How I created my own set of NFTs for less than 100 USD

You may know, as I did, that hive-engine allows the creation of NFTs on HIVE. Many tribes have implemented this technology stack and now you can even mint NFTs using the tribal tokens.

Since there are no great guides or documentation, I took it upon my self to figure out more about this process. I started by looking into which tribes allowed this possibility.

So we have some options right now, beyond paying in BEE we can pay in PAL, SPT, CINE or others. Of course if we are going to be publishing NFT's in someone elses tribe, we have to consider the concept of relevance. I doubt that NFTs of my face would go over well in the SPT-splinterlands talk community.

But luckily we have CINE, and I have some experience with Film and Television, so I came up with a wonderful test case for these NFTs within the CINE tribe.

As I dug into the 'how' to create NFTs, I looked over the interface for clues. Most of it seemed straight forward....

Tribes can set their own pricing, and the price structure was misinterpreted by me at first glance. The first of any token costs 101 CINE, and each edition of the same token costs 1 CINE. I am making a collection of 8 NFTs, with 20 editions each, so in the end my total cost for these 160 NFT tokens of 8 different types is 960 CINE.

This converts to a 80.5 HIVE price, or about 75 dollars at the time of writing.

We have the option to upload audio, video or image NFTs, and I am going to go with images, as I have spent some time clipping my face out of some of my film and web series appearances.

Take note - the thumbnail does not need to be the same image as the NFT, and currently these NFTs, once created, cannot be edited by anyone. If you need editable NFTs, for gaming for example, you will have to look into the BEE minting options, like dcity.io does, for example.

In the next section, we have a number of options, including the name of the NFT and the collection. Collection is a way to group NFTs, and I am using 'EcoInstant's Theatrical Collection' to group all 8 of these current NFTs I am making.

An important note that I discovered, the total characters (including spaces) of the Name + Collection Name + username of minter cannot total more than 100 characters. I initially tried to submit this NFT with the full name of the episode title, which is - Señor Stevia or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bean, and the result was that the NFT wasn't printed. After contacting support, the tokens were refunded - currently there is no warning on the front-end, but looks like they will be working on creating just that warning.

The description is also important, it is where I am sticking the youtube links for people to go check out the content that these NFTs come from.

Rights is also an interesting category, this gives you the chance to including content in the NFT that you are allowing 'limited production rights' to, this might be like merchandising rights or others. My NFTs will be private, in that owning them does not give you rights over my face, but will instead look to give value to these NFTs in other ways, more on this later.

Don't forget to set the number of tokens in the edition, I am doing 20 for each of the 8 editions in my collection.

At the end you will also have to click a bunch of check boxes, these are terms and conditions stuff. One of the reasons I selected my own face for my NFT collection is that I can easily give consent for my own face and likeness, while including other people would require actual work - like talking to people type work.

Once you hit mint, it will spin a bit and then let you know that your new token is available!

Which brings us over to the market - you have to list the NFTs on the market to allow people to buy them.

But why will people by your (or my) NFTs?

This is the real question. As we have reviewed today, the technology exists for anyone to easily mint, so the only thing that is left to do is give these tokens some value. I have some ideas, and the first one is to give a prize to the first person who assembles a full set of these.

15 INCOME token prize to the first person to assemble a full set of my NFTs!

I have some other ideas with these tokens, but I think this is a great first step. Its like a race, because only the first person wins.

15 INCOME tokens (shares in our Synergy Fund), can currently be purchased for 5.3 HIVE each, or 79.5 HIVE. These tokens are each backed by more than 7 HIVE in assets.

I have set the market price for the first 4 sets of my NFTs at 120 cine each, for a total set cost of 960 CINE. This is approximately 80 HIVE if you buy the CINE up from the swap pool here: https://beeswap.dcity.io/swap?input=SWAP.HIVE&output=CINE

So the first person to buy a set will get basically a full rebate in INCOME tokens!

What are some other ways to add value to NFTs? Let me know some of your ideas in the comments for a chance to win one.

Freedom and Friendship!