Welcome. I'm pretty new myself, just a couple of days
Got any examples of things you have done before?

keep up the good work :3
no problem, ethical hacking and security diagnostics is one of my hobbies. I work on web development with a small team and doing this kind of things is also useful for me. I always learn new methods of security breaching and how to patch them which is knowledge I can put into practice for my own work.

Well there are many ways.
But mostly depends on how much are you willing to spend in building your userbase.
Buying followers: from a business standpoint is not that out of the question. It is easier for someone to follow you if you have more followers. (Its like sheep, sheep goes where the other sheep goes)
Get referring sites: Participate in forums, in Facebook groups, Facebook pages, youtube channels and always point to your twitter page letting people know what kind of content are you going to offer.
Make Events/Contests: Users love to receive and never give. If you can mask that with smart spending, you will have users at the palm of your hand. Having contests weekly even if it is little investments like 30$/month
Adwords: Advertise your twitter page with adwords. You need to know specific keywords associated with your website and Look up a little into SEO
Make a website: In parallel to twitter you can make your own website and link a twitter feed on it. It will be easier to link than your twitter and cam make it more appealing with in-community rewards. Also you can profit from ads in your website if you want to.

I just tried cracking it and I can confirm that it is possible, yet very very complicated.
you can easily get the session secret by using AYAH.sessionSecret().value
(you should look into making variables use strict by placing the whole javascript inside a function. that will make variables not accessible from the console. )
anyways, the correct validation is encrypted (which could be decrypted and elaborate a script to generate it) also with a simple scanner I managed to know the ajax calls needed in those games.
For the most part your are very secure. This captcha haves many many levels of security and even a DDOS protection on their websockets server(validated by session).
Still I recommend you to place a server sided cap on which you can no longer ask for btc from the faucet.
As I already mentioned the verification is actually on the client side and then the program sends a hashed string to the websockets server in order to verify the transaction. (if the game is correct)
this can be automated and a skilled hacker could break this system in a couple of days.
The system is already pretty secure, a cap would make it infallible.

aside, are you a human is not as antithetical as the previous one, but it is way more secure so good job on the change.

The consumer version is just a couple of months away. I really recommend you to be patient and wait.
(the consumer version will be 1080p)

Oh com'on this has to stop. I hate seeing there are so many scammers using paypal like that.
It makes us (People who don't have other medium of trading USD without abusive fees of over 10%) trading impossible.
I tried trading twice to buy bitcoin, and both times the sellers refunded the payment not giving me the bitcoins because it was risky for they.

People is too scared of using paypal now because of how many scammers there are.. I pretty much resigned on buying bitcoins with paypal.
I'm going to sell services and participate in contests to get some bitcoins, since it is the only way for me to get some.

I just submitted this web application.
http://btca.frikicorp.com/
I just finished it a couple of minutes ago specially for this contest

Its an actual Humble bundle Rule and it is in the ToS.
That's why they stopped giving out the keys. people were not respecting the ToS.
They now have a system that links accounts with the Steam API so there is no need for keys anymore.
However, they do allow you to gift them. (which is still hurtful for the devs, but profiting from it is much worse)

Does it have to be in Visual Basic ? (I'm asking because maybe you want the source to be in Visual Basic so that you can tweak it later)
if not, can I use C# ? Or if you want to I can even make it a web application.
my advise for your database is a VPS instead of godaddy. personally I use ramnode

I wouldn't call it a portfolio, but I put some of my works in my deviant art here
I mostly do Web development and my team and I are going to make the portfolio website after we finish 2 big jobs we are in.

glad to hear that, some website have capchas so difficult that I have to try a couple of times before getting them correctly. And I'm not a robot D: !

Its an illustration, as a freelancer I usually charge in between 30$~100$ depending on how much time it takes me to do the illustration.
Do you have a hurry to get this project done? I might be able to put some time in it tomorrow or this Saturday.
(Might even go for less than 30$, it is fairly straight forward )

But SweetCaptcha is verty aesthetic and user friendly. I really recommend you to keep it instead of using one of the well known ugly captchas. Implementing fixes for the problems reported in this thread shouldn't be hard at all.

I just tested it and made a bot capable of spamming the faucet with requests.
Kudos on the unconfirmed/confirmed system which slows down bots, yet I still think a server sidded cap is necessary because I made BTC 0.001942 in like 10 minutes which is more than 0.288BTC/day out of a single machine.
This could hurt you a lot.
(I'm not going to withdraw this btc, feel free to pm me and I'll give you the account's key so that you can delete the account)

Well I'm sorry, even with a proxy I can't find a gift option.
It used to be on the send payment form. gift or product.
There is no option anymore.

I have a Premier - verified  paypal account
Please if interested email me (PMs have a limit per hour and can really be stressful to get in that cap while in negotiations)
My email: gogodr@hotmail.com

exceeded the limit of 5PM/hour

it looks like there is no gift option in paypal anymore

I'm willing to pay the fees though.

its so hard to get people's trust, I understand it.
But this costs me a lot too. Each failed transaction that gets refunded means money that I can't use for a couple of days.. banks in my country are really quick when giving money but very slow when receiving...

Points taken, give me a couple of days and I'll refine your logo.
I'm right with the vintage style right? Most companies of modern technologies like bitcoin usually go for the minimalist/metro/web 2.0  style.
I'm guessing that for the web design you want something more outside of the box. Implementing that vintage style into a website can be a little more challenging and it is not common, but it is possible.
This Saturday I'll grab my tablet and refine it, I hope that's fine with you.
I apologize too, I took your comment a little on the defensive side which was not proper.

Lets see, I'm sorry but I don't really find sense in what you are saying.
I suppose you want something like this:
BTC/USD
BTC/RUR
USD/RUR

Check both markets on both currencies

Market 1:
Buy price of BTC/USD == Market 1 BTC/USD
Buy price of BTC/USD * Sell Price of USD/RUR == Market1 BTC/RUR
Market 2:
Buy price of BTC/RUR / Buy Price of USD/RUR == Market2 BTC/USD
Buy price of BTC/RUR == Market2 BTC/RUR
...
and so on checking also selling price and calculating fees, in order to check if there is possibility of profit.
the idea is pretty good, but the fees are not really that friendly.
Just at glance, I don't think you will be able to turn profit like this, but I might be wrong.

anyways, if on further investigation a bot like this can turn a profit. 0.1BTC is way too little for what you are asking.

I really suggest you to limmit the get free bitcoins to a certain ammount.
like primedice does. If your balance is over a certain quantity, you can't ask for more free bitcoins.
Otherwise, making a bot for that captcha is not really that hard and the ammount of bitocoin you give might be tempting to make a bot for it.

No, I did not draw the phoenix myself but I do work as a graphic designer and I do care about the origin of my designs.
In this particular case the phoenix illustration is from public domain which means that can be used as derivative with no royalty fee and what I did was to blend it with the bitcoin logo and replicate the vintage style into the bitcoin logo as well as lightly edit the illustration in order to fit on top of the circle. I thought this style was what you were asking for with the examples on your first post and the drawing of a raising phoenix with a sun behind.
I can't help but to feel a little attacked by your comment. I'm sorry, Design and art are two different things. I designed a logo for you, I didn't draw it.
The process of design is gather resources, compose, refine and showcase. And the first one is one of the most time consuming process.

source of the phoenix illustration:
Linked through here
Sourced from here
which sourced the illustration from the book (Westwood, J.O. The Cabinet of Oriental Entomology. 1858)
-------------------
if you want to keep an exact copy of your illustration, I can refine the drawing and make it a logo with the same ink shading style of the one I submitted, but it will take me some more time than just a couple hours.