How to Become a Crypto Artist and Earn an Income by Selling NFTs
Anyone with an Internet connection and a crypto wallet can become a crypto artist. Here’s how!
Crypto art is arguably the hottest sub-sector in today’s booming NFT market. Tokenized memes, GIFs, and pixel art images are selling for thousands of dollars on NFT marketplaces.
While you can buy these NFTs in the hope of selling them on for more at a later point in time, you could take it a step further and become a crypto artist yourself in the hope of earning some crypto along the way.
In this guide, you will learn how you can become a crypto artist and (potentially) earn an income selling tokenized digital art online.
How to Start
First and foremost, you need to decide what kind of crypto art you want to create. There are a lot of NFTs that fall under the category crypto art, including tokenized memes, GIFs, short video clips, digital images of physical art, and more.
If you have an artistic vein and already know what type of digital art you would like to create and sell, great! If not, have a look through NFT marketplaces, such as OpenSea, to get an idea of what’s out there.
Looking at the best-selling crypto art first is probably the right move, especially if profit is your primary motive.
Once you’ve decided what type of crypto art you would like to create, you will need to download a wallet, such as Trust Wallet, that enables you to interact with the Ethereum blockchain.
While NFTs also exist on other chains, around 99% of the crypto art market currently operates on the Ethereum network, so that will probably be the best place for you to kick-start your career as a crypto artist.
Next, you will need to think of your artist name and personal branding.
In the crypto art market, a fair share of artists uses pseudonyms (Beeple, for example), while some even prefer to keep their real-world identity entirely hidden. Fortunately, the crypto art world allows for that as you only need an Ethereum wallet to start minting and selling NFTs.
Minting Your NFT Collection
Arguably, the trickiest part of becoming a crypto artist is creating (or minting) the NFTs you would like to sell. Fortunately, the process of minting NFTs no longer requires budding artists and creators to code smart contracts.
Today, there are several mint-your-own-NFT platforms that essentially allow anyone with an Internet connection to make their own crypto art. These apps range from very simple to highly complex, catering to different types of NFT creators.
Mintable, for example, allows anyone (with an Ethereum wallet) to create NFTs (of images, videos, or GIFs) within minutes, and without the need to have any technical knowledge of smart contracts, or spend any ETH to mint the token. For first-timers, Mintable is an interesting option.
To mint your crypto art collection on Mintable, you simply sign up, connect your Ethereum wallet, and load up the content you would like to tokenize and sell as NFTs. Once you have minted an NFT, you can put it up for sale immediately on the Mintable marketplace.
However, the NFTs you create on Mintable are very basic and, given how easily anyone can create them, they don’t carry quite the same level of perceived quality as NFTs minted on other more prestigious platforms.
Creating your own NFT on OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, for example, carries a bit more prestige — even though the process to mint your own NFTs on OpenSea is not that much different from Mintable.
On OpenSea, you connect your Ethereum wallet, click ‘Create,’ and follow the prompts to mint your NFT collection. Then, you can immediately put them up for sale on the OpenSea marketplace.
Other notable NFT platforms that allow you to mint your own crypto art collection include:
In light of the fast-growing NFT market, new platforms and apps that allow you to create your own NFTs are emerging. The key — for newcomers with no track record as an artist — is to use platforms that have large, built-in marketplaces to increase your chances of selling your digital art.
Expert tip: remember that all the NFTs you mint will initially be held in the Ethereum wallet you mint them with. What’s more, your Ethereum wallet address will then be connected to your artworks throughout their lifetime. Therefore, you probably want to create an Ethereum wallet specifically for your crypto art venture and keep your trading and investment activities in a different wallet.
Once you have minted your NFT collection and have listed it on a marketplace, you will need to start getting your name (and artwork) out there so that you can start selling it.
Promoting (and Selling) Your Crypto Art
Simply listing your digital art on NFT marketplaces will probably not lead to an immediate influx of sales, especially if you are starting out completely fresh and don’t have a following as an artist in the real world.
You will need to promote your artworks to get your first virtual pieces out of the door.
Social media provides the easiest avenue to start promoting your crypto art as well as NFT forums, subreddits, and Telegram channels.
While you don’t want to be shilling your art non-stop, becoming part of the NFT community and contributing value to it can go a long way in increasing your visibility as a budding crypto artist.
And you never know, maybe someone will like your virtual art and you’ll become the next Beeple in no time.
To start your crypto art career, download Trust Wallet and connect to an NFT marketplace today.