How to Create an NFT? Everything You Need To Know

NFTs are trending with popularity as it enables people to earn handsome financial rewards. If you wish to capitalize on NFT, this article enumerates the steps to create an NFT and helps you know its essential tools. To make an NFT, you must first understand its concept.

What is NFT?

An NFT is a digital token you attach to your digital content – such as artwork, collectible cards, or real estate to represent your ownership. NFTs exist on a distributed network called the blockchain that records transactions and prevents any manipulation. Hence, NFTs are highly sought after due to their authenticity.

Therefore, to make an NFT, you have to create a new token for a digital item to convert it into an asset on the blockchain network. This process of creating an NFT is called minting. Hence, an NFT is coined as soon as it is made.

Here is a list of steps to follow to create an NFT:

Step 1: Create or Pick the content

To create NFTs, you must first pick the digital content you wish to attach to your NFT token. This content can be a picture, music, video, meme, GIF, tweet, or other creative products such as crypto-collectibles, video games, and virtual land in metaverses. Alternatively, you can create a new piece of digital art, written content, or video to make an NFT art and save the file in one of the formats mentioned. Once you decide on the content, ensure it is original to avoid legal troubles. Additionally, always prefer content that adds value to your audience.

The next step is choosing a suitable content file type and size. If your content is not digital, you must have it converted into an appropriate file type. The most preferred file types include:

JPG
Visual arts are stored in Portable Network Graphics (PNG)
Graphics interchange format (GIF)
Text documents are saved in portable document format (PDF)
Music is stored in MP3 format
Video is stored in MP4 format
MOV

How to turn your art into an NFT – Step-by-Step Tutorial

In addition, you need to seek the help of a developer if your NFT contains a smart contract (conditions for sale). A smart contract is a sale agreement between an NFT buyer and a seller.

What are Smart Contracts in Crypto? (4 Examples + Animated)

Step 2: Choose Your Blockchain

To begin with, the minting process, choose the blockchain network on which you wish to create an NFT. Some of the criteria to consider while selecting a blockchain includes:

Transaction Speed: You need to pick a blockchain with a high transaction speed as they perform more transactions per second. This way, you can be sure of completing your transaction.
Security: As most networks are vulnerable to security threats, go for a network that maintains a good track record of security history.
Transaction Cost: You must always go with a blockchain network that offers lower transaction costs or one with a feeless structure.
Smart Contract Functionality: A well-crafted smart contract functionality offers excellent security. Hence, choose a blockchain that comes with this feature.
Energy Efficiency: Go for a more energy-efficient blockchain to save your time and the environment while working on the NFTs.

The most popular blockchain network is Ethereum. Other popular options include:

It would help if you bore the cost of transacting your NFTs while trading with it. This fee you pay for the transaction is called a gas fee. Since Ethereum is pretty costlier, some of the alternatives to consider to lessen gas fees are:

Rarible facilitates selling NFT through the flow blockchain with the Blocto wallet.
Opensea allows you to sell NFTs through a polygon blockchain.

NFT Gas Fees OpenSea

Step 3: Set up a Digital Wallet

NFTs exist on the blockchain with a wallet ID indicating your ownership. A digital wallet is a virtual wallet that stores your private key to authorize transactions. Hence, it houses your cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Wallets allow you to:

Sign in and create accounts on the NFT marketplace, a digital platform for buying and selling NFTs.
Access your digital assets, sign transactions, and manage balances.
A wallet facilitates the payment of gas fees.

Some of the best NFT wallets are listed below:

Once you create your wallet, your account is secured with a 12-lettered ‘seed phrase,’ which acts as your unique password if you forget your password.

How to Create a Digital Wallet?

Step 4: Buy Crypto through an Exchange

You will require cryptocurrencies to pay gas on the blockchain and mint your NFTs. It costs about $12 to $249 worth of ETH to pay for gas fees while creating an NFT. Hence, it is a good idea to fill your wallet with cryptocurrencies. For this purpose, create an account with a reputable exchange to log in and buy the cryptocurrency.

Depending on the blockchain, you can buy Ethereum (ETH) or Solana (SOL) coins to mint NFTs. After you purchase the coins:

Log into your exchange to transfer them to your wallet.
Once there, open the wallets tab to choose the relevant currency and specify your wallet address in the address field.
Pick the right network (ERC-20 for ETH, Solana for SOL) before entering the amount to withdraw.

Step 5: Select your NFT Marketplace to Sell

Creating your NFT starts with selecting a good NFT marketplace. An NFT marketplace is a digital platform that facilitates trading your NFTs. First, however, you should choose your venue based on the following factors :

NFT marketplaces charge you a fee for trading an NFT.
Terms and contracts: Some platforms will present you with an agreement. For example, some venues offer you copyright claims along with the NFT, while others allow the original maker to retain the copyright.
Specialized type of NFT: Some platforms specialize in a specific kind of NFT. For example, NBA Top Shot is a basketball-focused marketplace.
Your choice of blockchain.

There are two categories of NFT marketplaces you can choose from:

Curated Platforms: These platforms allow established artists to mint or create NFTs. Hence, they feature high-quality digital art tokens. Thus, they charge a high transaction fee and render a pretty rigid royalty percentage for your art. E.g., SuperRare.
Self-Service Platforms: Anybody can make use of this platform to create NFTs. You can use these platforms to develop an NFT art or make your photo, a video, or an audio file and convert these into NFTs. Unlike curated platforms, these platforms are pretty flexible with the royalty percentage for each token sale.

Here are the top NFT marketplaces to choose from:

OpenSea
Axie Marketplace
Larva Labs/CryptoPunks
NBA Top Shot Marketplace
Rarible,
SuperRare
Foundation
Nifty Gateway
Mintable
ThetaDrop

However, the most popular NFT marketplaces among these are the Open Sea and Rarible.

How to Choose An NFT Marketplace?

Do I Have To Use A Marketplace Site To Create An NFT?

It is not necessary to use a marketplace to create an NFT, as you can also create your smart contract to deploy your NFT into the blockchain of your choice and mint. However, it is pretty challenging; hence, most people prefer to use a platform.

Step 6: Connect Your Wallet to the NFT Platform

Once you have set up your wallet and chosen your NFT marketplace, you need to connect both. First, you use Rarible or Opensea, which automatically prompts you to connect your wallet. Following this, a list of compatible wallets appears, from which you can choose one of them and continue with the connection process. In addition, you have to be careful whenever a connection request appears unexpectedly due to the possibility of scammers.

Step 7: Display Your Collection

To sell your NFT, you must display it. For this purpose, upload a display image of your content when the NFT marketplace prompts you. Following this, add a suitable title and a short description to improve the probability of selling your NFT as it will attract collectors.

Step 8: Create a Digital Token for Your Content

Once you create your collection, you can follow the below steps to create a digital token for your content:

Click on ‘Add New Item’
Upload metadata which can be a visual, audio, or 3D file.
Name your token.

Following this, you can prefer to mint a single token or a collection.

Stand-alone Token

This allows you to create only one copy of your digital token, enhancing its worth.

The Edition Token

This allows you to create multiple copies of your digital token and an edition number to make each replica distinct. Then, you have to add properties, levels, and relevant stats to enable your buyers to filter your artwork.

Click on “Create” to add your NFT to the blockchain. During this step, you must pay for approval and gas fees.
After a successful transaction, select the payment token you would accept for your digital art.
Then, depending on your marketplace, you will be prompted to set a royalty percentage. Through this, you will be entitled to receive an amount as future collectors sell their NFT. Additionally, you must exercise caution while setting the rate as a higher percentage can mitigate the chances of reselling your NFT in the future.
The next step is to choose a relevant file resolution and size for the platform to verify your token and approve it.
Once your token is backed, it is ready for sale after setting an initial price for your NFT.

How to create an NFT on Opensea

How to make an NFT with Rarible

How Much Does it Cost to Make an NFT?

The cost of gas and site fees influences the cost of creating an NFT. For example, on the Ethereum blockchain, your gas fee will cost around $70, whereas the site fee comes to $300.

Can you Mint an NFT for Free?

You can create NFTs for free in Rarible using its minting feature. This feature allows your NFT to be listed in the marketplace while being stored in decentralized storage. Therefore, your listed NFT has minted after a buyer purchases it. On the contrary, your NFT can be listed after you mint it.

When you mint your NFT for free using lazy minting, you need to choose the free minting option on Rarible. In addition, you will have to sign free authorizations for your wallet.

Lazy minting explained

How to create an NFT on Rarible for free

Step 9: Listing Your Work for Sale

Once you successfully create an NFT, you must list them for sale to monetize your NFT. For this purpose, you have two options to sell your NFT:

Setting a fixed price: You can specify the price for selling your NFT.
Go for an auction: The two types of auction available include:

English Auction

Increasing Price Auction: In this type, the price keeps growing until the highest bidder is declared a winner.

Timed Auction: In this type of auction, an NFT can be bid for over a defined period. The highest bidder wins after the time expires.

Dutch Auction

This auction involves a decreasing price trend until someone buys the NFT.

How To Make Money With NFTs?

Final Thoughts

As NFTs are growing popular, they attract higher prices. Therefore, as an NFT creator, you can have higher expectations to make money. Nevertheless, you must also remember there are NFTs that have incurred losses. This loss can be attributed to the gas fee and sale of NFTs. Hence, always sell an NFT with a minimum price ensuring it adds value to your audience.