Learn about our NFT Launch and how we sold-out in just 12 mins

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How to launch your NFT Collection with AutoMinter

NFT collections stand to revolutionise digital art, fundraising, and community building. But how do you take your NFTs and turn them into something valuable?

In this post, I’m going to share some of the lessons we learned from selling out our NFT collection in less than 12 minutes of going public.

First off, know that it’s a mistake to think all NFTs will be successful. There are lots of great ideas out there that don’t have the execution or marketing behind them and will never succeed as an NFT.

Second: It is not easy but you can do it. If you want to sell large volumes of anything (NFTs or otherwise), then you need a plan and the right team behind you.

Designing REAL Utility

Designing utility is about creating a real reason for people to use your token.

To make customers comfortable about buying into an unknown project for a medium-to-long term investment horizon, you want them to feel like it will at least be worth mint price with a chance of it being 100x if you deliver.

This may seem like wishful thinking, but there are ways to design utility into your tokens.

For example: You can have an NFT that is actually redeemable for a private members bar which will be funded with the mint fees and royalty sales. This way you’re able to fund the bar, and the buyers will have private members access and potentially a shared ownership of the bar.

The NFT Roadmap

An NFT roadmap is a plan of action that shows you have a clear vision of where you’re going and what you need to do to get there. It should be based on the strategy behind your token sale. The best NFTs have clear, achievable roadmaps that are backed up by real progress.

If your roadmap isn’t realistic or if it doesn’t convince investors that you can deliver on it, then it won’t gain much traction — even if the idea itself is good. To make sure this doesn’t happen:

For example, if you’re building a community owned bar with NFT access your roadmap might include developing staking, purchasing the premises, getting local licences, renovation and launch day. Each milestone should be achievable in the timeframe listed, but also demonstrate how your team is making advanced progress on achieving their goals.

You need to show people why they should trust your ability to succeed with this project—and having a good team, with good progress is key!

Provide real value with your NFT

Offer incredible value for your new NFTs so they’re easily snapped up.

The key here is to price your tokens at the optimal price to make them irresistible for buyers.

We priced our NFT at 0.06ETH. Even though the direct utility in the app was worth 0.2ETH each use (for unlimited uses). This made it easy and obvious for buyers to realise the immediate value.

Oversubscribe your whitelist

You should oversubscribe your whitelist. This means that you allow more people to sign up for the whitelist than the number of items you intend to mint. The reason is simple: most people will not turn up on mint day, and if you undersubscribe, then there is a good chance that some people who want to get involved won’t be able to simply because they weren’t lucky enough to sign up first.

One of the biggest challenges in building a whitelist is knowing how many users will convert. This is determined by your user acquisition rate, conversion rate, and retention rate. This can vary wildly from 2%-40% depending on a lot of factors, including the hype you can build, and the engagement of the community.

It’s a good idea to aim to get 10x the number whitelisted for the Drop

Do Collaborations with communities who have strong synergy

You should collaborate with communities that will help you sell your NFT. You can do this by giving whitelist spots to random winners in other communities.

The best way to find a good communities is by looking for ones that overlaps with your own audience, and then giving incentives to their community leaders, and giveaways. Stick to communities of a similar size to your own, otherwise and work your way up slowly. A 100k+ community is not going to want to collab with someone with 20.

Create a “mint spike”

People will not buy your NFT if they think no-one else is buying. Most people will want to be the last person to buy not the first. If you don’t get enough sales quickly enough, you risk not selling any.

You want to make sure that people have FOMO (fear of missing out). Make sure they don’t think they can buy later at a lower price, or even better, that there will be any more mints.

This is done by making sure your community knows when the whitelist mint is open before it opens. You should also communicate this with your early buyers so they know what to expect from the start.

One trick is to approach your most engaged community members, and ask them to be of the first people to mint in the first 10 seconds. This will ensure you get early mints and people don’t FUD.

The whitelist selection trick

The first thing you should know is that you need to be selective with your whitelists. If your goal is to sell out, then you want the best possible buyers for your NFTs. You don’t want people who aren’t likely to hold their tokens; or who won’t show up on mint day!

It’s normal that whitelists get full of ‘bots’ and people who are not likely to mint. You can remove these users from the whitelist to make room for whales with large funds in their wallets. You want whales to mint because many people monitor NFT mints and get alerted when whales mint. This drives more secondary market volume for your collection.

Create Hype

Create urgency (and a little hype) in your Discord from at least 1 hour before the mint starts. And continue to actively engage the community until mint closes.

Announcements should be sent at least 30 mins before the start of the sale so that people have time to get ready and prepare their wallets. Send one more email to remind everyone of sale time.

Use a countdown timer on your website or in Discord, this will help build excitement and also let people know exactly how long they have left to purchase! We used a countdown clock which was displayed on our website, as well as Discord – people love knowing how much time is left!

Smart Contract Design

There are many things to consider for smart contract design:

  • Gas optimisation
  • Many security vulnerabilities
  • Whitelisting + dynamic pricing
  • Features to include
  • Contract Audited
  • Lazy minting
  • Design airdrops into the contract for giveaways
  • Implement the different royalty standards

If you use AutoMinter to create your smart contract, you’ll have all this automatically. It will also generate your minting pages so that people can mint your NFTs easily.

List on upcoming NFT sites

There are lots of sites which list upcoming NFT drops. Some are free, while others are paid.

I recommend listing your NFT on as many upcoming sites as possible. This will help ensure that your NFT is discoverable everywhere and can be sold across multiple marketplaces.

The NFT Drop checklist

  • Setup a whitelist
  • Design real utility worth over 10x the mint price
  • Create a strong, achievable roadmap (and prove you can deliver)
  • Generate your artwork
  • Smart contract (use AutoMinter)
  • Create a minting site so people can mint (use AutoMinter)
  • Prepare emails, social media posts, and discord announcements in advance
  • Reach out to the most engaged community to get them to mint early
  • Identify communities and their leaders for collabs

Conclusion

By following these tips, you can create a successful NFT collection that really sells itself. You’ll be able to generate hype around your projects and keep them going with repeat buyers who are excited about what you have to offer!

If you have any questions feel free to reach out on Discord 🙂