Interested to create your own NFT web stories?

## Introduction

The web is the truly open and distributed system we have. You need to worry about a few administrative things, such as getting a domain name or hosting. Still, otherwise, nobody stands between you and what you want to tell the world. From the early days of the internet, creators used this open nature to build compelling web experiences for profit and fun.

As users' expectations about interactions evolved, web developers responded by building genuinely unique web experiences that capture people's imaginations and delight their users. What digital experiences are people expecting today? In this blog post, we will dive deeper into web stories and applications to market non-fungible tokens.

## What are web stories

Web stories are visual stories for the open web. The web story format is accessible and part of the open web. Web stories are available for everyone to create or use on their websites. They are a web-based version of the famous "stories" format, which blends video, audio, images, animation, and text to create visual and immersive experiences on the web.

Web stories, formerly known as AMP Stories, give you the ability to create immersive, interactive experiences for your readers while allowing your content to load faster than using content delivery networks (CDNs). Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) is a web component open-source framework that enables developers to create user-first experiences for the web. The AMP framework allows developers to build web stories with engaging animations and tappable interactions optimized for the mobile viewing experience. This visual format lets you explore and interact with content by tapping through it or swiping from one piece to the next.

Web stories are growing in popularity. Since October 2020, roughly 6,500 new domains have started publishing web stories. Over 20 million web stories have been published online, with about 100,000 new web stories added daily ([youtube.com](https://youtu.be/APFQybnAiEQ?t=6)).

Case studies for web stories are impressive. Bon Appeteach, a healthy comfort food-based recipe blog, has made over 100 web stories. In two months, their pageviews grew by 6X from around 100,000 to over 700,000 ([bonappeteach.com](https://www.bonappeteach.com/how-i-successfully-make-google-web-stories-for-my-food-blog/)). WordLift, a semantic SEO tool for automating structured data markup, created a web story for its SEO predictions. The results? WordLift boosted traffic on their website by 504% ([wordlift.io](https://wordlift.io/blog/en/web-stories-seo/#:~:text=website%20by%20504%25)). Foo Tokyo, a lifestyle brand focused on luxury products, increased their session duration by over 550% and their page views by 30% using web stories ([firework.tv](https://firework.tv/us/blog/what-is-a-web-story/)). Audpop, a video creation platform, saw 1,200% growth in customer engagement and 500% growth in sales by using web stories on their website ([firework.tv](https://firework.tv/us/blog/what-is-a-web-story/)). Jumprope, a creator-first blog, used web stories to get 100,000 to 300,000+ page views ([blog.jumprope.com](https://blog.jumprope.com/2021/02/24/jumpropes-guide-to-google-web-stories/)).

Web stories appear on Google Search, Google Discover, and Google Images. They are promoted by Google but are not owned by Google. Web stories are pieces of content that can be shared and embedded across the web without being confined to a closed platform (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn). Web stories give ownership to content creators by empowering them with complete creative expression and allowing them to host their own data on their own servers. Sound familiar to NFTs?

## What are NFTs

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are becoming increasingly popular as an alternative method for fans to support their favorite creators. When technology evolves, and new creators begin to adopt it in their workflows, new solutions arise to previous problems. With the recent adoption of NFTs and blockchain technology, we see new crypto-enabled solutions. Creators use NFTS to monetize their creative process, build a community around their work, and incentivize their fans to contribute their capital and time.

NFTs are designed to give you something that can't be copied: ownership of work. By creating or minting NFTs, creators can retain the copyright and reproduction rights to their content. When you buy an NFT, you hold the right to digital ownership of the NFT itself and the right to exclude others from digital ownership of the NFT. Beyond that, it will depend on whatever terms govern the NFT. I would characterize ownership of NFTs as intangible or incorporeal personal property – an item that cannot be touched or held but has some level of value. It can be bought, sold, gifted, bequeathed, mortgaged, used as collateral, and levied like other personal property.

Creating an NFT is a great way to earn money for doing what you love. It's one of the best ways to generate active income through primary sales and passive income through secondary sales. And while it's an appealing prospect for many creators, there comes the point when they realize that NFTs will not market themselves.

## Why create web stories

Is it possible to use web stories to promote NFTs? Let's explore the value of web stories and how they maximize market reach for NFT projects. Web stories are an opportunity to create engaging content that will work across multiple platforms (social media, web, tablet, smartphone). You can tell stories that haven't been told before.

Web stories are designed to create immersive, full-screen experiences. They are distributed for free and can be used to market products, services, and even NFTs. Web stories help creators take ownership of their content and reduce the reliance on social media platforms for content distribution.

Creators and DAOs can create web stories to spread the word about NFTs and even encourage viewers to purchase them. The second reason is more important: you need video if you want attention from search engines and social media. Therefore, the best stories are designed to attract both visitors and are search engine friendly.

Digital creators are pushing the boundaries of what is possible with digital media. Thanks to NFTs and web stories, they can push creative and technology limits at the same time.

## Video-first web stories are the future of NFT storytelling

The impact of video on the web can't be underestimated. According to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words ([forrester.com](https://www.forrester.com/report/How-Video-Will-Take-Over-The-World/RES44199)). Over 500 million users utilize Instagram stories daily, and 86.6% of Instagram's users post stories every day ([99firms.com](https://99firms.com/blog/instagram-stories-statistics/)). People who watch videos stay on sites longer than people who don't. More importantly, Google favors video content in search results with a ranking boost.

Video is ubiquitous on the internet. Video has emerged as one of the most popular ways for creatives and DAOs to market their work. Yet, few content platforms have tools to help creators monetize their creativity through videos. My goal is to help creators use videos to reach new audiences and expand their fan base; while facilitating collaboration between creators and marketing teams.

Video is the future of storytelling on any platform. With video becoming increasingly important, it's essential to think about how to create video-based content for various social media platforms. While most platforms monetize stories with advertisements (ads), it's possible to monetize stories with non-fungible tokens (NFTs). You can generate a lot of traffic with web stories. Still, for most creators and DAOs, the technical hurdle of creating web stories prevents action.

At 🪶 Phoenix Team, we can help! 🪶 Phoenix is a performance-based NFT marketing team that believes creators and DAOs should get paid for creating content. Let us take care of your marketing, so you don't have to.

NFT Web Stories for Brands

The beauty of the internet is anyone can create an account and sell anything. But if you're going to be a creator and want to sell something that's original, you need to understand what it is you want to sell. In this blog post, we cover three reasons why you should drop your own non-fungible tokens or NFTs.

NFTs are the next wave of creative expression. NFTs allow creators to tokenize their creative process or create a digital creative trail using blockchain technologies.

One of the main reasons NFTs are so popular is that they give us digital verification (public data on blockchain networks) when we need to know someone's ownership (crypto coins or tokens) or identity (crypto addresses).

While fungible tokens ($BTC, $ETH, $BCH) can be easily traded (or swapped) for one another, the value of non-fungible tokens cannot be easily swapped since each token is unique.

The most notable implementations of NFTs thus far have been [CryptoPunks](https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks) (circa 2017), or [Art Blocks](https://artblocks.io/) (circa 2020), [NBA Top Shot](https://nbatopshot.com/) (circa 2020), and [Bored Ape Yacht Club](https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/) (circa 2021), and [CryptoKitties](https://www.cryptokitties.co/) (circa 2017).

Let's compare these NFT projects by sales volume. CryptoPunks has a total sales volume of 1.244B $USD, Art Blocks 743M $USD, NBA Top Shot 707M USD, Bored Ape Yacht Club 454M $USD, and CryptoKitties 44M $USD, according to [CryptoSlam!](https://cryptoslam.io/) These amounts were calculated from transactions on all marketplaces tracked and include owner-to-owner sales only (not initial sales from the product directly to the owners).

Some of the first NFT projects went on to trade millions on secondary markets, proving that all collectibles can be digitized and tokenized.

## You can have more creative ownership over your products with NFTs

NFTs are unique digital assets. You can own them, verify their authenticity, transfer them easily, and trade them securely. All of this leads to greater ownership over your assets.

The ecosystem around NFT minting is expanding. [Ethereum](https://ethereum.org/en/) (smart contract-enabled blockchain) and its side-chains ([Polygon](https://polygon.technology/), [Arbitrum](https://offchainlabs.com/), [Optimism](https://optimism.io/), [Ronin](https://whitepaper.axieinfinity.com/technology/ronin-ethereum-sidechain)) have been the dominant networks for NFT creators. We're also seeing creators jump into non-Ethereum networks such as [Flow](https://www.onflow.org/) and [Binance Smart Chain](https://www.binance.org/en/smartChain).

NFTs are tools in the creator economy. They provide a way to store and transfer digital assets in an efficient and provably scarce way. These tokens can represent digital assets (coins, items, collectibles) and even physical assets (cars, houses, vaults). While these NFTs are still in their early days, many see them as the next step in the evolution of digital ownership.

The era of digital ownership is currently upon us thanks to crypto tokens. It’s time for creators, and creatives to look into creating (or minting) their own NFTs to maximize ownership of their creations.

## NFTs are now within reach for even small creators

NFT creators are banking serious capital in their crypto wallets. But NFT drops are not reserved for famous artists like [@beeple](https://twitter.com/beeple), even small creators can now drop their own tokens for profit or fun. If you are a small creator and you own your own content, you can drop NFTs on any smart contract-enabled blockchain network ([Ethereum](https://ethereum.org/en/), [Flow](https://www.onflow.org/), [Binance Smart Chain](https://www.binance.org/en/smartChain), [Polygon](https://polygon.technology/)).

Dropping NFTs typically requires capital up-front. The transaction fees are necessary to use the technology (sign blockchain transactions). The first generation of NFT marketplaces ([OpenSea](https://opensea.io/), [Rarible](https://rarible.com/), [Zora](https://zora.co/), [Foundation](https://foundation.app/), [SuperRare](https://superrare.com/)) required creators to pay up-front. The second-generation platforms ([OpenSea](https://opensea.io/), [Rarible](https://rarible.com/), [Cargo](https://cargo.build/), [Mintable](https://mintable.app/)) feature lazy minting (aka gasless minting or magic minting) which allows creators to make NFTs without any upfront gas cost, as the NFT isn’t transferred on-chain until the first purchase or transfer is made. With lazy minting enabled, creators can tokenize their creative process for free.

## Leverage marketplaces to sell your NFTs to your fans and your community

One of the fastest ways to increase the value of your digital items is to let someone else distribute them for you. This makes both centralized marketplaces and decentralized counterparts very attractive to creators. Third-party marketplaces or auction houses provide a quick and easy way to turn your NFTs into revenue without knowing how to develop and launch your own smart contracts.

There are three major reasons why you should drop your own NFTs on third-party marketplaces: You will monetize your work faster; you can build stronger ties with the existing collector community, and you will receive free marketing for your work. What's the downside of relying on existing NFT marketplaces? Marketplaces typically take 1-15% of the selling price. If you are still deciding on which NFT platform you want to use for your NFT drop, check out [🚀 Dstack](https://dstack.xyz/).

## It's easier than ever to drop NFTs that become more valuable over time

NFTs, or digital collectibles, can be designed to meet the goals of their creators. For example, do you prefer working alone? Use lazy minting to drop your own NFTs for free. Do you prefer to collaborate with other creatives, designers, musicians, videographers, photographers, or marketers? Use split payments to automatically distribute funds for all parties involved. Do you want to allow your fans to access private content? Use token-gating to share private content with token owners.

When you tokenize your work, you are essentially sharing your work with the world and potentially getting paid (if you have a large enough following or a true fanbase). If your community purchases your tokens, they recognize the market value of your tokens. They also believe that the token value may change in the future.

NFTs can be anything. This has opened up a whole world of opportunities for creators. If you find yourself thinking about creating your own NFTs but holding off, reach out to us.

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NFT Web Stories for Brands

Three Reasons Why Brands Should Drop NFTs

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