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FASO artists & creators have sold over $1,086,773 worth of art via ecommerce on their websites over the last 90 days.
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Hi There,
NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are non-interchangeable unit of data that can be sold and traded. NFTs have become increasingly more popular in the art world because they are often associated with digital files such as photos and videos.
Over the last 2 weeks, I've discussed what NFTs are technically and how they exist in the art world. In the article below, I will continue the discussion and focus on whether or not you should sell your art as NFTs.
Don't forget to reply to this email and send us any questions you may have!
Enjoy, Clint Watson
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In this article series, we're looking at the world of NFTs. In the first article, we explained what an NFT actually is, in the second article we explored NFTs as they relate to art - are they snake oil or a new selling paradigm?
In this week's article we'll attempt to help you decide if you should consider offering NFTs of your own artwork.
I do think the crypto world and NFTs point to something real that is happening. And something that might coalesce into a real, useful idea in the future.
NFTs - Still Super Early
But right now, that whole space is kind of like the world wide web in 1994: there is a lot of hype and a lot of wild ideas being tried, the technology is complicated and immature, a lot of people are getting scammed, and a lot of what is being tried now will eventually go away and be replaced by better, easier, more sensible alternatives.
In the long run, I think something will come of NFTs in some form or fashion. However, NFTs are currently very hyped and the technology, from a user perspective (and from the artists' perspective) sucks. It sucks that I have to learn all the crypto stuff simply to buy an NFT. The whole minting and purchasing process is cumbersome. If you mint your NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain (which is the biggest and most popular) you will have to pay "Gas fees" simply for the right to mint the NFTs. And those fees you pay up front, you will never recoup unless you actually sell your NFTs. Despite all the hype about democratizing things for the artists, NFTs are very much "pay to play."
In addition, many of the touted advantages of NFTs are over-hyped. For example, NFTs are supposed to be decentralized, since they live on the blockchain. But in reality, NFTs you mint in one marketplace don't transfer easily to other marketplaces. OpenSea just upset many artists by restricting the number of NFTs an artist could create in a given collection. So much for decentralization.
A huge key to successful art marketing is to make things easy for the purchaser. However, NFTs currently actually make things more difficult.
The user experience of buying an NFT is currently confusing, technical and cumbersome. I don't think whatever version of NFTs/crypto that exists down the road will go mainstream until the crypto community creates more technology and tools for "regular people" that will make purchasing NFTs as easy as purchasing on Amazon.
Another issue to consider is marketing. I've seen a lot of artists waste a lot of money on gas fees minting NFTs because there is currently a "Gold Rush" atmosphere and there is a lot of Fear of Missing Out. Artists don't want to miss "the next big thing." Don't let fear of missing out push you into something that doesn't make sense for you. You should objectively evaluate your options.
Attack of the Cartoon Clubs
One big problem with this "Gold Rush" attitude is that "real art" in the NFT world is increasingly being pushed out by the cartoon art clubs. For example, one of the biggest NFT projects on Opensea is the "Bored Ape Yacht Club" (BYAC). There are 10,000 cartoon apes and if you purchase one, you are allowed to be in the private club and you get access to their online discord group. Many of these "Bored Apes" have sold for the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Below is the Opensea page where you can buy your very own Bored Ape. Do you want your art on the same site as cartoon apes?
Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs on OpenSea:
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| If "Bored Apes" aren't your style, you can purchase one of the most famous NFTs, one of the "Cryptopunks": |
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While NFT Marketplaces are touting that $41 billion is sales from 2021, the truth is that a big part of those sales was the cartoon clubs and not "real" art. Essentially, NFTs are being used as online country club membership dues. And that might be a legitimate use for NFTs, but it also has nothing to do with art and isn't likely to help you sell your art.
Should You Offer Your Art as NFTS?
So, should you offer your art as NFTs? If you are currently selling well, have a real following, have a good social media following, and your followers are savvy digitally, then offering NFTs might work for you.
Rare NFT images Sell - But Rare isn't what you think it is.
One thing you need to understand critically is that in the online world, the way to think about rarity is quite different than you are used to. Online, paradoxically, an image that spreads very widely across social media is a rare image. This is true because very few images spread widely. If you can master getting your images to spread far and wide, this can be utilized to create value in art objects that are not in the traditional sense rare.
In other words, an image's ability to cause itself to be replicated has become a counterintuitive, digital definition of rarity.
This is precisely the point I was trying to make in the following tweet:
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Like all marketing, NFT marketing requires you to create the demand first. If you haven't created any demand for your NFTs, then simply minting NFTs in a marketplace is going to be a waste of time.
But, if you have a social media following, and are able to get images of your art to spread virally, at least to your following or, if you understand how to create memes and how to maximize your chances of something going viral on social media, then you have a chance of selling an NFT.
The short playbook is this: Post the image of your art, get it to spread, get people to be interested in the image and your story and then (and only then), mint the NFT. If you haven't shortcut the process, then everyone who saw the image the first time it spread is a potential buyer of the NFT.
In addition, if you want to sell NFTs, there is a whole culture that has developed around NFTs. "gm frens shill me your latest drops". If the previous sentence made sense to you, then you should probably offer some of your work as NFTs. If it didn't, then you may need to learn some of the NFT culture first.
If you are not selling well, don't have a big social media following, or your fans are NOT digitally savvy, I'd forget NFTs for now and work to improve your marketing and your following so you can sell your real paintings first.
In short, if you struggle to sell your paintings, offering NFTs won't magically fix anything and you might end up wasting money and time to even mint the NFTs. But if you're selling your paintings easily, NFTs might give you a way to expand your offering... if you're social media savvy.
If you choose to offer NFTs of your own art, caveat emptor - buyer beware. The whole space is so hyped, and so full of people drawn to it for the fast money that scams are inevitable. The whole market may collapse at any time, just like the ICO market (the previous crypto based bubble) did in 2018, after being hyped as the "next big thing" in 2017. I'm not saying not to do it, just saying be careful.
Resources for NFTs
If you would like to look into offering NFTs further (on Ethereum) you will need a crypto wallet (I would look into Metamask). You will need to purchase some cryptocurrency (Ether) to pay your gas fees. You will need to connect your wallet to a marketplace. The two marketplaces I would currently look at are OpenSea and Foundation App. Once you've connected your wallet, you'll be able to upload an image and mint your NFT (after paying the gas fees which fluctuate in a large range. I've seen the minting fees range from $10 to nearly $100 depending upon the activity on the Ethereum blockchain at the time). Finally, if you want to try minting an NFT but don't want to pay gas fees, you can try minting an NFT on the Tezos blockchain. Tezos doesn't charge gas fees, but also there aren't nearly as many NFT buyers that buy from the Tezos blockchain. The largest marketplace for Tezos NFTs is objkt.com.
We'll keep an eye on the space and update you with future articles.
Sincerely,
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| Clint Watson BoldBrush & FASO Founder / Art Fanatic www.FineArtViews.com
PS - If you have any questions feel free to reach out and I'll do my best to answer them. You can reply to this newsletter or hit me up directly at https://twitter.com/clintavo (you'll likely want to be on Twitter if you want to offer NFTs anyway).
PPS - FASO, our technology company, is experimenting with NFT technology in our engineering research. We are considering some kind of NFT marketplace that would be for real art only (no cartoon apes). I'd love feedback from you, especially if you currently sell NFTs, on if such a marketplace would be of interest to you. In fact, if you currently offer or sell NFTs, we'd love to get feedback on what your experience has been like. Hit reply and let us know!
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