There’s no doubt about it — NFTs don’t just sell themselves. You can’t just make a couple dozen of them and throw them in the river and expect to see some returns.
There is no magic formula, just hard work and repetitive efforts, and repeatedly slamming yourself against the proverbial brick wall until something sticks, and that may take a while, but, as they say, your time is gonna come.
So in the meantime, while I’m waiting for the money transfers to happen to give me some ethereum to play with, meaning to pay the transfer fees from sales, I’ve put up a few hundred crypto NFTs on opensea.
Oh, there’s no chance of selling them yet — we’re waiting for our ethereums to clear the bank transfer, which might end up taking several more weeks, but that’s the banks these days, but I’m putting in the uploading and creative efforts now, because there’s really nothing else to do until that account opens and starts doing business.
I’m thinking of all sorts of fun NFTs I could put up for sale, but there’s not a very big customer base for anything that’s highly specific, such as our 50 Years of the Institute, which I’ll be sourcing for images to go onto NFTs on opensea.
Right now, the focus is on artwork, not photos of ourselves and our friends, although that’s bound to get into the mix in some way or another.
There’s a natural limit to the number of NFTs I can mint, just because the market is so slim at the moment — there’s no one outside our community who’s interested in anything we have to offer.
We’re out of date.
The only remedy is to get back in date or give it up, and folding and quitting just isn’t my style, and I hope it’s the same for you.
So, let’s see what we CAN do while we’re waiting for success to strike like lightning.
Well, we can design more stuff for which we have no storage room, or we can find other things to do with our time, perhaps things that will support our NFT art efforts.
That means youtube, doesn’t it?
It’s the only resource you have, unless you’re independently wealthy, and trust-fund babies seldom find their way out of the sandbox, so I wouldn’t expect to see too many of them here, and I don’t.
If you’re willing to fight for it, you can win. If you’re medium-temperature on the subject, you’re bound to fail. You need a task that you can achieve, a goal that you can make, and that would be to sell a crypto NFT for $25.00.
Yes, just one.
Relax, there’s plenty of time to rejoice later. Meanwhile, take that as the first rung on the Ladder of Consciousness, and it’s now time to take another baby step.
Sell another crypto NFT for $25.00.
Notice that I said “crypto” NFT??? That’s to distinguish it from a hardware NFT such as one of my wallet cards, or a Civil War coin that wasn’t issued by any government.
Actually, I have thousands of rare and valuable images, and tons of photos of me with my various collections.
Now, keep this in mind. I’m not sure you can still do this, but there was a time when you could go to the Louvre and take a selfie with the Mona Lisa and put it up as a NFT.
Well, that’s the Mona Lisa, in the public’s mind. They draw no distinction between the actual painting and a selfie of you in the same room with the painting.
So while you’re trying to wrap your head around that one, let me hit you with another idea — how about some very personal photos of me and my cat?
Believe me, it’s hard to fail with a cat. Anything cute and furry will get some buyers anywhere, on any medium and in any outlet. It’s a sure winner.
If you could get an original photo of Beyonce’s cat — please note the restraint here, I did NOT use the word “pussy”, although I’m sure it struck you as well that that would make the photo infinitely more popular — and you could make it into a crypto NFT, you’d make a fortune.
Of course, she’d sue for her share, but you should have offered her a percentage in the first place.
If you can get a celebrity to scribble a picture and sign it and give you permission to use their name and visage to make that photo into a NFT, well I guess you’d own the world.
Do that same thing again — enlist some celebrity in a fundraising campaign, to donate a signed drawing, crummy as it may be, to be minted as a NFT and sold at auction to benefit charity.
Okay, now do it again.
If you’re already a celebrity, do be conservative in your issuances, meaning don’t oversupply the marketplace with too much stuff.
I have a LOT of things up right now on opensea, only because I have no idea what might be attractive to the NFT buyer, if anything.
I’m not at all sure what the market is or what the general public taste is, other than bad.
If you wanted to help me with my work, one way to do it would be to encourage many folks to buy a $25.00 NFT from me.
Normally, NFTs go for a LOT more, but $25.00 is a very modest price, and then there’s the gas fee on trade, so it adds up fast, and therefore I take pity on the buyer and keep some of my prices low.
When I sell an important work of art as an NFT, my plan is to charge what I would have asked for the original canvas or sculpture. It’s one of one, there are no more.
With multiples, it’s different. I can ask less, but I’m not inclined to do multiple NFTs at the moment, although that may change radically over the next 24 hours, you never know, with digital stuff, what’s going to come down the pike in the next few minutes.
So my price for a very important graphite NFT would be about $35,000.00, which has happened in the past — my prices are very reasonable, considering I’ve been in the art market since 1959.
Actually MOST of my prices are low. I have a few million-dollar items, but I certainly don’t expect them to actually sell.
They more or less serve as notifications that the Institute exists and that we provide many valuable and unique services worldwide, and we need help to keep doing that.
One way to help is to buy my NFTs, so you can feel the benefit of giving, and at the same time, if any of those NFTs hit the bigtime, you’ll be rich.
That’s the real payoff, the very real possibility that your NFT could take off and go right through the roof, over the top and out the door.
So which of my NFTs would you bet on as sure winners in the NFT race?
Would it be in the art area? Perhaps famous people or events? Or maybe something funny, or something philosophical.
I’d like to know what your preferences are, but not your casual preferences — those are easy to form and cheap to talk about.
What I’d like you to do is to VOTE.
That’s right, vote on my NFTs, tell me which ones you love and which ones are stupid, and which ones you think have the best chance to explode with value.
Of course, you should check out ALL the offerings before you cast your ballot — but how do you vote?
Simple.
Merely click on “Add to my Shopping Cart”, and pay the shipping. That constitutes a legal vote.
Every other kind of vote, whether verbal or written, doesn’t count, and gets thrown onto the “fraudulent vote” pile, such as it may be.
So every NFT you actually purchase for your crypto ethereum NFT collection is a vote of confidence, a “Yes” vote that will get me into the White House.
Come to think of it, I already live in a white house, so you can keep the elective office — I’ll take Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, too.
Humfph, if I mention one more New York City Borough, I’ll have to pay royalties to the Rodgers & Hart estate.
You’ll be thrilled to be holding some $25.00 NFTs of mine when one of my high-end NFTs goes ballistic.
You can be sure that I’ll spend the next 24 hours adjusting the prices of all the NFTs that remain for sale. I’m planning a marketing campaign that involves major news media outlets, and that might get results, one never knows.
So how many of my $25.00 NFTs would you be able and willing to buy?
No matter what your answer, it won’t be enough. From this you can make a living, but YOU have to put the effort into it, see? What kind of effort?
I’ll get specific:
- ACTUALLY GET A WALLET — When you try to create something on opensea, it sends you to MetaMask, which is apparently free.
- FILL YOUR WALLET WITH ETHEREUM — Well, actually, your MetaMask Wallet will send you to a source of ethereum from whom you can buy some ethereum currency.
- BUY SOME ETHEREUM — Exactly $200.00 ought to do it, unless you get unlucky when you try to initialize your account, and you end up paying double the normal amount.
- GO TO OPENSEA AND CREATE A NFT — Actually go ahead and make a collection and fill it with at least one NFT that you MINTED right then and there.
That’s it, that’s the whole drill.
I’m adding to that effort by listing some NFTs on eBay, hoping that they know what an NFT is, which I doubt.
There is at the moment a profoundly limited marketplace for NFTs, but that will soon change, as the public catches on.
The thing is, you’re here at the BETA stage — this thing hasn’t even really launched yet, and the mechanics and technicals are emphatically NOT in, at least not yet.
Ethereum is still on blockchain, but that’s quickly changing as public sentiment forces change and as they’re able to act.
Keep in mind that ethereum and opensea are just a couple of kids — it’s basically still a startup with a glimmer of an idea, sort of like where twitter was when he first put the site online.
Can you expect to make an actual living? Well, frankly, at $25.00 per sale, you’re not going to grow rich very quickly, but as your confidence in yourself and your own worth grows, you’ll start to edge upward, out of the poverty hole and into a rising star.
There are countless people on youtube extolling the virtues of NFTs and saying “A month ago, I didn’t know where my next rent was coming from, and now I’m making $45,000 a month and I’ve paid the whole year’s rent in advance!”
Stories like that abound, and maybe it’s time to get YOUR story going, eh?
You can check out my eBay listings if you like — “insane investor” is my handle — but there’s nothing really going to happen there. What it takes for something to “really happen” is a connection with a news agency and a gallery and a museum curator and some very moneyed people who take a tax interest and … well, you get the idea.
You need connections, exposure and tons of followers, and that isn’t me, and probably also isn’t you.
I’m really too busy being creative to market, but because of my obligation to the community, I take the time to convey my marketing secrets, and I also take the time to put my stuff up, and take my chances with the public.
Do try to remember: you won’t do any better with NFTs than you do with your tangible art.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby