BAYC #2126, Bobo the Berserker, owned by @digitalflowercg

The Ultimate NFT Project Launch Guide

Update 21st March 2022: We have launched our own project called “Friends Of Dionysus”. We are building an actual winery in Italy empowered by NFTs.🍷
If you want to learn more, please follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/fofdionysus

Welcome!

Wow! You made it and are reading my ‘Ultimate NFT Project Launch Guide’! Thanks. 🥺
It means you might be thinking about launching your own NFT project or are just curious about what I think is a good NFT launch. Either way, enjoy! Any feedback is appreciated! Now.. let’s get into it!

This document is a work in progress! Probably there’s stuff missing, but I plan to extend the content over time and improve it based on everyone’s input!

An outline of this document

1. Values
2. Preparation
3. Launch
4. After Launch
5. Tools for Brainstorming

1. Values

Before starting any project you need to understand the people you are building it for. You need to understand what they value, what they are looking for. Let’s start with the values:

Trust & Transparency

The first step to a successful project is to gain trust. In my opinion the best way to do this is to be transparent about everything. Who are you? Why did you decide to do this project? Which skills do you and your team have? It’s actually really similar to a startup pitch in front of investors. I believe for long term success possible buyers need to believe in your team and after that in the possibility that the community as a whole will make the project a success.

Although I think transparency is one of the best ways to gain trust, please be aware that being not anonymous also brings risks with it.

Vision & Roadmap

In addition to the transparency about yourself, people who invest in the project always expect vision from the creators and a specific roadmap. If you lack this vision, they won’t be in the project for long or won’t even buy one single NFT.

It is okay if you have not figured out every single step of the future, but you should show that you have a long term plan for the project. If you can show them that you plan for years or even decades instead of months, they will take you and the project more seriously.

Collaboration & Community Input

One of the core values of the current communities is the ability to have an impact on the project. As a creator you shouldn’t decide everything on your own and just tell the community about them. Always LISTEN to your community. Of course you can and should have an opinion of your own, but only if you listen to the community and collaborate with them, they will push the project forward, invest their own time and market it on social media.

If you get these things right, success will be imminent unless you fail in the execution of the project. So.. how to prepare, launch and grow a project? Let’s dive into it!

2. Preparation

Before you can launch your project, you need to do a lot of preparation. Let’s cover the tasks you should check off your to do list!

art follows utility

aka form follows function

Utility

Before working on anything visual, ask yourself: What will people be able to do with your NFT? I strongly believe that future projects need to offer more utility than “just” an artwork to look at. Any NFT project that wants to be successful needs to think about utility first, the artwork follows.

Examples for Utility:

1. Token-as-a-Ticket (e.g. VeeCon)
2. Special Community Access (e.g. Discord Roles with collab.land)
3. 3D Model (usable for the Metaverse, AR Object or 3D Print, e.g. The Meebits)
4. Hi-Res Images (Desktop/Phone Wallpapers/Real Life Print)
5. Commercial Licenses (see Bored Ape Yacht Club)
6. Get Creative! (check Tools for Brainstorming if you need a little help)

Artwork

When you know which utility you’d like to offer to your community, it’s time to think about the visual artwork. You can find a collection of current projects in my Avatar Twitter List. I have to say that it feels like we have reached a certain point of saturation of these random trait generation avatar projects. That’s why I encourage you to choose utility first and then decide on the artwork. Try to be original and not just copy & paste one of the other avatar projects!

Categories:
Unique Avatar Projects:

1. Illustration (e.g. Bored Ape Yacht Club)
2. 3D Rendering (e.g. The Meebits)
3. Pixel Art (e.g. Cryptopunks)
4. Building Intellectual Property with room for interpretation: Doodle (e.g. VeeFriends)

Dedicated Topics:

1. Hobby Based (e.g. Gardening with Zenft Garden Society)
2. Passion Based (e.g. Food Lovers passionate about Pizzas with RarePizzas)
3. many more, too many to list. I recommend checking out one of the platforms that list all projects in order to get a proper overview. For example CryptoSlam.io, OpenSea.io or Rarity.Tools.

Technology

Alright, well done! You decided on the utility and artwork style of your project. But how will it all come together?

Consider these questions:

1. On which blockchain will you release your NFT?
   Ethereum is the main blockchain most NFT projects run on. Although it has a rather big ecological impact and is rather slow, the release of Ethereum 2.0 should improve these issues. If you want to publish your project on another blockchain, take a look at Polygon.
2. How will the artwork be generated?
   If you plan on releasing a project with traits and a random generation process of traits, consider using Chainlink VRF. If they are handcrafted visuals, you probably don’t need to do anything in this step.
3. Where will the data and artwork be stored?
   You should consider using IPFS and store as much as possible, maybe everything, on this decentralised database! Art Blocks even stores the code of how the image is generated on it.
4. How will you integrate the chosen utility into the NFT?
   Depending on the utility you want to provide, you might need to find new technological solutions, e.g. if you want to make your NFT into a real life ticket to a conference, you need to think about how the verification process will work!
5. Which smart contract changes do you plan in the future?
   You should “design” the smart contract in a way you can adjust in the future, so you can add utility to it.

Team

So far, so good! You know which kind of utility you will offer, how your NFTs will look and how they will be implemented! One of the most important things is now to build a team, if you don’t have one already.

There are some essential roles you should consider for the core team. You probably won’t need for every task a separate person as everything will be rather agile anyways. Especially tasks that are related to community management, social and partnerships can be handled by one person, but the more the merrier. You can also involve the community early on for community moderation.

I suggest to think about the following roles for the team core:

1. Visual / 3D Artist
2. Blockchain Developer
3. Community Manager
4. Social Media Manager
5. Partnership Manager

Additional important tasks:

1. Legal Consulting
2. NFT Consulting by an OG from the community

Finances

Great job! Next up is the calculation of costs and your revenue streams. This is also the time to think about the purchasing costs of your NFTs.

Your Cost Structure

1. Minting & Gas Fees
   If you write your own smart contract with random generation and the option to purchase directly from your site, you can let your buyers start the mint process. Depending on your project you could also mint them for your community before the project launch. Keep in mind that you might have additional costs when you use external tools like Chainlinks VRF and any other transactions you need to do on-chain.
2. Hosting
   You will need to host a website, get a domain name. The usual cost for any project.
3. Salaries
   You should put aside some of your NFTs for your team, early supporters and for giveaways. You can also promise your team a share of the generated revenue, but in the end they will need to pay their rent. Unless it’s a passion project and you have a full team already or experts are offering their help for free, you should plan on hiring a core team and reaching out to relevant freelancers.
4. Marketplace Royalties
   Although it’s not a direct cost, please be aware of the royalties marketplaces make you pay. For example OpenSea takes a 2.5% cut on any sale that’s done on their marketplace.
5. Donations
   Similar to marketplace royalties, please consider doing good with the money you receive. It could be a donation to offset the ecological impact of your blockchain transactions or it could be somehow related to your project, e.g. SuperYeti fights human trafficking in Nepal and India. Many projects take a share of e.g. 2.5% of the generated revenue or choose a specific amount they plan to donate at certain thresholds.

Your Revenue Stream

1. Initial NFT Sales
   I guess this is a no-brainer. The money which is generated through NFT sales ends up in your wallet. You should think about how to handle this: How much of your revenue do you want to keep in the corresponding cryptocurrency (probably ETH) and how much you need to cash out to pay bills and salaries.
2. Secondary Market Sales
   All current projects have added royalties on secondary market sales. This enables you to earn money even after your initial sale is over. It also means you have an intrinsic motivation to get the secondary market lively. Common royalties are between 2.5% and 10%. You should be aware that people in the community are really sensitive when it comes to projects that take a big share of these sales.

Pricing

Alright, you know about your cost structure and revenue streams. Now you need to dig into defining the pricing of your NFTs. It should allow people to get into the project easily, but it should also be enough to cover your costs.

Different Types of Sales in projects, which have a fixed amount of tokens:

1. Fixed Price, no bonding curve
   You define the cost per NFT, every NFT costs the same. Usual prices in current avatar projects range from 0.04 ETH to 0.1 ETH.
2. Bonding Curve
   If you choose to use a bonding curve, early adopters will be able to buy your NFT really cheap and the more NFTs that get sold, the more expensive they get. The formula for bonding curves is rather tricky, as you don’t want your NFTs to become so expensive that nobody can afford them anymore.
3. Milestone Based Increase
   Another option is to choose an increase based on different sales milestones. E.g. you could increase the price at 25%/50%/75% of sold NFTs. This also awards early joiners, but it might be easier to communicate to your audience than a bonding curve.
4. English Auctions
   The usual auction style everyone knows is called “English Auction”. This is usually only feasible for your project if you have few NFTs to sell and your buyers see upfront what they get.
5. Dutch Auctions
   In comparison to the English Auction mechanic, there are Dutch Auctions whose term originates from the tulip mania from the 17th century. Instead of bidding on top of each other, the price starts at a certain price and goes down until one buyer decides to buy. This also works only if your buyers know what they buy. You can check VeeFriends for an example.

Next to the sale type, you need to decide on the amount of tokens you want to give away and your pricing structure. Let’s do some example calculations. I’ll do revenue only, of course you’ll have to do your own calculation including the costs.

Example 1: No bonding curve
10.000 Tokens * 0.06 ETH = 600 ETH -> 1500€/ETH = ~900.000€
10.000 Tokens * 0.08 ETH = 800 ETH -> 1500€/ETH = ~1.200.000€
10.000 Tokens * 0.1 ETH = 1000 ETH -> 1500€/ETH = ~1.500.000€

Example 2: Bonding Curve
10.000 Tokens * starting price 0.02 ETH *increase per sale by 0,03% (last token 0.401 ETH) = overall ~ 1271 ETH -> 1500€/ETH = ~1.906.000€

Example 3: Milestone Based by 25%
(2500 Tokens * 0.04 ETH) + (2500 * 0.06) + (2500 * 0.08) + (2500 * 0.1) = 700 ETH -> 1.050.000€
(2500 Tokens * 0.05 ETH) + (2500 * 0.075) + (2500 * 0.1) + (2500 * 0.15) = 937.5 ETH -> 1.406.250€

Roadmap

Alright, we have covered A LOT already. As mentioned before the roadmap is essential to show potential buyers if you plan long term and if you have a vision for the project. You don’t need to know all details and every single step the project will take, as it should be done also in collaboration with the community, but you should be able to outline the most important milestones.

Website

Every project needs a website. Before the launch this is your flagship to demonstrate your ability to deliver. If the website isn’t working or not looking great, how should the community trust you with delivering a highly complex blockchain project?

Contentwise you can use the website to showcase the artwork people can expect, describe the utility, show the roadmap and the team that is working on the project.

Social

In order to raise awareness, share content and interact with people you need a social presence. Most commonly in this space the chosen platform is Twitter. Instead of just tweeting randomly, I recommend to create some type of content strategy for your Twitter. You don’t need to stick to it perfectly, but it should give you or the people who will manage it some guidelines to stick to.

Community Relationship
Which style of communication and which kind of relationship do you want to build with your future community? Will you write tweets like texting with your best buddy or in a more serious and professional style?

Content

1. Project Updates
   It’s always good to give a behind-the-scenes look. It will help you with building up trust.
2. Community Management & replying to questions
   People will talk about your project. I recommend setting up a dedicated feed with mentions of your project. Tweetdeck is really helpful for this.
3. Raising Awareness
   In the end people have to discover your project before you can explain it to them and gain trust. There are many ways to do that, many projects do giveaways with a Retweet mechanic, others do collaborative giveaways with other projects, in which you qualify if you join both Discord servers.

Next to posting content I highly recommend connecting with people and influencers. Talk to them, ask for feedback and make yourself approachable. Join Clubhouse rooms and Twitter spaces and talk about your project. The NFT community values this presence a lot and it increases trust by a lot if you are there and answer any questions the community has. Next to joining other spaces and promoting your project, you can also host your own room. I recommend doing this in collaboration with an existing NFT community or relevant hosts in order to reach a wider audience.

Community

A healthy community is key. The platform of choice for many current projects is Discord. The most important things to get right in your server:

1. Onboarding
   Set up a proper onboarding process, including Bot blockers.
2. Channel Setup
   Create pre-launch specific channels to give people space for discussions — most importantly a channel for feedback and suggestions!
3. Moderation
   Define your community rules and clearly communicate them. Feedback should always be welcome, but insulting behavior or active FUDing without reason should lead to a ban. Give a few members, who you either know personally or who are very active early on and seem to be capable, moderation rights. But be careful! Anyone you give this, will automatically be seen as a spokesperson for the project, so you should give them a proper briefing before giving the rights, so they know the answers to the most important questions. The worst thing that can happen is that fake news is spread because one of your moderators sends a wrong statement.

3. Launch

Aaaaalright, it’s launch time! 🥳 Will your project take off or not?

Reveal

If you have a project which shows the NFTs upfront, there won’t be any reveal necessary. If you’re doing a project with random trait generation, you need a reveal mechanic. The success and hype around this is massively important.

Let’s go through the common ones:

1. Instant Reveal
   If you’ve got everything ready (smart contract deployed + artwork done) you can offer an instant reveal. This means as soon as someone purchases your NFT, they’ll see the traits they got and if they got a rare one. This mechanic works nicely as people might immediately purchase one after another until they get a rarer one or one they like.
2. Specific Reveal Date & Time
   Some projects schedule a specific date and time for a reveal. This allows to build up a lot of hype and curiosity on social media. You can host a launch party yourself, if you’re not hosting it might happen anyways as communities often start e.g. their own Clubhouse rooms. If you go for this mechanic make sure you have EVERYTHING ready for the given time. Your project will instantly get a bad reputation if you fail to deliver.

Social

Twitter
During your launch and reveal you need to be super active on Twitter. Reply to tweets that mention the project, respond to questions and retweet people who bought your NFT.

Clubhouse / Twitter Spaces
Be present! You don’t need to be there all the time, but once a day, jump into a room that’s about your project and show your community that you’re there, reply to questions and create trust.

Community

At this point you should have at least a few hundred people in your Discord server already. As soon as your NFTs are in the wallets of your community, you can start to hand out roles.

Possible Roles you could create:

1. Creator
2. Core Team
3. Moderators
4. Owners
   a) split by amount of tokens (e.g. different roles for holding 1, 5 or 10 tokens)
   b) split by traits (e.g. if you have different animals, you could cluster by animal race, e.g. VeeFriends who cluster by bird, mammals, etc.)
   c) based on duration of holding (e.g. day 1 holder, longterm +1 year holder, etc.)

When you create these new roles, you can also create specific member areas, which are unlocked based on these roles. Furthermore you can also create channels for trading, sales and whatever your project needs. You can also consider adding some bots, like a listing and sales bot from OpenSea.

4. After Launch

Good job! Your project was a success, you are sold very quickly — but now the real work begins! You need to show your community that the decision to trust in your project was the right one!

Implementing Feedback

If you get certain feedback and ideas from the community, you should at least reply to the important ones. I encourage you to regularly do community polls for token holders. You can do this either inside Discord inside member specific channels or use a platform like Snapshot to do polling.

Price Observation

Watch your floor! The floor can tell you how the hype around your project is evolving. If it moves down people are selling more than buying, if it moves constantly up, you’re probably doing everything right.

Some projects buy up the floor if it is below the initial sales price, redistribute them to the community through raffles or even burn them to decrease supply. You can definitely do this, but in my opinion there are better ways to work around this. I strongly believe that if you build a solid project, you won’t need to do any of this.

Tackle Fraud

Fraud is the worst thing that can happen to your project and especially people who buy into your project. The most “common” thing you will have to deal with are OpenSea project clones.

Here’s how you tackle it:

1. Education, Education, Education
   Your community needs to be educated about fraud and how they detect it. You need to protect them as best as possible. The blockchain allows to verify the origin of any NFT, but people still will try to trick other people. This includes the same naming, fake blue check marks and much more. Regularly raise awareness through announcements in your Discord server and Twitter feed. Gary Vee and his team are doing a great job with educating the VeeFriends community on their blog.
2. OpenSea Verification
   One of the best ways to protect yourself and your community is to get a blue checkmark on OpenSea. This will only be possible when you reach a certain amount of sales and generated revenue, but should be easy if your project takes off.

List your projects

There are different platforms you should get your project on. Here’s a short list:

1. Rarity.Tools (most important to random trait projects)
   Rarity Tools calculate the rarity of all your NFTs based on the percentage distribution of traits. This helps your community members to adjust pricing and valuation.
2. Cryptoslam.io
   Cryptoslam tracks all sales of the biggest NFT projects, including different historical graphs and leaderboards for the most successful projects.

Social

At this point your social channels are mainly there to keep the discussion going, observe active and critical voices and react to their comments if necessary. You should join some audio rooms after the launch to show that the project isn’t a rug pull (aka scam). Of course it’s important to get actual work done and work on your project, but it’s equally important to care about the community and the reputation of your project.

Execution

If you have reached the execution stage, well done! You hopefully have a vivid and healthy community, giving you valuable input about the project. The floor of your NFTs is slowly but surely rising. Now it’s time to deliver! As this is really specific depending on the project you are planning to create, I won’t go into detail here. Basically it’s all about delivering on the promises you made to your community.

Thanks!

Thank you for checking out my ‘Ultimate NFT Project Launch Guide’. If you are reading this, you made the first step to a successful project launch! 🚀
I appreciate any feedback! Feel free to add comments in this document or get in contact with me on Twitter!

In the following and last section you can find some tools for brainstorming, taken from the Miro template section.

5. Tools for Brainstorming

S.C.A.M.P.E.R.

S.C.A.M.P.E.R. is a brainstorming method developed by Bob Eberle, an author of creativity books for young people, who introduced it in his 1971 book SCAMPER: Games for Imagination Development. In this clever method, you’ll find 7 different questions to encourage and inspire your team to approach a problem through 7 unique filters. By asking your team to think through a problem using this framework, you’ll unlock fresh, innovative ways to understand the problem you’re trying to solve.

The S.C.A.M.P.E.R. acronym stands for:

• Substitute
• Combine
• Adapt
• Modify (also Magnify and Minify)
• Put to another use
• Eliminate
• Reverse

Read more & Miro Template

Disney Creative Strategy Template

What is the Disney Creative Strategy?

Walt Disney is famous for dreaming up and executing some of the most ambitious creative projects of our time. The Disney Creative Strategy was inspired by his approach to projects. This creative process bridges the gap between imagination and reality. Use the Disney Creative Strategy template to brainstorm ideas that balance dreams and their execution.

To prepare for a Disney Creative Strategy exercise, divide the room into four parts. The first part is for dreaming and imagination, the second is for realism and planning, the third is for critics, and the fourth is for out-of-the-box thinking. Dividing the room sets the stage for what is to come, preparing the team to switch from one framework to another.

Read more & Miro Template

Perceptual Map Template

What is a perceptual map?

A perceptual map is a visual representation of customers’ or potential customers’ perceptions. Perceptual maps are used to assess organizations, brands, products, ideas, goods, or services.

Perceptual mapping is a powerful diagrammatic technique. To create a perceptual map, you must first draw two or more axes. The axes display your company’s product, brand, or service relative to your competition. Many marketers and product managers choose to use different size circles to represent sales volume or market share of competing products, though this is optional. You can then ask participants to rank competing products relative to each other along these axes. The resulting map gives you insight into how customers feel about competing products in a given market.

Read more & Miro Template

Follow me and get in touch, if you want to talk NFT!

I am looking for a Bored Ape to buy, if anyone has a spare one please let me know! Thanks! 🙏🏻