This recent documentary about the NFT/CryptoArt movement is only a couple months old, which is good in this fast moving movement. The New York company Adorama put this out, and it's a very well produced, solid overview of what the NFT (Non Fungible Token) technology has made possible in the art world. If you're an artist, photographer, writer, or musician who wants to learn more about what NFT's are, and how they're being used in art so far, check this doc out. It's under an hour long, and a great place to begin learning.
For those of you who know this blog as an Old School BMX blog, mostly, you've noticed that I'm suddenly writing all about this "NFT thing." Yeah, I started diving into learning about this technology a couple of weeks ago, seeing if there is something in it for small time artists, like me. I'm still going hard with the research.
Yes, when you google "NFT's," most of what initially pops up are the crazy prices paid for JPEG's or PNG's of pixelated zombie looking things, funny apes, and Beeple's $69 million auction price for a digital collage called "The First 5,000 Days." I just found another article about Christie's Auction house selling over $100 million in NFT art this year. Really. And none of these art NFT's are tangible. It's fucking weird. That's the crazy side of the NFT/crypto art movement.
But is there anything in this technology for a typical Esty-type artist, photographer, writer, musician, or designer? Yes, I'm glad to say there is. Here are the basics I've learned so far.
One: NFT's are a digital file tied to a blockchain transaction, which gives proven ownership. That little thing is the magic. It makes that one (or a series) of pieces of digital art rare. And in art, rare stuff can sell for higher prices.
Two: Pretty much any digital file of art, photo, video, writing, or music, (up to 30 megabytes, I think), can be "minted" into an NFT.
Three: This whole movement came out of the high tech/gaming/crypto world, which means there's a fucking shitload of money around NFT's and crypto art.
Four: The price of entry is to 1) get some crypto, Ethereum in particular in an exchange, 2) open a wallet, and 3) join one of the marketplaces, like OpenSea, Axie, Super Rare, Rarible, Nifty Gateway, Foundation, or the others that exist. Then 4) Most important, do a whole bunch of research to learn about how things work. Google or YouTube your questions, and dive in.
Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, (who dropped a series of 10,000+ NFT's called Vee Friends, in May), says to do your "50 hours of initial research" on any new thing. Then decide if it makes sense for you, or not. That's real good advice.
Five: Take a piece of your creative work on a digital file, and "mint" it into an NFT, which takes services fees and a "gas" (blockchain) fee, and show it off in the marketplace you chose.
If you do that, will your artwork NFT sell? Probably not.
Like selling art and creative work anywhere, you, or someone, still has to PROMOTE and MARKET your work to gain interest, and get sales. If you already have a following, you need to see if any of them are into NFT's already. Most average people are not. It's still a very new and emerging thing.
If you don't have a following, you need to begin building one. The main market for small creator NFT's (and the big series drops) may be a few of your current patrons, but more likely will be a whole lot of "traders" or "flippers." These people are buying and flipping NFT's like day traders in the stock market, or sports card/collectible traders. They want to find new projects that have potential to grow, and they want to buy your NTF's CHEAP! Cheap is $150 to $200, maybe $300, or less in NFT land. These traders want to buy into your work, and resell it quickly for a 10X or 20X gain, that's 10 or 20 times what they paid for it.
So if your NFT costs you $80 to mint, and you sell it for $150 to a trader, that trader wants your work to get popular, and take off, they're in it to make money. They want to resell your NFT art for $ 1,500 or more (paid in Eth aka Ethereum, usually). In this scenario, you, the artist, make $70, the trader makes, $1350, and a bunch of traders learn you exist, and will pay more attention to your next pieces minted.
To most artists, that sounds like a shitty deal. And for one piece, it is. But if you continue, and you do multiples of you pieces, (a series of 3, 10, 50, 100), then you can begin to make some decent money on future NFT's. That's the basic idea. Yes, it's possible you could do a series, and they could get noticed and take off quickly. But more likely, you'll have to spend a bunch of time online promoting your work to people who have a sports card trader mentality.
So if you want to jump into NFT's and sell one NFT of your epic painting for $5,000, that's not going to happen. Unless your physical paintings already sell for that kind of prices, then it might. Most small time artists, I think, will either try selling NFT's, and fail, because they aren't willing to do the marketing or promotion necessary. Then they'll post somewhere saying "NFT's suck!" and stay on Etsy or in their own Shopify store selling pieces. Hey, that's fine, NFT's are not for everyone.
The artists and creators who are willing to sell for low prices in the beginning, to do steady promotion, and build a following over time, have a much better chance of success somewhere down the road. For people willing to learn this world, and do the work, there's a good chance of being able to create whatever you want to create, and make decent money at it, at some point. There are a lot of people from the crypto world doing this already, it seems. That's the upside of the NFT/crypto art scene, as far as I can tell at this point. When somebody's art NFT's take off, they freakin' LAUNCH. Ask Beeple. But his "5,000 days" collage of sketches took him 13 1/2 years to compile. So he definitely paid his dues.
So that's what I've learned so far. If you're willing to seriously market your creative work, NFT's may be really cool for you over several months time. If you're the typical artist that just puts a piece or two out there, puts two Instagram links, and hopes to make big money, don't waste your time with NFT's. I hope this was helpful for some of you.
Oh, and Twitter and Discord are the main social media platforms for NFT/crypto art. I'm on Twitter: @steveemig43 .
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