The NFT world as a whole saw majors ups and downs throughout the past couple of years.
Dramatic highs in 2021, and record lows in 2022.
Despite their turbulent journey, NFTs are still and thing and going reasonably strong in 2023. People are still buying and selling NFTs, as well as creating them.
Fortunately, as technology and software has become faster to create, and cheaper to market and distribute, there are reasonably very quick and low price options available to make an NFT.
In some cases, NFTs can be made for free.
The cost to make an NFT include graphic design, coding and blockchain gas fees. It can cost anywhere from $0 to $10,000+ to make an NFT Collection. A single NFT can be created using free using free software. High end NFT collections will require a design and development team.
Way back in 2017, to make and release an entire NFT collection would have meant hours of specific programming, as well as design skills to create the graphics for the NFTs.
Online software to make this easy didn’t exist.
It wasn’t until 2021 and in to 2022 did software companies release just how many people want to create NFTs and started creating SAAS solutions to cater for this need.
SAAS is simply software as a service, and means online tools sprung up to take away the technical parts of the overall NFT creation.
Using free software can though have its limitations.
Cost of NFT Graphic Design
To create an NFT, an image is needed.
Some NFT creators focus more on the utility and benefits of owning the NFT, whereas some create amazing collectible artwork as a feature of the NFT itself.
Not all of us all graphical designers at heart, which is a skill unto itself.
The artists among you will feel more than happy creating an image that best represents your NFT, convert into a digital image such as a JPG or PNG, and use this as the foundation to make an NFT.
Those who are non-artists will need to look towards graphic designers.
Fortunately, there are a number of places to find NFT graphic designers.
One such place is on a person to person gig or service provider like Fiverr.com selection of NFT graphic design providers. Here hundreds of designers will design you one or a number of NFTs for a project or collection.
Quality of work and other customer feedback is important to review rather than simply choosing a provider on price.
During our last check, NFT designers can be hired of rates from $9.99 for a standard single basic NFT design, up to $4,220 for a 10,000 NFT collection with 100 separate combinable traits.
For simple very basic NFTs, your own artwork can be used for free, but for more complex multi-trait, large volume graphic collections it can cost several thousand dollars.
Summary: Price between $0 and $4,220
Cost of an NFT Coder
With a graphical digital image ready its time to make an NFT using it.
There are three main ways to do this.
Learn to Code a Smart Contract
It wouldn’t make much sense to learn an entire complicated programming language simply to then code the creation of an NFT.
If though you have any type of coding experience, even so much as basic HTML, it could be enough of a foundation to learn how to code an NFT yourself.
I personally tried this and used a low cost Udemy course to teach all the basics of creating a smart contract which can create, deploy, and overall make an NFT.
Although I had a prior understanding of programming languages already, the course claims that anyone can create a smart contract for their NFTs without any coding knowledge or experience.
The cost of the course if bought during a sale can be as little as $15.
Use a Free Online NFT Creator Tool
The creation of an NFT to a programmer is a pretty simple endeavour.
Some programmers built the functionality of the NFT creation into online tools that can be used instead of learning any programming languages or taking any courses.
The benefit is a fast experience, although some unscrupulous programmers have created ‘free tools’ that actually pay themselves when sales are made rather than your own digital wallet.
One such legitimate service is the one offered by OpenSea, and their Free Online NFT Tool – this handy link shows you how
This is a great tool for those wanting to experiment with NFTs. The cost to use the service is 100% free, which will give you your first NFT. If though you wish to then sell the NFT, a gas fee is payable.
Recommended Reading: How to make an NFT using the OpenSea NFT Creator Tool
The cost of using the tool is free.
Use an NFT Coder
If this isn’t the type of work you want to do yourself, you can always hire a coder to do the work for you.
Smart contracts can be incredibly complex by nature, or very simplistic.
The more complex (number of traits, number of images, DAO rules etc..) the more costly the coding services will be.
Again, another great place to look for an NFT coder is on Fiverr.com.
Although there are many NFT coders it is important to check feedback and ensure they are legitimate as again some NFT coders have substituted their own digital wallet address as the recipient of some or all sales.
There are 3rd party smart contract auditing companies who can verify the legitimacy of a smart contract, although these can cost upwards of $2,000.
A good NFT coder can usually code a basic smart contract from around $200-$300 to a more complex smart contract of $2,000+
Summary: Price between $0 and $2,000+
Cost of Blockchain Gas Fee for NFTs
Unfortunately, just like paying taxes, there is no avoiding the blockchains gas fee.
A gas fee is a charge of a particular cryptocurrency for actions on the blockchain, such as loading a smart contract and buying or selling an NFT.
The gas fees price has many factors.
Different blockchains have different pricing models. Ethereum is the most expensive and can cost anywhere into thousands of dollars for extremely complex smart contracts during peak periods, whereas other blockchains such as Polygon MATIC and Solana charge a fraction of a cent for the same thing.
As tempting as it is to save money and simply launch an NFT, or NFT collection, on Polygon MATIC or Solana, the reality is that there are more serious buyers on OpenSea who predominantly use the Ethereum blockchain than anywhere else.
This though is changing as OpenSea are opening their doors to more blockchains, not just Ethereum.
Upload a smart contract on to the Ethereum blockchain during off peak times, such as 2am to 4am, and it could be considerably cheaper.
Summary: Price between $0.01 and $1,000
Conclusion – How much it costs to make an NFT
It depends how hands on a person can be and carry out much of the expensive work themselves.
If we take the approximate values from all the costs involved, the cost to make an NFT is between $0.01 and $7,220.
Although the cost to launch a basic smart contract NFT can cost anywhere from $0.01 and $200.
The cost to launch a more complex multi-purpose smart contract can cost anywhere from $100 to $7,220+
