While selling artworks as NFTs is an innovative way to reach a larger audience for digital artists, an increasing number of non-digital artists, such as painters and sculptors are digitizing their works to become an NFT vendor. This requires them to turn their art into a digital version without compromising on the quality, and for many, that's still an untrodden area. This guide guides you through a step-by-step plan of action to digitize and display your artworks, from your canvas to the NFT marketplace.
Offline to online
When you start to sell your artworks online, you'll need to create a digital version of them. After all, you can't upload a physical painting. To just get straight to the point: the only way to digitize your artwork is by scanning it or simply by taking a picture of it. That's easier said than done, because, unless you have a professional camera, you might have to sacrifice some of your artwork's original quality. To ensure high-quality images, you can go to a print shop and have your artwork scanned by a high-end scanner, or you can hire a professional photographer with the right tools and skills to shoot your work. Make sure to scan or photograph your work in high resolution, with a minimum of 150 DPI (dots per inch) and ideal quality of 300 DPI.
With tools like Photoshop or any other editing program, you can adjust the color balances, brightness, and contrast, while also making sure the resolution is at its highest. Once you have the digital assets you need, it's a good idea to start off by presenting your art in the form of a portfolio. You can do this by setting up a simple website with a portfolio template or using an existing platform like Pinterest or Dribbble to show off your work and gain the interest of your audience.
NFT marketplaces
When you're ready to start selling your artwork as NFTs, you'll need to upload your work on one of the available NFT marketplaces. On this marketplace, you create a portfolio to showcase your work. Your NFT portfolio, like a typical art portfolio, can be used to promote your work, but it has the extra feature of being stored on the blockchain, which makes it irreversible and easily verifiable.
OpenSea is one of the most popular marketplaces for creating an NFT portfolio and selling your work. OpenSea is a digital art/collectibles marketplace. It's generally easy to use and it enables artists to sell their work in a safe and trustworthy environment. Not sure which platform to choose? Here's a list of the most popular NFT marketplaces and their selling propositions:
Opensea
In terms of NFT marketplaces, OpenSea is currently one of the market leaders. OpenSea's platform hosts a wide range of assets, and it's free to sign up and browse through the large collections of digital art pieces. Next to that, it supports artists and creators and provides a simple plan for creating your own NFT (known as "minting"). OpenSea is a great place to start if you're new to the NFT realm.
Rarible
Rarible, like OpenSea, is one of the biggest marketplaces for all types of NFTs. On the site, you can buy, sell, or produce many types of art, movies, collectibles, and music. To purchase and sell on the marketplace, you'll need to use the marketplace's own token Rarible, unlike OpenSea. The Ethereum blockchain serves as the foundation for Rarible. Major software firm Adobe has also recently teamed up with Rarible to help safeguard the work of NFT artists and minters.
Crypto.com
Besides providing crypto-trading services, Crypto.com has also launched its own NFT marketplace in 2021, which offers a wide variety of NFTs from genres such as art, games, sport, music, celebrities, and more. The Crypto.com NFT marketplace aims to simplify registration and investing processes to make the platform and trading practices accessible to a large audience, from beginners to experts in the field. Next to that, Crypto.com allows its users to buy NFTs without having to pay a transaction fee.
Nifty Gateway
Nifty Gateway has supported the sales of some of the most well-known digital artists like singer/songwriter Grimes. Nifty Gateway, in addition to being a curated platform, also hosts the NFTs that are purchased, which means the NFTs are not stored in your personal wallet but are instead stored for you by Nifty Gateway and Gemini (curator). While this might not be very suitable for NFT collectors wanting more flexibility in their art investments, Nifty purchases and sales can also be done in fiat currency (e.g., US dollars) without first having to purchase cryptocurrency.
Mintable
Mintable intends to create an open marketplace that's comparable to OpenSea. You'll need Ethereum (ETH) to engage in the purchasing and selling of NFTs on Mintable. As a user of Mintable you must first buy Ethereum cryptocurrency before connecting your wallet to Mintable to bid and buy on the marketplace.
Enter the market
Before deciding on an NFT marketplace for you, you need first identify what type of digital asset you want to sell. Just about anything digital can be tokenized on a blockchain, which can make it difficult to find the right audience for your type of art. Have a look around the different available marketplaces to get to know the average audience behind it, and pick the one that's most likely to be interested in your art style.
Another factor to examine is the type of tokens offered by a marketplace. Some accept a wide range of tokens, while others are closed marketplaces that use a proprietary token. When creating an account on the NFT marketplace, make sure to fill your crypto wallet with the right coin or token to engage in the site's services. Once you've created an account, you'll be requested to connect your wallet to the NFT marketplace. Double-check to discover what type of security is in place and if there have been any privacy issues in the past.
Let's start selling
Now you're all settled with your NFT portfolio on a marketplace that fits your art and target audience, you can start the process of actually selling your assets. To start off, you'll need to link your crypto wallet and select the "Mint an NFT" option. This requires you to upload your digitized artwork to the marketplace to make it available for sale. During the minting process, you can choose to earn royalties on your sold NFTs, which allows you passively monitize your work. Once your NFT is minted, you can choose to list your item for sale by following the steps offered by your chosen marketplace. During these steps, you can set the price of your NFT, after which your marketplace calculates a so-called "gas fee". This gas fee is an Ethereum blockchain fee for the recording of transactions and varies depending on the amount of traffic on the blockchain network at that moment. Usually, the marketplace itself also requires a small percentage of the money you make with your NFT.
Once you finish the listing, your NFT is available for sale on the market. If your website or social media channels aren't already advertising the sale, now is the time to do so. It's also possible to manage your NFT listing, but keep in mind that making changes or taking it down might cost you more money, and gas fees you've already paid aren't refundable.
Cultivate your audience
Digital art sold as NFTs is a relatively new phenomenon that is still mostly unknown to the general public. A major goal for NFT platforms is to create communities that allow digital artists, collectors, and industry experts to interact and learn from each other about the latest trends and advancements in the world of crypto. For NFT artists, creating a community around your art is essential for gathering enough interested collectors to raise the value of your artworks. The value of the Bored Ape NFT collection skyrocketed all thanks to the community around it. Not only are they popular among dozens of A-list celebrities, but buying a Bored Ape NFT also provides you with access to community-only events and deals. So, when setting up your NFT portfolio, you should already be on the lookout for a platform to cultivate and manage your own community.
How can we help?
We get it. The world of crypto and NFTs is not something you'll understand overnight. That's why Grypto is here to teach you more about the hype and use of these new technologies. Besides functioning as an educational platform, we help artists with the process of digitizing and marketing their artworks on NFT marketplaces. Together with the artist, we create, grow and manage an online community to raise awareness and with that the value of their art.
Are you interested in teaming up with Grypto to turn your artworks into valuable and future-proof digital assets/NFTs? Get in touch with us via the contact form on our site, or send us a message on our social channels.
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