It’s incredible how NFTs have have exploded in popularity, giving web designers, a new ways to make money and share their work with a bigger audience around the globe.
We’ve all heard a lot about NFTs during the last year. The NFT space has become increasingly large, and thus unavoidable, especially when we see blue-chip companies like McDonald’s and NIKE to celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton getting their hands on it.
It may sound siprisingly wired and intimidating when we hear about NFTs at first, with thoughts popping up like “why is everyone obsessed with these things?” “what exactly are they,” and “why are they selling for so much.”
Let’s see in the simplest way how they work and how can web designers and web creators use them.
This is a new way of selling digital assets, like art, images and videos, while giving the enormous power to content creators by offering them new ways for monetizing their work, distributing it to a larger audience.
NFTs aren’t going anywhere soon, so let’s dive into the details of how they work and how to use them practically.
What Are NFTs?
The term NFT stands for “Non-Fungible Token“. Simple put, it is a unique digital record, stored on the blockchain that proves ownership of a certain digital asset.
Ownership of a jpg, a movie, an audio file, or any other sort of digital asset falls under this category.
The NBA, for example, sells NFTs with video snippets from basketball games, or the digital artist Mike Winkelmann known as Beeple, whose work was famously auctioned for $69 million just because it was made as an NFT.
It’s crazy!
You probably wonder, whats so unique about them? And where does the value come from?
The key characteristic of NFTs is that they cannot be duplicated.
This means you own the official version of whatever it is you possess if you own the NFT, which means there is a finite number of that token/asset and no one can steal it and make it as their own.
Which is great, because now The Market can place a true value on that item. Before NFTs, there was no way to prove that you are the owner of a digital asset, hence the asset had no way to be valued.
If we take Beeple for example, and how much the market scored his work, we’ll see hat the most valuable print he ever sold was $100 per print.
But now, as he made all of his digital art into NFTs, he could sell the actual original digital work on an auction for $69 million.
So now anyone can download his digital art, because NFT doesn’t provide Copyright Claim to the work, but Beeple remains to have the definite proof that he is the owner of the original work.
NFT In Web Design
NFTs definitely mark the first time digital products like graphic art, drawings, 3D models, animations, websites, logos can actually be sold online for a price The Market gives.
This has never been done before, and it’s a game changing for digital artists.
NFTs are a new way to buy and sell digital assets that The NFT Market can finally value and put a price for the original piece.
Especially in digital art, in the NFT Market, which consists sale of some type of digital art, from $100M 2020 rose up to $22 billion in 2021!
This is an opportunity for web designers to make more money and to distribute their digital work to a broader audience around the world.
In the world of NFTs you can sell illustrations or animations as artwork, or websites that you designed for clients, if you are a web designer. Crazily, you can buy even colors as NFTs.
How can NFTs be a benefit to a Web Creator?
Web creators can monetize this new technology by selling NFTs or making them for others just to use it to grow your audience and reach more followers.
You can sell your work as an NFT
All that you produce as a digital asset like websites, logos, graphic art, illustrations, animations, now with NFTs, you can sell these goods to anyone who wants to buy them and become the owner of the original digital file.
For example, some people who value quality artwork will prefer to buy an NFT art and own the piece and than later display it via digital screens in real life.
When you put and NFT up for sale, you can either establish a fixed price or hold an auction, allowing your followers to compete and determine how much they want to pay for it.
This can be a game changer as it happened recently with Beeple.
Furthermore, by selling your artwork you can earn even royalties on future sales.
This means in addition to the money you get from the first sale, you can earn royalties every time NFT (your work) is traded/sold in the future.
For example, you could sell an NFT for $2,000, but if the new owner of the same NFT sells it for $20,000 in the future, you could earn up to 10% which means $2,000.
And you are the one who will determine the royalthy percentage of your NFT asset before the initial sale.
You can offer NFT Promotion Services and Creation to your clients
Businesses and brands are starting to use NFTs. If you are a web designer who creates website for clients you could build a portfolio by adding NFTs and offer them as a new service.
This is good for the businesses and for you as being ranked at a position as being up-to-date with the latest trends on the internet.
By creating NFTs you are able, to additionally earn income from selling them on platforms like Fiverr and others.
You can also Grow Your Audience
As NFTs grow in popularity, more and more are getting interested and want to get their hand on it.
So if you are not that concern about how much you will make with a NFT, just to share your work as NFT will get the attention of everyone who is interested.
This would be a great way for you to present your work in the newest and trendiest way.
Those who are interested in NFTs from an investment point will surely be exposed to your art/design just because it is an NFT now.
This simple act of offering your work as an NFT will help you target new audience and open up a way for new potential clients.
How To Create an NFT?
The process of creating NFT (also known as minting) is pretty simply if you are already familiar with cryptocurrencies.
What to do when you are not? Here’s some steps to follow.
1. Create a Crypto Wallet
To begin, it’s crucial to know that NFTs run only on the blockchain, which means you’ll need a cryptocurrency wallet to transfer, store and buy or sell them.
The option for choosing a crypto wallet is enormous, but the most popular among them all are MetaMask and Coinbase Wallet.
Choose one you like, download it and get started. It’s simple as that.
2. Fund Your Crypto Wallet
When converting your work into an NFT, you are recording a transaction on the blockchain, which will cost you money, since the network needs to perform some work. This is called “gas fee.“
You will need enough cryptocurrency in your account, to make sure you can pay this price to eventually mint you NFT. You’ll need to purchase come Ethereum (or whichever the cryptocurrency you are planning to use) which can be easily done with the most popular crypto wallets mentioned before: MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet.
Gas fees, however, are not the fixed amount because they are determined by the network’s current pricing at the moment. To mint an NFT will cost between $50 and $150 on average.
3. Next, Choose an NFT Marketplace
These are the NFT Marketplaces: Rarible, OpenSea, Mintable, KnownOrigin, and SuperRare among many others.
This is the place where you actually create an NFT and allow people to purchase it.
4. Connect Your Crypto Wallet to the NFT Marketplace
For example, if we go to OpenSea Marketplace and click “Create“ button, it will automatically transfer you to Connect your Wallet to the NFT Marketplace.
5. Last Point: Mint Your NFT(s)
Once you create your crypto wallet, funded it, and connected it to the marketplace that you choose, it’s pretty simple to follow the instructions on the marketplace and create the actual NFT.
Next you need to upload your file (the original image, video, website, design, illustration etc.) and select the terms of the sale.
This means you get to choose whether you’d like to sell it for a fixed price or at auction, how long will it be available for sale, and will there be royalties paid to you for every sale in the future.
Furthermore, it’s good to create a landing page to promote your NFTs to get the most out of it.
Anyone who sells NFTs or has a collection of NFTs uses a website or landing page for proper communication with clients about the project details.
You can do your research and find the what best suits for you.
So, the website or the landing page is necessary as it will be the place where anyone visiting can view the portfolio of available NFT designs, learn the backstory of the work or the creator, and get more information about future plans of the NFTs designs.
