Steem Powered

So, Tsu is dead. Last week the site shut down leaving hundreds of users wondering what they should do now. A lot of them won't get the money they had accumulated as it's not up to the payout threshold. They have added the ability to download your posts and photos. The posts are in xml and json format, so it will depend on whether you can do anything with those. I may file them away somewhere for future reference, but it's better if old posts can stay on-line. Tsu posts were not included in Google results, so they are of little value now.

There's discussion on the Tsu Forum about other sites that pay. I'm not really interested in those that just have pictures and/or short posts. I did that on Tsu, but I really prefer longer-form blogging. I'd heard about Steemit a while back. It's based around blockchain technology and has its own cryptocurrencies. I'm still trying to understand how these work, but you earn some based on how many votes your posts get. It's not based on views as the site does not carry advertising apart from on the search page. You can run mining software on your PC, but they discourage running it on multiple machines by requiring that each has your private key (used as a password). If anyone else gets that they could take your money. They also discourage speculation by limiting how quickly you can take money out.

When you look at the homepage you will see posts that show a value of thousands of dollars. That's certainly impressive. It seems to depend on getting votes by 'whales' who hold a lot of currency as their votes have more influence. Comments also have a value, so it's worth making good comments. I'd hope nobody is voting up 'nice' comments.

I am getting comments from bots. Steemit iswas fairly open for developers. The code for the site is open source and people can access the blockchain of posts to produce their own stats.This post lists a few plus a Chrome extension that gives you notifications. The site itself is lacking some of the features you would expect. There are notifications. You can follow people, but can't go straight to their feeds. Perhaps they are relying on others to add to it. This may be an opportunity for me to find some programming projects to work on.

Unlike Tsu you can pay into your account using Bitcoin. I had a small amount from various faucets and it was simple to buy some 'Steem'. I think that has increased my reputation there. They want people to hold currency. You get $7 worth when you join, but you can't take it straight out. I haven't invested much yet and am happy to wait a while to see where it goes. The Steem price has fluctuated a lot as you would expect. I understand that some people have already taken out large amounts, but you would  have to do it via a Bitcoin exchange to get cash.

If you join up then you can find me here. I'm using my standard name of steevc. Posts do appear on Google and I've already had one about prog rock shared on Facebook. Note that I do not earn anything if you join. There is no referral scheme that I know of.

Update in 2021: The Steemit platform became corrupted by a hostile takeover, so links have been updated to point to the Hive platform that is still decentralised. You can find me there.

Bitcoin for fun and (a little) profit

Everyone knows about Bitcoin, but how many actually have any? There are many ways to buy it now, but you need to have some specific need to justify the cost. What if you just want some to play with?

The answer is faucets. These are sites that will give you a small amount of Bitcoin in exchange for being exposed to some advertising and usually you need to respond to some CAPTCHA (to prevent automated access). It really will only be a small amount, generally less than a cent's worth, but if you do this a few times each day it can build up.

Here's my suggestion of one way to approach this:

1. Get a Xapo wallet. This a place to store your bitcoins. It will be on their servers and secured with your password. There's an app (Android at least), and you can even get a debit card
2. Open a Bleutrade account. This is also a wallet, but also allows you to trade in many other cryptocurrencies
3. Go to Moonbit and log in with your Xapo email address. You can visit as often as every five minutes to claim whatever amount has accumulated. There are bonuses for visiting daily, recruiting people, and some random bonus for no apparent reason. You can play with this, but we will exploit it below
4. Use the Moonbit referral link to log in again with your Bleutrade Bitcoin address. You should be able to find that on the Wallet page if you click the + on the Bitcoin line and then Deposit. When you claim on the faucet with this account your Xapo account will get 25% of the amount too. This will build up over time.
5. Once you have accumulated a reasonable amount of Bitcoin on Bleutrade use it to buy some of their Bleutrade Share. When you have enough of this you get a share of their trading profit twice a day. You probably need at least one share to get anything, but it will then give you a small amount each day. It's not much, but what do you expect for so little work?
6. Of course you can use your referral links (as I am here) to recruit more people and earn from their efforts. 
7. You can transfer your Xapo funds into Bleutrade to use there, but there is generally a fixed fee for this, so wait until you have a reasonable amount, e.g. $1 worth

I have tried some other wallets, including a local one on my PC so I could experiment with transferring between them. I have yet to actually buy anything with Bitcoin, but I have donated some to some projects. I've accumulated a few dollars worth. The price is not fluctuating much these days, but it would have to go up a lot to make me rich.

There any many other faucets, but I find Moonbit to give a reasonable return without being too annoying. Others want you to play games or watch videos. That's fine if you have the time. Bleutrade have their own faucets, but I don't make much from those. Bitcoin Zebra is related to Moonbit and gives a random amount each hour when you visit. Another simple faucet is freebitco.in.

I have looked at the Bitlanders social site that rewards you with Bitcoin, but it could take years to make a few dollars and I don't find it that interesting otherwise. I've also tried an Android app that pays random amounts each hour if you look at some ads, but the rewards are too small to be worth it to me. 

As with most things you are not going to make a lot for doing so little, but everything you make has some real worth and if you have the time you could make something worth having. I suspect some people play lots of faucets each day. The choice is yours.

I prefer to spend time socialising on Tsu where I make a nice little income, but I'll keep building my Bitcoin pot for future use.

Let me know your thoughts. I find cryptocurrencies fascinating and I think we will all be using them in some form in the future.

The value of networking

A common feature of sites that pay users is that you get rewarded for recruiting people. This seems logical as they need to grow in order to make enough to pay the staff. Tsu and 3tags have the same model (spookily, rights-infringingly similar) where you get a portion of what your 'children' and their children make. The site keeps 10% in each case.

I've seen people on Tsu with networks of many thousands of people and this can make them several dollars per day. This only works if they are active. I have built a fairly large network myself, but only a small percentage are still active on the site and so I still only make pennies per day. This may change in time if more people join up or if those who joined before come back. There is definitely an issue with keeping people engaged. I suspect they give up when they don't make anything immediately. I think the two main issues are

1. Setting realistic expectations
2. I also think there is a language barrier. I've reached out to some of my children, but often they do not respond.

I wonder if some people join Tsu when they see a link just to see what it was as the main site is not visible to non-members. This seriously reduces how many will use it. I want my public content to be truly public, where Google etc can find it.

3tags is public and seems to benefit from that as people are making good money even though it has a lot less members than Tsu. I haven't managed to recruit many people and creating a post involves a little more work than Tsu, so I'm not doing much there. It's not really a social site. It's about sharing links and blog posts. I could blog there I suppose, but I prefer to be a little independent. Yes, I know Blogger is not under my control either. I do have my own site, but it's easier to blog here.

There's a new (ish) player at Bitlanders. Their USP is that they pay in Bitcoin. The site looks a little like Google+, but uses cartoon avatars. I think it's actually been around for about 6 months, but it's fairly quiet there. Some people have accumulated thousands of followers and may be making money, but there's not much discussion of that. A lot of the posts I see are about Judo. I think that's because some of the founders are into it. You get 'buzz' for viewing posts and videos. Each day that gets translated into some small amount of Bitcoin. If you recruit people you get a fixed 20% of what they make. I'll keep an eye on it, but I won't be visiting every day.

I've been neglecting things like blogging and pocasting lately. I need to drag myself away from the feeds and get back to that, as well as important things like playing my guitar.