As soon as you have a concept for your first NFT collection, you may begin to wonder how much money you will need to create it successfully. Fortunately, launching an entire NFT collection is quite affordable, if not free. Let’s find out how much does it cost to create an NFT collection.

While reading the article, you might discover that the “number” is extremely large; however, try to stay with me. I will provide some suggestions to bring the costs down to “zero” at the end of the article as well.

Determination of the types of cost to create an NFT collection

Before knowing how much does it cost to create an NFT collection, let’s first find out what kind of costs you are going to pay. An NFT’s creation and mining process can be summarized as below (plus where and when the costs will occur):

• Determining what kinds of artwork you are going to sell → cost of designing the artwork.
• Building NFT-structure → cost of developing metadata
• Establishing NFT through a smart contract → cost of coding the smart contract.
• Allowing minting on your own website (or blockchain platform) and beginning the sale of NFTs to the public → cost of minting

Let’s go through each cost one by one.

Designing artwork

Selling an entire collection of NFTs is more difficult than selling just a few of your own NFTs. Typically, NFT collections are used by brands and businesses to entice new customers. Therefore, most users (if aren’t artists) usually pay anywhere from $50 to $100 to hire a Fiverr freelance NFT artist for a basic character.

Coding the smart contract

There must be a unique ID assigned to every minted NFT, and smart contracts are where our unique ID placed. Your NFT collection can be minted on the blockchain thanks to the smart contract’s coding, as each NFT’s terms and conditions are laid out in this document. On average, a smart contract developer’s fee ranges from $500 to $1000.

Developing rarity and Metadata

Two critical components of the smart contract needed to create NFT collection are rarity and metadata. An NFT is made up of NFT metadata, known as the JSON files in the smart contracts. Different NFTs will have a different rarity depending on how many variations of traits you have in your collection. Depending on the number of traits in your NFT collection, metadata, and rarity integration can cost anywhere from $150 to $500.

Minting traffic

When it is created on a blockchain, NFTs are minted. As a result, miners expect compensation in exchange for their efforts, and they are paid by the “gas fees” – the digital currency used to pay for transactions on the network. Gas fees keep the blockchain active by rewarding the miners who validate and add user transactions to the blockchain. Since miners are compensated for their efforts, they will go out of their way to earn more in gas fees, which will strengthen the security of the network. However, if you choose Ethereum as your blockchain platform, considering how much does it cost to create an NFT collection, this fee can cost up to 90% of your total budget.

If you’re not going to mint your NFT collection through an NFT marketplace, you’ll need your own minting website. Your NFT collection’s website will serve as a landing page for customers who want to buy (mint) your NFTs. A minting website typically costs between $500 and $1,000 to hire a developer (you can save this cost by doing it by yourself, of course).

How much does it cost to create an NFT collection?

Now, let’s review the numbers a little.

So, as a general rule, the cost of creating a full-fledged NFT collection can run anywhere from $700 to over $52,600. Sounds expensive, right? Well, it does not need to. Because of the abundance of free tutorials and platforms available today, you can still save a substantial amount of money. There are even some that allow you to do everything, such as NFT Port, for a small sale fee.
So, how can you reduce these costs to a minimal amount?

Tips to reduce the cost of creating an NFT collection

Let’s review some of the tips that most NFT artists use:

Considering other blockchain platforms than Ethereum: Without doubt, the most old popular one costs the most. Sometimes it worth, as it contains a large number of users. But, nowadays, there are many other platforms that can still do the best job without costing that much. For instance, Polygon, free gas charge!
Adopting “Lazy minting”: If you use the “lazy minting” option that is provided by the NFT marketplaces that are the most widely used, it will not cost you anything to create your own NFT.
Lastly, as previously stated, try to do it by yourself: You don’t have to hire anyone to perform any of these tasks because they’ve all been documented in step-by-step tutorials on the internet with real-world examples of how they’ve been done successfully.

Conclusion

Now you know how much does it cost to create an NFT collection. However, because each blockchain has its own set of defined processes, the price varies.
Getting started with NFT collection for the first time can be difficult, so you may want to consider working with a partner such as Satom, who can help you every step of the way. Keep in touch with us to find out more at hello@satom.vc.