More cautions on NFT creation offers

I felt I should add a bit more info about my experience losing a substantial amount of money on an offer to mint NFTs from my artwork. The person who contacted me claimed to be in Dubai and used a gmail address. The significance of this is that it could have been anyone from anywhere; there is just no easy way to track that down. I would now advise against this kind of contact, which is impersonal and distant. Demand some more direct way of communicating. But it's important to realize that no one is going to contact you out of the blue and legitimately offer thousands of dollars in crypto to mint your artwork. There's a greater than 90% chance that such an offer is a thinly-veiled scam.

I am completely convinced of that now. The buyer offering me Ethereum (ETH) required me to use his preferred website, Mintplazza, to mint the NFTs at a rather high cost to me. That website no longer exists; it has disappeared, along with any 'profit' I might have realized. I'm thinking that Mintplazza was never a legitimate minting platform, even though it looked real enough to fool me. Insist on an established website with affordable minting fees, not a site that you don't know.

Another warning I would give relates to scams in general. I had initially sunk a good bit of my own funds into this endeavor without seeing the promised profit from sale. The 'buyer' kept telling me that I just needed to put in a bit more to cover the fees to withdraw my profit. As the NFTs kept getting sold (supposedly), the increasing cost required increased fees to withdraw the crypto. I was basically goaded into throwing more money down an endless pit. Scammers are well acquainted with this tactic. The approach is that you've already paid so much money and you are so close to a big payoff, what's a little more? With all that potential profit just around the corner, it seemed foolish to throw it all away. The hard truth is that it's foolish to keep pouring money into a lost cause. That's a hard realization to come to, but when you realize or even suspect what it is, cut your losses, the sooner the better. These kinds of criminals know that you are reluctant to come to this realization and would rather believe that the big payoff will come your way if you just pay another 'fee.' 

My last counsel is trust your gut. If there is high pressure, walk away. If some attitude or direction of the conversation feels manipulative, walk away. As I dealt with what appeared to be Mintplazza's tech support, I had a bad feeling. They were often unresponsive and their replies were very unprofessional, but when I had money to send, they got back right away. I kept on, ignoring my better instincts and hoping against hope that this was a legitimate business deal. It wasn't. Trust your suspicions and bail as soon as you can. It's better to not make any money than to lose it. But remember, it's better to lose just $1000 than $5000 or more. That's the lesson I needed to learn. I'm recovering from this substantial loss of funds, but I am writing it off as a business expense, so that's one way to deal with it. But I hope you can learn from my example and not make the same mistake.