As the number of ICOs and crypto projects increases, so too do the opportunities for bounty hunters. So how can you make the most of them?

ICOs almost invariably run bounty campaigns in order to leverage their communities’ networks to bring in more investment and new users. Smart bounty hunters can earn a lot by participating in these. Here are some tips for optimising your income.

1. Cultivate your social channels

It’s an obvious one, but the greater your network of connections, the higher your influence and the more valuable you are to an ICOs marketing team. Cultivate your social media accounts. A few minutes a day, including posting relevant articles, following key accounts, and some judicious engagement in useful threads, will help you become a social influencer and potentially boost your bounty income significantly.

2. Keep up to date with the latest ICOs and airdrops

There are many sites that post details of current and upcoming ICOs and token drops. It’s worth checking in with these daily or at least weekly, and signing up for updates if offered. Many airdrops will offer tokens for very little work – sometimes just registering a crypto address. Others will require more engagement, but with the opportunity for greater income as a result.

3. Stay the course – or jump ship?

Participating in sig campaigns on bitcointalk is a little like trading or investing in an ICO itself. You are locked in for the course of the token sale, and cannot use your sig for any other campaign in that time. By committing, you risk losing out on other projects. But by skipping from one campaign to a seemingly hotter project you lose the time you’ve already sunk into it. It’s a little like the difference between trading and HODLing. If in doubt, you’re probably better off staying the course, unless the alternative is a very attractive initiative or you haven’t spent much time and effort on the first.

4. Use your special skills

If you have particular talents, make sure you put them to good use. That might include writing articles, making translations in various languages, creating images and videos, tapping into particular communities, or even helping with bug bounties and code audits, if you have the experience. If you’re not sure how your skillset can be used, or are after specific opportunities, ask the team directly – the worst they can do is say ‘no’.

5. Decide what to do with your tokens

Hold or sell? Lots of bounty hunters dump their tokens on the market as soon as they’re listed on an exchange. If you’re after short-term income, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you take a big-picture approach, you might be losing out on 10x gains or more. There’s always a risk in holding, since you never know how the secondary market is going to treat a token. But equally, strong projects with good fundamentals have the potential to appreciate hugely in price. Your $30 bounty could be worth $300 or $1,000 in a few months. So even if you do need the money now, consider whether it would be worth keeping some in a long-term HODL account – just in case.