How to Make Money with NFT in 2025? Beginner’s Guide

Remember NFTs and the noise they made when monkey pictures were changing hands for preposterous prices? We do, and the picture of this space today could not be more different. Even without billions circulating through the market, there is still some money to be made. In this comprehensive guide, we will explain the current state of the NFT market and see how it influences economic activity in it today.

Key Takeaways

• How are NFTs doing? Not at the same level as in 2021-2022, speaking realistically, but there is indeed a market for the unique digital assets and works even in 2025.
• How to trade NFTs successfully? There are two options to get started: create NFT art (or any other form of digital content in demand) or buy an undervalued token to sell it later for a better price.
• Selling NFTs is not the only way to profit off one. Some protocols also let you use them as collateral for lending in DeFi and staking.

The NFT Landscape in 2025

It’s very likely that you have heard about NFTs all the way back in 2021 when they were making waves even in the mainstream. Or, you have delved into the crypto world more recently and only have a general idea of the tech. In any case, before diving deeper into the practicalities of the NFT economy, let’s review what it is and the state of the market in the current year.

NFTs stand for ‘non-fungible tokens’, and the NFT definition is a type of blockchain token (and by extension, digital assets) that is unique and non-interchangeable, as opposed to cryptocurrency tokens. What makes an NFT valuable? Instead of monetary value as a digital currency, the NFT value comes from their contents or what they represent on the blockchain. So, NFTs are only as valuable as what this wrapper contains, but it does not mean these assets do not follow the market principles such as demand and supply either.

There are multiple NFT types and categorizations: depending on their contents, the standards they follow, etc. The most intuitive grouping is, of course, by the type of asset they represent: art and photography, music, virtual lands, in-game assets, tickets and licenses, domain names and digital collectibles. Needless to say, the markets for all these types are different, and not only in the sense that you trade these on different platforms.

The NFT market trend dominating the sector in the mid-2020s is the shift to utility: early NFT trading was mostly fueled by hype, for the record. These days, though, the floor prices may not make headlines anymore but the assets tied to NFTs are a lot more valuable than just randomly generated pictures. Ironically, as the early adopters argued that NFTs could see practical applications such as digital tickets, proof of exclusive access and verifiably unique collectibles, it took several years to arrive at the point where it really became commonplace.

So, What is an NFT (Non-Fungible Token)?

If your curiosity is not satisfied with a simple definition, let’s unpack the concept of NFT a bit more. It definitely wouldn’t hurt to know this to understand the real value of these tokens!

What does ‘non-fungible’ mean? Is it just a fancy way of saying ‘unique’? Not exactly: non-fungible means ‘not interchangeable with other assets of this type or with equal value’. Money is fungible because you can trade a dollar bill for another and you will still have a dollar, they are interchangeable. You can’t trade a personal invitation, or a plane ticket, or an autographed item the same way, and NFTs aim to capture this facet of value exchange.

NFTs are not the same as cryptocurrencies for this exact reason: they were never intended to be a medium of exchange. In a way, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum are not perfectly fungible either, because each unit carries a unique transaction history but in practice, this amounts to the same difference as a serial number on a money bill. NFTs, in contrast, use the security of records in the underlying blockchain to reliably signify ownership of unique digital assets.

This is a part of the technology powering NFTs, tokenization. Its core idea is to create digital representation of real-world or digital assets, the more secure and tamper-proof, the better. Blockchain tokens happen to provide a solution: with a specified standard, many blockchain protocols can mint unique, irreplaceable, publicly verifiable tokens to represent any asset. This asset is usually linked to a token in its metadata due to the transaction size limits. Another trend that has emerged after the initial NFT boom as the market matured is keeping the NFT contents on-chain (as opposed to external links).

There is only so much space in this guide to talk about the intricacies of NFTs. For a closer look at NFTs and a digestible introduction to learn about NFT for beginners, make sure to read the Beginner’s Guide by ChangeHero!

NFTs and Money-Making

Let’s be real: the NFT space blew up as much as it did years ago not exactly because of the promising use cases. As soon as the public caught wind that some serious money was moving through this sector, the rise in value became a self-fulfilling prophecy (until the bubble burst and the actual growth began).

And it is not like NFTs have no monetary applications either: digital artists adopted this technology to receive royalties from subsequent sales, and a lot of activity with the NFTs boils down to trading and flipping. Digital art? Hold and sell until the artist makes a name for themselves. Collectibles? Roll for a rare combination and sell it to someone looking for it. Gaming? Buy a fully decked out character to skip wasting time on leveling (or spend some time and monetize it if you are on the other end of the trade). Basically, the economical implications were baked into the niche from the very start.

Not all use cases ended up as lucrative as others. How to not waste time and money on them and which to focus on instead? This is what we aim to equip you with in this guide!

Creating and Selling Your Own NFTs

• Pros: minimal costs, full control over royalties/revenue
• Cons: more suitable for digital content creators

Let’s start with a method that would not require you to hunt down a gem and dish out your digital cash right away: NFT creation. It is not necessarily easier, mind you, since you will be the one setting the value of the digital tokens; it’s crucial to get it right!

Virtually any digital content can be turned into an NFT: we have already mentioned art, photographs and music, but videos, posts, edits, GIFs, memes and collectibles are fair game too. The images used throughout this guide? They are algorithmically generated digital art, curated by Art Blocks (some of them are interactive, too)! If you can afford it and do not mind sharing royalties, an NFT artist for hire is always an option. Keep in mind that you will also need to have an idea how to promote whatever you choose even before you tokenize it.

Next, you would be choosing the platform and blockchain to mint your tokens. To choose the right one, check the blockchain specs (transaction speed, throughput, volume, gas costs, security) and the quality plus NFT-friendliness of its ecosystem (token standards, future-proofing, cross-chain capabilities, reputation). Your blockchain for NFTs options do not end at Ethereum: BNB Smart Chain and Solana also have busy NFT communities of their own. If you do not feel like giving up the security and performance of Ethereum, review its Layer-2 chains such as Arbitrum, Base and Polygon. Even Bitcoin these days is a valid choice (although ‘digital artifacts’ there are not exactly NFTs)!

Last but not least, minting NFTs requires you to set the initial price right away. How to price your NFT right, then? One thing to remember is that the initial price is not that major of a factor: immediate sales are not an indicator of success, and appropriate pricing can emerge eventually after the mint and trading. Often, the initial price of newer collections is lower to attract and build a holder base and to reward them for being early. In this case, the creator increases the price linearly as more tokens sell and more users are involved. Setting the starting point in NFT pricing should come after the market research, weighed against the floor prices of competitors, their clout (AKA social media numbers) and market popularity.

You should also keep in mind the supply of the tokens; the more limited they are, the pricier they can get, but minting 10 copies at once will also provide a lower entry threshold. Well-balanced inventory is like a fine art: too many unsold tokens will signal low demand but too few tokens can also make you look less capable as an artist or just pretentious (unless you can already flex some clout).

How to Mint NFTs

Once you figure these things out, it’s time to dive right into the practice! It wouldn’t really be a surprise though that the NFT minting process also has a ton of considerations to it.

For example, what exactly are the steps involved in minting an NFT? Generally, they would go:

• Connect your wallet to an NFT marketplace of your choice. Ouch, even more prep? Let’s talk about choosing the best minting platform a bit later and for now, assume we connect MetaMask to OpenSea. It’s best not to leave the marketplace profile empty because the author’s name is often a factor in the work’s value, plus mentioning accepted cryptocurrencies can come in handy.
• The marketplaces usually have a creation interface to upload the file and name the token. Creating the item also lets you specify description, extra links, blockchain, and royalties. This is the step where all the prep from the previous section will be needed!
• How to create a NFT for free? Not so fast: there are costs baked right into the process. Make sure your crypto wallet is not empty: any transaction with an NFT, minting included, is not free. The costs associated with minting NFTs include gas fees, a small commission that goes to compensate blockchain operation.
• List the NFT for sale on the marketplace. You have the choice between a fixed price or a timed auction. The marketplaces will take a small cut from each sale and will calculate the minting and listing price based on the network activity.

The costs to mint an NFT, on top of gas and marketplace fees, can add up to hundreds of dollars but there are a few things you can do to offset them or even eliminate them completely. When it comes to gas fees, alternative networks and L2s are a more economical choice: while minting on Ethereum can shoot up to $500 at absolute peaks, Solana's typical minting cost is around $0.015 per NFT, Polygon is less than $0.01, and Binance Smart Chain is ~$0.15–$1.00. But even if you choose Ethereum, batch minting, data size optimization and streamlining, and transaction timing can make a huge difference. Still wondering how to make a NFT completely for free? ‘Lazy minting’ is the ultimate cost-saving technique: just don’t mint until you have a buyer (who is also willing to handle the costs).

Remember we promised to talk about the best platforms for minting NFTs three passages ago? It’s about time to deliver. What NFT platforms are worth looking into in 2025?

• OpenSea is still one of the top choices, at least for Ethereum and Polygon. They take a noticeable but reasonable cut of 2.5% off each sale but in return, provide a user-friendly experience with zero gas fee minting for collections and creator royalties. Users interested in trading NFTs rather than minting will also appreciate the platform for a wide range of art, digital collections and even practical things like domain names.
• Magic Eden consistently rounds up the top three of NFT marketplaces. It supports many chains, Solana and Bitcoin included. It does not take a listing fee (but they do not accept all listing applications) and the trading fee there is 2%.
• Rarible is very similar to OpenSea, down to the fact of being interoperable with it and taking the same commissions. Its distinction is in the community-centric approach, evident in DAO governance.
• SuperRare aims to distinguish itself by focusing on high-quality, curated art, including exclusives. Its commissions are steeper: 15% from initial sales and 3% on the buyer side.

How to Make Money with NFT Trading

• Pros: suitable for non-creators
• Cons: bears more risks, has an upfront cost

For those who do not have the time or skills to start and promote a collection of their own, going down the path of a digital collector might be the better choice. After all, speculative investment is still a major part of the conversation around NFTs. How to generate profit from that NFT investment, though?

A valuable skill that should make it possible is being able to accurately appraise the value of an NFT. How do you analyze it?

• Get to know the author figure: things you’d like to include in the analysis are their reputation and following.
• Pay attention to the project’s fundamentals: scarcity and rarity, utility, tokenomics, founding team and roadmap, if any.
• Review the asset’s market traits: latest price and trading history, liquidity and volume.

You can learn to pinpoint NFT valuation with your own experience but it is better to get to know the risks from other’s mistakes. What risks are involved in trading NFTs?

For starters, this space is largely unregulated to this day, so scams, fraud and money laundering are still a factor. Common tactics are rug pulls and whitelisting, both falling under the definition of insider trading; wash trading (artificially inflating trading volumes) and, much like traditional art, money laundering.

Thefts are also quite common in that space, and while hacks occur, they are rarer than phishing or other social engineering attacks that result in users revealing their wallet’s private keys themselves. In the NFT space, theft also takes the form of intellectual property (IP) theft, when someone’s work is tokenized without their knowledge or consent. Buy a token like this without doing due diligence, and after a legal request from the artist to the platform, you might end up with a worthless token linking to a DMCA notice (based on true events).

Even if some legal clarity would alleviate those risks, there is still the extreme volatility in this nascent market. The estimated total value in the market changes by over 60% up and down on a daily basis. Even the crypto market looks tame by contrast!

Last but not least, the blockchain technology makes it so that you are solely responsible for the security of your assets. It might be nice knowing your access to them is not so easily revoked but losing the cryptographic keys or other credentials means no one will be able to help and you alone are responsible.

With all that being said, all those risks can be alleviated or outright avoided with proper measures. If you are prepared for the worst, how do you start? What are the best NFT trading strategies? This answer is best left up to your own needs and experience but here is what you use in your toolkit.

• Buy and hold — works for projects with strong growth potential on the long time horizon.
• Follow the trends — be quick on your feet; identify trends before they hit the market by analyzing social media and markets.
• Focus on rarity — requires a keen eye for highly-sought after NFTs, pays rarely but handsomely.
• Flipping the tokens — works for NFTs with an established market, the good old “buy low, sell high”.
• Focus on novelty — also requires quick thinking and being early. Be prepared for a lot of new projects to flop, even if you did all due diligence as you should.
• Diversification — combine various types of NFTs to spread risks and maximize returns.
• Fractionalization — buy and trade a fraction of a popular NFT, reducing both expenses and risks.
• NFT Lending — applies to both sides of the deal; use a token as collateral to loan out other crypto or lend cryptocurrency to NFT owners for a chance to buy it out if they are liquidated.

Flipping NFTs

Boiling down NFT flipping to buying low and selling high is easy. Digging deeper uncovers a lot of details that need consideration, though. What are the components to success here?

• Timing is key, whether you enter the market with your own NFT or make a secondary sale. After all, due to the popularity of linear pricing, the earlier you are, the lower is the price, as a general rule.
• Liquidity is not just nice to have, it’s necessary to flip and trade NFTs. The easier it is to strike a deal, the more likely you are to actually make money in that particular market.
• Most importantly, desirability of an NFT is at the core of its value. It has its own contributing factors: fame and popularity of a project or holders, the founding team’s activity, extra perks for utility, and arguably, style.

Being cheap or expensive is not the same as being under- or overvalued. How do you know if an NFT is undervalued to get it for a lower price? One trait to be on the lookout for is rarity, and resources like NFTSniff, PolyRare (Polygon), and MoonRank (Solana) can help. They will provide you with valuable information about market valuation, supply dynamics of the collection, holders and trading activity. To analyse the market fitness of undervalued NFTs you will need some extra research, such as following the trends in the NFT space in social media.

The platform where you can flip NFTs will depend on the collections if you approach it from that side first. If you would prefer to choose NFT trading platforms first, here are a few options best suited for flipping NFTs.

• Blur is the current runner-up that often flips OpenSea in volumes. It is limited to Ethereum only but focuses on speed and efficiency, enabling traders to snipe the newest collections before anyone else. You can also access other marketplaces’ collections from it, and 0% marketplace fees solidify it as the top choice for pro traders.
• Nifty Gateway operates on similar principles, offering exclusive regular ‘drops’ of digital arts and music. It also offers built-in card purchases in addition to crypto payments. The service commission is on the higher end, 5% plus 30 cents off each sale.
• BakerySwap is the go-to place for BNB Smart Chain users who want to trade NFTs or other BSC-tokens as well, since it is a DEX in addition to an NFT marketplace.

Can You Earn with NFT Royalties?

• Pros: continuous, near effortless income
• Cons: continuous performance not guaranteed

Already mentioned in passing, what are NFT royalties? How do they work? This mechanism is embedded into the smart contrast when the NFT is minted; it directs a share of sale price to the address specified, usually to the NFT creator. In other words, if an NFT changes hands, the creator receives a payout for a specified amount, every time instead of once at the initial sale. Royalties can be adjusted to a flat fee (fixed amount) or a percentage of the sale (usually 5–10%).

How to set NFT royalties up? If you are not making a custom smart contract, most popular platforms where you create NFT online allow you to set it up in the user interface. Normally, they are determined at the minting stage but collections let you change the royalties after the fact (although updates apply to all NFTs within it).

Now, how much can you realistically earn from NFT royalties? The current top earners (30 day) rack in $50 to $20 thousand, according to DeFiLlama. Out of 3853 tracked collections, though, 2938 have seen zero royalties in the past month, and the median earnings for the remaining 914 collections is somewhere around $3. Although the tracking is prone to some reporting errors, this should give you the idea of the state of NFT royalties today: there are a few noteworthy examples of success but the vast majority of projects do not really serve as a reliable stream of income.

NFT Gaming and Play-to-Earn

• Pros: underrated but viable niche of the NFT industry when it comes to earning
• Cons: speculation outside of the game is more lucrative than playing to earn

When NFTs became known in the mainstream, it was not only thanks to Bored Apes or Crypto Punks. Around the same time, Axie Infinity became a prominent news story because of its economy that made genuine difference in the global south, particularly, the Philippines. Players who rented and sold the NFT in-game characters (called Axies) used them for real-world business. But do NFT gaming and play-to-earn hold up as well today as streams of income?

First off, what are play-to-earn (P2E) games and are they the same as NFT games? This is basically another name for blockchain games, which makes sense, given that NFTs use blockchain technology. As the name implies, in P2E games, players are rewarded for in-game activities with assets that have real value (or at least, are supposed to, due to being freely tradeable). These assets can include in-game crypto and NFTs, or cash prizes for tournaments and competitions.

How to start with crypto gaming? You will also need to have a compatible wallet to connect and store the game-related assets. Research the games beforehand to learn what blockchain they are on, what kinds of rewards they offer, and if there are any requirements to join. Some games will let you start without additional expenses but others might need you to pay before you play, let alone earn.

Which NFT games are the most popular right now? Based on statistics from DappRadar, the current top-five P2E games are:

• World of Dypians, a multi-chain massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). The in-game economy relies on a native BSC token that can be staked and the NFTs that represent in-game items.
• Lumiterra, a multiplayer open-world survival crafting game on Ronin. Its in-game economy is flexible enough to accommodate casual gaming, P2E mode and pro-level DeFi activity.
• Pixudi, a race board game. According to the introduction, it is not ‘pay-to-win’, and likewise caters to both free-to-play and P2E players. The backbone of its economic model is tokenized characters.
• Alien Worlds, a metaverse on the WAX blockchain which collects community-created games and experiences. Its economic components are the native token, NFT items, and lands.

Of the usual mainstays that surface in the conversation time and again, Axie Infinity is still arguably performing the best. Star Atlas on Solana is fairly active, and The Sandbox is far from abandoned. Then again, due to the diversity of economic models crypto games employ, popular or well-known games are not necessarily the best to earn money with NFT. Wallet activity does not always reflect the activity of players and vice versa.

Staking NFTs

So far, we have discussed how NFTs work when you want to flip them. However, it’s possible to earn with them without selling the NFT. For a while now, it has been possible to stake NFTs, too.

How does NFT staking work? Using a smart contract that supports this feature, an NFT holder can stake an NFT of their choice by connecting the wallet, depositing it to the designated smart contract, and watch the protocol rewards accrue over time. The logic for NFT staking is roughly the same as in staking cryptocurrency: you use it as a collateral (a stake, if you will) to express your confidence in a validator securing the network. If it misbehaves or fails to deliver, you are punished monetarily but if it meets expectations, all stakeholders are rewarded. The calculation takes into account the duration of staking, interest rate, total amount of staking, rarity or property of the NFT, and network fees.

This arrangement requires specific setup, so the range of platforms that make NFT staking possible is limited. Some examples are Zookeeper (gamified DeFi protocol for liquidity mining), MOBOX (metaverse), and Binance Fan Token Platform.

Using NFTs in DeFi and receiving crypto rewards sounds good until you take into consideration the risks. Whatever you have to be aware of when staking (illiquidity, impermanent loss, smart contract vulnerabilities) and using NFTs (lack of regulatory clarity, volatility) is combined, basically, doubling the risks involved.

Fair Warning about NFT Investing

It would not hurt to reiterate potential NFT risks and downsides before you commit to putting NFTs to work. Investing carries more or less the same considerations as NFT trading, which we already mentioned: extreme volatility, scams and fraud, money laundering, thefts, lack of legal rights protection, self-custody risks and the dual-investment structure.

Which measures can you take to protect yourself from NFT scams? Since phishing is the most common tactic in social engineering, buy only from verified marketplaces and train your eye to spot suspicious emails and links. To avoid holding the bag due to insiders pulling the rug on you, conduct due diligence on projects and teams. Taking some time to learn the history of prominent scams can also help you to see patterns and red flags, learning from others’ mistakes.

It has been a few years already, and although the space has matured noticeably, there is still no regulatory clarity in sight. Will it ever get better (or worse) from the legal point of view? Attempts to create specific legislation that would center NFTs are barely made, complicated by a huge number of factors: borderless nature of cryptocurrencies, dubious enforceability of smart contracts, IP rights and royalties, anti-money laundering measures. Tax and securities laws, however, have way fewer qualms about inspecting this technology closely. The NFT regulations are not on the table just yet due to the size of the market but should a second explosion in this digital market come for any reason, it may as well serve as the catalyst for more laws to be introduced.

Closing Thoughts

So what if the NFT future does not look as close as it did in 2021? NFT investing may look like a much less lucrative endeavour than at its first peak but it still can deliver on expectations. For all the effort it takes to start NFT trading successfully, the payoff is not at all underwhelming, and the market appears to be on the upside trajectory for the long term.

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