At Foundation, we are advocates of artists coming up with their own playbook for a smooth entrance into the NFT community. We’ve put together this guide as a jumping-off point for creators, but by no means is this everything. Along with all of the below, we encourage you to bring questions to your peers, and study the strategies of others before minting and listing your work.
Creator Strategy Recommendations
If you’re just starting out with NFTs, we’ve put together this quick checklist of what you’ll need to get going:
Considerations before you mint and list an NFT:
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Select a wallet and send ETH to it (more info on how to do this here). We support MetaMask, WalletConnect (Ledger, etc.), and Coinbase Wallet.
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Confirm the works you want to mint
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Determine listing price: the minimum you want to receive for the sale
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Schedule your minting and listing days: +48 hours, ideally 14-60 days between finalizing plan and listing
Considerations for promoting your NFT:
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Create your profile on Foundation, add a bio, profile image, and cover photo.
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Verify your profile by connecting your Twitter or Instagram account. You’ll need to verify your account before you can mint an NFT on Foundation.
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Pick a date and time to mint your NFT.
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Select a date and time to list your NFT for auction.
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Prepare a Twitter announcement using our best practices guide.
Make a profile that stands out
Once you’ve created your profile on Foundation, make it as descriptive as possible. Building context around your practice is helpful to familiarize your work in a new community.
Tip: Consider using a GIF as your profile photo and banner image to liven up your space and include as many links as you can to tell your story.
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Set up your wallet
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Connect your wallet to Foundation and choose your profile name
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Add a profile photo and cover image
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Fill your profile with as much biographical information
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Include links to your social media profiles, portfolio, personal website, and any other relevant sites
Here are a few profiles that illustrate the best practices:
Verify your Foundation profile
To mint and list NFTs on Foundation, every creator must verify their profile by connecting a Twitter or Instagram account. This is important as it builds context for your work and gives bidders the confidence they need to start collecting your NFTs.
We recommend connecting a Twitter account. Twitter is the most important social media platform for conversations happening in and around NFTs. If you do not have a Twitter, consider creating a profile and engaging there regularly to become part of the community.
If you choose to verify your Foundation profile account via Twitter, you’ll be asked to share a public tweet with your Ethereum wallet address. This step is how we’re able to verify that the account belongs to you. Sending a verification tweet is a great signal for your entrance to Foundation and we recommend that you leave it up for your followers to engage with. Edits to the public verification tweet are possible as long as you do not edit the line containing your wallet address.
Build your following
Following creators and collectors is an important step in kick-starting and building up your network on Foundation. Start by following accounts of creators you look up to or collectors whose NFTs you admire. Perhaps this will spark a conversation when they see your work. Importantly, it will also share their NFTs and activity in your Feed, and send you notifications when they list works for auction. Following is helpful to stay up to date with your community and see different strategies and approaches from others. Beyond Foundation, following creators and collectors of interest on other social media is a great way to see how they are communicating their NFTs.
Ideas to build your following:
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Browse the Featured Creators section of the Foundation homepage.
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Look up an artwork tag that interests you the most and go down a rabbit hole.
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Consider following Foundation creators and collectors you admire on Twitter.
Engage with the community
Creators, collectors, curators, and supporters are all valuable parts of the ecosystem helping to contextualize your journey at Foundation. Consider sharing other artists' tweets or NFTs from Foundation. Join a conversation on Twitter, or ask questions to other community members, most in the NFT space are also learning as they go! We are incredibly early and progress is best communicated by sharing experiences with each other. Discord is also another social network where communities around NFTs go to discuss what’s happening and connect with others. Research which groups resonate most with you and your practice, join their Discord and get involved.
Some guidelines to keep in mind:
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Finding your community and being a supportive member to others is key
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Consider joining an NFT-focused Discord server
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Don’t be afraid to ask questions or build collaboratively
Optional: Collect NFTs by other artists
If you’re able to, consider collecting work by an artist you admire and familiarize yourself with the process ahead of minting your own NFT. This will give you a sense of what may resonate with collectors as you build out your own strategy for selling work.
To participate in an auction, browse our guide about collecting NFTs in the Foundation Help Center. Many creators on Foundation are also collectors (we interviewed a few artists here to understand why this is important to them), and the community does appreciate when a newcomer gives another artist in the space their support.
Considerations to keep in mind:
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Creators who also collect NFTs are able to understand what it’s like to participate in the space from a different perspective
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If you decide to collect before you mint, assess what aspects of the process you appreciate and can adapt for your own strategy
Confirm you have the rights to sell an NFT
Before you mint, you will need to read and accept our Community Guidelines. Guaranteeing that you are the original creator and hold all of the rights to mint and list an NFT is very important. This is not to be taken lightly, and anything you are unsure of, or not clearly within the bounds of creating should not be minted.
If you do not own the entirety of a work you are minting (including sound, design, text, etc.), consider clearing with all the stakeholders before proceeding.
Write an exceptional artwork description
Prepare up to 1000 characters about your artwork, as potential collectors and the NFT community want to know as much as possible before starting an auction. Outside of Foundation, you can also share behind-the-scenes footage or other stories about the work’s creation to spark inspiration in others.
Tips for setting a reserve price
If your ambition is to sell an NFT, becoming acquainted with the Foundation auction system is important to align your strategy. Once an auction begins, you will not be able to update the reserve price, so make sure that it is set appropriately.
Considerations for setting a reserve price:
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You know best about how much you will be happy to accept for an artwork sale. The best reserve is the minimum you wish to receive, regardless of whether more bids come in throughout the auction.
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Listing at a low reserve price is more likely to have an auction kick off sooner, but if you are willing to wait for your first bid to come in, you can set a higher reserve price for the right collector to decide.
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Explore the sales history of other creators in the community and see what strategies have worked for them.
Best practices for promoting your NFT
Extend the time between minting an NFT and listing for auction
Minting a standalone NFT, without listing it right away, can be an important step in your rollout strategy. Consider minting at least 48 hours before, or even multiple weeks ahead, as a way to build up anticipation before jumping into listing the work for auction.
Setting a promotion schedule for your NFT release
We regularly recommend having 6-8 weeks minimum for planning a strategy around your NFT release. Once you have a date in mind for when you will be ready to mint, consider a schedule as follows:
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Day 1: Post on socials about your upcoming NFT, and give other creators and collectors a heads up to gauge outside interest and support ahead of listing
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Day 2: Verify our Foundation profile using Twitter. The verification tweet also serves as your announcement to the space, letting others know you are here.
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Day 3: Share a sneak peek of the work and announce that you will be minting it tomorrow
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Day 4: Mint your NFT and announce that you will be listing it for auction soon
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Day 5: Continue to share background information about the work and how it came to be
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Day 6: List NFT for auction
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Day 7: If your work goes into auction, share updates on who has bid and how much time is left before it ends
Promotional strategies once your NFT is in auction
All of your efforts have come to fruition and your NFT is now in a live auction.
The momentum around auctions can be exhilarating, and people love to follow along with updates. You can share when you receive bids, when your 24-hour countdown begins, and when a time extension is added. It’s also best practice to announce the close of your auction and to shout out the collector who won the piece. They’ll be as thrilled as you are.
A few example tweets: