Passively Earn Cryptocurrency From Your Blog or Website

Introduction

I recently switched my default web browser from Chrome to Brave, and I am enjoying the experience so far. Brave is a privacy-first web browser that blocks trackers and ads by default. It has several excellent components, such as a built-in Tor browser, a Crypto wallet and my favourite feature, the ability to earn BAT tokens (Basic Attention Tokens - A form of crypto) from browsing the web.

The "Basic Attention Token" (BAT) is a cryptocurrency token based on Ethereum, built on the ERC-20 standard. Advertisers must purchase BAT to show ads on the browser, which gets rewarded to users of the Brave Rewards platform. Users can "cash out" their rewards to real money using an exchange or tip other users for their content.

In this post, I will explain how to become "Brave verified." Being verified notifies Brave users who visit your blog or website that you are accepting tips. You will also receive rewards from users who have set their reward preference to Auto-Contribute, an automatic way to support publishers and content creators. Take advantage of your slice of the pie!

Sign up to Brave Rewards

First, you will need to sign-up to receive Brave Rewards by signing up for the Brave Creator Programme. You can find the website here. Enter your email and verify your account. You will be sent a secure login link via your email.

Once logged in, you should see the following dashboard:

It is important to note to collect your BAT payment, you will need to connect a wallet through either Gemini or Uphold. Check the support documentation here to ensure that the wallet you chose supports your region. In short, Gemini only supports the United States and Uphold supports most of the world.

You will need to click the + Add Channel button to verify our blog or website. In the Add Channel pop-up and click Website.

Verify Domain

You will get prompted to enter the domain details of your website. For my blog, I would enter tomling.dev and click Continue. You will also have the option to "Opt-in" for Brave to serve ads on your website. "Brave shares 70% of the revenue from our new privacy-preserving Publisher Ads with content providers. The project is currently in development and being tested with select partners. Brave's Publisher Ads are available on an opt-in only basis, and you can cancel at any time. There is no obligation to sign up."

We are nearly there! Now we need to choose a verification method to prove that you are the domain owner. You have two options to do this:

Brave recommends that you use the trusted file method to validate. This option is more suitable for those who can drop a file quickly into their web server's directory or those who don't have direct access to their DNS settings. You will need to create a folder called .well-known and place the file there. If you did everything correctly, you should be able to click the verify button and have everything confirmed.

I use a CI/CD pipeline to deploy my blog through GitHub actions; adding a TXT record to my website's DNS was far more straightforward.

To do this, you will need to find your provider's DNS settings. In my case, I use Google Domains. On the custom records setting, add a TXT record with an empty hostname (places the record on the main domain), and for the Data, paste the value provided by Brave. Here are my settings:

Make sure you save your changes. It's time to verify! Head back to the Brave Creators website and click Verify DNS Record. Note: This may take a few minutes to several hours to become available for verification, depending on where your DNS is hosted.

It may take a few days for your website to display as being verified. You can check the status by visiting your website and looking for the blue checkmark. You may need to click the refresh button to display the latest status.

You are Verified! 🌟

Congratulations! You are now a verified Brave Creator and ready to receive BAT from users who browse your blog or website using the Brave browser. Now get out there and start tipping some creators.

If you have questions, contact me using my Twitter handle @tomlingdev. If you enjoyed my content, consider tipping me using BAT 😊.

If any of my blog posts have been of help to you, and you are feeling generous, don't hesitate to buy me a coffee ☕.