A Beginners Guide to Making NFTs

By Krystle Rose

These directions are for minting and listing NFTs on SolSea.io, which is on the Solana blockchain. It’s one of my preferred blockchains because it’s carbon neutral.

Last updated: January 19, 2023

Prepping Artwork

The first step is to prepare your artwork by saving your digital files in an acceptable format. SolSea supports final artwork files saved as a .jpeg, .png, .gif, .mp4 and .mov with a max file size of 40 MB.

Minting an NFT

Visit SolSea.io, connect your wallet and sign in with your account info. Make sure you have enough cryptocurrency in your wallet to cover gas fees.

Note: What are gas fees?

Part of a Collection?
First up, decide if you’d like this NFT to be part of a collection on SolSea? If so, set that up by navigating to “Creator Dashboard” in the sidebar navigation and selecting “Create Collection.” Fill out the info and set up your new collection. You can also edit this information later, except for the title and short description.

Get to Minting
Once you’re ready to mint your NFT, navigate back to the “Creator Dashboard” in the sidebar navigation and select “Create NFT.” This opens a page where you can fill in all the details about your new NFT.

Upload your artwork files to the appropriate sections and add in a title, a short description and a long description. The long description will show up on your NFT detail page on SolSea.

License
Next up is selecting a license category. SolSea offers four licensing options and shares the details of each.

Royalties
Now select a percentage of royalties that you’d like to receive from secondary sales of your NFT. 10% and above is a popular percentage chosen for unique artwork, but feel free to investigate similar NFTs and look at their percentages.

Traits
The traits include a category and a detail that pair up together. Example: the category could be “color” and the detail could be “red.” You can also add more than one trait.

Final Steps
After you double and triple check your NFT information (!), click on the “Mint NFT” button and approve the gas fee to add it to the blockchain. Once it goes through your minted NFT will show up in the “Creator Dashboard” within the “My NFTs” page.

Listing an NFT

Go to the “Creator Dashboard” and click on “My NFTs.” This will bring up a page with all of your NFTs. Make sure you have enough cryptocurrency in your wallet to cover gas fees for listing your NFT.

Click on the NFT that you would like to list and then click on the “List” button. choose the price and accept the transaction.

Congrats! Your NFT is now live and ready for someone to purchase it.

If you have questions about these NFT 101 Guides feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @KrystleRoses or through my contact form.