In this thread we discuss the Bitcoins For Gets program:

http://bfg.swfchan.com/

This is the place for questions, comments and advice.

How can you be able to pay out this huge amount of BCs? How can we trust that the money will actually be paid?

The current rates are what I believe I can afford, but if it gets out of hand later I can always tweak them (with a proper heads-up to the people participating of course). But I need more people to actually participate to find out if the current rate is okay though.

As for the trust part of this, try it and find out. The minimum payout is 0.0005 BTC. You will probably be able to reach that amount within an hour or two as long as you link from somewhere active. That means the most you can lose is a few minutes of your time (the time it takes to post a couple of links) and you will know if I actually pay you within one day after you request your first payment. I *will* send payments.

The reason I'm doing this is mostly for fun and for the good of Bitcoin in general. The currency is new and needs more usage. If I'm lucky swfchan will get a couple of new regular visitors as well, it's a gamble from my side.

+ Bitcoin-Qt : http://bitcoin.org/en/download

+ Electrum : http://electrum.org/

The first one is the official client. It's what pretty much every bitcoin server uses, tried and trusted. The downside is that you have to download the entire blockchain, which is around 8.4 GiB at the moment according to http://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size. Although you may need more disk space than that; my current data folder of the official bitcoin client is 19.1 GiB. Don't know why, maybe it creates a bunch of hashes/indexes that takes a lot of space or maybe it keeps a lot of garbage files. The data folder (containing the blockchain and wallet) is placed in the %appdata% folder of your system (inside the current user's directory).

The second one is a lightweight client. You only keep the wallet (and all important keys) plus blockchain headers on your computer. Your client connects to external servers that contains the whole blockchain to recieve the current wallet balance. This means the client only takes around 31 MiB instead of several gigs.

If you use Electrum they have a portable version that doesn't require installation. It doesn't spread out files on your hard drive to your %appdata% folder - your wallet is in the same folder as the Electrum executable. Electrum creates your wallet using a seed consisting of a bunch of words that could be memorized, this allows you to recreate the wallet at any time from these words even if you lose your wallet file.

My advice is to go with Electrum. It's small, it's trusted (officially linked to from http://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet) and it's easy to use. Your coins are safe as well since you keep all your private keys locally in the wallet file, the worst these external servers that you connect to can do to you is lie about your current balance. But you can always pick a different Electrum server to connect to if you think something looks odd.

The only thing you should be aware of is that the current version of Electrum (1.8) has a bug in it that causes connections to leak outside the selected proxy (especially if the proxy is down). This only affects you if you want to hide behind Tor for example and can be "fixed" by blocking non-local connections using a firewall (ask if you want me to explain how). The bug seems to have existed for several versions and I don't know why it isn't being fixed to be honest. If you aren't concerned with completely masking your IP address this doesn't matter at all though.

Don't go with an online wallet. These are comfortable but if you don't have control of the wallet yourself it means that all your bitcoins can be stolen at any time. This has happened in the past and some people have lost several thousands of bitcoins this way.

I'm confused on that one.

No, you only get points from "owned IPs" and a IP can only become claimed by your account if it arrives through your link and has never been on swfchan before.

The deal to get points is to bring new IPs to the site and have them watch a flash on eye.swfchan.com. If the IP has been to swfchan before it isn't new and won't count as being brought in by your account.

Each IP that is owned by your account but has NOT gotten a flash gives you a bit of exp, that's it. But bringing that IP to the site wasn't a complete waste of time since it is still owned by your account from then on and may watch a flash on swfchan sometime in the future. Maybe a completely different person watches a flash (due to dynamic IP), it doesn't matter, since you own that IP you will earn points at that time. The exp is good to have too since it will help increase your account's level, which will immediately make each earned point worth more bitcoins.

Once a owned IP presses the GET FILE button on eye.swfchan.com and actually watches/downloads a flash there you will start earning points from it (and gain a bunch of additional exp). Each IP you own that has watched a flash will earn you 2 to 12 points, depending on if the IP has done more stuff than just watched a flash (in short: active visitors pays more).

You have to keep bringing new IPs to the site to keep earning points. The flow of points will eventually stop if you just bring a few IPs and then just sit back and wait. If you bring and claim (own), say, 500 IPs you can earn max 500*12 = 6000 points from them. For more points more new IPs must be brought to the site.

It's a bit of a gamble but even if I lose out on it and I just throw away all my bitcoins I will still be glad that I did this. What bitcoin needs right now is to be used and passed around for products or services, not just to be treated like a share on the stock market to be sold when the price is high and bought when the price is low.

There's a lot of bitcoin hoarders out there waiting for the price to rise, but bitcoin will never get the respect and value it deserves unless people actually use them by passing them around in exchange for something other than money. The BFG program is a good match for bitcoin, I get a chance to pass them around in exchange for visitors and the joy of seeing my site being used.

As what you said "If the IP has been to swfchan before it isn't new and won't count as being brought in by your account." Then if ever a user clicked our link but he already been in this site before we get nothing? Or if a user clicked our link but didn't click (GET FILE) we also don't get points for that? As what I understand how the internet works if ever we bring a user to a certain site that is already counted as traffic and traffic means money. Linkbucks and Adfly pays better than your method dude try to add additional ways to improve this. I'm earning good at linkbucks and adfly and I wanted to try earning here too but as what I saw about your program it's not very competitive. But I'm willing to help you get some traffic if ever you increase your rates or add better features. I understand that this is still an experiment so it is subject to change and improvement. And can you also add paypal in your payment?

Yes, that's correct. If the user has a IP that has already been to swfchan before it counts as not being a new user.

>if a user clicked our link but didn't click (GET FILE) we also don't get points for that

That's right, in that case, if the IPs of the users were new to the site, you only get exp and get to own the IP (meaning if someone watches a flash from that IP in the future you will get points).

>traffic means money

Not exactly true in my case, people that doesn't block ads means money. Otherwise the user is just taking up resources on the server (which is fine for me, I'll be happy the next time I have to upgrade the server hardware because that means that many more people are enjoying the site). 40-60% of swfchan's visitors block ads.

Right now those that don't block ads generates less money than what I paid for them to get to the site anyway, my advertisment providers have been really bad the last two months. So that's also something to keep in mind, people that doesn't block ads doesn't really always mean enough money.

Yesterday I earned 0.9 USD per 1000 popup impressions on Juicy Ads and they popped only once for only 40% of swfchan's visitors yesterday.

Meanwhile I currently pay about 0.114 bitcoins per 1000 new IPs that watches a flash on the BFG program (remember it changes as the value of a bitcoin changes and also depends on account level). That would sell for 10.8 USD right now.

Also consider that bitcoins are most likely to increase in value as time goes by, which means those 1000 new IPs could be worth many more USD if you withdraw your points to bitcoins today but wait some time before selling them for USD.

Now, let's also remember that typically 40-60% (often near 60%) of those new IPs are blocking ads, meaning that they don't produce any income for the site but only give the account that brought them points. No income for me, only cost.

So even if your link brings a bunch of IPs that has already been on swfchan before, and if some of the new IPs don't watch a flash at all, it's very unlikely that I make back the money that I spend bringing that new visitor here (considering the 0.9:10.8 USD income/cost ratio).

Update 1aug2013: The last five days I've been getting 0.8 USD per 1000 popup impressions, 11% less than when this post was originally written. Seems like the site's ad income is going backwards...

The only way I could start gaining from this deal is if the visitor you brought continues to use the site and returns on his own another day. That's why it's extremely important that the visitors are active and actually solve the captcha and press the GET FILE button.

If they weren't required to watch a flash it would be so easy to make bots that bring in thousands of new IPs to the site, but they wouldn't actually be real users and most probably not even one of them would load an ad, leaving me with nothing to redce the costs a little bit. If I just wanted hits to my site I would go through a traditional traffic-seller where you can buy 25000 visitors for just a few bucks. But I want quality traffic brought in by real links in real discussions, not just bot hits or people fooled to go to the site only to then close the window.

>pays better than your method
>your program it's not very competitive

I haven't seen anything like my program yet that pays in bitcoins, so it's very competitive for what it is. If you *need* bitcoins you'll earn exactly that here. Otherwise you would have to get paid in other currencies and then find a way to buy bitcoins.

Maybe you earn more using Linkbucks and Adfly but those things are completely different than what this is (they show a commercial break to the user, while my thing just brings the user directly to my site without any break - true that I must have ads on my site to keep it running but its not the same as a 10 second wait page with ads).

Like I always say, bitcoins are the gold of the Internet. Just like real life gold, bitcoins are worth more than what they can be sold for. Gold has unique properties that makes it far more valuable to have other than just to be sold, not to mention they typically increase in value over time as supply becomes more scarce (this is probably why USA hasn't sold away gold yet to pay for their debt, because gold is more valuable than their worth in money). Same with bitcoins, the unique properties make it more valuable than just what it's worth in euros or whatever other currency, plus bitcoins will grow in value over time as they become more scarce by design.

>add paypal

Sorry, that won't happen. First of all I can't afford it, the only reason I can pay so good is because I got the bitcoins that I have early when they weren't worth much. Second of all I want to keep being Anonymous, if I used PayPal I would have to come out into the public.

Nothing is stopping you from linking to a swfchan link-in THROUGH an Adfly link (for example). That way you can earn both traditional money from their ads AND bitcoins from the new visitor if he watches a flash on swfchan. Then you'll always get something even if the IP is not new on swfchan.

I do understand you really mean.. Ok I will promote this site again I hope I could earn better in your program. Another question is what if you run out of bitcoins and we still have some pending cashout?

I do understand what you really mean.. Ok I will promote this site again I hope I could earn better in your program. Another question is what if you run out of bitcoins and we still have some pending cashout?

is there someone who got paid already? how will we know that you are paying?

At least five people have been paid already.

I checked out the stats of your account (I'm pretty sure which one is yours, you've been withdrawing every day). You have 1938 owned IPs but only 528 IPs has actually gotten a flash. This means that 1410 IPs are bounces (went to the page and just closed it).

I've noticed that you are putting your links all over 4chan here and there, often without any description. This means that you get a lot of people checking out the link but then just closing it since they realize it wasn't something they were interested in (that's a "bounce").

Since you only get paid for active visitors (IPs getting a flash) you get few point-giving IPs when posting swfchan links this way. That's why it's better to post links to swfchan in relevant places where people are aware of what link they are clicking and know what they are going to get. Otherwise you get many that just close the webpage upon arrival.

So right now with your 528 IPs you have earned 0.04892946 BTC in total. Let's compare it to what I sad before: 0.114/1000 = 0.000114 BTC per IP that has watched a flash. 0.000114*528 = 0.060192 BTC. So according to what I said before you should have earned ~0.06 BTC by now with your 528 IPs. You are pretty close, but not exactly there.

Why isn't it exactly the same? Because the value of a bitcoin has risen a lot since I wrote >>7601. The value of the points is locked to SEK (Swedish currency) and then converted into bitcoins, how many you get per SEK will vary depending on the current market value of a bitcoin (this is written on the BFG front page and in the Balance section of the page when logged in).

Also, how many points you get per active IP depends on how active it is, and whether or not it is blocking ads. When I calculated 0.114 BTC per 1000 flash-watching IPs before I used data from people in the BFG program, it's possible that they had some more IPs that had viewed an ad.

My gut is telling me that many users on 4chan are using ad-blockers. Therefore you'd get fewer IPs not blocking ads when linking from 4chan. It's hard to know where people that are not blocking ads hang out but for example a forum for mothers swapping recipes probably would have less ad-blocking IPs. However then the problem becomes what you could possibly link to on swfchan from there, especially considering the porn ads that swfchan has. It's all about finding good places to reach out to people that has never heard of swfchan before, and then giving those people something they are interested in. But I digress.

Considering the bonuses, I can't really afford it. It's starting to get really expensive with the BFG program because my ad providers have been paying me less and less the last week for some reason. Since I wrote >>7601 the site income has dropped 20%! 9% in just the last two days! I don't know why but if this continues I have to start hunting for other ads again. If anything I expected the income to rise maybe 5% from the new IPs the BFG program provides, I certainly didn't predict a 20% drop. Weird. But even though things are far from profitable now I will continue the BFG program. I never expected it to be profitable anyway and it's still fun to actually do something with my bitcoins.

There's no limit really, the system I've made tells me how many bitcoins I need to have in stock in order to cover possible payouts if all accounts were to withdraw at the same time. If I notice that number getting close to half of my stash of bitcoins I will obtain new ones.

I'll always make sure I can pay people, if I ever get in a financial situation that makes it *possible* that I can't afford to make payouts in the future I will make a notice about it and shut down the BFG program. The already-active accounts will of course be able to withdraw their bitcoins if that ever happens, I won't just suddenly pull the plug and "run off with the money" (I've gotten that treatment myself from bad ad providers in the past, they got away with two months of free advertising on swfchan and kept lying about them going to make a payment for several months).

>How many people are using the BFG program?

Unfortunately, very few. It's probably a trust issue, even though the withdraw limit is so low (0.0005 BTC). The first impression of my site probably sets off scam warning clocks to a lot of people, due to the simplistic unprofessional design. I'm aware of it and maybe I will try to make it pretty in the future, though that would clash with the layout of the rest of swfchan so I'm kinda torn.

To date only 63 accounts has been created, most of them are just blank test accounts with 0 or very few owned IPs. Your account is actually the most active, in total maybe six accounts are still active right now. There has been a few more in the past but they settled with one payment and then stopped.

I don't know how to get users on the BFG program really, I feel like I've tried everything (have even spent bitcoins in an attempt to spread awareness). Maybe I just have to rely on word-of-mouth and hope users recommend the program to other people. If you (anyone) have any ideas of how to promote the BFG program I would love to hear them.

Well, here are some pointers I can think of if I were using the BFG program myself:

+ Porn is the easiest way to get someone to watch a flash. All guys follow their dick (and some chicks the smell of it).

+ Search the web for forums regarding porn/hentai/rule34/some-fetish. Make flash threads. Recommend flashes, urge others to do the same (free bumps for your thread).

+ Lurk around, check threads for people that want something ("man I wish I had porn of X"). Answer requests by posting a link to a flash on swfchan, if it has something to do with the conversation.

+ Use the automated screenshots swfchan provides to give users a preview. Make own screens if the automated ones suck. If people like what they see in the image they are more likely to click the link.

+ Describe what the link leads to. Why is it recommended by you? Put related links in relative places: If the fetish of the forum is bondage, link to bondage flashes. Keep an eye out for the theme of the site you are linking from.

+ Explain how to use swfchan. What you can find there, how to navigate, what the purpose of the site is (flash archive). Get the user to understand that he must press GET FILE to see the flash. If the basics of swfchan is explained to the user he might explore the site more.

+ Sometimes (especially if the site is explained) you can link not directly to eye.swfchan.com but to the flash's index page (example: http://swfchan.com/1/1/?swfchan.swf). This will give you at least one extra page view from the IP.

+ Linking to http://swfchan.net/popular.shtml can earn you a bunch of page views from that IP and it also places the IP on another swfchan domain (extra points is earned if the IP visits all three of swfchan's top domains).

+ Linking to a category page, for example http://swfchan.net/categories-irlreal.shtml, places the IP on another top domain plus he might browse around a lot more. Maybe especially if you use a fetish-subcategory (in the right place).

+ Keep linking to new content on different days on the same site that you have previously linked from. This makes IPs re-visit the site and thus earn you bonus points. Explaining of swfchan works also makes it more likely that the visitor returns by himself.

+ Don't spam, you'll just get banned and have your posts deleted. Nobody likes a spammer/advertiser, especially in forums or in the middle of a discussion. Best to be helpful, give people what they want and respect boundaries.

+ Repeating yourself too much (like posting instructions several times in the same thread) will make you look suspiciously close to a spam-bot/advertiser. Be cool and act natural, reply if someone asks you something. Make some posts without links in them.

+ The further away from big chan sites you get the more likely you will be to get new IPs that has never visited swfchan before. Non-english speaking forums is probably goldmines when it comes to getting new IPs.

+ By checking http://eye.swfchan.com/services/insight/referrers .asp it's possible to get inspiration of how to link to swfchan, and maybe even find good sites to link from.

+ If you are posting in a thread where someone has previously linked to swfchan your chances of getting new IPs are lower because people probably have visited swfchan first via that other guy's link.

+ Non-expiring low-traffic pages might be better to link from in the long run rather than temporary high-traffic ones, simply because several low-traffic sources piles up to a reasonable amount of steady traffic that lasts forever with no further effort from you.

I've removed all ads from the bfg subdomain and have cleaned up its front page. It has less info now but looks much less messy.

The form for adding listeners for refcombos has also been hidden on the account page (must click "advanced" to show it) because it was probably just confusing for many and link-ins are so much better anyway.

In addition I wised up and went and got a HTTPS certificate issued by a trusted authority. Found a good, free one that didn't actually need to verify who I am, I just needed to verify my ownership of the domain. This won't make the address bar turn green but it gets rid of the scary warning since the certificate is no longer self-signed.

Today I have decided to change the rate at which points converts to bitcoins in the BFG program. The base conversion number is doubled from 75 to 150. This means that each point earned is worth half as much. It wasn't easy to take this unfortunate decision and I have been thinking about it for several days. I will motivate my reasoning.

First of all the BFG program simply isn't performing as expected. From the beginning it was an experiment that might not give fruit, I knew this, but due to my ad providers paying less and less even though swfchan's traffic is increasing (marginally) this experiment has proven much more expensive than I initially thought.

Secondly, I'm not seeing many returning visitors. A lot of hits coming from the BFG program seems to have been tricked into clicking the link or was a traded click via traffic exchanges. Rarely were people brought to a flash actually relevant to their interests; they just pressed GET FILE, figured out that they had been tricked and left forever.

Lastly, most visitors are blocking ads. True that the point of the BFG program is not to get visitors that view ads, it's to spread awareness of the site. But I'm just saying that if they didn't watch an ad AND they were tricked to the site (meaning they don't feel like coming back) then the visitor wasn't really worth to pay for.

I hope these points make you understand that it was simply too expensive to pay the old rate for non-returning, ad-blocking visitors. However rather than shutting the BFG program down completely I think decreasing payouts is better. This way I will see if anyone is still interested in earning bitcoins, because although it pays less to link to swfchan now, it still does pay.

New accounts are affected by the change immediately, the current 135 old accounts will have two weeks until the change takes effect. They will be alerted of the pending rate change at logon and recommended to withdraw before the deadline.

Finally changed the misleading "New" headline to "Make refcombos", hopefully this reduces confusion. Also, now accounts will have two link-ins automatically created for them to make sure everybody can use the BFG program (there are quite many accounts that are blank, meaning some people signed up but couldn't figure out to how to actually use the thing). The two auto link-ins created leads to the popular page and the first page of the porn category, which should be two good start points to link new visitors to.

From now on some BFG stats are displayed below the login form. Most importantly it shows exactly how much points are worth in bitcoins at the moment.

It's been a month since the rate was last changed and nothing has improved; the visitors gained don't stick around for longer and my ad providers have just been paying less and less for each day. Could have something to do with the global economy state, perhaps ads online just aren't as lucrative as ther once were. I've decided that the best thing for me to do is to hold on to the BTC I've got in order to be able to cash them out in the future when the server needs to be upgraded and so forth. Investing them in getting some new visitors hasn't really been working out.

I still don't want to shut down the BFG program though. Instead I will just change the rate to make each new unique visitor much less expensive for me (making sure the BTC that I have will last longer). Starting today the base conversion number becomes a whopping 2250 for new accounts, the 208 existing accounts will keep the old rate until the end of 27:th of October. I understand if old members will abandon the program because of this, setting the rate to this might as well be seen as shutting the program down I guess. Thanks for trying this thing with me! Of course I'd prefer if you stay however, there is still bitcoins to be earned after all.

Minimum withdrawal has been changed from 0.0005 BTC to 0.00003 BTC. Also, from now on I will do payouts once (maybe twice) per week instead of once per 24 hours. I expect less withdrawals in the future so no point in me checking every day if a payment needs to be done.

i just started but got no inside intell on BITCOINS. I will like to have allot of BITcoins in the future. Can some one help me out on the ways to get the most out of it. I also having problem posting my links. is there a easier way to post a link and a program send them out to defrent webs site that are in the porn sention

Thanks for shown interest but I've decided to shut down the BFG program today.

The program always produced too much spam, which was never my intention at all, but I just noticed that even /f/ has started to get spammed today and this is where I draw the line. If there's anywhere online where swfchan does not need paid links it is on /f/.

With the BFG program I was looking for links to swfchan on people's own homepages or blogs or in threads where they were related to the current discussion, not just random promotions here and there by guys hoping to get a click. Instead of just letting things go on and make people get more and more annoyed every time a link to swfchan is posted I'll just close BFG instead. So if you see a link leading to swfchan from now on you can rest assured that it is not paid and if anyone is spamming them he is doing it on his own.

If you have any pending balance left in your account you can withdraw it, there is no longer any minimum payout limit. Please be aware that it can be a while before the coins are I send however because I want to send all final payments in one transaction. Hopefully the Bitcoin client should allow this, as I mentioned before it doesn't allow too small transactions. Unless an update has been released of course, I haven't checked. The client should be updated to allow smaller transactions due to the ridiculous increase in value of BTC lately (compared to USD).

I don't think the BFG Program will return since it will probably just cause a bunch of spam again, but I never say never. It was a fun 5 month experiment at least.