Earning BitCoins - Websites and the little things

If you are hungry for some BitCoins naturally you'll go google "Earn BitCoins", "Get Free BitCoins". You are going to go through a bunch of websites, some of these sites are genuine enough, but you have to remember to find and read the little things.

There are some websites which tell you to earn BitCoins by watching a video, or by installing this Java Plug-In in order to "mine" with your CPU. You'll think, hell yeah, give me some BitCoins, and quickly register yourself as a user, set your computer up to earn some BitCoins for a few hours, you return and get all excited about all of the BitCoins you've earned. You wish to withdraw them.

Now some websites can be a little greedy. For your own sake you will want to check out their withdraw fee's, and minimum withdraw amount.

If you just want to earn a small amount of BitCoins, and yes, even a small amount of BitCoins can take it's time to be earned. Then when you want to withdraw, you just want your mini amount of BitCoins. But the site denies you to withdraw, because they have a withdraw limit of 1 whole BitCoin. Then when you do, they take 0.1 BitCoin in withdrawal fee - well, that was a waste of time.

I'll be making a post with pros and cons about sites which I've used to earn small amounts of BitCoins.

Mining - How to mine for BitCoins (GUIMiner, Mining Pool)

As explained in my former post, mining helps out other people getting their transaction done, with the use of the resources from your computer.

For mining you can choose between a variety of applications out there to mine with. Personally I use GUIMiner, the newest version didn't really work out for me, so I went in search through a lot of Forums and found out that the version 20110701 generally worked better, and it did for me too.

After downloading and installing. When opened it should look something like this:

*The tab "DeepBit" next to "Default*" is a saved miningprofile I've made.

A short explanation of all the things you see, with an example of mining with a mining pool. 

"Default*"-profile: There's made an profile for you by default, here you can setup your mining profile. It's nice to have the possibility of making different profiles, because if you work on your computer while mining you might want to set the mining a little down, or if you want to let it mine all night while you sleep, you may want to set it as high as possible to get the most out of everything.

Server: When you click here, a list of different servers should appear. (Servers and ports for these are already implemented in the software) 
You will use this if you want to join a mining-pool. You can pick one and then click on the blue link on the right, to get more information about the mining-pool. Different mining-pool's have their own set of rules/fees and such, so it's good to check out before joining.

Eg. at the server DeepBit, you need to get registered on their website with an email and password. Your email is your username, and that email is the same you have to type in, in this program. Along with the same password you registered it with. Remember to add a payment address in order to receive your BitCoins.

Notice: Each servers have their own form of login. This means that your DeepBit-login cannot be used for the other servers. If you want try out different servers, you need to create a new user for each of them on their website.

Device: Here you chose your video card. The video card you chose is the one that is going to do all the mining work for you.

CPU Affinity: "In the old days" most mining was done with the CPU, today it's mostly done with the video card (GPU). Depending on the amount of cores you have the more check boxes will appear. Eg. Quad core: 0 1 2 3. This means you can choose the amount of cores you want to use for mining. 

Extra flags: This is to setup limitations/get the most out of your video card. Forum thread about flags.

Balance: Some servers provide you with an API key. This key can be inserted in the GUIMiner, it enables the balance, which shows how many BitCoins you have earned so far. You insert the API key by going to the bottom of the GUIMiner window, and choose the button in the middle. It will pop-up with a windows where you can put in your API key. 

Start Mining!: As it says - begin to mine!

There is a FAQ about GUIMiner to be found.