Photo courtesy of CNBC
A Chicago woman made over $109,000 selling non-fungible tokens of her photography in 2021.
Before 36-year-old Brittany Pierre sold other NFT’s as a profit in addition to her artwork, she often struggled to pay her rent, to afford groceries and bus fare, she told CNBC Make It.
While living paycheck to paycheck, she “got pretty depressed,” as her financial situation was very “touch and go,” Pierre said.
However, things started to change for Pierre after she learned about NFTs in March. Her friend, Elise Swopes, recently sold an NFT of her work for over $17,600, prompting Pierre to learn everything she needed to know about non-fungible tokens. After turning to Swopes for advice, “I dove straight in, just doing a YouTube and a Google deep dive for a couple of days,” she said.
After a couple of friends helped her get started in the business, she was invited to the NFT marketplace Foundation by photographer Zak Krevitt. Another artist helped raise funds for Pierre’s gas fees to mint a couple of her art pieces, she said.
At the time, “I probably had like ten bucks in my bank account,” she said. “I think fees [were] about $250.”
The following month, Pierre started selling her first NFTs and priced the art pieces at a few hundred dollars each — more than what she made with her physical art.
“It was real hard to do $50 photoshoots, trying to peddle $30 prints. I’d have bookings here and there, but it wasn’t sustainable,” she said. “That first couple of $200, $300 [NFT] sales was a lot for me. That’s exactly what I needed to pay rent.”
Since then, Pierre has made a significant amount of money selling her work. As a result, she could pay her bills and live a more comfortable life while donating to various organizations and supporting other artists’ NFTs — some of which she flipped for a return, CNBC reported.
“Last year has been the first year that I could live completely abundantly, more with my heart than I ever have been able to,” she says. “I’ve never had a job over $15 an hour, and last year, I was able to make a little over $100,000.”
The 36-year-old’s artwork is a celebration of Black culture, and “it’s mostly Black women and men that I try to uplift,” Pierre said. “When you look up ‘beautiful person’ on Google, you normally see a white person. So I wanted to put Black people on the blockchain so we can solidify that. I want to highlight the Black experience.”
Though the process isn’t easy to delve into, Pierre said NFTs and cryptocurrency are a great way to produce generational wealth.
“I definitely think that not only NFTs, but crypto in general, can help marginalized people, especially the Black community,” she said.
Additionally, she said, “I do truly believe that crypto and NFTs can be the path of real financial freedom and freedom from racist systems in government and banks.”