NFTs created and minted by this non-artist and you can too

Yesterday I, a non-artist, created and minted my first NFT collection to Opensea. I'm no Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Michelangelo or Picasso. I'm not a graphic artist by any stretch of the imagination. I had previously minted a friends collection back in January and published an article about it, but I wanted to actually post my own personal collection to the world's largest NFT marketplace.

Now you might be asking yourself a couple of questions at this point...

• How did you create artwork if you aren't an artist?

• How did you mint the NFTs?

• How much did it cost?

• Who exactly is going to buy your artwork?

• What does the collection look like?

Well hold your horses there, I am here to answer all your burning questions and by the end you will realize you can also create, mint and sell your own NFT collection. No artistic ability needed. No previous experience required. And it won't cost you an arm and a leg, in fact you will be astonished at the cost of such an endeavor.

How did you create artwork if you aren't an artist?

The first challenge in creating an NFT of course was coming up with the artwork itself. Before embarking on the actual art, I had to come up with a concept and I decided to go with an abstract look at amphibians and lizards after they suffered radiation exposure thanks to us humans and nuclear war. A little self indulgent I know. I would create a collection of eight NFTs called "Nuked" and lucky for me that collection name was still available on OpenSea to use.

If I'm being honest, and why wouldn't I be at this point, I do have a little bit of artistic ability. I've dabbled with Photoshop and can crop a picture or two, however, creating artwork from scratch is not my forte. I needed help and I found it in the form of artificial intelligence generated artwork. Yes, I put in the parameters and let the software do all the heavy lifting. Never before had I used AI to perform such a task, but quickly I found out just how simple the process could be. Soon enough, I had the artwork at my fingertips ready to be uploaded and shared with the world or at least the readers of this article.

How did you mint the NFTs?

There are many ways to go about this, but I had done this once before for a friends artwork who knew nothing about crypto or NFTs. That certainly gave me a head start and the process isn't all that difficult if you don't mind stumbling through a bit.

First, you must select a site to mint on and I choose OpenSea because it is the largest of its kind and also where I planned to put all the amazing artwork up for sale. Second, you must connect a wallet and I choose MetaMask for this task. There are other options including Coinbase where I have a small amount of funds, primarily thanks to their "Earn" program, but MetaMask tends to be my wallet of choice until Tally Ho takes that preference over for me after I use it some more.

At this point the artwork was already done so I just clicked on "Create" and followed the steps. It takes a bit of getting used to as you not only have to create and mint each NFT, but also set up a collection to place them all in and finally put them up for sale. As the saying goes, "if I can do it, anybody can."

How much did it cost?

Zip, zero, nada...

You have a choice when it comes to minting NFTs as to which network you want to mint on. I'm not sure of the cost to mint on the most popular, Ethereum, but I'm assuming there are transaction costs here given the price of doing business on the network. I didn't want to be paying a few dollars for every NFT as this whole thing was a bit of an experiment so I went the cheap route.

Polygon! I choose Polygon and my MetaMask wallet switched to that network. I approved all the requests from OpenSea and I was off and minting for free. That is correct, it didn't cost me a dime to create, mint or put up for sale my first NFT collection. And truth be told, it didn't take up a whole lot of time either. Now if only I can get rich of this not so hard work!

Who exactly is going to buy your artwork?

While I'm sure you have been engrossed by all the exciting details up to this point, this is where the story is likely to take a sad turn. The truth is that probably no one will buy one of these NFTs and the reason for that is me. I messed up in terms of the pricing by somehow setting the floor on my first NFT to .75 ETH and that floor was applied to all other seven items in the collection. 

I find a hard time seeing anyone paying nearly $1,200 for each of these masterpieces thanks to my mistake and the recent run up of Ethereum. I could be wrong and would be happy to be so but the chances are probably slim.

The problem is that once you set a floor price for your collection on the Polygon network on OpenSea, it doesn't seem like you can change it. I can probably work around the issue by taking down the collection and resetting it up and I will probably do so at some point. But hey, what if there is a taker out there. Might as well leave it up for a bit just to see what happens. Aim high as they say.

What does the collection look like?

Grotesque? Interesting? Enchanting? Disturbing?

Beauty, you see, is in the eye of the beholder. That said, I will leave it up to each of you to determine for yourself by checking out the collection - OpenSea - Nuked Collection. If you happen to really like one of the pieces just let me know and since you know the artist via our connection at read.cash so I'm happy to give you a pretty big discount!

Like most of my journey in the world of crypto, which is still somewhat in its infancy, everything I do is about "learning" more than "earning". I never set out yesterday to put out an NFT collection, it was just a spur of the moment idea that I followed through on. I don't even remember what inspired it, however, I enjoyed the task and learned a bit along the way so consider it a success even if I don't sell a single NFT.