Key Lessons for anyone wanting to make their own NFT project

In 2021 I made an NFT project, it sold out & I made around $300,000 at the time paid in cryptocurrency (Cardano’s $ADA to be specific)Since then not only have I learned a ton of valuable lessons but I’ve also lost about 99% of the money I made from the project to do a few things…

• Crypto prices dropping (I held the crypto, didn’t cash any out at the high prices I received it at)

• Taxes (this took 70% of my crypto compounding with the price drop)

• Developer costs (Hiring full-time employees is unsustainable without a revenue-generating model in place or a long-term allocation of funds)

• Failed attempts to hire talent (artists, developers, community mods, non of which came to fruition publicly but still took a chunk from the money made from minting the NFT project)

Preventing a downfall (or not)

The above list does a good job of outlining costs to look out for in a broad sense, but more importantly, is my place in these unforeseen costs & what I would do differently knowing these pitfalls.Before we can go any further it’s important you realize & I admit two things.#1: When creating my project I was more focused on making money than I was on the long-term vision for the project or giving back value to the people about to mint my NFTs. This lack of vision & short-sightedness for the sake of money is ultimately what led to my project not sustaining or performing well over time on secondary markets & in terms of progress for the community & brand around it.#2: Even when a project does things with good intentions, it is not always perceived that way nor is it beneficial to the project. I made the mistake of adding utility because people were mad at me for a lack of progress & then pushed out something more short-sighted once again. Taking the time to look at what each decision means, in the long run, is the only way to remain sustainable & continue to bring value to the people around your community. My place in my project’s downfall does not make me a victim, but more so an incompetent founder. Even though I launched on a blockchain that only had NFTs for a few months, the cascading decisions were made with a lack of long-term thought & overall insight into sustainability (both on my own workload to make a living & the funds to push the project further development wise)

Copy, paste, repeat

As time has gone on & more people made NFT projects I began to spot the pitfalls in nearly every collection, my own included.All the new projects are doing the same things over and over again with new words or art attached, and consumers are in a constant state of wanting to make money first so the following cycle occurs…People are excited about a new project, people buy said project, the project sells out, people are hungry for utility, people want to make money so they focus on floor price, things are happening too slowly, everyone moves on to look for the next big thing, founders get unmotivated, founders give up slowly, & then the collection fades in with the 99% of all other NFTs (dead & untouched).

Projects start to add utility for the sake of utility & ruin what could be a long-term vision by starting with a muddy form of utility that doesn’t add to the experience or value an NFT holder has. People don’t want to keep track of 1000 airdrops and claims & staking programs, they want tools, resources, & a community of like-minded people to interact with.Now that I’ve been able to step back I’m crafting my own vision on these principles, all in due time.

Do I need to use NFTs?

To close this short letter up I want to add this last section that asks an important question that most people don’t ask themselves.A ton of people are wondering how to use NFTs in their products, & that’s awesome… but a better question I’ve found is asking “Do I need to use NFTs for this to make it valuable to the user?” or “How does making this an NFT make the product or service better?”Often times NFTs are used as a way to make a ton of money because they are seen as investments. Truthfully though NFTs are something you buy as a consumer first & an investment second.NFT projects are ultimately businesses, at least most of them. & this means that projects that don’t operate like a business are on their way to becoming unsustainable if they mean to keep adding to it as a central authority.In the end: adding NFTs to the mix of any business model introduces a requirement for long-term value & understanding how people will oftentimes see said NFTs as investments.If you want more lessons that you can use on your path to avoid unneeded struggle or pain, then check out my video at the top of this article where I dive into more of my lessons on the subject, off the script in a freestyle manner, or just click here.Below is a great threads to read if you want more depth on NFT projects success.

Thank you so much for reading, if you enjoyed and found any of this useful then consider clicking one of the two buttons below to show me how cool and epic you are ⬇