What is an Airdrop? Should You Participate? Here's What to Know

The moment I took my first step into learning about cryptocurrency, I had a big problem. My interest and excitement was much greater than the amount I had available to start trading and investing in cryptocurrency. The more I learned, the more I wanted to get involved. It wasn't long before my wife got tired of me asking if I could sell things in our basement and put the money in my trading account.

I had to find other ways to scratching my new crypto itch without investing another dollar. Thankfully, I found Steemit, a place where I could spend time instead of money to earn cryptocurrency without putting my own money into it. And through this community I came across several other ways to get coins without giving up cash, including airdrops.

After spending the past few weeks entering dozens of airdrops that I believe will be worth the small amount of time I invested in each, I decided to dive deeper into this subject. I want to others who love the cryptocurrency space but don't have a small fortune to invest (yet). I began a Free Coin of the Day (FCOTD) series, and I'm planning on putting out additional articles and videos.

Here is my first, which is a basic explanation of what an airdrop is and if you should get involved in them. Read below for further explanation and I hope you will follow along with my FCOTD series.

What is an Airdrop?

An airdrop is a part of many early-stage company's marketing strategies, usually deployed before their ICO where they accept money in exchange for coins to raise enough money to build the product or platform they are trying to create. It's a modern day promotional T-shirt.

So let's say I'm going to start a company on the blockchain and we're going to raise money with our coin (BigSuperCoolCoin (BSCC)). Before we can get investors interested in our coin, we need to show that a lot of people love our project. To get thousands of followers on Twitter and our company's new Telegram account, we promise to give our first 10,000 supports 500 BSCC just for signing up for our accounts. While the value of the 500 coins may just be a few dollars, the supporters win because they get to be some of the first supporters of what could be a profitable project (and they could make money on the airdrop), and the company wins because they now have a community they can use to test their product, show to investors, etc.

Should I Participate?

In the video above, I explained the top four things you should consider when applying for a company's airdrop (opportunity, number of coins, number of participants, time it takes to complete). But in reality, it's often just an "eye test." Since most airdrops take less than five minutes to complete, if it looks attractive, it may be worth signing up for. After all, why spend thirty minutes researching something that only takes five minutes to take action on?

Free Coin of the Day

To help you avoid the airdrop duds and know how to complete an airdrop in a few minutes, I created the FCOTD series. Each day I'll share an article and a walkthrough video showing you exactly how to sign up for an airdrop I think is worth your time (and my own). I'd love for you to join in.

Here are my last three if you'd like to get started:

• WOT: https://steemit.com/airdrop/@michaelluchies/free-coin-of-the-day-2-16-18-woter-airdrop-how-to-enter-for-20-free-wot

• TradePlayz: https://steemit.com/fcotd/@michaelluchies/free-coin-of-the-day-2-17-18-tradeplayz-airdrop-contest-how-to-enter-for-free-zed

• Luckbox: https://steemit.com/fcotd/@michaelluchies/free-coin-of-the-day-2-15-18-luckbox-airdrop-and-bounty-how-to-enter

Have you participated in an airdrop? Please comment below, and thank you so much for reading!