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.

Group Therapy

The Tsu social network is about 10 months old now. That's a fairly long time in internet years and it should be reaching maturity now. The expectations for what a service should offer are set by the big guns like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Although each site should have some unique features to mark it out people expect certain features.

The latest new feature on Tsu is groups. Although you can follow people who share your interests it is useful to have a place for like-minded folk to discuss their interests without all having to follow each other.

There are a limited selection of groups available so far as they have to be approved by the team. This is partly because groups generate earnings as in other areas of the site and this could be abused. It should also prevent lots of similar groups being created. The creator and administrators of the group get a percentage, but some also goes to a nominated charity. In the current beta phase (first 30 days) nobody gets anything.

I have joined some groups, but quickly left some as they were just full of irrelevant posts that were filling up my stream and the admins were not dealing with them quickly enough. I think there have been changes since then so that you only see posts by friends unless you actually go to the group page.

More groups are being approved each week and I will look into those. I've created a couple of possible groups to see how that goes and have also been asked to be an admin on others.

In my opinion groups work best when they are for a fairly specific topic. Otherwise there will be an overwhelming number of posts and it will be impossible to find the good stuff unless there are good filtering tools. Perhaps posts with the most likes and comments should be highlighted. There also needs to be search within a group. I hope to see the feature evolve.

Any thoughts? Discuss here or on Tsu.

Something from nothing

In October 2014 a friend told me about a new social site that paid users a share of their advertising revenue (90% in fact). I was a bit sceptical at first. There are loads of 'get rich quick' schemes on-line. Often these are some variant of a pyramid scheme where early adopters may get paid by new people paying to sign up. Those have no sustainable business model. The site was Tsu and as there was no sign of any cost to join up I gave it a go.

Things went fairly slowly to start with. I acquired a few followers, but it took a few weeks to even earn a few cents. I could see people frantically adding friends and followers (you can have 5000 and 1000 of each respectively). That did not appeal to me as it would make it impossible to monitor the feed of posts. I don't have the time to go looking at lots of separate feeds for cool stuff. I use social sites to see what friends are up to and to see cool/interesting/funny posts.

You have to make $100 before you can ask to be paid (originally via cheque, Paypal and other means were added later). It looked like that would take years to achieve, but I gradually built a larger following and started earning a little more. I also built a network of people (Tsu 'children') who used my profile link to join the site. I get a percentage of what they make and a smaller slice from their children, grandchildren etc make. That's not making me much at the moment, but it should in the long term.

I'm a long way from $100, but this week I just took delivery of a physical item bought with Tsu currency. British artist adogaday sent me one of her pictures that I took a fancy to. She's doing well by selling her work on Tsu. Anyone in the world can easily send her the money and she can get paid when she builds up enough.

My picture was partly paid for by a blog post I wrote on Tsuniverse. That may be my first time being paid to write.

I'd have had enough for a picture much earlier if I hadn't given so much to charity, but that's another great aspect of Tsu. There are all sorts of events and challenges to encourage giving and I find myself getting involved. One of these is #fivecentfriday. I try to give a little to a selection of charities each week. Some of those with more income have been matching these donations to boost the totals. It all adds up.


I expect I will get to $100 one day. It will take months, but then that money will go into a fund towards buying myself a treat.

Come and join us on Tsu to be part of the new economy.

Tsu is not a scam or a pyramid scheme

Recently Jon Dunn on Tsu pointed out that some Google searches implied that Tsu was a bit dodgy.

I think the other results relate to Texas Southern University.

The definition of a pyramid scheme is that you use money paid in by some people to pay others, so that it will eventually collapse when people realise they will never get paid. It's a scam rather than a business.

I think this idea is due to a misunderstanding of how the Tsu algorithm works. It's true that people get paid based on what those they recruit make, but none of them needs to pay in any money. All the revenue comes from the advertising on the site and in the app (available on Android and iOS). The company is taking 10% to cover their costs, but still has some way to go before they are profitable.

The fact is that people are getting paid just about every day. Some of them post pictures of the cheques they have received to encourage others. The biggest I've seen is this one by songwriter Andrew Fromm.

He's by no means a typical user as his contacts in the music industry means he could recruit people who can easily grow a large network. He has 29,000 followers himself, so he can earn many dollars a week from his own views regardless. I know of many other people who have had hundreds of dollars from Tsu over the eight months since it started.

Personally I've made about $40 and I've given about half of that to charities on the service. There are about forty of those now and they seem to be doing well. The recent Tsu Madness event raised over $1000 that went to a wildlife charity. There are various events such as #FiveCentFriday that encourage regular giving. You can give as little as one cent, so just about anyone can donate.

It's still going to take me a while to get to $100 (threshold for a payout), but before then I may use some of my funds to buy some art from an artist on there. I've said before that the Tsu market has great potential and it seems to be taking off. It just needs a few more features to make life easier for those selling goods and services. The site is still evolving as they find their way.

The fly in the ointment is the fact that Tsu is not growing so fast of late. They have reached around four million users, but public statistics seem to indicate that fewer than 1 in 40 is visiting daily. I know a lot of my child accounts are dormant. Somehow they need to keep people engaged and actively recruiting. I think that some of the newcomers do not understand that they stand to benefit from getting their friends to join up and use the site. There is still massive growth potential, so it will be a long time before new users stand no chance of building a network. I've written about that too.

I'll keep using Tsu because it's fun. There are nice, friendly people there and we have a laugh. If I make a little extra money, then that's a bonus. As always, you can find me at http://www.tsu.co/steevc

Tsuper Powers

Being part of the Tsu Madness tournament has been a very positive experience for me. I had lots of support from people I don't know that got me through the first round, but in the second round I was up against BigFollowing who could muster more votes than me. I still did pretty well considering I'm just a regular user. This campaign has already raised twice as much as last time with over a week to go. The eventual winner gets to decide which charity gets all the money. Of course people are free to donate to any of the charities instead or as well. The scale of the charity donations on Tsu has greatly impressed me. People can choose to publicly display their donations and some are for many dollars.

I have benefited in the tournament by gaining a fair few new followers. I hope some of them will stick with me and engage in some discussion as that's what I'm there for. I also benefited financially as my views were way up and my daily 'monetization' has increased. I've passed on some of that extra money to the Tsu Madness fund.

My Tsu earnings

In my early days at Tsu it looked like I was not going to reach the payout threshold for years, but I've steadily built my following and network over the last 8 months so that it looks like I could get paid this year even if I continue to make charity donations. I do intend to spend some of it buying a picture from an artist who accepts Tsu Dollars as payment. There are a number of companies and individuals doing this now and some are listed on the Tsu Market. As I have said before, there is massive potential for this sort of commerce.

In the long term a large Tsu network of people you have recruited, and their recruits, should give a steady income as the membership increases, I'm starting to see that even though many of the people on my network are inactive. It's obviously good to get in early on this for maximum benefit. I do not consider this a 'multi-level marketing' scam as some critics have accused, Nobody has to pay anything to use the site. All the income is from the advertisers, with the Tsu company taking 10% to keep things running.

People ask how I have managed to gain so many Tsu 'children'. I've gained a lot via the tsumatic site where anyone can advertise their profile link for free. Now that you can make your profile truly public on the web people can review your posts before deciding whether to join up. I hope this will result in less dormant accounts where people only signed up to see what was there.

As always I am open to any questions about my experience on Tsu. I don't claim to be a social media expert, but I will always try to help. Of course you can check out my profile too.

Vote for me! It's Madness!

When I joined Tsu it was full of talk of how to maximise your money making and some people were busy trying to game the system. A lot of those people have been banned or gave up and it's now settled down into a nice place to be. One of the most impressive aspects has been the charity work. There are around 40 charities on there that each have a Donate button on their profile. You can donate as little as one cent and it all goes to the charity. This really kicked in when the Nepal earthquakes happened and many hundreds of Dollars were donated. Tsu founder Sebastian Sobczak set up TSU and Shikshya Foundation Nepal specifically for this cause, but other charities also helped there. I find it amazing that all this money is what people have earned from using Tsu. I've heard people call it a pyramid scheme, but nobody has to pay anything to join. Some people are making a lot of money and being very generous with their donation. Others make a little and give what they can. They may never get to the $100 pay-out level, but they can still do some good.

Of course people tend to want to make giving more fun, so various challenges have been organised to encourage donations. I've given to many of these. One of these is Tsu Madness, which was run in March. It's run like a sports tournament where popular Tsu members are played off against each by people voting for them other until two remain to fight for the title. The winner gets to nominate a charity to receive all the money raised from the tournament account and donations.

Tsu Madness is running again this month (June 2015) and I'm surprised to find myself entered as a wildcard. I'm by no means famous, but I've got to know a lot of people on Tsu by participating.

I'm up against people with far larger followings, so I don't expect to get too far, but I'll play along. My nominated cause is Charity Water. I think clean water is a basic right that we should have got to everyone by now, but much work still needs to be done.

I'll try to do a few posts to promote myself in the contest and to help it make some more money. I'll be donating some of the money I have too.

So please consider joining Tsu, even it's only to participate in this event. There are lots of cool people to follow and interact with, so maybe you will decide to stay.

Knocking down the walls

When Tim Berners-Lee developed the web he envisioned it as an open web of information that anyone could read (and modify originally). In the 25 years since then the web has changed a lot. Some sites are more like applications than just sources of information. One of the bad trends has been to lock sites behind some sort of barrier. This may be force people to pay for it or just to make them sign up to the site. There may be cases where privacy is required, but if I'm just sharing cool links or blogging then I want it to be accessible by anyone. That's one reason I use Blogger and other web sites I've run that have been open.

Although I liked many of the features of the Tsu social network I didn't like that it was a walled garden. If I sent anyone a link they would see this sign-up screen. That put me off sharing posts on other social networks. People thought I was trying to 'scam' them into joining some money-making scheme rather than being social.

Being able to share links across the various social sites is something I enjoy and any barriers to that were a pain.

As of today things have changed.









There's a new privacy option "Do not require users to sign-in to see my profile and posts". I've turned this on as I don't want my posts to be hidden. There's a further option to my profile from search engines, but I can't see any reason to do that.

It's going to be interesting to see if this affects the number of views I get. Tsu users have access to statistics on their most recent posts. You don't get details about where viewers came from, but it's interesting to see which posts work best. On Tsu views translate into income. When money is involved people will try to cheat the system and concerns were immediately raised about this. So it will be interesting to see if they count views from non-members.

Previously people have joined up just to see what the site is when someone sent them a link. Many of them never came back. Now they can have a look around first and decide if it's something they want to be part of.

I do see a few little issues with this. The profile that they originally visit only gets credited for new members if they join whilst on one of their posts (or the whole feed). If they click to another user (who has opened their feed) then the credit goes to that one. If they go to the 'home' page then they are back to the old method of having to manually enter a username. These may be teething problems that will get sorted out soon. The site is still relatively new and I don't know how much user testing has been done before making this feature available.

Tsu user Eileen Brown has written an article on ZDNet about the new open Tsu.

Here are a few of my recent selected posts for you to check out:

• From when I discovered the open Tsu
• Sharing a video about renewable energy on Orkney
• One of my photos from my neighbourhood

You are still limited in layout and number of images, so it's not an ideal blogging platform. I'll keep doing that here and post the links onto Tsu (and elsewhere).

I am making a little more money on Tsu lately, but it's not enough to justify my time. I stick around as I'm having fun interacting with cool people. It's interesting to play with a new site that is doing radical things. The money is just a bonus.