I made ZERO ($0) sales on our first NFT project. Now what?
Here's what I've learned so far and my 2023 priorities for animalz!
Newsletter
TheMustach3 weekly newsletter is split into three sections:
1️⃣ Lesson learned from making ZERO sales for our first NFT project
2️⃣ animalz update: our strategy and focus for 2023
3️⃣ web3 content creation: threads and spaces
1️⃣ Lesson learned from making ZERO sales on my first NFT project
Six months ago, I quit my job and went full-time into launching animalz, a digital apparel brand for online and mobile games.
So far, it’s been wild and a roller coaster ride building in this bear market.
Since the beginning, I wanted NFTs to be part of our strategy and products. Given all the hype and use cases around it, I thought offering digital collectibles might be a good opportunity.
Plus, sales and feedback on our digital apparel items were going well. People loved our products, posted avatar-generated content (AGC) on social media, and bought our items.
So why not launch digital collectibles?
But I was wrong.
We launched 20 NFTs at the end of October and made ZERO sales.
In this newsletter, I wanted to share some lessons I’ve learned along the way.
(you can still mint our pink masks here)
1/ Build your community first. Then launch your project, especially in this bear market.
Building in a bear market requires a different playbook.
And building a community first is one of them.
The motto “If you build it, they will come” totally applies here.
if you build it, they will NOT come!
Can’t stress this enough.
You must build a community first and offer value before launching your project — even if you have Alpha or credibility in the space.
Ryan Carson is one of the best examples following this script.
Jonah is another great example.
Spend your first couple of months building a community!
With our NFTs, I made the rookie mistake of building our project first, not the community.
Start with the community.
Then move to launching your NFT project.
2/ Partnerships are the most effective way to grow your community
You can have the best idea.
Best design.
Great marketing.
But if you don’t have an audience, your NFT project will ultimately fail.
Spend time getting to know people, scheduling calls, joining Twitter Spaces, and sending DMs. You want to start building relationships early on and look for potential partners.
Partnerships will allow you to tap into their audience and build your community more quickly. In general, most people in the space are happy to help.
All you have to do is ask.
The earlier you start asking, the quicker you will be able to grow.
Part of the reason why our apparel is doing well is because of the different partnerships with agencies and models I’ve built since the beginning.
Building those relationships allowed me to tap into existing communities to market our digital apparel, resulting in +50 social media posts and +1200 item sales.
Moving forward, 70% of my time in Q1 23’ will be focused on reaching out to potential partners and trying to collaborate more with projects and companies that already have the channel and audience to launch new collections.
3/ It took me 6 months to ‘get’ the web3 space
When you first enter the space, you will hear people saying: “web3 community is just different from web2”.
At first, I was hesitant but it’s real.
The community behaves, collaborates, and communicates differently. If you want to enter the web3 space and don’t have a Twitter account, you’re dead.
Twitter is the place for the web3 community.
It’s where Twitter Spaces are organized randomly for people to hang out, get to know each other, and forge collaborations.
I started my journey by buying NFTs, joining Discord channels, participating in a DAO, and then joining Twitter. I should have done it the other way around.
Spend as much time as you can on Twitter at first.
Then join Discord channels or DAOs.
I would recommend doing this for 2-3 months before buying your first expensive NFT.
4/ How does this affect animalz?
Not making any sales for our first animalz NFT sucked. I was bumped at first and took me some days to get back in the game.
I might consider it a failure but a great learning experience as it allowed me to:
Understand the technology behind minting NFTs, ETH contracts, and the differences between DIY and custom-built tools.
Think about how to bring products to market in the web3 space.
Join great communities and meet amazing people who are building great products.
Have a better grasp of the web3 ecosystem. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with so much innovation and things happening in the space.
Write a better strategy on how I will spend my time, resources, and focus for 2023.
Failure is part of this process. Learn to embrace it, learn from your mistakes, and move on. If you are thinking about launching your own NFT project, I hope these lessons help in some way.
2️⃣ animalz update: our strategy and focus for 2023
animalz NFTs failed, but our digital apparel continues to be strong. We are getting great feedback from our community and will focus on the following for 2023:
1/ Double down on Instagram and TikTok filters
You might have seen videos of me wearing our animalz pink mask before:
We launched our first TikTok filter (here) earlier this month. Without any marketing or promotion, we’ve gotten almost 500 posts and 33K views so far.
For 2023, I will focus a lot of our resources on pushing more filters into Instagram and TikTok. This will be one of the best and most effective ways to drive brand awareness and more interest in our digital apparel items.
2/ Find more collaborations with partners and influencers for new and existing collections
I will continue to publish new items every month but will focus the majority of our efforts on finding new partners to launch our collections.
These are some partners I have in mind:
CreaWearables for our sneaker line and breaking into the RKFT ecosystem.
Blueberry Entertainment for expanding into Roblox.
Platforms we want to expand: Roblox, Minecraft, Meta Avatar Shop, and StumbleGuys, among others.
DressX to launch new collections.
Monica Quin for launching our new Zepeto collection.
An additional list of +15 mobile and online games.
If you know someone or are part of these companies or projects, please reach out! Always looking for intros or connecting in the space.
3️⃣ web3 content creators: threads and spaces
Our weekly Twitter space for web3 content creators continues to grow.
This week we had almost 200 listeners and have been getting great feedback from the community. Come hang out at next week’s Twitter space and talk about building habits for content creation.
1/ AI tools set to supercharge your content creation process by NFT_GOD
2/ 8 writing hacks to jumpstart your copywriting skills
Till next time!
TheMustach3
💌 don’t forget to join our community.