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By Henry Uche, Lagos
The 21st century is embedded with unprecedented but radical changes across every human endeavour. Such changes come not only with threats to Life and businesses but opportunities to explore for the betterment of mankind. One of such opportunities glaring for us to make ends meet and more is the digital space.
The digital era has ushered us into another realm of transacting businesses in a seamless manner. Progressive countries are not only investing in the digital economy but are designing policies, Programs and creating an enabling environment for their overall economic growth, development and sustenance.
In this interview with Olaseni Kehinde Precious, a digital entrepreneur/marketer, she simplified the ways one can explore Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) in a digital era.
Excerpt:
What are NFTs?
An NFT is the latest revolution in the art world. The latest revolution in the art world carries the acronym NFT: Non-Fungible Token. It is not a rupture within art and creative processes, but rather a new way of commercialising and giving value to digital art, a kind of register of originality and ownership of the works that circulate and are reproduced freely and unstoppably on the Internet.
The NFT is a token registered in a blockchain (the same used by cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum). They are digital assets that symbolise objects like art, collectible, and in-game items. They are meant to be purchased and sold online, most of the time with cryptocurrency, and are mostly encoded within smart contracts on a blockchain.
Acceptability:
NFT is fast gaining popularity because of its futuristic reliance on blockchain technology to advance art. Having skyrocketed over ten folds from 2017-to 2021, hitting a market cap of over $6billion, the industry consistently yields income and royalties for its creators, adopters, and investors.
How to explore NFTs?
Whether you are an adopter, investor, or creator, here are seven ways to earn from NFTs.
By Early Community Airdrop:
You can earn NFTs by becoming an early adopter, which means detecting a good project early and simultaneously integrating it into the community early. In most communities, the first 500 people who join the community to help facilitate the project are considered early adopters with special privileges. These members are sometimes referred to as OG members in some communities to distinguish them from other members as well as to enjoy certain benefits. As an early adopter, you stand the chance of becoming whitelisted with less effort. Being on the whitelist means you can mint NFTs during presale at a lower price and sell on the secondary market for a higher return.
By Tasks, Contests, and Giveaways:
You can win free NFTs by taking part in community tasks, contests, trivia and raffles. To raise awareness, the community task primarily consists of social media tasks such as liking, commenting, retweeting, and tagging friends on Twitter. As the value of NFT can be determined by the strength of the community, it is possible to earn NFTs for free by engaging in community posts on social media and dropping your discord username by the instructor’s instructions.
There are all kinds of contests, ranging from inviting others into your community to competing for an NFT. The community can create a contest around design, content creation, etc. among members for promotional purposes. The community decides which entries are the best, and in some cases, the best entrants receive free NFTs. If your entry is standard enough, you stand a chance of getting the community votes in your favour to compete for a reward.
Whenever there is a community giveaway, you should put in your best and submit something worthwhile that the community can use for promotion. NFT communities often create contests whenever there’s a release of a new collection. Nifty Island for example created palm challenge 3 for members of the community to get access to the legendary pistol early and may decide to sell to players in the secondary market once the game project launches.
You can get an NFT for free by participating in some projects’ social giveaways by liking, retweeting, commenting, and tagging some of your friends on Twitter. The difference between this and a community giveaway is that in this case, you are not a member of the project community. Most times, such NFTs end up in futility and the NFTs share are of very little or no value because projects always place their community first. Unless, it is shared by reputable people in the space such as Gary Vee, Farok e.t.c, or projects with proven track records, such NFTs are not advisable.
By VIP Giveaways
Communities can agree to give out certain privileges to members of the community who have rendered great contributions to the community. Those who are actively involved in the community sometimes stand the chance of getting an entry into certain contests or airdrops. This implies giving suggestions, relating with other members of the community, and consistently participating in community activities get rewarded.
NFT communities help to sustain and improve the level of participation in their community by rewarding members with Experience Points (XP) depending on how actively they are involved. This allows them to level up have certain ranks in the community, and have a chance of getting an entry to certain contests or giveaways.
In some communities, you can be rewarded with the cryptocurrency of the network which would help you with further mints and also encourage you and other members to be actively involved.
Hodlers Airdrop:
This means that if you hold an NFT, it allows you to stand the chance to another airdrop in the community. In most cases, communities grant access to their members who are hodling a particular NFT which oftentimes, is unique to airdrop when they release new collectible. The hodlers have access to ‘allowed list’ i.e those who own the first project and are allowed to mint. For Instance, Cool Pets to Cool Cats NFT hodlers, Mutant Ape to Bored Ape holders e.t.c This ialies that certain advantages come with hodling.
Building:
Adding value to a community can come with certain benefits i.e. contributing to the growth of a project by using your acquired skills gives you leverage and additional benefits. The use of professional skills such as content creation, graphic design, copywriting, Youtube marketing, etc. to add value to the growth of a project makes you eligible to become one of the major pillars of that community, which can as a result earn you NFTs. This means that the more you build the community, the more your reward surges as the community grows. Some communities can decide to reward you with a distinct NFT with a promising value or they pay you in Ethereum, Solana or the likes depending on where it is stored.
Play 2 Earn Games:
Play 2 Earn Games are fun ways to make money with NFTs. Play NFT games such as Crabada, axie infinity, Sheep Game e.t.c you get to win the tokens of that NFT which you can either stack up to buy more NFTs or sell.
Flip membership passes:
A membership pass is what grants you access to certain NFT communities. Meaning you can have access to different benefits that come with the project roadmap such as minting, airdrops, royalties e.t.c You can get Like two and Flip one when the mint period is closer and there’s a huge demand for it.
Flipping NFTs and Investing:
Just like you invest in digital assets like domains, cryptocurrencies and flip them for cash afterwards, you can also do the same for NFTs. Flipping an NFT means that you can either make an NFT short or long to make some profit. A short-term investment or flipping can simply be carried out by minting at a relatively low price during private or public sales and flipping hours or weeks, after when there’s a lot of hype surrounding the project. If you’re not able to mint, you can check the stats of certain NFTs and use them to your advantage.
For instance, Marketplaces like Opensea, Immutable X, Looks Rare, etc. allow you to view the stats of top-performing NFTs to see how their value has either surged or dropped drastically. In the crypto space, it is advisable to buy the dip and sell the pump i.e. buy when the value is relatively low and sell when it appreciates which can also be applied to NFTs.
To make a profit, you can simply go to stats on the marketplace, check top-performing NFTs, check for the number of sales it has compared to transfers, check how long the sales occur to have a clue on the type of demand or value that it has. Engage in snipping i.e. check on those who ignorantly list their NFTs below the floor price and flip for a higher price. It’s very advisable to do this early when the project just gets listed on the secondary market and there’s a lot of hype surrounding the project.
Long-term investment can be carried out by hodling an earned NFT for the long term or buying it. But here, I will be concentrating on the investor’s perspective. First, making background research about an NFT project gives you clarity on where to put your money for a return.
It helps you understand available projects and how to leverage them. After appropriate research has been made, you can buy at that time to hold for years when the NFT has gained massive utility and surged in price. You can simply do this by buying through listings or even minting them. For a particular NFT that you figure out to be valuable, it is better to mint about two or more of them when the price is low and sell one or more when it is expensive, while you still have the one you are hodling. That becomes your asset and even when you later sell, you can re-invest in the project at a later time.
Create a valuable project:
NFT gives you the room to make some profit as a creator when you develop something unique and substantial. Once you come up with a creative idea backed by a good team and community, you can connect to a digital wallet to an NFT platform such as Opensea, Rarible and so on. You can also create a collectible, consider the percentage of royalties you wish to earn from it, and pay your fee to the exchange to get you listed. You can seek potential investors as the community surges, thereby making money from it, and then expand your investment in the process.
Influencer marketing:
Build a huge ‘following’ in the NFT space, partner with upcoming or existing projects and help them market to your audience. Get paid for building a reputable brand and having enough reach in the space via shilling.
