Preamble. And it's a ramble. 

I'm a photographer. And a designer. I dabble in 3D and Audio from time to time and I create films from time to time. 

I'm 39. 

It's been a long road these past 4 months as I started on learning about NFT's and their value as well as the potential to sell them as art. 

A lot of people have told me " it isn't about selling, it's about the experience". 

Don't know how much I can relate to that right now. I'm a struggling artist whose value has been "That wedding photographer?" or "That wedding videographer?" or "that guy who takes portraits of you nicely?". 

I've been in competitions and won, lost or just ignored. 

I've held exhibitions and sold one piece and or sold nothing. 

I still have the metal prints I made from 3 years ago sitting in my brother's house because they just wouldn't sell. Images that I spent years making haven't gone anywhere because of multiple reasons. 

I'm either too brown for people's taste. 

Not brown enough. 

Not well marketed to the right group.

Too well known to the wrong group. 

Or

I just don't know what i'm doing. 

NFT's for me were this amazing opportunity to bridge that gap and create an online following to begin selling my work. Finally a platform that would understand the true value of my work and appreciate what i'm doing. 

It's not easy. 

It hasn't been easy. 

It's really been difficult. 

I find it difficult because I can't understand the relationship between art not selling and generative pieces selling. 

Yes, I do sound very pretentious in that last statement. 

But It's how I feel. 

I don't know why my work that's taken 27 years of learning, sweating, paying attention to every single penny so I can invest in my work, saving, working hard for it, picking up the pieces when film rolls get damaged, when drives get corrupted, when CF cards/SD Cards get damaged, when I get robbed, when I just don't have the motivation to work, when the client doesn't pay, when I get paid less by a company that's GIGANTIC has a client relations lady who spent 4 days with me 12-14 hours a day editing a piece, getting VFX done, getting Animations, essentially a whole production done decided at a whim that she didn't want to pay my daily rate and pays me 600$ instead of the agreed amount says "do what you want about it, we're mastercard. How far do you think your case will get" gets away with it (I really want to call them out) I'm upset.  Picking up the pieces from there. 

Losing my first wife to cancer after being together 7 years and married for a year only to have that snatched away from me. 

Picking up the pieces from all this. And I get to a platform that should be for creatives but ends up being for utility. 

I feel dumped on. But maybe that's just me and maybe that's what's wrong with the way I approached all this with NFT's. 

So here's my take on it.

1. Lower your expectations. 

Some of you may get lucky with nft's and mint your work which will sell almost immediately. You're a very few lucky ones. The rest of us will be scraping the bottom of the barrel struggling to get into the game by shilling daily and potentially won't get a second glance for months. So keep your expectations in check. 

2. Mint with Purpose. 

I made the primordial mistake of being an over eager beaver and minted like a complete nincompoop. Make sure your Genesis collection is purposeful. Give it your very best work. Make sure it's limited so there's a demand for your work. It'll also give you a chance to take stock and actually sit down to review what's your very best and what you need to showcase to the world. If you did what I did, it's alright. We can remedy the situation. Just get down to your opensea and hide what you don't want anyone to see when they get to your profile. It's not difficult to do and it helps keep the landing page clean. 

3. Connect with your peers.

I'm learning this now. It's taken me time to get used to communicating on twitter. An app I've used solely to get my Internet and electricity reconnected as it's been the only way to speak with the providers so far. I'm reaching out to artists around the world whom I've never met, and more importantly I'm connecting with artists from my own country and region and it's really wonderful. It'll also give you a chance to share your work with them and theirs with you. And this earns you visibility amongst your peers. There's nothing more powerful than your work being shared by another artist. It's like an endorsement of your achievements.

4. Share your peers work.

Like I said in the previous post, there's nothing like sharing other artists' achievements. Share their work if you think it's awesome. You'll earn street cred and you'll make friends for life. You'll also get noticed by collectors and creatives alike as "that awesome artist who helps other artists out". 

5. Twitter Spaces

This can be a 50/50. You will learn a lot. And I mean A-LOT on twitter spaces about your peers. You'll learn catch phrases like "Shilling" and "WAGMI" and it's a fun ride. You'll also learn a tonne about the NFT space, CRYPTO and Blockchain spaces. And most importantly, you'll network. And that's key when you're looking at trying to sell on the NFT marketplace. 

This is so far what I've learnt while being in the NFT space for 4 months. 

I'm still trying to figure out how to make that sale, but when I do, you'll be the first to know :D 

Have an awesome day/Night!