Here is a Basic Guide to selling NFTs for Africans

Temitope Akintade


NFTs made their big breakthrough in 2021, and now in 2022, NFTs have become a digital phenomenon. NFTs are currently the big topic in the crypto-verse.

Since an NFT is unique, limited, and non-reproducible, interest in these digital objects increases enormously as the days come by. The driving force is a new ‘digital art market’ – NFTs are auctioned off as works of art and sometimes reach six-figure sales prices on digital exchanges. 

The popularity of NFTs doesn’t stop with art, the influence and integration of non-fungible tokens are also increasing in other areas such as the music industry (songs as NFTs) or virtual real estate. A lot of money can now be made with NFT trading.

It might still look strange in some quarters, but what seemed like it might be a short-lived fad shows no sign of petering out. So if NFTs are here to stay, at least for now, is it time to look at how to make and sell an NFT as a possible route for your creative work?

Firstly, you will need to ‘mint’ your NFT. To make an NFT of your artwork, you will need to choose an NFT platform and a payment wallet – which would be used to pay fees – and to later receive payment when the NFTs get sold.

Some of the most popular NFT marketplaces include OpenSea, Rarible, LooksRare, SuperRare, Axie Marketplace, NFT ShowRoom and others. There are many NFT payment platforms like Coinbase, MetaMask, WalletConnect, MyEtherWallet and Fortmatic, which are regarded as the most popular.

Below is a step-by-step guide to making and selling an NFT and possibly earning some money.

Funding your wallet 

All NFT auction platforms want the upfront payment to ‘mint’ an NFT (the process that turns artwork into a non-fungible token that can be sold). In most cases, payment must be made in cryptocurrency, which means that before you have a chance of earning any cryptocurrency by selling an NFT of your work, you’ll need to buy some to cover the fees. Ether is the most commonly accepted currency since it is the native cryptocurrency of the open-source blockchain platform Ethereum, where NFTs first launched. 

If you possess some ETH already, you will have to make sure you have it in a digital wallet (Metamask or others), which you’ll need to connect to your chosen NFT platform (Opensea or any other) to make and receive payments. If you do not have, you can buy with cash on Binance p2p, Kucoin p2p or any other crypto exchange and platform out there where you can buy ETH or other currencies and then transfer to Metamask or any digital wallet of your choice. 

As mentioned earlier, there are many options for this, but we would use MetaMask to illustrate. It is available as a browser extension and as a mobile app. 

Creating a digital wallet

To create a digital wallet with MetaMask, you will need to go to its website and click on the blue ‘Download’ button in the top-right. You would be asked to confirm that you wish to ‘create a new wallet and seed phrase’. Seed phrase means a list of words that stores blockchain information. Say yes, then agree to the terms, create a password, and make your way through some security measures, then you have your account set up.

Adding crypto to the wallet 

Once you have your MetaMask wallet set up, or any digital wallet, you’ll need to add some ETH to it. As explained earlier, you can buy on those platforms and send them to your preferred wallet.

Connecting wallet to the marketplace 

At this point, you will need to connect the Metamask wallet to the NFT platform (Opensea, Rarible or others) that would be used to sell the NFT. On Opensea (the same as most marketplaces) at the right-hand corner of the screen, there is a button that reads ‘Connect wallet’. Click that and on the next screen, you will be asked for your wallet provider, then you choose the wallet (Metamask, Coinbase, WalletConnect and likes) you are providing. A popup will give you the option to connect your wallet with the marketplace. Click ‘Next’, then ‘Connect’, accept the terms of service and confirm you are over 13 years old.

Uploading the artwork

Now that you have a wallet connected with ETH to make payment, click the ‘Create’ button at the top right. You would then be given options to create a single, one-off work, or to sell the same item multiple times. After deciding, you need to upload the digital file you want to make into an NFT. Most marketplaces accept PNG, GIF, WEBP, MP4 and MP3 files, up to 30MB in size.

Setting up auction for the NFT

At this stage, there are three options – Fixed price, Unlimited Auction and Timed auction. Fixed price allows you set a price and sell your NFT instantly. The ‘Unlimited Auction’ option will allow people carry on making bids until you accept one. Finally, ‘Timed auction’ is an auction that only lasts for a set time. 

You can add a title and description for your listing. To maximise the chance that your NFT will sell, you should write something that would convince your buyer that the artwork is worth it. You will then be asked to consider what percentage of royalties you wish to claim on any resale of your art in the future. A higher percentage will net you more money per sale in the long run, but it will also deter people from reselling your art in the first place as it will be less likely to make a profit for themselves. 

Paying the listing fee

The final step is to ‘Create Item’, and be invited to connect with your wallet to pay the listing fee with the Eth in your wallet. The fee ranges between 5- 20 dollars. Before going further, you will  have to agree to another fee to actually generate your NFT. And when a buyer actually buys the NFT, you will have to pay a commission fee on the NFT sale, plus a transaction fee for transfer of the money from the buyer’s wallet to your own.

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