Bitcoin Forum

It is sad to see many come to this forum and the first thing they do is participate in bounty campaigns because someone told them they could make money that way. In most cases, such campaigns pay in some rather worthless tokens or pay nothing at all.

You wonder how it is possible to work for months and advertise a particular company/project in your signature or with social networks and to get nothing?
The reason is very simple, they (owners) take advantage of the gullibility of people and the fact that something is presented on this forum, but this does not mean that anyone guarantees you that you will be paid for your work.

I put bounty hunting in category of big time-wasting, even bigger then claiming on faucets - today you at least get pay instantly in 90% of faucets on your microwallet account.

I'll give you an example of how one bounty campaign is ended, only partially happy for some participants and only because some members start to ask owners to finally pay. Some users still beg for the money, so be smart and save your time - do you want to beg for your hard-earned money and that in the same time someone is calling you scammer&bot?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5173498.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5189378.0

I agree with you on this current situation of crypto. 90% of current ICO/IEO today is scam because regulators is too strict on startup project on crypto today so most legit company that want to start a project don't dare to continue anymore. So most ICO/IEO today are scams that only wants money. I really miss 2017.

I understand the worthless tokens, but it's quite ironic that bounty scams happen so often with the coins/tokens that get listed on exchanges and have some value. The "devs" get too greedy and don't want to share?

Totally agree with the OP, don't waste your time.

I wonder why there's still participants in an ICO which it has been discussed many times that it's not worth to join or participate in an ICO which all you guys said are all true that most of it are scam ICOs. Even if there are still legit ones but still not easy to find an ICO that reward their participants.

It would be good if the bounties/rewards would at least be escrowed to a trusted entity before these guys go around and ask a multitude of people do repetitive tasks all over the interwebs and share the brand. It's the only solution possible to avoid getting gamed upon by these greedy dev teams that have been pestering the ICO/IEO/whatever token scene for years now. What's painful is that by the end of the campaign, the devs would get the lion's share while the bounty hunters would get scraps and leftovers which, IMO, isn't really fair at all.

How about instead of "Don't become a Bounty Hunter", why not "Be vigilant as a Bounty Hunter"?
The current title/content is like saying all the projects posted here have zero profitability and all are scams. If that's the case, it'll defeat the purpose of the Bounties (altcoins) (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=238.0) sub forum.

Whether you'll be scammed or what, is purely dependent on the person. So instead of discouraging, I suggest for them to be observant and cautious time to time.
Also, wouldn't it be unfair for real and legit bounty provider if people wouldn't come just because of these scam bounties?

Because many have pretty easy tasks, like following or joining Telegram groups.

In the world there are many people who do not have much free money to invest and a lot of free time. Time is a valuable non-renewable resource. Everyone has the right to spend his time, as he considers it more profitable for himself. I can say similarly - do not trade on the exchange, you will lose your money, and in 9 cases out of 10 I will be right. But if you learn from your defeats (victories do not teach anything), you will get valuable experience that will possibly change you for the better. It’s hard for beginners in the bounty now, most likely it will be a waste of time. But maybe not. (And everybody in this topic with a commercial signature, it's hard for me to imagine that only stupid or crazy people write here). :)

But it is easy for you to say cuz you already know stuff about bounty hunting.
What about those unaware, fresh to this environment, newcomers? They don't know any better and Lucius is just trying to warn them.
It must be sad, do not participate in any bounty paid in self-token. Accept only established, exchangeable coins, otherwise chances for you to loose time and effort are almost at 100%. Times have changed and people need to know that astronomical profits from hunting rewards, are a thing of the past. In other words, do not sell your data for promises.

I know after reading the OP, many users especially those would aren't privileged to be in a bitcoin paying signature would consider the OP to be unrealistic or not been considerable but he's just to trying to look out for you guys. Bounty aren't that bad especially when you get rewarded for your time invested into promoting a project but that's not usually the cases nowadays. Bounty hunters get treated as salves that's why the OP is trying to discourage such patronize to kill off the industry since nothing much can be done about the way projects treat hunters considering this is free market and the forum doesn't regulate bounties.

You're far better off developing yourself into a quality and reputed member of the forum and mostly likely get hired for a bitcoin paying campaign that pays weekly and irrespective of it scamming it's participants it'll just be a week worth of time invested and not the 3-6 months associated with the bounty scams accusation we record on the forum occasionally. In your spare time I recommend reading through this threads; [Guide] Factors to consider before joining paid signature campaigns. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5115291.msg49958482#msg49958482) it'll help guide you in your decision making.

This was my case before, then after I finished with some bounties I ended up getting zero rewards both from fake bounties and some are not paying after the campaign was successful. I thought at first, this will be the thing I need, to earn some extra income. this is a wrong judgment when all the bounties that I joined gave me nothing in return.

For some reason people still are trying to make money off altcoin bounty campaigns in 2019. Done are the days where they can make a lot of money just by collecting random airdrops and sharing altcoin spam on social media. The time:reward ratio is just so bad already, that the only decent way of earning some sats is through signature campaigns. Beyond sig campaigns and services though? I'd honestly spend my time elsewhere if the main focus was making money.

I will give my advice to beginners. If you came here to make money participating in bounty campaigns, you will most likely be disappointed. This may be a fun quest and side effect, but it is not the right goal. The right goal for a beginner is to try to understand how Bitcoin works. The right goal is to be an active member in the crypto community, because the crypto has the potential to change the landscape of the future. The right goal is to learn how to analyze startups on your own in order to distinguish viable ideas from empty ones. There are many right goals, but greed here is a bad adviser, albeit a strong motivator. :)

They can start that way, everyone can but over time they will realize that the forum discourages such bounty hunters don't contribute anything to the forum. More seriously, time goes and I don't know what will change. Who knows, theymos can do serious steps to disable all signature or require charged fees to run signature campaigns or bounties in the forum. Such things repeatedly suggested by the forum's community and theymos definitely reads community ideas as well as has his own plans.

He made warnings in 2018 with merit system (the first one) and some posts later relate to merit system and probability of signature disable if merit system fails (the second one); and the third one is enhanced merit system.
Somehow merit system (original one) did not satisfy theymos's expectation and he moved further with enhanced merit system, which likely works more effectively.

I do expect merit system will keep work and control spammers by preventing them to rank up and reducing their spams. That what we have by now.

Unfortunately, if spam escalates again (with next year bull run), things might be changed seriously and the last step (signature disabled) will be likely chosen. I think such bounty hunters don't care what they bring to the forum and good members of forum community, but it is painful for good users if they have to tolerate bad consequences from what they don't do (actually come from spammers.)

This is simply not true, early days of ICO were just as bad, the percentage of scam projects was the same as today. The only difference for bounty hunters is that bounties were paid in BTC or ETH at first, or at least people could sell their tokens on exchanges for a good price, since the whole market was very hyped. But still all those projects were scams, their devs never had intention to finish them. Today the hype is long gone, and investors are generally suspicious of these offerings, so bounty rewards were reduced to almost nothing.

Been there done that and they keep repeating it, they delay paying their bounty hunters, sometimes they are not paying at all, they locked the bounty campaign and they just unlock it when they cannot sell their shares anymore, some bounty campaign are totally waste of time, we must do a lot of research if we do not we can lose a lot of time and effort.

Asking the manager/project team to pay your money = begging?

I can never agree with this statement. How can it be termed as begging when you ask for something you've worked for. Asking for free money is called begging and people who don't pay money to the ones who worked for their project, they are beggars and cheaters.

Not all bounty campaigns are scam and I recently got paid $800 from a campaign and $100 from the other. It may be considered a small amount but it's definitely worth the trouble. You just need to be sure the manager is not a newbie but a reputed one who cares for the participants and makes sure they get paid.

I don't completely agree with OP. I agree that almost most of the projects these days are not worth it considering the old days. But there are still projects which have some worth when they hit an exchange. The think is to chose the campaigns wisely. If you chose a good project, you'll more likely to get paid for the work you have done.

Although the op is partially correct, we need to consider several aspects, being one that the amount might be worthless for some, or a weeks pay for others, depending where you come from geographically...
Good projects are definitely becoming really scarce, and most are scams or turn into one... but this is not happening only in ICO/IEO... it's all over crypto...
We need to cooperate to make things better, educate people to spot the cheaters and the scammers...

There is some good points in the OP but its probably worth mentioning if you join a bounty campaign then you instantly lose a lot of credibility on this forum if that is the only thing you are doing. The current philosophy that the ICO's are following via these bounties are both annoying and detrimental to the forum and by participating in them for promise of free coin you are contributing to the decline of the forum.

You can't fully educate people to detect scams because they are not always easy to spot and a lot of it is done on assumption and your personal comfort levels in investing into something that you are unsure of.

+1

Bounty hunters have to do their own  due diligence, don't expect bounty managers  to do that  for you as most of them will simply accept any bounty campaign, especially if they get paid in BTC/ETH or some other listed crypto currency.

There is another issue: certain  amount of bounty hunters don't really care if some project is scam, as long as they get their reward. Just take for example Coincompany ponzi scheme (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5187590.msg52556550#msg52556550), bunch of bounty hunter with btctalk accounts joined their bounty campaign, without any checking or care that they are helping scammers.

There was a thread created yesterday in altcoin discussion > Are ICOs really DEAD or simply cleared a path for better projects? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5190196.0)

Check the image from that thread.

It seems that ICOs are dead completely or will soon enough. Maybe IEOs, STOs will follow the same way.
Before there were too many ICOs and bounty hunters gambled their time for the lucky one. But now the ICO number is very less and to gamble time for the lucky one is very slim and of course a stupid act imo.

Instead, hunters should gain skills according to their likings for a better future; programming could be the first choice. We all should learn how to use our "time" in the right manner.

Golden times of cryptocurrency is over, so take the right step today for a better tomorrow.

It is true. I did join ICOs before but it's not what I think it is. Some ICOs did help you earn money a little bit and some ICOs are a completely waste of my time. Later on, I stop joining ICOs bounty program and I found out that there are other ways on how you can earn which I could spare some time doing it.

I would consider 2017 as the year that many hardworking bounty hunters made their big money despite all the scams that perpetrated the cryptocurrency marketplace. Yes, there were many frauds and failures too but those who made it to the exchanges got the best reception in terms of prices, consequently bounty hunters were having a fiesta.

Now, the situation is direly different as many of the projects can fail to get into good exchanges and if they do there is no more big demand waiting at the helm making trading anemic or lacking the energy needed. Of course, there are a few exemptions and lucky are those that got into those projects (example is the project Harmony which did its IEO in Binance).

Still, when we look at the bounty threads, participants are having a good time and seems to be enjoying their time, sharing and posting about the projects they hope will give them some income they need. Sadly, many hopes will just vanish into thin air months after the crowdfunding activities are gone.

People like to moan too much. Obviously, if you support shit you get shittokens or nothing at all. If someone wants to support a project that is exactly as every other then good luck to them on that.
Most ICO are the same. They have some background fluff the reason to exist. Social media presence and a one-page website that works exactly the same way as every other ICO website with that silly little bar that fills up as tokens are sold and people are actually fooled by this. If you want to support a project support something that is actually there. Something more then what I just described even a little more is better than most ICO projects.
Looking fancy has nothing to do with how good a project is. Simple is usually better in fact.

I believe that 90% of those who join this forum are here just because someone they trust told them that they can earn money by simply creating an account and start joining bounty campaigns or airdops.
I am here since 2017, and the first time I heard about bitcointalk was around 2015. All I was hearing is that you can earn a lot of money just by joining.
I will not be ungrateful, I earned a lot of money in the past by simply joining fb and twitter campaigns. But all new members must know that this is no longer possible. There are still other ways to earn money here. Just forget about altcoin campaigns, it is not worthy anymore.

The way new members are directly heading to bounties does look like they have been influenced by word of mouth or there is a large amount of account farming going on to earn which I have no doubt is happening with the amount of people who don't contribute to the forum in any way and just update their posts on their bounties to get paid. As for it being profitable I don't know but I am inclined to believe that you can earn a substantial amount if there are so many people rushing to complete these bounties.

Most new members are making accounts on bitcointalk forum for bounties. That's right, they're not making useful posts on here. The next thing is, I totally agree with you. Because of most ICO and IEO projects are different types of scams. Most bounty managers are changing allocations the end of the campaign. The important thing is they have a general rule to they can change the rules anytime. If you participate in the bounty campaign, you have to agree with those rules. That' means you cannot get an actions to those projects.

Are you joking? I agree (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5190196.msg52656748#msg52656748) that the token sale is dead or in a deep coma and it’s stupid to keep kicking this dead horse.But not with the opinion that the golden times of cryptocurrency is over, because they had not even begun. When the foam on the surface settles down, we will find many more surprising and wonderful things. Similarly, the dot-com bubble burst, but several years later a whole herd of unicorns appeared. :)

Seems this time ICO's are dead really since we cannot see a profitable campaigns right now and  also we cannot see a new ICO became successful on there ventures so maybe the ICO era is  dead and I still skeptical on IEO's and STO's since some of them still didn't earn success maybe due to market failure happen recently and the one who really step up are mostly listed on binance launchpad.

But bounty  hunters should really not lose there hope since there are other things that can be profitable if we spend time to learn and as you said it's really time for us to learn new things so that we can still earn on our stays here. There are online courses that we can choose and by that  we can learn skills that  can help us to earn.

But still I'm hoping that it's not really over and all of this is events happened due to the market situation and can go back when markets became more healthier.

Crypto != ICO/IEO/STOs or whatever a team told you. If that's true, then nobody would consider Bitcoin as cryptocurrency.


I believe ICO or IEO will be replaced with STO sooner or later, only because those who participated in ICO/IEO are looking for profits, and that's hard to achieve with utility tokens, especially at the beginning. Market penetration is tough because blockchain is not equal to a crypto token. Lots of solutions proposed by ICOs projects can be done without a secondary token, but they created that just because they need money.


I think the more important point from this discussion is that doing bounty hunting as a job is simply a waste of time. Legit projects won't show up every week, and in fact, I only know one project that pays me well since July for translating their docs. Other than that, I don't see any. Participate in bounties if you have free time, but never use it as your primary source of income.

When I join any bounty from BM has no reputation, I know if maybe I will not get paid. It's just a gamble for me, if I get paid and can be sold, I think it was my lucky day. I will never beg for any payment if I am not paid. Because it is part of my risk of joining any bounty from newborn projects.

I will just share a bit of my experience regarding Bounty Hunting.

When I first joined in a bounty campaign, I still remember it and it was the Paycent Bounty campaign and it became a successful one so I'm lucky at that time. The next campaign I joined is the Sirin Labs campaign which also became a successful one. After the first 2 campaigns I joined, out of the 10 campaigns that I joined maybe around 1-2 will pay me their tokens and unfortunately some doesn't have any value at all. I tried to join the translation campaign and luckily one campaign paid me and fortunately sell it (Helbiz Campaign) and the profit I got there has been used to buy my new phone.

To summarize my experience, out of the many campaigns that I joined there is a 1/10 chance that they will pay me after spending some time advertising them. Worst some of them doesn't have any value until now.

When this forum has been introduced to me by my companion, he said to me that I can get knowledge here regarding Bitcoin and crypto (he explained it to me first before saying this forum) and aside from it he said also to me that I can get some few bucks here.

I can agree with this. With faucets, there is a high chance that you can withdraw your rewards there but it is just time wasting. Here in bounty campaigns, if the campaign is a scam you will get a huge 0 in your face. Bounty hunting right now is more time wasting compare to faucets but..... still there are some bounty campaigns who are paying the bounty hunters. Its just that they are very hard to find right now because most of them ending up either a fail project or a scam project.

This is true, security tokens provide more protection for investors (and bounty hunters) from scam, but unfortunately they do not protect from the failure of the project due to team errors or unfavorable market conditions. I prefer a good utility token, but this is not so common. Security tokens are good for scaling up an already operating profitable business, perhaps in the future we will see their heyday in this direction.

Hence why it's frequently suggested to only join signature campaigns that already gained a reputation here on Bitcointalk. And yes, everyone should be skeptical when joining campaigns, but with bounty campaigns though? It's almost next to guaranteed for bounty campaigns to be either a huge waste of time due to the coins/tokens being worth next to nothing, or the campaign being a scam.

I couldn’t agree more on OP as I haven’t experience it yet. I’m participating on bounty right now, using this for exchange and first earning. I can say that there’s no harm on trying tho cos if all bounty will leave you nothing, why does others still join them? Just choose wisely

I have seen examples of this many times. Just joined the bounty, and as bounty was going on, managers say 'sir sir okay sir yes sir etc' and when bounty is completed and the time comes to payment, they disappear or say read pinned post..stay tuned..and ban people.

I hope those people who steal peoples hope will suffer so bad during their lives.

Do you think beginners can be vigilant when it comes to anything related to crypto? Probably a very small percentage can go that route, others become servants in a system that begins to exploit them because it is mostly based on projects that have no purpose and meaning, and its sole purpose is to make a profit for a small circle of people. How you can protect yourself from fraud in case of bounty campaign? You trust to someome or not, vigilant, observant or cautious is not something that makes too much sense if someone decided not to pay you after the job was done.



Maybe the term is wrong, what I think is that no one should ask for their honestly earned money, the obligation and duty of the project owner are to pay to those he hired. I post links in OP which show how bad the situation can be, after 3 or 4 audits of participants they still refuse to pay to all, it is very easy to say that someone is bot or cheater and keep more money in the pocket.

Manager's job is not to pay participants, if the owner doesn't pay, even the best manager can't do anything about it.


Exactly, after months of just bounty hunting, we see users ask why is so hard to get merit and rank up, and they just post in wrong board, where the chance of getting merit is very small or almost none. I recently saw a user who has activity almost 500, but he is still newbie, not a single merit earned.

That does seem to be quite an extended situation. I recall placing @coinlocket$ as a counter-example: During 2018 he often participated in bounties, but spent quite some time besides that creating regular posts, that were useful and merited across multiple boards. I considered him to be an interesting hybrid at the time, who is currently a Hero Member with over 1,1K merits under his belt. He is nevertheless one of the few hybrids I can recall (I think he has shifted interest sine then though, practically going off bounties).

Back into those years where bounties are still profitable where its participants hitting up thousands of dollars value of tokens that they had obtain which is somewhat a thing
that cant really be removed on someone's mind or an impression that they are hoping for even up to these days bounties without even realizing that those good old days were
already gone.Outcomes on most projects now are totally trash together with your precious time,effort and resources.

Bounty campaigns are an interesting case because they exploit people but these people keep on working. They're like that slave owner who makes his slave work hard and throws him some scraps but the slave is so miserable that he keeps on working.

Maybe bounty hunters got used to the situation and think this is how it's supposed to be? I keep on telling them in the altcoin section to ask payment in existing altcoin not some new worthless token. It's the same in India.

My advice is to look into the projects critically before embarking on their bounty.
Also platforms like bounty0x.io are of great help

Yes, unfortunately some of these bounty campaigns are scams and you are not guaranteed to get your money. A lot of these scammers also hosted signature campaigns for their projects on this forum and people posted for 30 or more days and they did not get any reward for their efforts.

You might be guaranteed a payment if the bounty/signature campaign funds are in escrow and if it is run by one of the more reputable campaign managers on this forum.

Unfortunately nothing can be done about these scams to prevent it, but people should not expect that payment is guaranteed in all of these projects.  ::)

Year 2017 is fruitful year for bounty hunters and there are so many choices of campaigns to join with but now, it's so rare  to find beautiful paying campaign since  we  cannot guarantee anything that's why we should be more creative to find new  things so that we can still earn by staying here. And maybe the bounty campaigns are  totally ends(hopefully not) so it's a must for us to get a skill to adopt on new trend.

some projects include running for more than 3 months, or even 1 year, and it ends with a red flag, it is quite painful for those who follow the project from the beginning to become a scam.

It is undeniable that so many people are expecting too much from the bounty, this may be the influence of the bounty in 2017. Unfortunately, at this time if not careful, it will be in vain.

what needs to be known to be a bounty hunter, requires great patience, and also preparation to work for free, because we cannot guarantee a project scam or not, even when we do in-depth research.

Nobody can guarantee that even with the most trusted managers unless the funds are in an escrow and with altcoin campaigns I doubt that is ever the case.
Even the bounty manager can get scammed because he is an outside party they hired just to manage the bounty. Or even better they pay the manager so the project looks legit, they get some free advertising and then they scam the bounty hunters.

I saw several high ranking member's scam there bounty participants that's why rank doesn't mean anything especially on bounty campaigns, The only thing we can do is to get ready on consequences and accept the fact that bounty campaign is pure luck and sometimes we can't get payed to some unfortunate circumstances.

And if a participant can't afford to that matters then maybe it will fit for them to join on btc paying campaigns funds of that category is on escrow.

Do you know why 2017 was good year for bounty hunters ?  The ICO concept was new at that time and most of the projects were not scams. Even though scam project did exists at that time too but not as much quantity as it is now a days. Since those ico coins listed in exchanges, the bounty hunters got good value for that.
These days almost all the ICO projects are made to make money only, hence bounty hunters will only promote the coins and should not expect much returns from these bounties.

some time ago I joined a lot of campaigns, working specifically on bounty articles. my job is quite good and always gets stake.  the work I do is always original never take others work, on average each article I do takes 2-3 hours. and did you know from many articles I worked on, only a few paid and could be cashed. now I have never done a bounty campaign, because I give up and throw away my time. too many scams and non-commitment payments.

Yes, it is very hard to earn something nowadays by bounty hunting. Enjoy your time on this forum to interact with this amazing crypto community, and to learn more useful info about cryptocurrencies, instead of wasting your time with worthless bounty campaigns. And if you want to try your luck with bounties, try to study carefully the project firstly, and make sure it is worth your effort and time.

I noticed the bounty hunter has drastically reduced when compared mid-2017 to early 2019, many stopped because of the scam project, but many also still survive, in my opinion, it is better at this time to make the bounty hunter a side job.

looks like I'll be back doing the faucet  :D

I partially agree with Lucius. However, there are some bounties in the bounties session which may be worth.

That digital gold bounty looks interesting (i took a brief look at it and I liked it), as some other projects already on exchanges. Bounty hunters should be vigilant and know which project to choose.

There are some which pay in Eth, others with tokens that are already in exchanges.

THere isn't room for everyone in good BTC payment campaigns (sadly many spammers are still in long term good payment campaigns), but there are quite a few opportunities in the bounty session.

You can't depends on that anymore. You could get tricked by the dev of project, even though you have analyze them before. You never know when a project turned scam (most of them are happened after their ICO/IEO ends).
Project which listed on website also doesn't gurantee you anything since the reviews can be faked as well

We may never see the heyday of bounty campaign again like what happen in 2017, when developers are so generous with it's participants, they always send their rewards in time, that is why early developers gain the respect of bounty hunters, but now you cannot say that anymore, developers are making it hard for bounty hunters to get their rewards first they make a lot of promise, then you promote them after that they delay payment and after you received your rewards, they locked it for months, it's really a waste of time.

You are right, it’s incorrect to row all under one comb. Even if there is nothing interesting right now, maybe something worthwhile may come up tomorrow. It is important to maintain concentration and keep abreast in search of new interesting projects. Analysis of projects with the goal of separating grains from the chaff is a useful experience in itself.

Thank you for the heads up. I am actually tempted to join bounty campaigns since I am new but I think most of them don't accept newbies to participate in the campaign. I'll probably make my way up to Jr. Member first before participating. I've got a lot to learn from this group, hope I won't be scammed or something that only wastes time.

I am sure there are some that can still be worth your time but those numbers keep falling drastically. If you take a look at the graph that akamit posted above you can see that there are less and less ICO campaigns on this forum.

I am not active in the altcoin world but one thing that could have an effect is if the bounty hunters agree not to partake in bounties that don't pay in either ETH, BTC or a stable coin. The less people take part in them the less advertisement and visibility they will receive and it will not be worth their time.

In my opinion, if you really expect a reward from the bounty campaign and making the bounty campaign the main work is clearly disappointing. Please don't misunderstand this, you can take part in a bounty campaign but don't make it your main job, because the results obtained are uncertain in value, and it's unclear when they are distributed. If the reason I participate in the bounty campaign is to support the project, so besides contributing to their token sale, I also support them in other ways.

The image I posted was a part of the entire post and the graph source was from ICO Watch.

But the original poster also mentioned,

Common sense

Those heyday were history now as nowadays there is too much of greed and mistrust and fear amongst the developers that forget about delayed payment now most of them don't pay and there are too many projects who just leave it in the mid ways once they get the desired investment and scam the investors.

For someone who has the experience, maybe the whole thing will not be a complete waste of time, but we know that most newbies have no ability to distinguish between good and bad, and it all comes down to luck. I know that everything in life carries certain risks, and everyone has the right to take those risks.

I just think that is the wrong approach to come to the forum and only do bounty campaigns. After some time many actually realize that they have earned almost nothing, and that they are still a newbie with 0 merits.

Hey man
Good day
Glad to see you

So
Do you think that all bounty programs are scam and waste of time?
I know a lot of projects where we can get some profits
Not big, but they really pay it

or what?  ???

Newbies must make sure that taking payments in newly created tokens is straight-up foolish. A developer can develop and deploy a token within minutes and so they won't have any value unless the company behind it proves worthy.
It seems very lucrative to see millions of dollars allocated for the bounty campaign in tokens but what they are not aware is that once the tokens hit the market, they are worth just fractions of what of promised to them. There goes your hard work and there's not much one can do.

I took part in Gilgam.es' signature design contest and won but the payment was in tokens, within few months the tokens didn't even hit any exchange and now even the site has become unregistered; learnt the hard way.

I totally agree.

When I discovered this forum the merit system was already implemented, and I realized that merits and a good account were the most valuable thing I could get here.

I tried to join some bounties, but I realized that participating in bounties would damage my reputation (all those proof of authentitcatiion posts), so I didn't participate any (1 or two only, which I earned a few bucks, but much more from sig campaigns).

This is absolutely true. Almost nothing shines for beginners in bounty campaigns. I think at such a pace to meet an active newby on the forum will be a great success. Even the path to the full member is now an extremely difficult task, not even all the legends can boast that they earned 100 merit on their own.

No matter how good you are in choosing the best bounty, you will eventually fail. Why not to try to find some alternatives? Such as offering some help in return of bitcoin and other worthy cryptos. Try my method, I have a skill in editing media, fixing computer and sharing knowledge, what I am doing is to join weekly campaign that pays in bitcoin, design for graphics in return of bitcoin, and troubleshooting problems in relation to computer remotely in return for bitcoin.

You might be right about joining campaigns that pay in bitcoin is better than campaigns offering some shitty tokens. But not everyone is lucky as you being a senior member when the merit system was introduced. Some members who joined the forum late have to post quality content to earn 10+ merits to join campaigns offering bitcoin. Nowadays entering a signature campaign without earning some merits is hard except for the recent Yobit & Cryptotalk Campaigns.

And not everyone has special skills like editing, designing etc to earn online. So yeah joining bounties offering tokens will be the next choice for those desperate to earn some money online.

Edit: Looks like you too have joined campaigns for tokens  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5060579.msg47908866#msg47908866). Dont preach against what you are doing.

There are not so many of those tasks or bounties being offered here so users are trying to join those that are offered, unfortunately the majority comes down to ICOs and newly created tokens hoping they will one they blossom and become a useful asset.

The Services section does have interesting offers from time to time but I can't remember I ever saw weekly campaigns for troubleshooting computer problems etc. Are you maybe referring to some freelancing sites outside of Bitcointalk?

Bounty hunters are becoming free, free workers. They become a free marketing tool for scams and lies. They refuse to pay even though they are listed on trading platforms. Delays persist, even with unpaid projects.

The hard part about being a bounty participant is after you promote such scam projects, you also ended up getting nothing in return. You will get the karma promoting things which lead to stealing people's money. we cannot deny it, I mean you promote those projects blindly, right?
That's why we need to be aware of the possible consequences. I agree with the Op's point about don't become a bounty hunter, because you may end up becoming a tool to scam people.

Not all, but in general most of them are only trying to make a profit for themselves, and in the best cases workers only get crumbs. Everyone is the master of their destiny, time and money, so he can do whatever he wants, and that includes bounty hunting.

It is my opinion that it is wrong to come to this forum just because of bounty, and ignore everything else. But I understand that some have an interest only in a particular thing, maybe because they think bounty hunting is easy money, or it is hard for them to post in English language.

But I think that even one Member rank can get more benefits on this forum by joining to some signature campaign (BTC), then to chase some tokens which may never appear on your account, or maybe quite worthless. Invest your time in building your profile/rank, and it can pay off in the long run.

You earned such amount ($800) because you're higher ranked member (Legendary). Imagine those low ranked members, what will they earn if they partake in the same bounty with you, probably (70-$100). Some money been paid at the end bounty campaign worth nothing

That's right. I  remembered when i joined a campaign and i worked hard to finish all required task and wait for the distribution of rewards i didn't get anything and they require us to have a KYC in exchange of our rewards which we feel we've been scammed.

And that is why its hard to become a bounty hunter. Some of the campaigns are really paying but you will need to make a research and of its a legit campaign.

I have seen the heyday of bounty hunting and early bounty hunters can prove that there are huge money be made in bounty hunting but the time of good projects are almost over, for two years there's no good project coming up and if there's a good project it will take time before the potential show up, if you are a big investor looking to be an early investor, then you can invest at your own risk, but if you are a new investors it's highly advisable to consider your other option.

Many people have become bounty hunters because they are poor, they do not have money to participate in investment programs.
A lot of projects release bonus programs, but I find that they are all scams. They don't pay bounty hunters, they postpone the payout time.
I agree with your point of view, don't become a bounty hunter.

I beg to disagree with your upbringings, it is always upon your hand if you're gonna go waste your time with campaigns that don't guarantee you anything cause prolly it's your responsibility to filter out campaigns that are worth participating than not. Your claim is hastily generalizing every campaign that can be found here when in fact, it just so happened that you just experienced some misfortunes then apply it on the general aspect, and technically you just can't for you might start some fuz and put legitimate campaigns at stake. SO if you've experienced some misfortunes and wasted your time with your chosen campaign, then it's not the whole forum's problem but yours to take responsibility of.

This is about bounty campaigns, not regular signature campaigns which pay in BTC, and most of them use escrow. There is no filtering as you say, how it is possible to know at all whether someone will pay you or not after you have done all that is required of you? Bounty campaigns are an ideal way to scam people and use them for personal gain.

I personally did not participate in any of the bounty campaigns, maybe closes to that was Twitter campaigns few years ago, but they pay in BTC for very easy task (2 tweets/3 retweets per week). So I am not starting this thread for the reason you think, you should read more than just title and first post, although I doubt some things would be clearer to you.

How can this be done? Some time ago bounty hunters hid behind the believe that a projects whitepaper could probably foretell what the project would be like in future time, I need not tell you they've been freed of that illusion as whitepapers have nothing to do with spoting a scam or a useless project, anyone can write beautifully about their project, but do nothing on the inside to make it a good one.

When it comes to altcoin bounties there is no filtering to decide, totally abstainance is the best option, unlike in the BTC paying campaigns were through the BM handling the project, you can already know how good the project is.

This advice right here is only good now. But if in 2017, bounties was a very big thing. So many ICOs and a good number of them actually turned out successful, at least for the few months on exchanges. Coming into Cryptocurrency with no capital to start trading, bounties was a more better way to build up some capital base. But now, everything has changed because ICOs are no longer gaining attention again.

I dare say that 2017 is the most successful year for ICOs, many ICOs succeeded until early 2018. But after that many projects also failed to develop, investors failed to get their funds back so ICO is no longer attractive.
Investors have realized that ICO is no longer profitable, they moved to IEO, which is now popular in some of the top exchanges.

We have to realize that at the moment ICO / bounty is quite different from 2017. Now it is a bounty hunter full of risk, different from 2017 which has quite a big profit. in 2018, bounties will begin to decrease in harmony with the ICO scams that have sprung up. at this time the risks that can go to bounty hunters are scams, not paid, paid cheaply, paid but tokens do not have a market, and so on. because of this many people are looking for another way, and think before starting the bounty.

in fact, some can give a good income, so on your part it was stupid to write maybe.