How to Spend Your Steemit Earnings

I get asked this a lot. How do I spend the money I earn on Steemit? This is from people that often have not signed up here yet and are inquisitive as to how it works before doing so. That is understandable. You don’t want to earn a ton of money and not have any access to it. I get that. That is why I am writing this guide, to help the people that are not sure how to spend their earnings here on Steemit. There are surprisingly, many ways to do so.

Peerhub, your Steem powered online marketplace

This is one I keep meaning to sell on. Basically, Peerhub is like eBay, Craigslist, etc. but without the annoying fees of PayPal or credit card processing fees. Anyone can sign up to buy or sell stuff. Peerhub uses “trust” as their rating – the more involved with Peerhub you are, the higher your trust rating is.

Now, how do they avoid those annoying fees of PayPal and credit cards? By allowing members to buy and sell using Steem Backed Dollars (SBD). How cool is that? No exchange fees, no fees to PayPal to receive, or add, money. Pretty awesome if you ask me.

With Peerhub you can accept Steem Dollars, PayPal, and cash for items you are selling. Kind of nice having that kind of freedom available.

I have one listing up right now, a Legend of Zelda 3D piece made of Perler beads if anyone is interested.

Sign up for Peerhub here.

Steem Files

This is a digital files service that you can upload tings like books, art, pictures, etc to and set a price in Steem Backed Dollars. When others find your work and like it, they can purchase it for the price you have set using SBD’s from their account. Pretty cool.

I have a couple of gaming magazines that I plan on uploading here and seeing how they do. Keep an eye on this one as I just signed up (requires some details from Steemit account) and cannot upload any files because there is “no space available”. I am not sure if I am missing something or if the available space they have is taken up by members already.

Sign up for Steem Files here.

Steemarket

If you are an artist, painter, drawer, photographer, etc then you will want to check out Steemarket. Here you can list your artwork and sell it for Steem, Steem Backed Dollars, other crypto currencies, or even your every day cash (no matter what country you are in). The choice is yours.

Be prepared for a slightly complicated listing process but the buying side is straight forward which is great.

Sign up for Steemarket here.

Cashing out to Bitcoin

Okay, you are probably not interested in buying anything on Peerhub or Steem Files and just want to get Bitcoin, or another crypto, and spend that. For the sake of this article we are going to stick with Bitcoin (the steps are the same for most any crypto).

First, you need a wallet. I suggest using Coinbase for a few reasons. One, I like having the Shift debit card so I have access to my Bitcoin in “fiat” money immediately and the fees for this are only whatever is charged where I get the cash. If I use an ATM, there are fees, but if I use my Shift card at say, Walmart as a debit then there are no fees, and I can get cash back for free (unlike an ATM).

If you don’t have a Coinbase account, please use my referral link here - https://www.coinbase.com/join/52a916a81e652302db000310

Using my referral code will get us both $10 when you buy/sell $100 worth of Bitcoin. How cool is that?

Once you have Coinbase setup you need to get some Bitcoin into it for that handy Shift card.

Exchanges are key

I used to prefer Changelly but after a transfer that took almost a month (and still cost outrageous fees) I have changed over to Blocktrades who have done well for me recently. With Blocktrades I have paid minimal fees and had my Bitcoin ready in Coinbase within an hour – quite fast for how crowded the Bitcoin transfer process is as of this writing.

Blocktrades is straight forward. First, I suggest signing up and creating an account, so you can have tracking of your transactions available. Once you do that you simply click on the words under “send” on the left side of the screen and pick Steem or Steem Dollars. Then pick under receive the currency you want – in this case, Bitcoin. Then select how much you want to send and you will be given an approximate amount in Bitcoin you will receive. Blocktrades offers other cryptocurrencies but Coinbase only supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash at this time.

Under those two boxes is a “Your receive address” this is found in your Coinbase account under the accounts button. Make sure to get your Bitcoin receive address.

Copy that address over to Blocktrades then click the “Get Deposit Address” to go to the next step.

Here you will receive a memo and be told what account to send your Steem or Steem Dollars to. Copy that memo and go to your Steemit wallet. Click on the desired currency you are sending (Steem or Steem Dollars) and then click “transfer”. This is where you will put in the account name you were told to send to and paste that memo.

Once you complete this step, you can go to your Coinbase account and watch the money arrive. The transaction will show “pending” till there have been a certain number of confirmations on the Bitcoin Blockchain, at which time the money is released to you and is spendable.

If you have the Shift card, available at Shift Payments’ website, you can now go spend your Bitcoin just like you would use a Visa debit card drawn on your bank. This means, online or in store if Visa is accepted there.

Anywhere Visa is accepted

At this point you are done. You have your money and can do whatever with it. If Steem or Steem Dollars go up in value (more than you sold them for) then you can always use Blocktrades to trade back in – if done right, you can turn a profit doing this.

But I want to spend Bitcoin and support the Bitcoin ecosystem

Glad you want to do that. There are a few places that accept Bitcoin and that is great. Here are some of my favorites, though keep in mind that this list is FAR from complete and comprehensive.

First up, Microsoft. Yep, you can spend Bitcoin with Microsoft. You add it to your account through this process and then can buy stuff in Windows Store, on your Xbox 360 or Xbox One, etc. Pretty awesome.

Expedia is a reliable source for cheap hotels and such. Guess what, they accept Bitcoin. Yep, you can use Bitcoin to pay for services you need in a hurry and on the cheap.

If you need computer parts, you know about Newegg. Now you can pay with Bitcoin for your parts or whole new computer. Supporting the Bitcoin community has never been easier.

Not a fan of Expedia? Then check out Bitcoin.Travel. I just found out about this site as I was trying to find an excellent rate to fly my wife home from the North East United States before a snow storm hits. The rates are slightly lower than Expedia (about $5 to $10) for plane tickets and I can pay in Bitcoin. Awesome.

If you have Dish Network you can pay your satellite bill with Bitcoin, did you know that? For me, that means they beat out DirecTV already though I use Comcast (too many trees around my home).

You can spend your Bitcoin at the online store for Lionsgate Films as you pick up movies like 47 Meters Down, Leatherface, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day among many others.

Got any gamers reading this? JJGames.com will give you a 5% discount for paying with Bitcoin! They have a wide selection of classics too so it should be easy to find some cool games to add to your collection.

SpendBitcoins.com is a search engine for stores that accept the popular cryptocurrency. Just type in what you want and stores that have it pop up with links directly to the product page. Easy as earning on Steemit.

Other places that accept Bitcoin

Shopify list of 75 places

Forum FULL of store links

There are over 100,000 stores that accept Bitcoin today. That is a major accomplishment for the cryptocurrency that is still quite badmouthed by the mainstream media. If you know of a cool store to spend Bitcoin with, let everyone know in the comments so we can support them.

While researching this article I learned that there is a Bitcoin ATM in a store I frequent a few times a month – never knew. They don’t have the Bitcoin logo in a window or anything, going to have to take them one and see if they want to put it up. We cannot support them if we don’t know they offer it.

Steem on my friends.