Earning $10+ A Month Passively.

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I make online shops and read science fiction. All things of the future, fortified, distill... [more]

4 years ago

Like an increasing amount of the working population, I'm one of those 'lucky' ones who work from home on a laptop. Over the past 6 months I've been trialling various methods of earning a bit of crypto on the side, whilst getting on with my work as normal.

I've tried all sorts of methods including:

Paid web browsing
Paid web searching
Paid file sharing
Mining Crypto in the background

I haven't included any service where you rent out your CPU, GPU or hard drive space as these services are geared more towards having a spare laptop/computer and not something that will run efficiently in the background whilst you get on with your day to day work.

As I need my laptop for 8 hours a day to work / procrastinate, all the methods mentioned here either earn coins in the background with no major performance losses or earn you coins for doing your normal work, which for me, is web-based for most of the day with an occasional Excel session.

I don't want to get anyone's hopes up too high as what can be earned a day is still pretty minimal. However, if we combine all the micro coin earnings in a day and calculate what you will be earning over time, it becomes noteworthy and the best part of this is, many of you, like me, will be sitting in front of you laptop for the majority of the foreseeable future regardless, so why not earn a few cheeky coins while doing so?

If you are just here to see my set up which is passively earning at least $10 of crypto a month, ignore my research directly below and scroll down through this article until you see the eloquently written 'this is it' title.
If however, you'd like to absorb everything I've learned from my lonely time working at home, please, read on, by all means.

Mining Crypto in the background

Potential Profit Per Day: 0.000005 BTC
Recommended? No

I'm starting off with mining as it's my least favourite of all the methods and it's not something I've bothered with for a few months as I'd rather have the comforting feeling that I'm not ruining my laptop.
To stress: I do not recommend you mine on your laptop or computer unless you really really want to.

I am not recommending you do this.

Mining anything on a laptop is crap, but if you do the maths and commit to it for a year you can generate an amount that combined with the next bull run could be worth $100 or so. Which isn't bad.

CryptoTab Browser

Easily the best of a bad bunch. I don't know why but it mines at a much faster rate than its competitors, but it does. Plus, the payout minimum is a lot lower.

If you have a big audience or lots of friends you could convince to start using CryptoTab Browser, you could really make some good coin as you earn a percentage of those you refer. Saying that, without friends you can still make about $0.05 worth of BTC a day.

Not only is it way better than the other programs I tried, it's a fully fledge web browser in its own right. It's basically a version of Chrome with a Monero miner built in. Yes, that's right it mines Monero with your CPU but it pays out in Bitcoin. I assume the reason they are paying out in Bitcoin is a marketing decision. Bitcoing gets more people's attention. Not everyone has heard of Monero, but most random nobheads down the pub have heard of Bitcoin.

Another cool feature is the ability to chose how much CPU you are letting it mine with. I had this set to minimum at all times as I hate my Macbook getting too hot. On the lowest setting I was mining at 700 H/s a lot and sometimes 1000 H/s. Note, i did try this on my very old Macbook as well and it was mining at measly 50 H/s - if that's the case for you, I really wouldn't bother!

I can confirm however that mining at 700 H/s worked out at about $0.05 worth of BTC a day. Here's my stats before I uninstalled it and moved on with my life:

My Macbook Pro is half decent so mining in the background wasn't a complete waste of time and I actually generated a ginormous 0.00026641 BTC with CryptoTab Browser. Using the low setting I was 'mining' around 0.000005 BTC a day.

Minimum Payout: 0.00001 BTC
Download: https://get.cryptobrowser.site/9528704

CUDO MINER

There's quite a few Youtubers who swear by Cudo Miner and they all seem to have pretty decent gaming PCs however I remained mostly unconvinced.

The payout minimum is a lot higher than CryptoTab and it's not as fast, but it's not the slowest on our list.

You can choose what coin to mine but it's best to use the 'auto' tool to ensure you mining is the most profitable.

WARNING - When I installed Cudo my Anti-Virus flagged it as suspicious, I can't say for sure if it has anything malicious in, but you have been warned.

Minimum Payout: 0.002 BTC

Download: https://www.cudominer.com/?a=gAlEUQt2D

Minergate

Not so long a go Minergate was the king of amateur mining, they even had an app out on the Google Play Store which has now vanished.

Since the release of Cudo and CryptoTab I guess everyone has realised how inefficient Minergate was. The payout minimums are very high, it's very slow to mine and a lot of the coins you can chose to mine are shit coins.
Who the hell wants to mine Monero Classic or Bitcoin Gold?
Even the good coins that you could mine in the past have mysteriously disappeared. Take a look at the screenshot below:

You can no longer mine Bitcoin, Litecoin or Bytecoin. Great.

You can chose which coin to mine from a decreasing selection and you can even mine more than coin at once, if your computer can handle it that is.

Sadly for most of us working on our laptops, the minimum payouts for each coin (which differ) are so high you'd probably have to mine for over a year to receive anything at all.

Minimum Payout: Depends on the coin

Download: https://minergate.com/a/7c5c74fe0b914c59bee49ddd

Paid file sharing

Potential Profit Per Day: ? BCH
Recommended? No, not yet anyway.

We all know how popular torrenting is. I for one remember the excitement of installing Napster on our home P.C. and downloading mp3s. Dr Dre and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were some of the first tracks I ever downloaded if I remember rightly.

There's a space out there that's not quite filled yet. BitTorent Token is available to trade, but there's still no actual use for it.

Around a year a go I did try out Joystream and earned around $2 worth of Bitcoin Cash. Joystream was meant to be big, as big as BitTorent. They seemed to have abruptly changed direction recently and now stream video content.

It's all rather disappointing but instead of these paragraphs being pointless waffle, the message to take from this is:

Keep your eyes on the developments with BitTorent Token!

THIS IS IT

A brief note before we move on to the gold - I haven't bothered comparing either service below to any other platform as there simply isn't a competitor yet. Microsoft are trying to take on both with their new Edge browser and it's ability to 'earn' but it's not crypto earnings (yet anyway). For now it's all gift cards and bullshit.

Paid Web Browsing with Presearch

Potential Profit Per Day: 10 PRE ($0.37)
Recommended? Absofuckinglutely

Presearch is simple, you sign up, you install a plugin that changes you default search engine and you're away.

From then on, every time you search, you are awarded 0.5 PRE. If you're like me and have to google a lot of words to check you've spelt them correctly, you'll be using Presearch around 20 times a day - that's 10 PRE tokens, that's 37 fucking cents. It's a no brainer.

All I have left to say is don't get greedy and try and abuse the system by using macros to search stuff automatically. Similarly, if you're one of those nutters that googles 'Bitcoin Price' every hour, don't! Firstly, Presearch will ban you for spamming the system and secondly, there's much easier ways to keep track of the price of Bitcoin you jabroni.

Drawbacks:

The minimum payout is pretty high at 1000 PRE and to be honest, Presearch is a bit of shit search engine. It's slow and the results it shows won't be as up to date as Google's. Luckily you can change the settings to use Google instead but doing this means you are only paid out 0.25 PRE per search, which is still pretty good! New users that use the link below will also receive a 25 PRE welcome bonus. You're welcome.

Here's a look at some of my Presearch earnings on a typical day:

Minimum Payout: 1000 PRE

Download: https://www.presearch.org/signup?rid=1550906

Paid Web Browsing with Brave

Potential Profit Per Day: 1 BAT ($0.26)
Recommended? Hell Yeah

Brave is a new Chromium-based browser that blocks adverts and trackers (by default), has a built in wallet for Brave's native Basic Attention Token (BAT). You can also opt in to receive Brave adverts and earn up to 1 BAT per day and I highly recommend doing this.

Here's how to turn Brave Adverts on and set it to the maximum of 5 per hour:

First of all click the triangle on the right of the search/address bar and it should show a box similar to the above. Click 'Rewards Settings'

Then make sure the toggle in the 'Ads' section is set to on. then click the settings button to the left of the toggle (both top right).

Set the 'Ads Settings' to '5 ads per hour' to maximise your chances of earning BAT.

For each pop-up ad you are shown you receive 0.05 BAT. You don't need to click the ad, you don't even need to do anything, just ignore it and carry on reading Trump's tweets.

It's worth noting that the number of adverts you receive will vary on a daily basis. I've received 20 ads in a day before (which equals 1 whole BAT yay!) and other days I've received zero ads.

You can also install Brave on your mobile devices and sync them all with one wallet. I haven't managed to do this as I'm fine having separate Brave wallets on all my devices.

Here’s a quick look at some of my BAT earnings:

Brave browser currently has 5.5 million monthly users - that's not only a lot, that's a lot of people that advertisers will want to tap in to.

More users means more advertisers, means more adverts, means more BAT for users.

Brave and BAT are set to be massive. BAT is already listed on Coinbase so it's ready for mass adoption.

Minimum Payout: 0.1 BAT
Download: https://brave.com/mic562

Combined Average Daily Earnings Breakdown

Note, I'm using average daily earnings, not the maximum, as, I ain't no fool.

8 x 0.05 BAT = 0.4 BAT = $0.10 (Feb 2020 Value)

15 x 0.5 PRE = 7.5 PRE = $0.28 (Feb 2020 Value)

Per day: $0.38

Per week: $2.66

Per month: $11.78

Per year: $138.7

I'll take $0.38 worth of crypto a day for simply following my regular routine. What's funny as after trying all these mining apps and other bollox, the best way to earn has turned out to be incredibly simple. All I have done is changed web browser and search engine. Adoption wise, that's fucking easy. My mum could do it. That's why I see a very bright future for both Brave and Presearch and I can tell you I certainly won't be cashing out all of my coins, I plan to keep a nice bag of BAT and PRE long term as I truly see a big future in both of them.