First post on here and although I've been using bitcoin for about a year I don't know much about it so please be gentle.
No worries. I'll help you out.
I sent a fairly small transaction last night and after 8 hours it still hasn't confirmed or been allocated to a block. It's transaction e9b744ff0a7bcf2d978933ef04bc22c25524ff04dc58d7389c94770c2d63a94a
Correct. That transaction (sending 0.109 BTC to 1AJfWTAJPqzgTbg2Dv5jgCNfESWiu5tzrd) has been successfully broadcast to the bitcoin network, but is not yet confirmed into a block.
I don't know if maybe I set the fee too low, I use blockchain.info and it sets the fees for me, I had assumed to make sure they were high enough.
blockchain.info has a reputation for creating transactions with insufficient fees. I'd suggest looking into some other wallet for future use.
In this particular case, the fee included with the transaction was 0.0001243 BTC, whereas a fee that would likely result in fast confirmation would be 0.000226 BTC. Therefore, this transaction paid 0.0001017 BTC less in fees than it probably should have if you wanted fast confirmation.
Is there anything I can do?
If you aren't in a hurry, you can just wait. There's a pretty good chance that the transaction will confirm sometime in the next day or so. If it doesn't confirm within a few days, blockchain.info typically will erase the transaction from the wallet and you'll have access to the bitcoins once again. You probably shouldn't send any new transactions until the old one is either confirmed or is removed from the wallet.
Any kind miner who'd like to mine it for me and I'll send you a small tip?
If you're willing to send a big enough tip, there are definitely mining pool operators here at bitcointalk.org that will mine it for you.
In particular there are two members,
macbook-air and
Quickseller, that both have access to add transactions directly to blocks solved by one of the currently largest pools (F2Pool).
You could try
sending one of them a message.
Getting a bit worried cos money is tight right now and I can't afford to lose it
If it doesn't get confirmed does it just float around in the ether forever or will they eventually be credited back to my wallet?
Nothing to worry about. Until the transaction is confirmed, the bitcoins have never actually left the control of your wallet. Your wallet software may choose not to include those bitcoins in the balance it is showing you, because the wallet software knows it created the transaction and it assumes it will confirm eventually. However, the wallet can simply choose to forget about the transaction and show those bitcoins back in your balance (blockchain.info typically does this after a few days). If it does that, then you'll have an opportunity to create a new transaction using those bitcoins (and hopefully the wallet will pay a better transaction fee).
