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22-year-old Indonesian makes $1M from selling his selfies as NFTs

22-year-old Indonesian makes $1M from selling his selfies as NFTs

When Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali, a 22-year-old student from Indonesia started taking selfies every day from 2017, he didn’t envisage that he would become a millionaire from such a mundane activity. 

The computer science student from Semarang, a city in Indonesia, religiously took selfies of himself every day from the age of 18 to 22.  

The pictures ranged from him standing to him sitting in front of his computer. According to Ghozali, it was a method to document his journey from admission to graduation. 

The pictures amounted to a thousand which he listed on the popular NFT marketplace, OpenSea, in December 2021. 

He fixed the price of every NFT selfie at $3 as he probably wasn’t anticipating a lot of buyers. 

While selling his expressionless photos, Ghozali mentioned:

“You can do anything like flipping or whatever but please don’t abuse my photos or my parents will be very disappointed in me. I believe in you guys so please take care of my photos.”

Shockingly, Ghozali’s selfies caught the eyes of influential folks on Crypto Twitter and it blew up from there. 

NFT Influencers like Arnold Poernomo bought and even helped advertise the NFT offering.

Ghozali, who is also an NFT collector, started making most of his sales from Monday, January 10, 2022. He sold his first 35 NFTs and has gone on to sell nearly 1000 in just the space of a week. 

The young artist added a touch of personalised branding to his marketing when he revealed that every photo had a story behind it

Collectors have gone on to post the photo which they bought and Ghozali would tell the story behind it. The stories have been mostly humourous and nothing out of the ordinary except one in which he is convinced a ghost photobombed him. 

This move has worked wonders for him as more and more people have been posting about his NFTs, drawing traffic to his OpenSea profile where the NFTs are displayed.

Ghozali’s listings have reached a total trade volume of 317 ETH, which is slightly over a million dollars according to Ethereum prices at the time of this publication. 

The student also filed his first-ever tax payment from the proceeds of his NFTs. 

Throughout the past year, NFTs have seen a massive spike in demand and the technology has minted a lot of young millionaires. 

So far, it is keeping the decentralization promise of the blockchain by allowing individual artists and everyday people to sell their art directly to collectors without needing an exhibition house/agency. 

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