How to get free Bitcoins

In my opinion, the best and easiest way to earn Bitcoins is to accept them as a means of payment. If you have a small business, the integration is done quickly and easily. No matter if you have abrick and mortar shop or an online business, no matter if you sell goods or services. You just have to complete the following three steps:

1. Get a free online Bitcoin wallet from Coinbase. If you're not sure what a Bitcoin wallet is, check out my What is Bitcoin section. There are also many other providers apart from Coinbase. When you sign up with LocalBitcoins you will also get a free bitcoin wallet with a broad range of functions. Find out which works best for you. And remember, no wallet is absolutely safe, so be careful with your money. Especially make sure you keep your Bitcoins stored safely in at least 2 or 3 different places.
2. Display a QR-code with your Bitcoin addressnext to your cash register. There are two options here.
   • When you have your wallet, go to a section that says 'Receive Money' or 'Add funds' or something similar. There will usually be a QR-code that has your Bitcoin address encoded in it. Print out the image with the QR-code and place it next to your cash register. Your customers will typically have a Bitcoin app installed on their smartphone where they can enter the value of the purchase in USD or EUR. Their app calculates the corresponding Bitcoin value. It automatically takes the current exchange rate to get the right amount. On your wallet account you can check the confirmation of your incoming payment.
   • Some wallets offer a 'Receive Money' functionality. When you earn Bitcoins by accepting them as a payment method on a more regular basis it comes in handy when you use a button called 'Create Payment Request'. Here you enter the Bitcoin amount the customer has to pay and it will show the corresponding QR-code automatically. This way the customer doesn't need to enter an amount which makes the payment for them more convenient. For this method you need to calculate the Bitcoin amount from your USD or EUR price before you can enter it for the QR-code to generate.
3. Display the 'Bitcoin accepted here' logo at the entrance to your shop to show everybody your innovative payment integration. You will find a printable version of the logo plus a free guideunder Downloads.

That's it. It's so easy, start to earn Bitcoins by selling goods and services today! This is just a quick description how to earn Bitcoins by accepting them as a means of payment. These links are also helpful:

• How to accept Bitcoin, for small businessesincludes more info for online businesses
• The Bitcoin Wiki Trade page shows you which other businesses already accept Bitcoin. Add your shop here to get more publicity
• Coinmap is an OpenStreetMap where you can see the geographical distribution of Bitcoin accepting businesses. Add your shop here as well

There are many other lists and indexes where you can add your shop. I find the two mentioned ones to work best so far. If you have one that you think is really good and complete, contact me. I will be happy to add other links here.Back to top ▲

2. Earn free Bitcoins by completing tasks on websites ✔

There are many websites which offer you to earn free Bitcoins. With most of these sites, the concept is that you visit the site and just for looking at it you get a small amount of Bitcoins. The concept has something in common with watching good old free TV. You watch a lot of ads and inbetween you get something you actually want to see, like a film or music clips.While this is a legitimate concept, the return on your invested time is very little. So when you earn Bitcoins from these advertising sites, the Bitcoins actually come at the cost of your time. As the saying goes 'there is no free lunch'. But see for yourself, here is a list of some of the sites that I find interesting

• ads4btc :: Earn Bitcoins for watching websites or videos. You can click every advert once a day, you have to view it between 5 and 60 seconds. The reward might seem small but it can add up. You get up to 1,000 Satoshi per click. In any case this site helps you to earn you first bitcoins fast.
• COINADDER :: This site has a similar concept to earn bitcoins as the one listed above. You can watch videos and websites to get your first couple of Satoshis. I haven't tested this one but generally the payouts seem smaller. However, before you start to earn bictoins more seriously by watching ads, you should not just calculate the reward per view, but also how long a video view takes you. At the end of the day you want to maximize the bitcoins you earn per hour.
• vidybit :: On this site you can earn bitcoins only from watching videos. Same hints as above apply. Calculate how many bitcoins you can get per hour in order to decide which is the best option for you.
• freedigitalmoney.com :: Earn Bitcoins by getting rewards fo purchases made in Bitcoin. On this site you also don't need a user account and just have to enter your Bitcoin address to earn Bitcoins.
• CoinWorker :: Earn Bitcoins by completing analytical tasks. A user account is required here. I haven't tried this service but payouts seem to be a bit higher than with the aforementioned sites.
• Bitfortip :: Earn Bitcoins by answering forum questions. This is a nice service because it brings people together who are interested in Bitcoin and many other topics. At the same time it allows to pay rewards in bitcoin for answering questions. This is something that would not have been possible without a currency like Bitcoin that has low transaction fees and instant transfers

Earning Bitcoins from completing tasks on websites is a viable option to actually earn someBitcoins, but don't expect your income to be very large. I regard it as a first step to get familiar with Bitcoin in general. Also, it is interesting to see what kind of services are enabled through frictionless money transfers.Back to top ▲

3. Earn Bitcoins from interest payments %

If you already have some Bitcoins, put your Bitcoins to work for you. Earn Bitcoins through interest payments by lending them out.

• Lend directly to someone you know. This allows you to assess personally, whether you regard the borrower as trustworthy. Then the two of you only need to agree on the terms like duration and interest rate and off you go. The drawback is, however, that you probably will not have too many acquaintances who match your amount, duration and interest rate requirements. But it's a nice way to earn Bitcoins.
• Peer to peer Bitcoin lending websites with listings from various borrowers are another option. Bitbond is such a peer-to-peer lending site. Borrowers publish funding requests and you can contribute to their loan. You can fund small portions of many loans and thereby diversify default risk. Bitcoin loans usually work the same way as fiat currency loans. The borrower gets a certain amount of money over a specified time and repays the money with interest. There are two things you need to be aware of when you lend Bitcoins. The site needs to be trustworthy and the borrower needs to be trustworthy. When the site assesses the creditworthiness of their applicants the information given about borrowers can be more credible.
• A Bitcoin banking like model. Here you place your Bitcoins as a deposit with a site that pays you a fixed interest rate on these deposits. As everything here, this method has advantages and disadvantages. The good thing is, that you don't need to diversify your Bitcoins over many borrowers. You just place your Bitcoins with your Bitcoin bank and that's it. You earn Bitcoins as a steady stream of interest income. However, be very careful. In the previous case of peer to peer lending you diversify your lending activity over many borrowers. In the banking model you trust one single borrower which is the bank. If they don't do a good job in managing your Bitcoins, everything can be lost at once. That's because the bank takes you deposits and invests them in assets, the most important assets usually being loans. If they do a good job you are fine because you simply collect the interest payment. If they don't do a good job you take the hit. An there is no deposit insurance in the Bitcoin world, too.

To sum it up, Bitcoin lending is a good way to make more Bitcoins from what you already have. And please notice this disclaimer: only lend through sites that you trust. Such sites will comply with the usual requirements that you expect from non-Bitcoin related sites as well. That means they have proper terms and conditions in place, they disclose their status of incorporation and contact details. Some sites in the Bitcoin world do not do this and in the end people wonder what happened to their Bitcoins. Therefore, when you earn Bitcoins from Bitcoin lending watch who you deal with and only use Bitcoins which you can afford to lose.