Today, NFTs have become not just pictures of blockchain technology, but financial tools. Even if you are not an artist or creative person, you can still try to create your own NFT and make a good profit from NFT trading. Now artists can earn great royalties through NFT art, and crypto enthusiasts can get unique NFTs to resell or collect. NFT trading is impossible without an intermediary and in this case, it is the NFT market. If you want to learn even more about NFTs – check out this ultimate guide to them by our CEO, Mykhailo Sitalo!

We will tell you how to build or create an NFT marketplace, how much it will cost and what benefits you will get from it. Before we get into how to create an NFT marketplace, we’ll go over some of the basics so that NFT newcomers can get started faster. Making an NFT marketplace is not easy, but if you approach this task correctly, you can earn good money on your trading platform and multiply your digital assets many times over.

NFT market: what is it?

NFT marketplace is a digital platform where you can create and store tokens (each token has a specific value), as well as buy and sell them for cryptocurrency. It is not possible to pay with regular money on NFT marketplaces. For operations with tokens, you need a special crypto wallet – an application that allows you to use cryptocurrency. 

So, NFT marketplaces work in an auction format. This means that the vendor creates an account on NFT marketplaces and puts the token up for sale, and potential buyers leave bids for how much they are willing to buy it. The highest bidder wins and buys NFT art.

On most NFT marketplaces, there’s no way to promote your work. This means that if you just create NFT and put this NFT up for sale on the marketplace, there is no guarantee that anyone will buy it. Beginning sellers should take this into account and take care of NFT project advertising on their own. An option is to contact NFT developers who can help with a promotion strategy. There are also developers who offer more specific services and help develop an NFT marketplace.

NFT marketplace: how it works?

In the case of NFT marketplaces, the transaction is secured by a smart contract, which guarantees its security (if the smart contract is reliable). And while the logic of the transaction is simple, it should be noted that it is not easy to integrate. That’s because NFT marketplaces run exclusively on smart contracts.

Whenever an operation occurs, a smart contract is initiated between the seller and the buyer, which performs the transfer of ownership of the asset and records the new data in the network. And all such smart contracts are automated and do not require a guarantor or a regulator.

However, marketplaces can play guarantor roles in this case, taking fees for all the transactions. An NFT marketplace smart contract in which users can host an NFT and buy such a token. One way to make a marketplace a reality is through a central smart contract, in which users put NFTs and their price, and anyone can come in and buy a token at that cost. 

It may seem to a beginner that all NFT marketplaces are about the same, but in fact, they differ in the audience, blockchain, niche, and additional options:

• There are a large number of marketplaces working with NFT. Some of these platforms are highly specialized and differ in the categories of NFT objects for sale: somewhere you can find items for NFT video games only, on other platforms – digital art niche. Notable marketplaces include OpenSea, Rarible, Niftygateway, and SuperRare. 
• Platforms charge a commission, which varies but is usually in the tens of dollars. Some platforms immediately generate a token from a downloaded file (and charge a commission immediately), while other NFT platforms create NFTs only at the time of sale.
• Any crypto exists in a blockchain. Everyone who makes a transaction has to pay for the gas. The payment goes to those who keep the blockchain up and running. Its size depends on the workload of the blockchain. Most NFT marketplaces operate in the ETH blockchain. There are options, but ETH is the most popular to build an NFT marketplace, which is why gas is the most expensive here. Keep this in mind if you build your own NFT marketplace.

New marketplaces appear every week. Experts divide NFT marketplaces by the number of users, but also by the volume of transactions with tokens, the number of famous artists in the NFT space exhibiting their work, the convenience of the platform interface, and the type of content exhibited on this marketplace.

Do you want to create your own NFT marketplace?

People who decide to create an NFT marketplace face many difficulties. First of all, you need to pay attention to the following details:

1. What kind of stack do developers use, including blockchain, token standard, smart contracts, programming languages, and databases?
2. The number of people on the team you are working with. For example, you will need one or two developers to develop an application that users will have access to in order to interact with your marketplace.
3. What kind of specialists do you need to hire? Do you have professionals on your team to develop NFT smart contracts, test the decentralized platform, and integrate third-party services into your network? Either way, you need a project manager, UI/UX designer, business analyst, software architect, QA engineer, and front and back-end developers.
4. How accurate was the product/marketing analysis? This is very important for the further successful development of your marketplace.
5. What are the deadlines set for the development team? Creating a fully functional NFT market can take 1-2 years, but with well-coordinated work, this process can be reduced to two to three months.
6. Is it necessary to use a multi-chain? this is a marketplace that can work with all popular blockchains. Ideally, it should be, but it takes a lot of time, money, and effort to integrate them, so it’s better to bet on one or more of the most suitable options first, and then add support for the others. The most active marketplaces are built on ETH, so of course this is a great solution to start with.

But how to launch market-making before we bring traffic with real users? Of course, you have to focus on your main audience and work in that direction. Don’t procrastinate and start as soon as you’re ready and tested. Also, take care to release teasers and try to build up the public’s interest in the marketplace with influencers.

Nevertheless, if you streamline the work with NFT marketplace development, everything seems not so difficult. Let’s take a closer look:

• If you decide to create an NFT marketplace, then you need to decide for which audience you create your NFT platform and what problems users it can solve. The NFT field is already filled with many NFT platforms, it is better not to create an NFT marketplace that will directly compete with the leaders such as OpenSea or Rarible platforms.
• Also if you want to build or create an NFT marketplace it is challenging to do without a team for software development, which will help with the technical part and properly build your new NFT platform. Such a developer should be well versed in the NFT field and have experience with several NFT art marketplaces (or other niches) of projects related to NFT marketplace development. So, a good developer means a lot when you try to make or create an NFT platform.
• Decide to create an NFT marketplace? So, any NFT platform has at least two types of users: administrators and buyers/sellers. When creating your NFT marketplace you need to think about what features each type will need on your NFT platform. Also, when creating or building an NFT marketplace, design is crucial because it is what will most affect whether or not your users will like your NFT platform.
• To create or build the NFT marketplace, after developing the interface design, you can proceed to the actual NFT marketplace development (writing code). To make or create your NFT marketplace publicly available, you must deploy it on a local server or in the cloud. In this case, you need to estimate in advance the approximate number of visitors that your created NFT marketplace will attract.

When creating is finished, the platform can be made immediately available to end users, but that’s not the best option. It is better to build a campaign with influencers or artists (if the platform is art-oriented), and with bonuses and discounts for first-time sellers/buyers.

Creating an NFT marketplace: how much does it cost?

The cost to build such a platform ranges from $40.000 to $100.000 or $500.000 and can vary depending on the customization required to meet your needs. If you want to build your own version from scratch, the cost of such a job will be much higher than an out-of-the-box solution.

How to make a profit from it?

When you decide to create your own solution, of course, you will be interested in the potential income. So, how much can you earn if you create your own NFT marketplace?

Here your profit will directly depend on which monetization model you choose:

• First, it’s a commission on sales. 
• You can also implement your own governance tokens and registration fees. 
• You can also get money from advertising both artists and third-party resources.
• You can choose and combine several of these models, successful platforms today do so.

Now you know more about creating NFT marketplaces, we hope our material was useful for you.