How to Find Good NFTs – Revealed: Find Profitable NFTs 2023

With hundreds of thousands of NFTs launching every day, and 94% of NFT holders seeing a negative return on investment in just four weeks, it’s more important than ever to find good NFTs.

How do you find the good NFTs?

There are tactics, techniques and analysis being done by whale NFT holders who know what they are doing and have been earning a very good return on investment with NFTs.

In this guide we will look at those same techniques and analysis to attempt to spot the good NFTs from the very large number of bad ones.

Good NFTs are those with utility, a long-term vision and visible founders with a track record of delivering on digital asset projects with multi-million-dollar investment. Popular NFTs can be analyzed through follower plus engagement volume, as well as whether the collection sold out during mint.

Find Good NFTs before Mint

With so many NFT projects launching, and so many tweets and YouTube videos, how do you find good NFT projects before they mint?

Before finding the good NFTs, we need to first find a list of the NFTs that are due to mint.

Once a list of NFTs are found, then the list can be analyzed and a set of due diligence checks can be performed to rule out NFT projects that show a red flag warning.

Find Good NFT Projects

There are three main ways:

YouTube Influencers

There are several NFT experts on YouTube who regularly share good up and coming NFT projects.

Often it isn’t known whether an NFT project will take off and succeed, or crash and burn, before it starts selling, but there are key indicators that will always help a project. These we will cover in this guide in full.

The influencers will already have done their homework, and assessed the projects based on the same criteria we will use in this guide.

Unfortunately, the biggest challenge is finding reputable and trustworthy NFT influencers.

For every good influencer there will be ten ‘influencers’ who promote NFT projects to their followers because either they have a financial investment in the NFT project, of which more demand will only see a bigger return on investment for the influencer – or the influencer has been paid by the NFT project to promote their collection.

Gary Vaynerchuk, the multi-millionaire entrepreneur is one of the most followed NFT influencers.

How do you find trustworthy NFT influencers?

The best way is to look back at their previous NFT recommendations on YouTube from 1 month to 2 months ago, and then track how they are performing.

If the percentage of recommended NFT collections from 8 weeks ago have a floor price greater than the mint price, the collection sold out, and sales are happening on at a least semi regular basis – it’s a good sign the NFT influencer knows what they are talking about.

If though their past recommendations are a sea of NFT collections that either sold very few items, or floor price is much lower than the mint price, it may be because they are either not very good at spotting the diamonds in the rough – or were paid to recommend the collection.

Twitter Influencers

Twitter is one of the most used platform for NFT marketing, influencers, and communications.

Almost every NFT project will have a Twitter account, and have links to their official website, where the NFT collection will mint from and official Discord channel.

There are many NFT influencers on Twitter, some with tens of hundreds of thousands of followers.

The influencers will regularly create posts sharing up and coming NFT collections, and their recommendations.

Like YouTube, influencers on Twitter are often either paid to promote the collection to a huge audience to attract buyers, or they can offer the influencer a number of free NFTs in the collection.

The influencer then has a reason to promote the project because the higher the demand for the NFT collection the more valuable the NFTs in that collection are.

Not all influencer works this way. Some generally are providing very good information of potentially good NFT projects, but again finding these influencers can be tricky.

Unfortunately, there are many scams in the NFT space where scammers pretend to be part of the project, or an influencer or post ‘helpful’ messages directing unsuspecting NFT buyers to websites to mint an amazing NFT – when, in reality, they direct the NFT buyer to a scam website, where after the buyer connects their wallet and mints an NFT.

The scammer takes the money and disappears, leaving the buyer with a worthless NFT or no NFT at all.

The best way to find a good Twitter influencer is look back at past tweets from 1-2 months ago (this is like the process we looked at for YouTube influencers) and check on how those NFT collections are doing.

A higher percentage of good performing NFT collections 8 weeks later is a good sign of a good Twitter influencer.

Up and Coming NFT Collection Tools

There are a few online tools and websites appearing offering the opportunity of finding out about NFT projects before they launch.

Many are behind an expensive paywall where membership is offered in return for Ethereum, but there are a couple that a still free.

One such free NFT tool is Upcoming NFTs by Rarity Tools.

There isn’t much in the way of analysis on free tools, but they offer a good starting place to see a list of many of the forthcoming NFT projects over the next few days.

It includes NFT projects being minted in Ethereum, Solana and MATIC.

How to Find Good NFT Projects

Once you have a list of the up-and-coming NFTs, whether recommended by influencers or simply taken from a tool, you will need to carry out some due diligence on the list and look for traits in these NFT projects that were part of successful NFT projects of the past.

For example, 80% of the top 10 NFT projects of all time have utility.

NFTs with Utility

Utility means there is a long-term earning benefit, often passive income wise, to owning the NFT.

This could be by coin earning by holding and staking an NFT.

In essence it means there is a reason to not only buy the NFT but also to hold on to the NFT for the longer term.

After the initial hype and buzz has disappeared, particularly after rarity reveal and 95% of the holders realize they do not have a rare NFT in the collection, there is normally a mad rush to sell off the less rare NFTs and an immediate fall in floor price.

This is the biggest issue facing NFT projects. Although the resale of the NFT provides the NFT founders an ongoing royalty, the higher the selling price the more in royalties the project receives – so it is in the projects interest to create more demand than sellers to increase floor price.

Visible Founders

Many NFT projects are launching, but many of the founders continue to remain anonymous.

Although this could be for security reasons as much as anything else, as one successful mint of a 10,000 collection would see the founders sitting with $3million or more.

The challenge this gives to potential NFT buyers is whether the founders have the ability, experience and mindset to deliver on the goal.

Many of the projects start with the best of intentions, and a lot of ambitious plans and forecasts.

The issue is to deliver results for any business, the founders at the helm need to know what they are doing.

A $3m investment can be lost and wasted very easily in the digital business building world to those who are inexperienced and do not know what they are doing.

Would anyone invest into a startup where the founders or CEO didn’t portray the right experience or at least personality and driven mindset to take the business forward in the right direction.

That is exactly what an NFT project is. Especially those with a long-term plan, goal, or business to be built.

Just like an investor would not invest into a startup without the right founders or CEO at the helm, to invest in to an NFT project with hopes of return without knowing or evaluating the founders is equally as risky.

How Good the NFT Artwork is

Whether the NFT artwork is good or not isn’t always a deciding factor.

Take a look at Gary Vaynerchuk’s VeeFriend NFT collection to see why.

But in contrast, Gary Vaynerchuk built VeeFriends from the millions of influencers he had amassed over the 10 plus years he has been in the public eye.

As more and more NFTs are being released into the market, there is definitely a slight trend towards high quality design artwork.

A move toward art focused NFTs.

It’s very easy to put out another collection of 10,000 cartoon animals NFTs, but not so easy to put out 10,000 individually created amazing artwork NFTs.

If the designer behind the project has worked for major brands, or even better have their own followers and fans, this is a big plus.

This trend is recent but looks to be growing.

Popularity of the NFT Project

It doesn’t matter how well designed the NFT artwork is, how good a utility it has or how inspiring the founders are – if the NFT project is not known, or popular, it is not going to fully mint or create a demand surplus over supply to push up the floor price and produce a return on investment for holders.

Unfortunately, artificial popularity can be bought or faked.

The easiest metrics to check are:

  • Twitter follower numbers
  • Discord member numbers

Although the number of members and followers can be bought to make the project look more popular than it is, the number of engagements is harder to fake.

If you see an NFT project with 50,000 Twitter followers and yet each Twitter post has just 6 likes and 10 retweets, the numbers are just not adding up.

Although it’s easier to buy straight forward fake followers from places like Fiverr, it isn’t so easy to buy followers that offer continued engagement (such as likes, retweets and comments).

Popularity is best determined by engagement more than straight follower numbers.

This will give you a real sense of the community behind the project.

Having the founders regularly engage with the community, answering questions and providing insight is also a good sign.

Once you have found a good recommended up and coming NFT project, with lots of engagement and visible founders – it is generally time to try and join the whitelist.

Are NFT Whitelists Good or Bad?

Buying an NFT during a pre-sale whitelist only phase may be the fastest way to flip an NFT for profit, but this is also the hardest way to determine the popularity of an NFT collection.

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen, there are many NFT projects with artificially inflated Twitter and Discord follower numbers.

Many more rug-pull NFT projects entering the market – which means the NFT project looks as if it will deliver on a lot of great promises for future investment, but once the sale happens the founders disappear with the revenue, the long-term utility and promises are never met, and the NFTs become worthless.

So, is it worth trying to join a whitelist?

Whitelists are those scarcity items that attract people to attempt to join.

A whitelist, for those who have not heard the term before, is a short list of potential buyers who are giving VIP status like an early minting day and often a reduced mint price.

A 20% reduction off the mint price for whitelist holders can be enough to cover the gas fees, meaning a greater chance of making a profit.

Whitelists also offer one other very favorable benefit – early minting.

If the project is extremely high in demand it could mean it sells out in seconds, and there are a lot more people who do not manage to buy an NFT than those who could.

If you are on the whitelist, it means you are almost guaranteed to be able to mint because there are generally less people on the whitelist than NFTs available. It means you can beat the crowd and buy ahead of the public sale.

Whitelists are great marketing tools for NFT projects, as they are very much in demand. Everyone wants a whitelist spot.

They can’t be bought but are either won or given away by the NFT project for promoting the NFT collection to others or being the most active in the NFT project community.

Although the NFT whitelist looks a great idea, it comes with a major negative.

The NFT pre-sale for whitelist members only doesn’t give a true indication of how popular the collection is.

If there are just 1,000 NFTs available to 500 whitelist members, and the public sale for the other 9,000 NFTs doesn’t happens for another two days, it’s impossible to know whether the 9,000 are likely to sell out.

Unless it does sell out during mint it means the popularity may not be what it seemed, and it could create financial problems with the project longer term.

Although whitelists allow you to mint earlier than anyone else, and can save you money, it doesn’t provide insight.

Unless the mint is extremely popular you can often see the number of NFTs minting as they happen.

This means it’s possible to see whether they are selling fast or selling slow.

In Conclusion – Finding Good NFTs

Finding good NFT projects before they have started selling is a very difficult task.

NFTs have been trading for over two years now, and that data has allowed us to analyze which projects have continued to soar and which fell very short.

Amazing founders, with an inspiring long-term vision, with a reason for investors to hold on to their NFT – and aesthetically pleasing artwork – are the reasons why some NFT projects are doing better than others.

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