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| pic credit: Cointelegraph |
In the first quarter of this year, the NFT market topped $2 billion in total sales. After six months, the figure had risen too far over $10 billion. As a result, this is an industry that is rapidly expanding. And my first thought was, "How do I get in on this?" but more specifically, "How do I increase my odds of winning?" because I personally need some kind of edge if I'm going to invest in something, so I did the research and created a process that you can follow step by step, a checklist to find NFT projects to flip for massive profits.
The main objectives or Goals
So, starting with the objectives, we have two key objectives or Goals.
#1 Make sure you don't lose any money.
#2 Invest in areas where we have the best chance of succeeding.
With these goals in mind, I won't be putting money into random initiatives and crossing my fingers just because I saw it on a Twitter thread or on a TikTok. I will not purchase projects that are already expensive, nor will I purchase one-of-a-kind items.
Only collections when there is a strong desire to purchase individual pieces from the collection. There are now ways for purchasing previously successful NFTs. This, however, is not my plan. If you ask me, there's just too much risk on the downside.
I'd rather buy ten robust NFTs at a floor price of $200 than one NFT for $2,000 that has already been pumped 10 times. That is simply my particular approach.
As a result, NFT investment has a very high risk. Not only do you have to worry about the volatility of crypto, but you also have to worry about an NFT collection becoming less popular and a tertiary risk of lack liquidity, which means you won't be able to sell the NFT you own because it's one of a kind.
Although the method I've developed helps to reduce the downside, there's still a good risk you'll lose money, especially if you're just getting started. So invest in your own risk, and none of this is financial advice.
The checklist I created includes questions on the community, the project's website, the artwork, the staff, and the project's distinctive market positioning.
It's fine to be overwhelmed
Okay, NFTs can be overwhelming at first. This is quite natural. Every half-hour or so, it looks like a new one is released. So we've got a sea of projects to sort through, and now we've got a sea of blockchains to build them on.
You've heard of Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, Binance, and plenty of other cryptocurrencies. I don't care where the project is built for the purpose of flipping. However, if at all possible, I would prefer to avoid paying Ethereum's exorbitant gas expenses.
But, in general, I'm looking for the best idea, and the blockchain isn't as important to me. We need to employ some tools since there are far too many alternatives for any one person to consider.
Step 1: Best NFT tools
upcomingnft.net and rarity.tools are two of my favorite tools for finding projects so far. So, if you have any more tools that you prefer, please share them in the comments section below. That would be extremely helpful.
But keep in mind that the goal here is to identify a new project that is extremely strong that we can purchase for a low price and perhaps sell for a profit.
This breakdown will be done with rarity. tools. rarity. tools are useful because it alerts us about upcoming initiatives. All you have to do is go to the top of the page and click the "Upcoming" button. Then it takes care of a lot of the legwork for you. As you can see, it displays products that are developed on a variety of blockchains.
The numerous social links, discord, Twitter, their website link, and the floor price at the moment of launch for the various projects. As a result, it takes care of a lot of the groundwork that I outlined earlier in order to get that initial work here.
Even though this is a significant filter, there's still a lot more legwork to be done if you want to maximize your prospective rewards by investing all of your time upfronts. You'll be able to relax knowing that you've done everything possible to maximize your profits.
Step 2: Bots are everywhere
We will understand this with an example. We have a project called Mad Ape Tournament that starts on November 6th. This project is now quite interesting because it has a sizable fan base. So I'm going to go ahead and break this one down using the NFT project checklist I created. So, first and foremost, let's look at their Twitter account.
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| pic credit: Twitter |
We can see that they have around 10,000 followers, and I'd like to check their Twitter engagement. So, in addition to checking followers, we know that you can have fake followers, which is common on Twitter. So we'd like to see how engaged the posts are. Given that there are 10,000 followers here, interaction appears to be a little modest.
You should also like to click on postings to check who is commenting, and then you can click on those specific people to see if they are real people or if they are just bot accounts. And this will help to establish the credibility of those who are genuinely talking about it. Start with the assumption that everyone is a bot, and then double-check that, hey, maybe they aren't.
You should also have a look at their discord. The majority of these projects will now be quite active on Discord. As a result, you'll want to get to know this. So, with more than 80,000 users, this project Discord is quite large.
But what I'm really looking for here isn't just the sheer scale of the project; we're looking for interaction from the project's followers as well as engagement from the project's leaders, such as the founders and moderators, are they genuinely answering questions? Are they holding up posts? Are they keeping people up to date? This requires some research, but we want to complete all of the jobs ahead of time. That way, we'll be able to maximize our profits in the end.
Step 3: Check their website
The next item we want to look into is their website. So, on their website, you simply want to make sure it's a good one. They're working on an internet project, you know. They can at the very least create a functional website. I do search for things like broken links on the site.
Is there a list of the site's founders?
What you should look for in founders is something we'll discuss in a moment. What's the overall vibe of the website? Are there any grammatical or spelling mistakes? You can tell when you're on a horrible website and when you're on a good one, and that's all I'm aiming for.
One of the most stereotypical characteristics of initiatives that are rug pulls or outright scams is that their websites are awful. So it's just one small thing you can do to double-check.
Step 4: Play the long game
Now, in terms of social aspects, I don't look for a specific quantity of followers or people, but let's suppose I come across a collection with 10,000 distinct NFTs and a following of more than 10,000. That tells me that if they have a larger following than the items for sale, this collection is likely to sell out. Of course, nothing is definite, and things might change at any time.
One thing you'll want to do now plays a little bit of the long game. If you're following a project and seem to be enjoying it. Let's say they have 2000 followers. Keep track of them and observe if they're growing in the weeks leading up to the launch.
If they have 2000 right now, and the launch is in two weeks, and they have 4000 in a week, that's a positive sign that the hype is rising, and they might have a great launch, and you might have a successful flip at that point.
Founding team
The founding team is the next thing you should investigate. We have a few questions to ask here. So, the founding team should be displayed first on the website. Some projects are no longer visible. I simply ignore anything that does not feature the founding team.
So, in this case, I had a tiny red flag because there were no actual images of the founders, and the explanations were a little hazy. And I was like, I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I'm going to dig a little deeper into this project.
I saw in their discord that they have a lot more extensive description of who the founders are, their backgrounds, LinkedIn profiles, and other such information. Okay, that's a little bit better, I think. So it's a fantastic point to make here that sometimes you have to delve a little deeper.
They should update the website and provide more information, in my opinion, because my first impression was that I should probably avoid this, but then I discovered more information later. So, another thing you'll notice with a lot of rugs pulls and total scams is that they either don't show the team at all or do show people, but they're absolutely false.
They're like random person generators, or you can do a reverse picture search and find some random dude from Ohio. You want people who have authentic social media accounts and have prior experience, especially if the idea is a game or some other type of endeavor.
Personally, I wouldn't invest in an NFT project that purports to be a game but has no prior expertise with game development. Of course, there's a greater chance that the initiative will fail.
Also Read: Polkadot and Kusama Projects that could make new millionaires in 2022
Step 5: Art
Now, this one gets a little more subjective, but I have some questions about the art to ask. Is there a sense of art in the work? Is it simply a carbon copy of another successful NFT project? As I previously stated, this is highly subjective, but you may get a sense of whether art is uninspired or a ripoff of another piece by simply looking at it.
That's probably one I'll steer clear of. You might ask yourself questions like, "Do I like this art personally?" or "Do I like this art?" This I believe you should do if you're purchasing an NFT because, in the worst-case situation, you might be stuck with it if no one else buys it in the long term.
Is there anything about the art that strikes out you as unique or different? Because NFTs are so simple to create, the industry is somewhat saturated, therefore you'll need a differentiator.
Step 6: What distinguishes them?
And that brings me to the last major subject area of my checklist - How are they different? And the first question is, Is there a unique use case for this NFT? I think the times are gone where we'll see very many additional projects become popular simply because it's a JPEG. I think more and more- They're going to have to have some kind of unique positioning.
So there's some kind of unique use case. NFTs, I believe, will have applications in the long run. Is there any kind of utility here? This could be a variation of a use case, in which case you should read the white paper.
Not every NFT project now has a white paper. The more ambitious ones are more likely to do so. If it comes with a white paper, read it before investing. Is there a one-of-a-kind community? This could be due to the community's size. Is there a large community before the launch? Is there a specific group of people who could be particularly interested in this project? Is there somebody in the community that wields a disproportionate amount of power? There are a few questions you may pose in that situation.
Is it connected to something special? like a game, a Metaverse, or a one-of-a-kind benefit. We're seeing the Metaverse and gaming aspect more and more these days, but you have to be careful that there's truly experience behind it.
I see a lot of projects saying things like, "Once we sell out our 10,000 pieces in our collection, we're going to make a game," but they have no experience doing so, and it's just a way to get people to invest in that project because they're like, "Oh, they're going to make a game eventually," but they haven't even started yet."
As a result, I'd want to see some experience. I'm looking for anything to look at. Is there anything unique about the art style? Of course, that's more difficult and subjective. Is there a great deal of anticipation?
And when there's a lot of enthusiasm, it's generally because one of the other boxes has been checked. There's something particularly unique about this project or application. Something isn't quite right. That is exactly what I am looking for.
Bottom Line
So, with this checklist, a project doesn't have to get a perfect score; rather, it's more like a report card. The higher the score, the more likely the project will succeed. But, once again, there's no certainty.
So, I believe the ideal approach here is to go through, spend a lot of time researching through these initiatives, be incredibly patient, pick just a few that you like, and possibly invest in at the ground level.
As I previously stated, ten distinct projects or whatever your budget is. Before you undertake something like this, I believe it's critical to have your safe investments in place. However, this is your life, and none of this is financial advice.
Diversify your purchases over a number of initiatives that all have excellent grades on your report card. If you accomplish all of that, your chances of finding that 10X, 100X potential flip will be considerably higher since you've done all of the legwork upfronts. So I hope this was particularly useful in narrowing down where to look for NFT projects.