What are some of the best ways to earn Bitcoin today?
On the other hand, what methods should you avoid completely?
Well, stick around… Here on Bitcoin Whiteboard Tuesday,
we’ll answer these questions and more.
Let’s face it, a lot of people are into Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies
in order to make a quick buck.
That’s why today’s episode is dedicated exclusively to
ways you can make money with Bitcoin.
For some strange reason,
people tend to think that because Bitcoin is a new form of currency,
there is some magical way you can earn it or make money from it easily.
I’m sorry to burst that bubble,
but Bitcoin is just like any other currency out there.
Just like there’s no easy, risk free way to make a quick buck
there’s no magical way to earn Bitcoin.
While cryptocurrencies in general may hold some new possibilities for
generating income the basics are the same;
you’ll need to invest time, or money in order to make money.
Each method I’ll be covering today
will be graded according to the following factors:
How much effort does it take to use this method?
How much money can be made through this method?
And finally - how risky is this method?
All of the methods I’ll go over are things we’ve actually tested ourselves
here at 99Bitcoins,
so you can rest assured we’re talking from experience.
Let’s get started...
One of the cheapest, easiest but also most time consuming ways
to actually earn Bitcoin is through micro earnings.
This means that you’ll basically be doing small tasks
and earning fractions of a coin for the time you spend.
Some of the more well-known micro earnings sites are Bitcoin faucets;
sites which you repeatedly visit every few minutes
in order to claim a very small amount of coins.
Faucets are actually a subcategory of PTC websites, PTC meaning “Pay to Click”.
PTC websites will usually have you click on an ad or on a button on the site
in order to make money from ad sales.
In return you’ll get a small amount of coins.
How small?
Well, from our calculations, if you work non stop at clicking buttons
you’ll average anywhere between 5-40 cents an hour.
Not sure that’s worth your time
or even the electricity to run your computer.
Micro earnings take a lot of effort, yield very low income
but are usually a very safe bet.
While participating as a faucet user might not earn you a lot of money,
owning your own faucet is a whole different story.
Today, you can build a cryptocurrency faucet relatively easily
and earn money from selling ads on your site.
At 99Bitcoins we have been running our own faucet for almost 3 years now.
Depending on the advertisers you’re using and the amount of traffic you have
you can make up to $1000/month running a faucet.
However, running a faucet requires a reasonable amount of time and effort.
You’ll need to set up your own website, manage users, prevent fraud
and also bring some initial capital to fund the faucet when starting out.
We’ve placed a link to our complete beginners faucet tutorial
in the resource section below this video.
Running a faucet requires medium to high effort,
yields low to medium rewards and entails a medium amount of risk.
Somewhere around mid-2014, BitcoinTalk, a leading Bitcoin forum,
started running signature campaigns.
Simply put, you could use your BitcoinTalk signature
to advertise a product and get paid for every post you write.
The complete list of campaigns can be seen on the forum itself.
With a signature campaign
you get paid according to your membership level on BitcoinTalk.
Usually, anyone with a status less than ‘full member’
won’t get paid that much, if at all.
To become a full member, you’ll need at least 120 posts under your belt.
There are also limitations on posts; such as length, original content, and more.
Sometimes, there’s also a minimum post requirement per week.
From our experience you can make up to $5 an hour
depending no how much you write and your membership level.
This, of course, does not include the number of posts you need to write
in order to earn the required membership level on BitcoinTalk.
You can find additional information about creating a BitcoinTalk signature campaign
in the resource section below this video.
To sum it up, running a signature campaign takes a medium amount of effort,
yields low reward and entails little risk.
One of the fastest, easiest but also riskiest ways
you can make money with Bitcoin is by trading it on an exchange.
Basically you’re trying to buy Bitcoin when its price is low
and sell it when the price rises.
However, trading successfully is not a matter of luck or guesswork.
Profitable traders spend a substantial amount of time
learning how to trade
and how to overcome the many risks involved with trading.
Successful traders know they might lose money in the short term
but they look at it as an investment in their education,
since they are aiming for the long term.
What I’m trying to say is that trading isn’t as easy as it looks.
If you want to become a trader
make sure you have the time and capital to invest in good trading education.
If you want to learn more about trading,
our resource section below has a link to another video
that will give you the basics.
I’d say that becoming a successful trader takes a medium to high amount of effort
depending on where you’re at in your training,
can yield high rewards and entails very high risk.
One of the most overlooked ways to make money with Bitcoin
is by promoting through various affiliate programs.
Affiliates are people who promote a certain business for free
but receive a commission if they manage to bring in paying customers.
Many Bitcoin exchanges, products and services
have an affiliate program in which you can enroll.
You then get your own unique affiliate link in order to promote that product or service.
Of course there are many ways you can promote your affiliate link;
you can share it on Facebook, run ad campaigns on different websites
or even set up your own information site and promote your links within the content.
This is actually how 99Bitcoins got started,
and we’ve even published a book about it called
“My Dirty Little Bitcoin Secrets” which you can download for free
in the resource section below this video.
If you want to know more about this method
make sure to download the book and read it from start to finish,
only then will you understand the amount of work needed
in order to become a successful affiliate marketer.
In our resource section
you can also find a list of highly profitable Bitcoin affiliate programs
which we have already field tested ourselves.
Promoting Bitcoin affiliate programs requires a high amount of effort,
can yield medium to high rewards but doesn’t entail a lot of risk.
A very obvious way of trying to increase your crypto wealth
would be to gamble on it
using one of the various Bitcoin casinos out there.
Of course there’s not much to elaborate on this method
but if you do decide to risk your money and try your luck,
please make sure the casino you’re using is provably fair.
A trustworthy Bitcoin casino will know that their “house edge” is enough to make a profit
and therefore will want to prove to their players
that they are not manipulating any results.
They do this through a mathematical algorithm involving cryptography.
Bottom line, a provably fair casino will show you how to check that
the results of the game you play are completely random.
You can find a list of provably fair Bitcoin casinos
in our resource section below.
Gambling takes little to no effort,
can yield high rewards but is extremely risky.
If you’re into crypto and have a knack for words
you might want to consider becoming a crypto journalist or article writer.
As the crypto industry evolves,
more and more news and information websites are popping up.
In many cases these sites are in desperate need for writers
as they are publishing dozens of articles each week.
Since good writers are hard to find,
if you can submit quality work you may be able to earn a nice revenue stream
by writing about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies
from the comfort of your own home.
The best ways to find work as a writer
would be to look for the “jobs” section in your favorite crypto publications.
You can also email specific sites you’d like to write for,
or you can create a writer profile on Upwork, an international freelance marketplace.
I can assure you there is a desperate need for good writers.
It’s best if you have some sample articles on hand
before applying for a writing job
as many publications would request previous work before hiring you.
Creating a revenue stream by writing about Bitcoin
requires a medium amount of effort, yields medium returns
and entails little to no risk.
If you’re not good with words
perhaps there’s a different service you can offer.
The BitcoinTalk services thread, there’s a link to it in our resource section,
offers a wide variety of services you can provide in exchange for Bitcoin.
Some of these include developing a website, marketing an online product
or even becoming an Escrow agent for Bitcoin transactions.
Moving on.
Many people that start out with Bitcoin
are instantly drawn to the concept of Bitcoin mining.
I mean, creating magical Internet money from your home computer?
What could be better?
Well, the fact is that today
Bitcoin mining has become more of a profession than a hobby.
It requires extremely expensive equipment, high electricity costs,
hardware configuration knowledge
and physical space to actually store your miners.
We’ve put a link in the resource section below
to one of our more popular articles
dealing with the profitability of Bitcoin mining today.
Having said that, mining altcoins is cheaper than what you’d need
in order to mine Bitcoin.
But this only means that the hardware will cost less.
The other hassles of electricity costs, configurations, maintenance and so on
are basically the same.
Sometimes you’ll encounter a website or mobile app
that tells you they will mine coins for you.
Most of these services are pretty much useless
and will usually consume your device’s computing power and battery
just to give you a few cents in return.
Another option is cloud mining;
paying someone else to handle the mining equipment for you.
While this sounds ideal, most of the cloud mining sites today
are just pretending to use your money for mining operations,
they are in fact scams.
Furthermore, while there are a few legit sites out there,
the money you’d pay them to mine Bitcoin
is probably better invested just buying Bitcoin.
Of course we always urge you to do your own market research
since in the end, it’s your money.
To sum it up, actual mining requires a high amount of effort,
yields medium to high rewards and is a risky business.
A very popular way of growing your Bitcoin wealth
is through Bitcoin lending platforms.
These sites connect borrowers that need crypto
with crypto owners who lend their coins for an interest rate.
Because these loans are ultra risky the interest rates are pretty high
which initially seems like a good thing.
I mean I can make 15% a year on my coins, what’s not to love about that?
Well, since there is no actual collateral that holds the borrower liable for the loan
more often than not these loans default and lenders are left without their money.
We’ve tested out several loans here at 99Bitcoins,
and they all eventually defaulted.
That’s why I recommend to stay away from this specific method.
You can read about our experience with online lending in the resource section.
Lending your Bitcoin requires little to no effort,
potentially holds high rewards
but is so risky it’s really not even worth considering.
Another method I suggest you avoid are coin doublers
and High Yield Investment Programs also known as HYIPs.
These are sites that claim to double your coins every few days
or give you unreal interest rates.
What these sites actually do is take money from new users
and use that money to pay off old users.
This process creates a lot of buzz around the site
that seems to be legit and solvent.
On top of that, they almost always have some sort of referral program
so that users can bring their friends on board.
This is how a Ponzi scheme works.
This will go on for around 3-4 months until one day
the website will just go offline and the money will be gone.
No more payments will be made
and a lot of people will get mad that they got scammed.
We have reviewed several Bitcoin investment sites
in the past 3 years
and have yet to find a site that we can say is safe to invest in.
Any site that promises you something that is too good to be true
is probably just a facade for scammers trying to steal your coins.
How can you find out if a site is a scam for yourself?
Easy, use our Bitcoin scam test tool located in,
you guessed it, our resource section below.
We’re reaching the end of this week’s episode and as you can see
we’ve covered a lot of ways you can earn Bitcoin
or make money with cryptocurrencies.
In the end each method has its pros and cons,
some are more risky while others take a greater amount of effort.
In order to make it easier for you to review what we’ve just covered
we created this table that illustrates the different methods,
you can get a better look at it below this video.
You may still have some questions.
And if so, just leave them in the comment section below.
And if you’re watching this video on YouTube, and enjoy what you’ve seen,
don’t forget to hit the like button.
Then make sure to subscribe for notifications about new episodes.
Thanks for joining me here at the Whiteboard.
For 99bitcoins.com, I’m Nate Martin, and I’ll see you… in a bit.