I've been using bitminter for a few months now and have been very happy with the service.
I just wanted to drop in and say hello and thanks. I'm a pretty technical person but this client is easily the most straightforward one I've found. I'm a small fish and between some old video cards and a few ASIC USB miners I expect to be between 1500 and 2000 MH/s but I'm having fun and appreciate how easy BitMinter makes it. Thanks!
Thanks, glad you like it, guys
ive tried out a few pools in the past week or two, but why is it with 12 hours of mining i only get .0001 from bitminter, when i usually get around .001 from places like slush and btcguild
edit: was it just bad luck with the pools yesterday?
Daily income will vary with luck, that's called variance.
In addition to that there is a delay from the time you do some work until that work is fully paid. The work you do is registered in a shift, and then that work is credited with income from new blocks we find until its shift is no longer among the 10 latest shifts. This takes about 15 hours currently. If you turn off the prepay perk then there is an additional delay having to wait for blocks to confirm, which takes about 20 hours.
So, assuming you have prepay on, if you do 24 hours of work and then look at the results, then only 9 of those hours of work have been fully paid. The remaining 15 hours of work are still receiving pay, even if you stop mining, because of how the shifts work.
If you do 12 hours of work and then look at the results, then even the first hour or work is not fully paid yet! Needless to say that is not going to look very profitable.
Also, comparing pools by how much you get paid for 12 hours of mining is pointless. The comparison becomes "which pool has the best luck today?" You can't use that data for anything. The luck a pool has today has no influence on its luck tomorrow.
More interesting: What is the fee? Is income from transaction fees paid out? Do you get namecoins? Is the reward system safe from pool hopping?