How to Create and Sell NFTs for Free

A lot of people have asked me in recent days how they can create and sell NFTs (non-fungible tokens), so I decided to write this tutorial on how you can mint (and hopefully sell) an NFT for free, with absolutely no gas fees or other costs to you.

First, a disclaimer. There are many different platforms and blockchains on which you can mint NFTs and all of them have advantages and disadvantages. In this article, I will only focus on the OpenSea platform and the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain. This is because choosing these is one of the ways you can create NFTs without paying gas fees (which are necessary, and potentially quite pricey, if you mint an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain, for example).

If you need to pay gas fees (the price required to conduct a transaction on a blockchain) when creating an NFT, you will need to sell the NFT for a much higher price in order to make any profit because you will need to at least cover the gas fees that were paid. That is not easy to do… for most artists, at least.

Without further ado, here is a step-by-step tutorial on what you need to do:

1. Connect an ETH Wallet to OpenSea

First, you’ll need to connect an Ethereum wallet to OpenSea. It can be completely empty — you don’t need to own any cryptocurrency. If you do not already have a wallet, I would recommend using either MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet. Both work well, are popular, and are easy to use.

Don’t forget to back up your recovery phrase while you are doing this step. You will need your wallet to confirm certain steps in this tutorial, so have it ready during the process.

2. Create an OpenSea Collection

NFTs on OpeanSea are created within a collection so you should first create a collection. To do this, click on your profile icon in the upper right, click My Collections, and then click Create.

Most of the important things you will do will happen here.

3. Set Up the OpenSea Collection

Set up your first OpenSea collection. You can set images (including logo, featured, and banner), and you now pick a name for your collection, customize the collection’s URL, and add a description of your choice.

You can also set the Royalty percentage fee here. This is the percentage you will earn from NFTs you create every time it is subsequently sold and changes hands. If you sell an NFT for $X, you will initially earn $X, but if the buyer then resells the NFT to someone else, you will make money again by earning a percentage of that new sale. I personally usually choose 10% as my Royalty fee.

4. Pick the Correct Blockchain

Next, select the correct blockchain for your collection. The opinions are the Ethereum blockchain and the Polygon blockchain. If you want to pay zero gas fees, choose the Polygon option.

Finally, click Create. You will need to confirm the actions you take with your Ethereum wallet while setting up the collection.

5. Begin Minting NFTs

Now that you have set up a collection, you can start minting NFTs. Just click on your collection and then on Add item.

You can now upload a piece of art (picture, music whatever) and mint it as an NFT. You can also choose how many copies you want to mint. If you have things like stats or unlockable content you get when you purchase the NFT, you also specify those things on this page.

Once your NFT is minted, you can click on its page and click Sell to put a price on it. The price needs to be a minimum of $2 when using OpenSea. You can also choose how many copies of the NFT you would like to sell (if there is more than one copy).

6. Profit!

That’s it! You created your first NFT and paid absolutely nothing in fees!

Now for another disclaimer: minting an NFT is much, much easier than actually selling one. You either need to have a following already or have a different way to get people’s attention.

Reddit is one avenue you can take: there are numerous subreddits in which you can do giveaways to promote your collection — it’s a good way to start and the way that I achieved my first few sales.

Thanks for reading this tutorial, and good luck with selling your own NFTs!