Best NFT Marketplace For Photography – Sell Your Photos as NFT

March 18, 2022

We have all seen the incredible popularity NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) started to get this year. This meant that people were buying and selling NFTs all the time. In order to do this, there was a need for marketplaces to act as intermediates. Obviously, there are plenty of them around as well. However, some of them are inclusive and work within many blockchains while some of them are blockchain specific.

There are things like price ranges, popularity, niche work, customized, and many other aspects that these marketplaces differ from each other. This means that if you are interested in the NFT world, then you may end up using plenty of different marketplaces to buy/sell the NFT you may want. Since you store your NFTs in a wallet, you could also buy from one marketplace and sell in another as well.

What you'll learn 👉

Top NFT platforms compared

OpenSea

With over 20 million NFTs and over 100k users, and nearly half a billion volume, OpeanSea is the biggest NFT market in the world. Almost every single ETH blockchain-related NFT finds itself in Opeansea one way or another. With how much people are willing to spend on NFT’s, their income is certainly hefty.

This causes them to keep improving their website constantly. By improving the website a lot, they aim at being more secure and also reach out to everyone possible. Aside from certain auctions that are too high for them such as the $69 million sales at Christie’s, usually all those huge purchases in millions happen at OpenSea.

This is why for anyone that wants to buy or sell cheap NFTs (under 0.1 ETH) on the ETH blockchain, OpenSea is the gateway to that world. There could be a little bit more changes that would have made it better of course. For example, other blockchains are not included, which could have made the website a lot better, but even with simply ETH, they managed to become the biggest NFT marketplace without a problem.

Rarible

The best thing about Rarible is the fact that it is owned by everyone. It is a community-controlled marketplace. People who own RARI tokens get to make the decisions about it. This means decentralization for the marketplace and never doing anything outside of what the market wants it to.

Of course, it is a great marketplace as well and does compete with others very well. It focuses on the art world a lot more than the gaming world, however, it does not exclude any other sectors at all. It is simply liked more by the art community compared to other communities.

Every person who buys or sells at Rarible ends up owning a piece of the 75k RARI tokens given out each week. This is why it is certainly a place where people like to participate not only because they want to buy or sell, but they also want to own and have a voice. This feature combined with volume makes Rarible one of the top places especially for an artist who wants to sell their work as an NFT.

SuperRare

The main focus for SuperRare is the art collection it has. All kinds of graphic artists from designers to photographers all get together in SuperRare to share and sell their art. This is obvious from the moment you open the website up and you are faced with pictures after pictures.

Some of them are digitally made, some of them taken as a photo, but they are all graphic related that designers made or photographers took, that’s the main focus. Of course, this means that if you like to take photos and you want to sell the rights to them, then you could use SuperRare easily to NFT them and use it as a marketplace for your art.

They also have a social network with profiles and basically galleries for any artist to share their art as well. This makes a popular artist’s profile a lot more visited. Considering how valuable things are in the NFT world, following famous artists in SuperRare is made easier this way. It is certainly not the biggest nor the most used NFT marketplace, however it is definitely the most known in its own niche without a doubt.

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Illust Space

Illust took the road in a much different place than any other place ever considered. Their perspective on the NFT world may not be an orthodox method of working, but it certainly did raise some eyebrows. They put all the NFTs that you won, into anywhere you want digitally using AR technology.

This means you could buy an NFT on the platform, then use the AR technology to put it in the middle of your living room, to your garden, to your office, or anywhere you want really. This way these arts would not only be owned by some people who bought them, but also be for everyone to see.

Anyone who doesn’t own a single NFT could download the app and if there are any NFTs around them they could go check it and even take a picture with it. This is why Illust is a breath of fresh air, and it will definitely keep on getting more attention. They are certainly nowhere near at the top with mere 400 followers on Twitter, so they are very small. However, the idea itself could be a long-lasting one.

Nifty Gateway

With a wordplay on NFT, Nifty has managed to create a product that is designed for small price items as well as big names. Famous celebrities and artists all work with Nifty and even a big auction house partnership with Sotheby’s proves they mean business. From $30 NFT to $30 million one, it is a place for everyone. It has been acquired by Gemini which is owned by the Winklevoss twins.

We all first got to hear about them from the Facebook lawsuit however they got into crypto very early on. With a good amount of money from Mark Zuckerberg and getting into crypto early on, this made the twins quite powerful in the crypto world. This came in with plenty of investments and companies such as Gemini which is a very trusted exchange.

All of this is to make it clear how the trust rating for Nifty is quite high and it is one of the safest places in the NFT world. They had a big problem with a hacker previously, which destabilized many people’s trust in them, however, they concluded it was nothing regarding them and reverted all the actions. You should do your own research, even the most trusted ones could end up getting hacked like this example.

MakersPlace

If you are interested in the NFT world even just a little bit, you heard the story about Beeple NFT going for $69 million. Makersplace was the partnership for Christie’s to create that NFT and help it get sold. Beeple used Makersplace to sell stuff beforehand, things that went for thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions before the big sale.

However, when that last one came in, it broke the internet with how expensive it was. MakersPlace is known mainly for that sale. The main focus of MakersPlace has always been premium works, they are a marketplace for artists that do not create collections like Cryptopunks but the conventional way of art that we could see in an art gallery.

In return, the prices of the collections there are equally impressive as well. They prefer quality over quantity and it is obvious as soon as you check the art they exhibit.

Cargo

If you would like to create your own NFTs with ease on both ETH and Matic chains, then Cargo is the way to go. Their focus is the development process of NFT creation and helps artists a lot on this part. With Cargo, you can turn your art into an NFT that you can sell with just a few simple clicks.

Plus adding Matic on top of ETH options makes the gas fee problem go away a little bit as well. At the end of the day, NFT markets are not consisting of just investors who buy but also artists who sell as well. Cargo gained a lot of attention from the seller side of the deal thanks to their ease of creation and process.

You can easily do everything you need to do in order to become an artist that sells their art in Cargo without any confusing codes involved.

Mintable

With investors like Ashton Kutcher, Mark Cuban, and Guy Oseary, Mintable is one of the leading NFT marketplaces for investors to back. It started out with the marketing move of not charging any fee to mint NFTs. This allowed creators to use it to mint their own art without paying anything. Nowadays they only charge for accounts yet they still do not charge for minting.

This means if you plan on minting a lot of NFT, it is still a lot more advantageous to use Mintable. Of course, the partnership that came afterward with Ripple also increased the attention Mintable has as well. Ripple recently announced a $250 Million fund for creators and NFT projects in order to support them grow bigger.

With such a partnership and with that news, it is expected to have a lot of growth and support for Mintable as well. Creating NFT on Ripple blockchain with a low fee could be the next step in the evolution of Mintable.

Zora

Zora does provide a different approach to NFT as well. With Zora you get to not only sell your NFT, but also your art gets sold multiple times, both by you and by other people as well. Think of it as digital trademark ownership. This way you can create one piece of art that you sell, then you can sell it to 100 people, and that 100 people could sell it to different 100 people and you keep making money even while you are not selling it anymore.

Both you and everyone else could sell your NFT (after they buy it from you) and you will have a commission from it no matter how many times it changes hands, even if something bought from you is sold to a 10th different person, you still take your cut.

This type of approach is usually liked by people who create art that could be used somewhere. That means if your art is music used in a song or art that is used in a movie, or anything resembling that, it is perfect for Zora. Mainly the “royalty income of NFT world” focus made Zora quite unique and interesting.

hic et nunc

As you can understand from the name, they are definitely unlike anything else you have seen in the way they work. However, the idea of an NFT marketplace is the same. It is business management that is different from others. They built their system on Tezos, instead of ETH like many others, and they are providing a decentralized, untouched version of a marketplace that people want.

The name means “right here, right now” and they really care about being present because they focus their marketing on it as well. Your NFT is called “OBJKT” from the “object” and you mint it by connecting and syncing your wallet. The design of the website is certainly one that people either hate or love, everyone has their own preferences but it certainly created two clear sides.

The main great thing about the website is the weird funky cool character of it, which is definitely in line with artists. However, it is not appealing to the investor side that much. Obviously, there are exceptions, yet creating it on Tezos is one of the most obvious proofs that show how they like to be different, for better or worse, as long as it’s unique.

So which NFT Marketplace should I choose?

This depends on a few things, as usual in everything crypto-related. First of all who you are matters the most, are you an NFT investor? An artist looking to sell his work? A collection creator? A photographer? A collector? All of these do have a different answer.

This means, first of all, you need to decide on who you are. If you only want to invest in NFTs, then Opeansea could be the best for you. If you are looking to sell your photographs then SuperRare could be a better place.

If you want to sell high-end stuff then MakersPlace could be a better selection. They all have a corner of the NFT market that they picked and each of them could be a better place depending on what you want to do with them. The first thing you need to decide is who you want to be in the NFT world, then picking the marketplace becomes easier.

What should I know before minting my first NFT?

If you would like to mint your very first NFT that means you also need to get ready to sell your NFT as well. Marketing is one of the bigger parts of the NFT world, if nobody in the world knows that you minted your NFT then who would be able to buy it? You need to consider the marketing channels that you will use in order to create awareness for your NFT as well. Minting itself is easy, there are tons of guides that would help you step by step.

From as easy as a few clicks on a marketplace to directly minting on smart contracts, there are too many options available. Lastly, do not forget that anything could be NFT but nothing without any uniqueness in it would care.

You can make anything NFT however you need to make it desirable and interesting to get interested from people, if it is a boring and unwanted NFT then it will not be bought by anyone and you will be left with your minting costs. So decide very well beforehand if your NFT would be desirable to others as well.

Conclusion

If your aim is to find the perfect marketplace for every single possible aim, then you will not find that place because it doesn’t exist. While one of them could be great at one thing, it could be weaker in another part. Another one could be perfect on what the first one was weak, it could be weak on the first one’s strength.

All in all, you would have to pick your places based on their focus, each marketplace offers a different focus and you will need to use them to their strengths to get the best out of them.

FAQs

So which NFT Marketplace should I choose❓

Pick the one you want to use, the one you need to, and the one that gives the best result for what your needs and wants are. Not all will be giving the same thing, so pick based on your personal requirements.

How Do Photographers Determine the Value of an NFT They Create❓

They really don’t. They just put it based on what they believe it should be worth, exactly as what you would have in a real-life gallery. However there are lower auctions as well, meaning an NFT could be on sale for a price, but if not bought for that price until a certain time then the price of it will go down, and keep going down until someone buys it.

This means photographers could decide on the price however they want, and if the market doesn’t agree then the photographer will eventually get what the market believes it should be worth.

Can people make NFTs from my artwork without my permission❓

Anyone who steals others’ art to create NFTs would be going against DMCA (digital millennium copyright act) and could be taken down. The NFT itself can’t technically be taken down, however, the marketplace could take the auction down and the sale could be voided before it happens. Anyone who attempts it could be sued for copyright infringement.

How can photographers make money with NFTs❓

They could either turn them into NFT and sell them, or they could use Zora to resell them as many times as they want, which would devalue each of them but could keep making money for the photographer forever instead of just once.

What rights do I give the buyer of an NFT❓

You give the ownership rights to the buyer. The copyright laws on where you live decide on what the buyer can do with it, but the bare minimum guarantee is that NFT means a digital agreement that buyer now owns the art NFT is based on.

Which File Format for Photography NFTs❓

All the usual formats are allowed, you could do anything from jpg to jpeg to png and anything else. However, the best resolution ones are in PNG format, which means investors do prefer PNG format NFTs over others. The higher the quality the better (PSD format sent afterward is also a good courtesy to the buyer as well).

Can you sell photography as NFT❓

You can take a selfie and sell even that. Technically speaking NFT is not the right to the item in the picture, however, it could be if you want to. This means if you take a picture of anything, it is the picture that is being sold and not the item in that picture as long as you state it clearly. So any photograph could be NFT and could be sold.

How do I market my NFT art❓

Twitter and Instagram are the two most powerful weapons in NFT marketing. As long as you can create an NFT persona on each of them, get to a decent follower number by simply posting related content or your NFTs and also following others (f4f works when you first start but you need organic followers too).

Afterward, it is all about using your social media properly to let your followers know. Do not forget to give away a few at first to make them interested and get a big number, free NFT is a great way to get high follower numbers, afterwards it would be easier to sell with a big audience already there.