Let’s first figure out what airdrops are and why they are needed.
If you are a beginner in the field of crypto currency, then you just need to know everything about airdrops, because it’s a great opportunity to put a few free tokens in your pocket, especially since you will not need to put any special effort into it.
Airdrop is a distribution of tokens by some little-known or a beginner start-up for free. The main goal of the project is advertising in social networks, as well as drawing attention to ICO in forums.
On every website or page on the network there is information available to a user, so he/she can read the project news, study its main policy and learn the projections for the future in addition to basic information. The ICO market is too oversaturated with new projects and few will be pleased with another one. However, if you get a few free coins for participation in the project, many of you will definitely agree to join in.
Airdrops can be easily found in telegram groups. It is enough to type the word “airdrop” into the google search and there will be a lot of links to projects. To participate it is enough to have an e-mail, access to the Internet and accounts in social networks- facebook, twitter, bitcoin talk forum, reddit, and telegram, as well as an Ethereum wallet because basically tokens are paid exactly for it — many ICO projects are created on the Ether platform and the ERC-20 standard.
There are 2 types of airdrops. One of them is a free distribution of a new coin after the hard-fork . For example, Bitcore charged the Bitcoin holders who had more than 0.01 BTC on their account. The meaning of this kind of airdrop is that if a holder has a certain currency, then he should be interested in the improved version of it. Some tokens are distributed to third-party crypto currency holders, for example, Stellar Lumens was distributed to the holders of Bitcoin.
The second option is the most common one. It is the “reward” for participating in an airdrop: it consists of distributing tokens to the project participants as an advertising promotion. The conditions for participation are always different and depend on the goals pursued by the organizers of ICO, but the actions that the participant must perform are approximately the same.
Firstly, as a rule, they ask you to fill out a Google form with an e-mail address, write a nickname, attach a link to facebook, twitter and make a repost of an advertising banner on your page. Also, organizers are asked to remain subscribers until the end of the advertising campaign. Sometimes they ask to attach a KYC form (scan of your passport) or wait for an SMS message on the phone. Many of them have a referral program that can serve as a good bonus of increasing your income from the airdrop.
The simplest manipulations do not require mental activity and are paid accordingly. It is not sensible to expect a large reward. On average, tokens are distributed for 2–5 dollars with the expectation that when coin gets on the exchange the price will rise and the user will be able to sell it more expensively. However, in order to get a decent amount of money in your pocket you need to participate not in ten and not even in a hundred of airdrops. Here is how the rule works: the more the better with the number of visited airdrops possibly reaching thousands.
There are a lot more chances to earn tokens from users with very popular accounts in social networks. In some airdrop projects, such a condition is even stipulated — you`ve got to have from up to 1000 and more followers on twitter and facebook. Here is where the referral program is of great help: subscribers can use the addressee’s link, thereby making money for a friend. But if your accounts can not boast of a large number of followers, then your chances go to zero. All you gain from the next airdrop is a bonus for registration and subscription to twitter, equivalent to less than a dollar. Many create their own individual group airdrops in telegrams and post their references to projects there. With rare exceptions, this really brings profit.
Unfortunately, not all projects are successful and not all go to the exchange. That means that the time spent on them can as well be just wasted, as it is not always clear what kind of project with promising advertising and a nice site will pay off in the future.
By the way, among the real airdrops there are a lot of false ones, which, under the disguise of a real project, recognize the addresses of users’ wallets and personal keys, and then withdraw all money from them. And, the more information the user provides, the more vulnerable his wallet becomes to financial pyramids, phishing sites and simply malicious viruses.
Let’s sum up the results: is it worth it to participate in such a campaign or is it better to stick to passive trading or participate in the bounty?
Of course, it is not sensible to completely abandon the airdrop as a method of additional earnings. Holders of popular crypto currencies can view it as a source of additional income, and from time to time look through the projects that distribute free tokens. However, you need to be very careful because most of the fraudsters are hidden here. Keep close track of all the information you are providing. It should not contain private keys, passwords and seed-phrases. Be vigilant and do not fall for the bait of scammers!
Also, the airdrop can be useful to people with very popular social networks with a large number of subscribers. Posts with reference links will not go unnoticed and this can become a solid basis for good earnings from an airdrop without much effort on your part.
As for users who do not have any crypto currency on their accounts or statuses on the forums, the practicality of promoting a profile specifically for airdrop is questionable. If there is not enough awareness of the crypto and there is plenty of time, then it makes sense to gain a number of airdrops more suitable for the user. Such projects are few, but they exist, and, theoretically, participation in a few dozen of such airdrops can justify the time spent.
Therefore, everyone has to decide for himself/herself if he/she should spend their time on airdrop. Is it worth all the time that you spend on mechanically copying links and tweets on your page, those 2 or 3 dollars that you will be paid for it. And maybe they will not even pay it. Nobody provides any guarantees that your time will pay off and you will get financial compensation. On the other side, if you have a lot of free time you`d better earn at least a little money than nothing at all. In that case the airdrop can become a good start and a source of information about the world of the crypto industry and a chance to broaden your knowledge that will serve you well in the future …