Skip to main content

5 learnings from a techie turned into a NFT artist

In September 2021 I chose to sell my crypto AI art business after two enriching (and often painful) years as a part-time sole founder. Today AImade.art is one of the best-selling AI art collections on Opensea. I want to share with you some of the key lessons I learned during this period:

  • Work hard and get lucky. And I got really lucky. On February 24th 2021 I had planned to shut down AImade.art, back then a business selling AI Art printed on canvas. I was discouraged after several months with no sales and my Shopify billing cycle was ending that day. Then something incredible happened: I missed the Shopify deadline and I sold an artwork one hour later. The buyer asked me: "Can I get it in as an NFT?". I had absolutely no idea what an NFT was, but after a bit of research I found the concept so interesting that, two days later, I had pivoted the entire business to NFT art made by AI. Sales started to pick up: I had finally found product-market fit.
  • Impostor syndrome as a motivation to learn. I did not have much understanding about Generative Adversarial Networks, blockchain or art in general, but somehow I ended up giving talks about these topics. Pushing myself outside the comfort zone made me prioritize training and acquire much deeper knowledge on these domains. Just that bit makes the journey worth every painful step.
  • The importance of a marketing strategy. Ads don't really work when you are targeting an uncharted market. None of my early customers had ever googled "buy ai art" before they learned what AI art was in a Norwegian newspaper. I wasted a lot of money on Google Ads and, out of despair, I started spamming on Reddit and HackerNews, which affected the SEO. I deeply regret doing that. I learned the lesson and I decided to invest in creating highly-relevant content for blogs, scientific communities, specialized magazines and social media. The effort paid off and AImade.art started climbing again on the search rankings. As of today, AImade.art is the first result for the terms "ai art nft", according to Startpage.
  • Respect your own work. When sales plummet I started dumping the price of the artworks with ridiculous discounts (up to 90%), making the profit margin literally disappear. Interestingly, that didn't drive more sales. It took me a while to understand that the customer segment I was targeting would despise artworks that are too cheap. People are willing to pay a fair price if you are able to communicate the value and effort behind each artwork.
  • Know when to stop. I decided to sell AImade.art once the business was finally flourishing. Why? During the last two years I have stolen hundreds of hours from my family. I cannot afford that anymore. Now that I have the satisfaction of having built something that customers love, I have decided to step down and prioritize my family.
I can only wish all the best to Brian and his team, who will take the business to new heights.

Popular posts from this blog

How to disable cookies on Google Analytics so that you don't need a consent banner

The integration of Google Analytics into a website or blog is not GDPR-compliant by default . You must first obtain explicit consent of the end-users to store cookies, describing in your privacy policy how you intend to use collected personal data. This is the reason why most websites nowadays display an annoying (but necessary) consent banner. If you fail to do so or if you only ask for implicit consent, you are at risk of being fined. However, it is possible to disable cookies on Google Analytics (GA) respecting end-users privacy, so that you don't need to ask for consent. The downside is that you will not be able to distinguish the type of user (unique vs new vs returning) and you will miss some session insights. If these details are not relevant for you, here is how you do it. Disable Google Analytics cookies on a custom website If you have a custom website with full access to the source code, you can simply insert the script below between the <head>  and </head>...
Read more

How to convert a PWA into an Android app in 5 minutes

In early 2021 I developed a memory game called Kobadoo  as a PWA (Progressive Web App) using ReactJS. It works pretty well as a browser game and gets decent traffic, but I wanted to reach more potential users by making it available on the official mobile app marketplaces. Since I didn't want to spend any time coding a native app, the easiest solution I found was to convert the PWA into a TWA (Trusted Web Activities) app. It barely takes 5 minutes to do it. TWA essentially allows you to easily create an Android app ( .apk file) that displays a full-screen browser view of your PWA. The user experience is almost identical to a web app and the views from the TWA will count as traffic on your web app. This means that if you have ads on your PWA, they will still work (and generate revenue) from the TWA. Another advantage is that every update you make on the PWA will be immediately reflected on the TWA without the need to submit a new version on Google Play. Here's how I convert...
Read more

How to change a post thumbnail in Blogger

If you have ever published a post on Blogger with more than one image on it, you might know that the featured image  (also called post thumbnail ) that is displayed in your blog's landing page is always the first image in the post. Blogger does not provide an editor tool to change this thumbnail. However, there is a workaround that will enable you to set the image you want. Find the Image URL. You can do this by right-clicking on an image of your choice from your browser and selecting Copy image address . Note that it can be any image that is publicly available on the Internet, not only from your post. Changing your post HTML code. From Blogger editor tool, click on the pencil, then select HTML view . Add the following line at the very start of your HTML code: <img src=" https://www.example.com/image.png " style="display:none;"/> where the URL in red is the one you copied in step 1. Click on Publish . That's it! The chosen image will be displayed as ...
Read more