It started over a decade ago. I held children’s stories in my head for ten years, telling them to my kids and hoping I would one day put them down on paper. After self-publishing the first book, I was encouraged to do my own illustrations for the second – AlphaBetty Doodles. AlphaBetty is a colourful book character who leads children through a series of adventures to help them learn the alphabet. I find it hard to believe but it’s the illustrations of this character, as the first family focussed NFTs, which have attracted the attention of celebrities, professional athletes and high-profile social media influencers worldwide. 

The majority of the money we’ve raised has gone back into the project or been donated to causes close to our hearts – so I’m by no means a millionaire – and to be clear, that is not the intention. However, the enthusiasm with which people have engaged with our brand has been overwhelming.  

BUT WHAT IS AN NFT?

NFTs or non-fungible tokens are unique digital assets that can be bought and sold, but which have no tangible form of their own. Unlike money, the unique properties of the token mean it cannot be interchanged with something else.

If you think about an original Picasso for example:  it’s one of a kind – you can take a photo of it but there will only ever be one original. This is how NFTs work too, however, they can be "tokenised" to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought and sold.

SO HOW DO YOU CREATE AN NFT PROJECT?

There are a number of things to consider when creating an NFT project.

The first step is to identify the unique digital asset to tokenise. You need to own the intellectual property rights for the item – whether it’s a piece of digital art, a meme or GIF. Also remember that your assets can only have a single owner at any point in time.

My assets were the illustrations of AlphaBetty inspired by my book. I created a series of Betties to tokenise and continue to build on that series.

Step 2 is to choose a marketplace which allows you to create your NFT on the blockchain and then sell it. Make sure you do lots of research because there are plenty of options and they’re all different in terms of pricing and features. Popular options are Mintable, Rarible and OpenSea.

Next you need to set up your wallet. Opensea allows you to connect most of the popular crypto wallets including Coinbase Wallet, Fortmatic, WalletConnect, and others. We used Ethereum Wallet for the AlphaBettyDoodles NFT project. It’s a simple process to go through on the marketplace you have chosen.

Once done, you’re ready to mint your NFT. The step-by-step instructions for uploading your digital file should be provided by the NFT marketplace. This process will turn your digital artwork into a non-fungible token that can be sold. It transforms a digital file into a blockchain digital asset. As a result, it cannot be deleted or edited. 

Next you need to ensure you have cryptocurrency available for listing NFTs. You have to pay a fee, in cryptocurrency, for listing the digital asset and making NFTs sales. So you have to purchase some cryptocurrency before you can earn any. Most NFT marketplaces, such as OpenSea, charge fees in Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum, so make sure you have ETH in your digital wallet.

Finally, you need to set up the sales process. Depending on which platform you use you can choose to sell at a fixed cost on a first come, first served basis; a timed auction or an unlimited auction where you have the power to end the auction at any time. There are pros and cons to each, but we decided to sell at a fixed cost and saw our Betties sell out within days!

SOME LESSONS FROM MY EXPERIENCE?

Throughout the process, it's always important to do plenty of your own research, gain knowledge from other communities in the space and get feedback for your potential ideas. It's very fast paced so you must stay on your toes, but it can be a great platform to unleash your creativity in identifying something new and appealing.

For me, it was about broadening the audience and giving back. The NFT space is thrilling. But it is like learning a new language and the positioning can sometimes feel exclusive. We worked hard to use ‘plain-English’ in the presentation of the project, and I think this approach is attractive to first-time holders, who make up a large proportion of our community.  

But it’s not just giving access to the grown-ups out there; we know that a large majority of AlphaBetty holders involved in our 3,500 strong community are parents who wanted to be able to share their NFT experience with their children. Not only can they share the excitement of holding an original, unique piece of digital art, but they can educate their family on the space itself – without exposing them to some of the more adult content which is typical of NFTs.   

The other major attraction is our philanthropic mission. Our aim is to use the AlphaBetty brand to raise funds for educational projects. The first £50,000 which we made from the initial sale of the ‘Betties’ was donated to children’s causes close to my heart – including the under-funded primary school that my children attended in Brighton.  

We have also partnered with Gamers Outreach, a fantastic charity that I am proud to donate regularly to, helping to provide enrichment and relief for hospitalised children: And our community is equally thrilled to be contributing to something meaningful through their blockchain experience.  

In summary, the success of the AlphaBetty Doodles project demonstrates that that NFTs don’t need to be exclusively for grownups, while the community element of the NFT space lends itself perfectly to philanthropic purposes.