NFTs For Beginners Vol. 5: How do I sell an NFT?

6 min readMar 25, 2022

Welcome to Volume 5 of our 6 part ‘NFTs Explained’ series — a shareable guide for your friends and family. In Vol.4 we discussed how to create an NFT. Now that you’ve tokenized your work it’s time to learn how to sell it. In today’s post we show you how to sell your NFT.

Step-by-Step Guide on How to Sell an NFT

Select your marketplace and connect your crypto wallet.
Visit your profile.
List your NFT for sale on the marketplace.
Complete your listing.
Share your listing, build a community.

Let’s get started.

Select your marketplace and connect your crypto wallet

There are many marketplaces you can choose from. To view a list of the most commonly used marketplaces check out our Vol.2 post here. OpenSea is currently the largest and most diverse marketplace for NFTs,, which is why we will be using it for today’s demonstration.

2. Visit your profile

To get started, head to your Profile page.

From here you’ll select the NFT you would like to sell from your wallet. In today’s example, we will be putting up our ArtMeta logo for sale, the one we minted in the previous post. If you don’t have an NFT available to sell, check our Vol.4 post on ‘How to create an NFT’.

3. List your NFT for sale on the marketplace

Select the blue ‘Sell’ button on the top right of the screen to be taken to the listing page. Once on the listing page, you’ll choose the desired price and type of sale you’d like for your NFT.

Pick the option Fixed Price if you’d like to sell your NFT for a specific fixed price, or choose Timed Auction if you would like people to bid on your NFT. In the screenshot below, you can see the price is fixed at 1 ETH. If you’d like to learn more about Timed Auction sales, click here to learn more.

When deciding on a price for your NFT, it will largely depend on the creativity, quality, your reputation within the industry and the community you’ve built around your NFT. All of these factors will play a role on what buyers are willing to pay for you for your art.

Gas fees should also be considered in how you choose to price your NFT. These fees are incurred when the Ethereum network records transactions on the blockchain. Gas fees also vary depending on how busy the network is at the time. Simply put, if a seller accepts an offer made on an NFT, then they pay the gas fee, however for fixed price sales, the buyer is responsible for the extra cost.

Lastly, OpenSea will list a fee for handling the sale, which is a percentage of the final sale.

Overall, keep in mind that gas fees, marketplace listing fees and a ‘First Time Account Initialization’ fee (which we will discuss in Step #4) for your first listing will apply and will reduce your profit from the sale amount.

Note: Users can set how long they would like for the sale to run. You can choose from the following listed options: 1 day, 3 days, or 1 week — but you also have the freedom to set a custom duration of sale using the calendar.

Below in the screenshot you can toggle the ‘Sell as a bundle’ option to the left if you’d like to include the item in a bundle (this groups NFTs from different collections).

Another great feature on OpenSea is that you can also reserve the item for a specific buyer. To do this, simply paste their address into the field below Reserve for a specific buyer.

Whichever option you choose, you’ll be able to see the potential fees from the sale listed at the bottom. In the example above, this sale includes OpenSea’s Service Fee of 2.5% and a Creator Earnings of 10%, for a total of 12.5%. This is the highest amount that can be deducted from your NFT sale on OpenSea.

To learn more about Creator Earnings, click here.

4. Complete your listing

You’ll now be asked to confirm your sale by signing a transaction.

As mentioned in Step #3, if this is your first listing on OpenSea, you’ll need to initialize your wallet first.

Note: If the item you are listing was not minted through a custom contract and not on OpenSea, there may be an additional approval and signature required in order to allow OpenSea to trade the item on your behalf.

Once you complete your listing, you’ll get a pop-up confirmation that your item has been listed on the marketplace.

To see the item(s) that you have listed for sale, go to your Profile page and select the Activity tab. From here you’ll see the item you have just listed labeled in the transaction List.

You can manage your NFT listing here as well, but bear in mind that making changes or removing the listing might incur another fee, and the gas fees you’ve already paid are not refundable.

5. Share your listing, build a community

Now that your NFT has been listed on OpenSea, it’s time to share your listing on social media with your community!

By setting a goal for your collection you can begin to build your community. A major step towards this achievement is defining your audience. By isolating the demographic you wish to appeal to, your community-building efforts will have stronger results.

Next, you need to keep people in your community excited. Giving your community reason to stick around, and making them feel a part of your project will stimulate the buzz you need for success.

The best channels for this outreach are Twitter and Discord. If you wish to promote a series, you should consider creating a dedicated account. If you are an artist, and just testing out the space, feel free to use your existing accounts on social media channels to let your existing community know about your recent NFT creations.

Twitter Spaces are a great tool to talk about your work to new audiences. To find these, first follow people in the NFT and crypto space, then when you log on to your Twitter account, you will start noticing that there are many “shill” (sell your own work) spaces happening all the time. Jump on as a listener, learn how others talk about their work, and when you’re ready, request to speak. Depending on the amount of people in a Twitter Space, it may take a few hours to get brought up as a speaker, but it’s an excellent place to expand your reach.

By being trustworthy, interacting with your community often and hosting regular AMAs (ask me anything), you will drive your work towards prosperity.

Stay tuned for Vol.6, where we talk about the future of NFTs.

This guide is a 6 part series covering the following:

Learn More About Us:

References:

[1]:The Verge: (Dec.8 2021): https://bit.ly/36yhmAe
[2]:Motley Fool. (March 15, 2022): https://bit.ly/3D9bSrA
[3]:Wired: (Feb.14 2022): https://bit.ly/3tBJ5cb
[4]:Opensea: https://bit.ly/3L6b8X8
[5]:Opensea: https://bit.ly/3uq0Fip

NFTs For Beginners Vol. 5: How do I sell an NFT?

Written by ArtMeta