Site Review: CoinURL

In addition to the many websites that give you bitcoins for free or for doing very simple tasks, there are other ways to earn bitcoins without too much hassle. For example, by advertising other webs through CoinURL, which you can consider a mix between Google AdSense and AdF.ly for the bitcoin world. You won't even need your own website to earn bitcoins with CoinURL! Let's have a look at how all of this works:

https://coinurl.com

How It Works:

• CoinURL lets you insert ads in your website or blog, like Google AdSense. When somebody clicks on these ads, you get paid a certain amount of bitcoins. However you do not get any kind of payment for impressions; the ad they put on your page could be viewed a million times, but if nobody clicks on it you won't get anything. This is a CoinURL 125x125 ad:

• CoinURL also gives you the option to shorten links, like AdF.ly; when you share those links and somebody clicks on them, they'll see for several seconds an advertisement. You'll receive a few satoshis for every one of those clicks. You won't get any substantial amount if your marketing skills aren't quite good though, since what you make depends on the volume of people that clicks your links. This is a shortened link:

example

• It's also possible to advertise yourself through CoinURL and the webs that show its ads, but I haven't tried this option personally.
• You may withdraw your earnings at any moment, but if you withdraw more than 0.1฿ per month they'll take a 25% commission.

Don't worry about commissions; withdraw 0.09999999฿ at the end of the month!

Best Strategy:

• Create an account at CoinURL.

Ad Slots

• If you have a website, create some ad slots, get their code and insert it in your web. Let's see how this is done:

This is the overview of your account

Among the options on your left, click on "My ad slots"

under the "CONTENT" section

Click now on "Create slot". Give a name to your slot and select its dimensions.

Leave the rest as it is. Click on "Create"!

You can see the slots you've created at "My ad slots" - "Overview"

In order to get the code of a slot, click on the little gear and select "Show code"

Now you only need to select the code and insert it in your web!

• Do not place the ads where they might be annoying for your visitors.
• Don't try to mislead or encourage your visitors to click on the ads.
• Do not click yourself on your ads either: you'll get caught and be banned!
• Try that the ads are relevant to the content of the page where you place them.

Shorten URLs

• No matter whether you have a website or not, you can use CoinURL's URL shortening method to earn some bitcoins. This is the way to do it:

Under the "TOOLS" section, click on "Shorten URL"

Write a URL on the text field and click on "Shorten"

Go to "CONTENT" - "My links" to check that the link was correctly

created and assigned to your account

• Now select and copy the link (it will have the format "http://cur.lv/[FourCharactersOrNumbers]"). Share it on forums, social networks like Twitter and Facebook, YouTube comments, etc.
• Do not spam.
• Create interesting content to go along your links.
• Contribute to a better web!

• You'll receive your payment around two days after you order a withdrawal.

Or almost three days...

Site Review:

• Expected profit: 3/5. This depends on how effective your marketing skills are and how good your web content is. Ads won't give you much, since they are almost ever clicked. Shortened URLs are far more effective.
• Convenience: 2/5. You have to create the shortened links, the ad slots and the content to go with them.
• Payment speed: 0/5. You'll receive your payment a couple of days after you order a withdrawal. They process payments manually.
• Risk: 2/5. If nobody cares about your ads or links you'll have lost your time. It's up to you to make good and interesting content that leads people to your links and ad slots.
• Final Score: 8/10. CoinURL is an advertising platform that pays you in bitcoins for showing ads. It's probably the most extended advertising system of the bitcoin world and works pretty well. However, what you earn depends a lot on your ability to create great web content; it's not going to give you bitcoins for free!

Site Review: BitSprinkle

This is a site that I found just yesterday, lurking around the Bitcoin Reddit (which you should visit from time to time). It's very similar to BTC For Me (reviewed here): you send a tweet and receive free bitcoins. Let's see the details of BitSprinkle:

http://bitsprinkle.warp-6.net/

How It Works:

• BitSprinkle gives you free bitcoins after you send them a tweet. The tweet must include your bitcoin address and their Twitter name "@BitSprinkle".
• After a couple of minutes (only three in my case) you'll have 1000µ฿ more in your digital wallet!
• You can do this only once. They do this as a welcome present to new bitcoin users so as they can "play" with bitcoins without the need of buying them on a market exchange.

Best Strategy:

• Create a Twitter account if you don't have one. I don't think they will send bitcoins to an empty or a recently created account, so make sure you actually use it before asking them for bitcoins.
• Create a new Bitcoin address only to receive bitcoins from BitSprinkle. This way you can assure yourself that they are actually paying you. Or use the address you created when you got your reward from BTC For Me.
• Tweet the following message: "Hey @BitSprinkle sprinkle me some #Bitcoin BITCOIN ADDRESS", including your bitcoin address where it says "BITCOIN ADDRESS".

Hey @bitsprinkle sprinkle me some #Bitcoin 12Za1i1zhYTCeHWBg8yJb72BeEGQVEuMdT
— The Bitcoin Master (@BitcoinMaster) March 2, 2013

• Wait a couple of minutes until their script catches your tweet and sends you the bitcoins.
• Done! Now you are 0.001฿ richer.

Great! 1000µ฿ for a tweet!

Site Review:

• Expected profit: 4/5. 1000µ฿. Not bad for sending just a tweet!
• Convenience: 4/5. If you already have a Twitter account, this shouldn't take you more than one minute.
• Payment speed: 5/5. Near-instantaneous. You'll be paid in a couple of minutes.
• Risk: 0/5. Zero. Not considering the possibility of Twitter being under heavy load and not being able to process your tweet.
• Final Score: 9/10. Why would you miss the opportunity of getting 1/1000 more bitcoins? Go to BitSprinkle and get them while they last!

Site Review: Free BTC PT (2 updates)

This is a site that I found by chance, since it doesn't advertise itself anywhere. And it's also the one that can potentionally give you the largest amount of bitcoins every day. I call it "Free BTC PT":

http://free.btc.pt/

Let's clear something out first: I consider that a web gives out free bitcoins when it's a bitcoin faucet or when it asks you to do very simple tasks which require very little time to do. If the tasks require some considerable time, I won't consider the bitcoins are free anymore, since you are actually working to get them. Free BTC PT lets you choose what type of site it is: you can stay the whole day there watching videos, completing offers and solving captchas or you can visit a couple of times a day and do a couple of each every time. I personally leave the site open on a tab of my browser and sometimes check to see if there are videos to watch.


How It Works:

• Free BTC PT gives you four different ways to earn bitcoins after registering an account: watching videos, solving captchas, completing offers or simply visiting the site every hour.
• If you decide you want to watch videos, go to the Watching Videos section of the web. Wait until some videos appear and watch them until they are over to earn 150.01µ฿. About 20% of the videos do not give you a reward for watching them though... Update 1, 08/03/2013: Now it's 100µ฿ for about half of the videos you watch. They update the reward as Bitcoin increases its value in the market. Update 2, 04/04/2013: Now it's 25µ฿ per video.

It works with Virool, just as CoinTube, but here they actually pay you

• If you want to solve captchas, go to Captcha Madness!. They'll give you one captcha, which could be verbal, an image or a description of a brand. Solve it to earn 1µ฿. Request a new captcha on the page that loads after you submit your solution and repeat the process. There seems to be an endless amount of captchas for you to solve, so you may do this until you get mad!

Solve the captcha...

... Request another captcha and get mad as you earn microbitcoins!

• If you want to complete offers, go to Satoshi's Millions!. Here's where you can earn the most bitcoins for doing stuff, but I recommend you forget about these offers entirely. Most of them make you download viruses or annoying adware or make you subscribe to a service which costs you more than the value of the bitcoins you receive for doing so.

No matter how tempting they are, forget the offers

• If you leave the website open on your browser, it will give you 10µ฿ per hour. Update 2, 04/04/2013: Now it's 5µ฿. Here you can see several of these payments on my Account Activity Log:

I haz Bitcoinz. Meow!

• If you want to withdraw your balance, go to their Withdrawal Center. You must have made at least 2500µ฿ to be able to withdraw. Update 2, 04/04/2013: Now it's 500µ฿:

You should get the minimum to withdraw in a couple of days

Best Strategy:

• Create a new Bitcoin address only to receive bitcoins from Free BTC PT. This way you can assure yourself that they are actually paying you.
• Visit the site, create an account and leave it open forever. You'll earn 240 120µ฿ per day this way.
• If there are videos to watch, do so. You'll get paid when you've watched them until the last second. Some days there are a ton of videos and others there are very few to watch. That depends on how many advertisers Virool has.
• If you feel like solving captchas, go and do it. I personally only do this when I'm really tired; it's an easy task that you can do without thinking and that sometimes wakes you up. Solve them in two tabs at the same time so as you don't have to lose the time the pages take to load. I can solve 6 captchas per minute this way. This means I could earn up to 8640µ฿ per day this way. And end up mad in the way!
• Don't complete offers. The harm they might cause to your computer is not worthy of the bitcoins you'll get for doing so.
• Request a payment once a day or when you reach 2500500µ฿. It's not good to leave unclaimed rewards sitting on the databases of websites you don't control untouched for too long. You only have to give them your bitcoin address once; they'll remember it for future withdrawals.

These three days I was away from keyboard around 8 hours in total. I needed some sleep...

Site Review:

• Expected profit: 5/5 4/5 3/5. Around 5000µ฿ per day if there are many videos to watch. Around 1000µ฿ otherwise. There's virtually no limit here though! Update 1, 08/03/2013: These numbers depend heavily on the videos that reward you for watching them. I guess they still can be achieved, but with the reduction to 100µ฿ per video it's more difficult than before. Update 2, 04/04/2013: The numbers keep going down as the price of Bitcoin goes up.
• Convenience: 3/5. The website has a weird design, but it works very well. It also has too many ads everywhere.
• Payment speed: 2/5. You'll receive your payment within 24 hours after you request one.
• Risk: 0/5. It's a website that gives you free bitcoins... Or that lets you earn bitcoins by doing simple tasks.
• Final Score: 7,5/10. Free BTC PT lets you earn a lot of bitcoins every day. More than in any other site I've stumbled upon. There's many factors that determine the amount you end up getting each day, so you should check it out and decide yourself whether it's worth your time.

Site Review: AmazonBitcoins (2 updates)

Do you buy at Amazon? Would you like to buy their stuff using Bitcoins? Now it's possible, thanks to a new Bitcoin service which launched yesterday: AmazonBitcoins!

http://amazonbitcoins.com/

My Experience With AmazonBitcoins


One of the administrators from AmazonBitcoins contacted me one week ago to see if I could review their new website. I accepted, as long as they sent me the necessary Bitcoins to test their service. I'm glad they trusted a crazy guy like me who calls himself "The Bitcoin Master" and sent some coins (Update 2, 25/02/2013) 0.9฿ my way! I'll tell you my experience using their service.

The first thing you'll see when you visit AmazonBitcoins is that the website is really clean and uncluttered; there's only the necessary amount of text needed to know what the site does and how it does it. It almost looks like an iPhone app inside your browser with that big "Get Started" blue button. If you press said button it will show you a dialog to register a new account:

Simple and infomative

When you introduce your data in the text fields and press the "Register" blue button you'll be given a personal AmazonBitcoins Bitcoin address to send the coins you'd like to exchange for Amazon gift cards. You may send as little as $1 (converted to bitcoins) to try out the service:

The "Copy to Clipboard" option is a nice detail

I sent them the 0.888฿ needed to buy a $25 Amazon gift card. Every time you visit the site this exchange prize is recalculated taking as a reference the one at Mt.Gox:

Transaction sent!

And in seconds I received this very professionally written email:

0.888฿ = $25.15? I guess the bitcoin exchange versus the dollar went

up while I was using this service!

After that, I only had to wait 13 minutes to receive my Amazon code on my inbox:

Excellent!

The service is really fast! Once you send them Bitcoins a new link will appear at the top of the AmazonBitcoins page with your order history. It will show you the status of your orders and the gift codes once they are processed:

This is my order history...

... And this is a sample order history where you can see two orders:

one pending and another complete

They also had a Live Chat where I had the chance to chat with Brian, one of the creators of the site! This is a great addition in case you have questions about the service. Brian is very helpful and nice as well:

Update 1, 25/02/2013: The Amazon gift code I received was redeemed by the AmazonBitcoins administrators, not by me.


Site Review:

• Service quality: 5/5. The website is clean and zen-like, the registration process is hassle-free and the information they give covers everything you need to know about the service. They've also got a FAQ.
• Convenience: 5/5. This is a great service for those who'd like to buy stuff from the Old World (where Bitcoin has not yet been widely adopted by every business). And especially for those who don't want to go through the process of registering on a market exchange (or can't [I'm looking at you Residence Certificate!]) to transform their Bitcoins into other currency. 
• Service speed: 4/5. The service is fast. It's not automatic, since they have to wait for some confirmations of your transaction to avoid the bad people who double spend their bitcoins. They are planning to let customers with a good payment history skip this waiting time and receive their gift codes as fast as possible.
• Risk: 0/5 1/5. None. The administrators are good, trustful people. Their service works very well and if you have questions you can contact them via Live Chat or email. Update 2, 25/02/2013: Read the comments.
• Final Score: 10/10. AmazonBitcoins works like a charm. You can now buy stuff at Amazon with your bitcoins faster than if you go through a market exchange to transform them into dollars or other Old World Currency. It's a service I'd recommend to anyone!

Site Review: CoinVisitor (2 updates)

Update 1, 10/03/2013: CoinVisitor has been down for 24 hours. I sent them a tweet to ask the reason.

Update 2, 11/03/2013: CoinVisitor works again...

Let's have a look today at one more site that gives you free bitcoins for visiting websites. CoinVisitor follows a scheme a bit different from other similar places like BitVisitor, Earn Free Bitcoins or BitCoin4YOU:

http://coinvisitor.com/

How It Works:

• CoinVisitor gives you free bitcoins after you input your Bitcoin address, visit a website during a certain amount of time and solve an image captcha.
• You'll earn from 5µ฿ to 4500µ฿ every time you do this; most of the times it's 15µ฿ or 30µ฿. However, after several websites you'll notice it'll say at the top of the page "Current visit value: FREE". When that happens, you'll get nothing if you continue visiting sites and solving captchas.

I only visit webs when the visit value is different to FREE...

This is almost a loss of time (keep reading)...

• There's a countdown at the upper left corner indicating the time you must be at each website; it could be 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds and I once was 300 seconds. When it reaches zero, an image captcha will load; in order to solve it, you'll have to select the image that doesn't belong to the set. Let's see some examples:

When this countdown ends, you'll solve an original captcha!

The wrong one here is the mushroom, because it can never have leaves

The wrong one here is the giraffe (or is it a llama?), because its background is white

The wrong one here is the elephant, because it's far bigger than the others

The wrong one here is the arrow, because it has no legs

The wrong ones here are the boats, because you can't use them for eating

• If you fail the image captcha, you'll have to enter a verbal captcha:

I though I had all the previous captchas right...

Grrrrr! Boring...

• When the current visit value is FREE you might get a prize after visiting many websites. You can redeem it by solving one more image captcha:

I WON A PRIZE!!!!

It's funny that they divide Bitcoins up to hundredths of satoshi...

Yeeeeeaaaahhh

• Your payments are delayed, but you may request a payout at any moment.

Best Strategy:

• Create a new Bitcoin address only to receive bitcoins from CoinVisitor. This way you can assure yourself that they are actually paying you.
• Bookmark the site. You only have to introduce your Bitcoin address once. The site will remember it for your future visits.
• When you get up, visit the site, watch the wesites it pushes to your browser and solve the captchas. Since there's no possibility to know whether there are new websites for you to check out, do this several times during the day. I personally do it when I get up, after lunch and right before going to sleep. When the visit value turns to FREE, leave the site. Don't try to go for prizes.
• You don't really have to browse the websites. You could have them on one tab of your browser while you wait for the countdown to end doing other things on other tabs. However, some sites contain good information, so don't dismiss them automatically.
• Request a payment whenever you like.

You've got to solve one more captcha to request your payment

I prefer not to request it until I've reached thousands of microbitcoins

Site Review:

• Expected profit: 3/5. Around 200µ฿ per day. Not much, but since you don't have to wait several minutes on each site...
• Convenience: 4/5. The image captchas are kind of fun to solve (at least when you first visit the site) and the wait times are low.
• Payment speed: 3/5. You'll receive your payment several hours after you order a payout.
• Risk: 0/5. None at all; this is a website that gives out free bitcoins.
• Final Score: 7/10. CoinVisitor uses image captchas and makes you wait very little on each page. Its rewards for doing so are also lower than on other sites, but it's so fast to get them that doing so is worth your time.

Site Review: CoinUploads

Today I'll review a great web that allows you to earn Bitcoins with your digital files! It's really easy to use, anonymous and works very well. And its name is CoinUploads:

http://www.coinuploads.com/

My Experience With CoinUploads


A couple of weeks ago I put a notice on my Blogger profile inviting my awesome readers to suggest websites that I should review. Soon I received an email from one of the administrators of CoinUploads, a site that lets you host and monetize your digital files. Let's review it then!

The first thing you'll notcie when you visit the site is that it's really clean and minimalist. There's just some text succinctly explaining the service and a button to upload your file. There's no need to create an account, so the service is really fast. I created a text file with a list of my favourite webs to get free bitcoins and uploaded it. This information appeared on screen:

Select your price

Here I could choose the price I wanted to sell my file for and also was informed of the amount I'd end up earning after their cut was applied. You keep 70% of the price paid for your file, as in so many Internet services of today. Since this was just an experiment, I chose the minimum: $0,001. I introduced a new bitcoin address I created to receive payments from CoinUploads and pressed on "Save this file". I saw a new page:

Upload successful!

It said my file had been uploaded and gave me a link to share my file and earn money on every download. I decided to put the link on my blog, at the top of the right column. You can still see it if you look to your right.

I left it there for a couple of days but I didn't see any activity on the bitcoin address I created to test this service. I guess nobody wants to pay for a list they can get at the end of each one of my posts on this blog! I decided then to test the service... Buying my own file myself.

When you click on the "Download Here" link you are sent to this page:

(Since the price of Bitcoin is continually increasing it must be cheaper now)

You are told the price of the file in bitcoins and are given two options to buy it:

Download by Voucher or with Bitcoins

I clicked on the option to buy with bitcoins. My screen showed this micropayment page:

It generates an address for you to pay for the file

This page reloads every certain amount of time waiting for your payment to arrive. I must say I really like the minimalism and simplicity of the whole process. There's no clutter; they have only written what is essential for the service to work and nothing else.

Under the previous screen section, there was this:

A referral link!

Since I was going to buy my own file, I guessed I could use that referral link and not lose as many microbitcoins. Then I'd also be able to test the referral system! I created a new bitcoin address to receive the commision and introduced the referral link on my browser's address bar. Another screen with a new bitcoin address to send my payment to appeared. I payed:

I payed a ton more in transaction fees than for the actual file...

And in less than a minute they received the payment!:

A wild download link appeared!

As you can expect, when I clicked on the download link I downloaded my own file, which was nicely saved on my hard drive:

I feel weird for doing this...

Now I had my own file successfully downloaded, but I had yet to receive my earnings. I waited a few hours and this transactions appeared on my digital wallet:

Earnings and commisions!

Everything went incredibly well. The commision was 13,08µ฿, 35,001% of the basic price of the file (exactly as they claim). It's a bit odd that I received 38,86µ฿ when I had payed 37,37µ฿. Still, it's great to see that a service based on Bitcoin works so well! I recommend it to everyone that needs a place to host files which they want to sell!


Site Review:

• Expected profit: ?/5. This depends on how interesting your digital content is and how good your marketing skills are!
• Convenience: 5/5. Everything works as it should, the design is clean and uncluttered and there's nothing I could think of to improve this service!
• Payment speed: 4/5. They send their transactions in batch after six confirmations. You only have to wait a few hours to receive your bitcoins.
• Risk: 0/5. None. You won't have to pay anything upfront for uploading files, so you can nothing lose by using this service even if you then don't manage to sell them!
• Final Score: 10/10. CoinUploads is the service that anybody who needs a place to store their commercial digital content and wants to be paid in bitcoins should use. It's simple to use, effective, fast... I really can't think of anything that could make it better, so go and try it!