WHAT UTILITIES TO OFFER IN MY NFT COLLECTION

Welcome to the sixth chapter of the NFT creation course! In this chapter we’re going to cover how to decide what utilities to offer in our NFT Project. Even though we’ve previously played down its importance compared to Marketing, it’s a key point that will add a lot toward hitting a sold out and, above all, making your collection succeed long term.

It’s really important to be clear that the utilities you promise have to be achievable, they need to make sense and work in the long run. It’s also important that this is profitable; your NFT project is a business, it needs to generate revenue one way or another to keep going.

Without further delay, let’s look at the importance of differentiation, places to find inspiration, and we’ll talk about where we got the utilities for Tillarys.

UTILITIES TO MAKE YOUR NFT COLLECTION STAND OUT

The utility we offer in our NFT Project will be one of the factors that lets us differentiate ourselves and stand out to attract users with real potential to buy our NFT.

Having a unique or uncommon utility is important, especially if it’s genuinely valuable. Offering what we’re used to seeing in every project (Staking, joining a DAO, getting Calls and Whitelist Opportunities) won’t help us, even though there are plenty of projects that brand around these same things and pull off an incredible impact.

The NFT space has very little track record, so we have plenty of blue oceans to tap into with our Project. With so many opportunities out there, it makes no sense to stick to a red ocean.

Of course, if we have a working business that can back up our NFT Collection, it will be a much bigger help. It’s also really useful if our team includes certain people whose work the utility is going to rely on (for example, there are NFT projects dedicated to offering their development to other projects; their utility is to do revenue sharing from the profits they generate).

SO WHERE DO I GET IDEAS FOR MY UTILITY?

We have tons of ways to get inspired or pull ideas from. If you already run a business that works, the easiest move is to offer something tied to it to your holders for what it brings them, so the business and the NFT project feed off each other (what we talked about in chapter 2).

If that’s not the case, which is the usual scenario, you’ll have to lean on your creativity or copy other projects and bring it to a different blockchain or adapt the idea.

Copying isn’t bad: if someone is doing something that works and you apply it in another space (in this case, on another blockchain), you start with an edge, since you already know it’s worked before.

You can find hundreds of NFT projects on Twitter or on Marketplaces like Opensea or Magic Eden. Take your time and go through the ones that catch your eye. The more projects you see, the better your ideas will be. 

That said, don’t overanalyze. You need to analyze, but you also need to act. Analysis paralysis is not an option under any circumstances.

If you don’t want to copy something outright, you can take the same concept but give it a different use.

It’s worth pointing out that there’s a huge opportunity to convert games and businesses that work in the “traditional” space into the NFT space. Find the one that fits you best.

WHERE WE GOT THE UTILITIES FOR TILLARYS

In Tillarys’ case, we pulled inspiration for our utilities from different places.

Tillarys’ approach is revenue sharing, but not through its NFT directly. Instead, it’s through the creation of secondary collections. Tillarys holders will be able to mint those collections for free. And these collections will focus on offering tools as a service to other projects, which is where they’ll generate revenue and share it back.

In other words, we’re going to make money from our utilities. Meaning we won’t try to monetize solely through royalties or the mint, so we’ll sell a very limited collection at a mid-range price.

These secondary collections will be created through the incubator, which will also support external collections, like a standard startup incubator.

Tillarys won’t just have that. It will also have Gatchapy and Tamagotchy. A Gashapon machine for users to play using the $THII token, and a Tamagotchi-style game where you evolve the NFT, customize traits, and earn $THII.

The incubator idea is copied straight from the “real” business model that Startup incubators already follow.

The revenue sharing model is something we took from other collections and built in through secondary collections, so we can split all the tools we can offer as a service into “categories”, each with its own “sales reps”, who will be the holders themselves, since they’re motivated to drive more sales.

The Gatchapy idea is an adaptation of the vending machine concept from another project.

And Tamagotchy is an adaptation of the classic game mixed with the concept of a traitshop and metadata updates.

CONCLUSION

Finding utilities you can actually pull off and that are profitable for you is a key point for the long-term success of your NFT Project. Take your time to dig in, read about other projects, and figure out what utilities you’d like to offer, without skipping the analysis side to make sure the idea holds up.

Thanks a lot for reading, see you in the next chapter!