Here are some top questions from the NFT Promotions Q&A with Lewna T. during 2/2022;
1. Question: How do you solve the technical aspects of your project?
Answer: There is a variety of platforms for turnkey NFT creation. For FooCuties, Lewna Tsuki used one supplied by XRP that walked her through the process of minting and setting up a collection. OpenSea, SolSea, Binance and other networks and/or exchanges offer simple ways to upload NFTs.
2. Question: Do you still need the copyright?
Answer: Typically an NFT is not a copyright unless an additional licencing agreement is included. You can put some of the “rights” into the the unlockable contract on Opensea, or use some of the licences available on other exchanges (Solsea has 9, Audius has a few). But copyright is still useful to double protect that your work is not used elsewhere for purposes you have not given, and to add legitimacy to the project. You can file a copyright for $50 for a small collection by mail at the US Copyright office.
3. Question: Do you have to mint all 2,000 NFTs yourself? Aren’t the gas fees enormous?
Answer: Most platforms offer a “lazy minting” option, in which the NFT is not actually minted until it is purchased, and the fees are paid by the buyer. Since Eth2, OpenSea no longer has outrageous gas fees. Prior to ETH2 many projects migrated to SolSea, Polygon or other networks, which still have their own exchanges and communities.
4. Question: If I want to sell an NFT of a signed guitar, but not the guitar, can I do that?
Answer: Sure, just make sure you have a professional photographer with a solid background, or better yet, a 3d model. You can use 3D software like Blendr, which is free, or Zazzle.
5. Question: Can I put a video on Opensea? And if so, since they are so time-consuming, is it OK for my collection to be just 20 videos?
Answer: Yes and yes. The film industry is getting very interested in NFTs as a way for movie-makers to sell directly to their fans. The number you produce is up to you, there are no rules. Keep in mind, however, that Opensea’s servers will not store more than 100MB, so you can put an image of the video and the user will have to access it via unlockable content on another server.
6. Question: Are there merchandise sites that automate fulfillment of a physical product that comes with an NFT? What could I offer to people who purchase an NFT of my logo?
Answer: Sure, some people put their logo into an NFT, and then when it is purchased send out a product.
Most people are doing fulfillment the old-fashioned way, collecting an address and mailing it out, or sending it via a one-off merchandise manufacturer such as Vistaprint and Instaprint that can put an image on anything from a coffee cup to a ball cap or a key chain. Tellie has also been mentioned. Just make sure you have a link in the unlockable content to a field or email address for the customer to input their physical address.
But keep in mind that integrated merchandising which does not exist today may be in six months. All this is still very new.
Also, an experience, rather than a product, can be provided with the NFT purchase. This could be a discount, a service, such as a one-hour consultation, or if you are a celebrity, access to a private experience (sports, party, zoom, etc.)
7. Question: We’re a design agency and we pitched doing an NFT collection around inclusion, but the clients objected because of the negative environmental impact NFTs have been having.
Answer: That’s gotten a lot of press, however, it is really just true of Bitcoin however, no longer true of ETH, especially since ETH2 in 2022. Other blockchains have always had a smaller carbon footprint, such as XRP, Polygon, or Solana. Using those platforms you spend no more emerging minting 10,000 NFT than the power it cost to create a cheeseburger at Mcdonald’s. There is a lot of misinformation out there, but it’s not as bad as it seems.
8. Question: What’s the right number of NFTs? Isn’t 50,000 scary to a consumer wanting scarcity?
Answer: Yes, professional investors will look at the size of the collection visa vi the size of its community. However, keep in mind that because each one is unique, some individual preferences to own the one-of-a-kind may also apply. It is really relative to the size of your community. Foocuties has marshmallows with faces, so 10 marshmallows with 10 faces are 100 NFTs. With 20 backgrounds and that’s 2,000. Each is unique. With ten other foods, that could be 20,000. What’s really important is the size of the community of buyers relative to the size of the project, and the structure of the releases, so that the creators can always create scarcity.
9. Question: What are the royalty and copyright issues involved with music NFTs?
Answer: Music is another industry where artists with a following can now sell directly to their fans by, cutting out the studios, labels, and so on, and letting fans pay directly for the music. Platforms like Audius, built on Solana’s network, now compete with Spotify.
A lot of what’s being sold as NFTs are just clips of a song. If someone buys all the clips they own the song. But keep in mind that what they have bought is the right to play the music, not a copyright to use the music for other purposes.
Unless the distribution and copyright are written into the smart contract, the person who buys the NFT for that piece of music cannot put it in an advertisement or a film. Whatever rights are written into the smart contract are the rights that someone has. Another workaround is creating an LLC, where the total ownership within the LLC is inside the NFT. This has been used to sell houses and is being adopted for other purposes.
10. Question: Wouldn’t this be great for all the indie bands that already have a local following?
Answer: Absolutely. That is why the industry is so exciting.