NFTs with Opensea you have options to use two types of cryptocurrency. These are called Polygon and Ethereum.

If you use Polygon it’s completely free to upload any of your art and turn them into NFTs.

If you use Ethereum you have to pay a one-time initialisation fee of a couple of charges. Sandra and `I paid around $100 for this, but the cost varies. I heard of someone only paying about $30 the other day. It all depends on how busy the network is. So it’s good to check early in the morning or off-peak times.

Check initialization costs “gas price” here https://www.gwei.at/

We will go into more about what polygon is, promoting your NFT and some of the scams you need to be aware of in part 2.

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