How do I create an NFT collection?

An inflow of investment creates the conditions for entering a wider marketplace in the community. Traditional art has been in demand for hundreds of years. Therefore, it will be as much in demand digitally as it is in its conventional format. You can showcase your tastes and become a curator of your own gallery. In virtual spaces such as Somnium space, collectors purchase land and build metavirtual galleries to house NFTs. A complete NFT collection is more valuable than selling them separately. Why is NFT art so valuable? This is a question for the collectors to answer. However, there are collections of car brands, wine, porcelain and other items, so why not virtual art.

The most popular and expensive NFTs you may have seen have the ERC721 token standard. But what does this mean?
ERC-721 is a token standard written in the Solidity programming language of the Ethereum network. It allows the creation of non-fungible tokens, that is, tokens with a unique value each acting as a verifiable unique digital object. Such tokens cannot be exchanged with each other like ERC-20 tokens. Examples of ERC-20 tokens are USDT, BNB, USDC coins.

To create any token standards, you need a smart contract (a set of functions and data located at a specific address in the blockchain). This is what will carry out all the operations of transferring and creating new tokens. Such operations are commonly referred to as transactions. In turn, transactions differ in the amount of gas spent.

Gas is the unit of measurement of the computing effort
of transactions or smart contracts performed by miners at their own expense to exploit the operation of the Ethereum network.
That is, the transaction fee can vary, for example we need to transfer 10 USDT from one crypto wallet to another, and it will cost several cents, but it will cost much more to create 100 NFT tokens. This is because miners spend much more computing power of their equipment, to solve complex mathematical problems. Consequently, they will demand a higher commission.

Note that if you want to sell your NFT tokens on marketplaces likeOpensea, Rarible, looksrare and others, your metadata must be in a special format..

NFT tokens metadata - is info about the content, which constitutes a token (title, quantity, attributes, picture/video link). You might wonder, why not store them in the blockchain itself? The issue is that storing data in the blockchain is very expensive, soNFT tokens sellers use either their regular servers to host content or ipfs.

Ipfs is a communication protocol for creating a distributed file system, intended to replace the existing Internet HTTP protocol. Content located in IPFS is not stored on a single server, but on many nodes.

1. You need to generate 10,000 unique NFTs by overlaying (head layer, arms layer, torso layer, accessories layer, etc.) The more unique and interesting the accessories are, the more attractive your image will be to the buyer.
There are 2 ways to do this: use an online generator or download a repository and do it by hand. The second way is the best choice for larger projects, as it allows you to fine-tune your collection.
When using the first method, you can use this or this. There are many online generators, each has its pros and cons. But the main thing is that the interface was easy to understand. While setting up the collection, you fill in the relevant fields, such as the number of NFT tokens you want, their titles, rarity in relation to each other, etc. Then you have to add your layers, and you get unique pictures with their own metadata as a result.
If you choose the second way, I recommend using the generator from HashLips. It is the leader among offline generators, with a lot of information and tutorials, as well as its constant improvement and support.

2.    Now, let's talk about the placement of our NFT tokens. We will use ipfs for this. Like with generators, there are many of them, but the most convenient and easiest one is Pinata. It has a free plan as well as affordable plans.
Note that you must create a folder with images first, having obtained a CID—a unique identification hash, which must then be inserted into each metadata file respectively, generators allow you to quickly and easily change the fields in your files.

3. Now that we are done with the external component of our NFT tokens, we proceed to the implementation of a smart contract, which will be the representation of our tokens. However, before doing this, I advise you to create a crypto wallet first. It can be Metamask or Coinbase. They are good with their protection and support on many devices.
Speaking of smart contracts, there are turnkey p2p solutions that handle the entire implementation, one of them is this. All you need to do on this site is upload images and pay for a transaction to create a smart contract. Your product is ready, but it is unlikely to be different from other similar NFT collections. That is why the smart contract is also an important part of your NFT tokens.
To create a smart contract, you need the Solidity blockchain programming language. If you haven't had any programming experience, it's better to hire a programmer to make a smart contract for you and release it on the web, as there are many pitfalls when creating something like this.
If you want to create a regular smart contract, you can paste the following code into this site with the .sol file extension: code
When you have pasted it, you must navigate to the deploy section, select the provider as Injected provider Metamask. Fill in the parameters such as the number of tokens, name, ipfs link, withdrawal address, then click the transact button, followed by gas payment.
Before releasing your smart contract into the main network, I advise you to release it into the Goerli testnet first (you have to get free etherium, just type goerli faucet into a search) and check the accuracy of the data entered, as well as mint a couple of test NFT tokens.

4. You will see the successful transaction at the bottom of the console, as shown in the picture above, then you copy the address of your smart contract and paste it into the search box here.

You will see a description of your smart contract with different sections that can be viewed. Also you can invoke smart contract methods in the Write section to change data, such as price, or to make a reveal (after minting, the nft often gets a stub with a thumbnail that appears on all the nfts in the collection. After a while, when the meta-data is updated, the nft is opened. Then you can see what nft you managed to mint (this is the reveal) of your NFT tokens, and of course the funds are withdrawn to your wallet, usually this method is called withdraw.
To use these methods, you need to connect your wallet to this site by pressing Connect to web3 button, then you need to choose preferred method, for example withdrawal, and insert the address where etherium will be credited as parameter, then press write, and pay for the transaction:

To summarize, these are the basic steps for creating your NFT collection on the Ethereum network. All you need to do is to create a site for promotion, where you can integrate the purchase of your NFT tokens.