Making money using an app or program sounds good. Pretty good, actually, and even more so if it’s a browser we’re going to use for a few hours a day for sure. This is what Brave browser offers us: use me, let me send you some ads in the form of notifications and in return, I reward you with some tokens called BAT that you can spend on certain things..

Not bad. But the author has some experience using apps for money and getting frustrated so I’ve been using Brave for the past few days to see if it’s possible to save a few bucks from the browser and if so, how much and what can be spent. Join me on this adventure.

How do brave rewards work?

First of all, we need to understand how this reward system works. Brave allows us to configure the browser to send us so-called advertisements. bold ads. These ads are “based on your interests inferred from your browsing behavior. No personal data or browsing history is transferred outside of the browser.”

These ads may be sponsored images on the browser home screen and local push notifications. They’re available in both desktop and mobile apps, but we’ve only used the desktop version these days.

Sponsored image on home screen.

Example of notification sent by Brave.

They are not enabled by default, but must be enabled manually from the program settings. By doing this we can configure how many ads we want to see per hour, be up to ten ads and what we chose.

Brave rewards us with BAT when we see these ads. key attention markers. BAT is basically some kind of cryptocurrency It is based on Ethereum, but they see it as a “utility token” from Brave that “can be used to directly measure, exchange and verify attention”. For more technical information on the token, FAQ here and whitepaper here.

The basic operation that puts the techniques aside and reduces all this to worldly life is as follows: you see ads, you get BAT, you accumulate them like loyalty points and exchange them for prepaid gift cards or use them to tip verified creators. You can also use them to pay with Gemini Earn and Gemini Pay, buy NFT or buy things in web3 apps.

And how much do you earn?

And now that we know how this system works, let’s talk about experience. Brave says the ads are based on our interests, relative to our browsing behavior, which doesn’t match the ads I’ve seen during this time: cryptocurrencies, metaverse, NFTs, web3 apps… None of these issues interest or consume me. In fact, I don’t remember seeing a single ad related to my interests.

Some announcements received on July 28.

I started the experiment on June 14th, and since then I’ve been using Brave all the time (except for the two weeks in July when I’m on vacation). The browser is configured to send ten announcements per hour, i.e. ten push notifications with their respective audio alerts. By 30 June I had earned 4,250 BAT which I cashed out on 8 July.. Come on, I won in 15 days. $1.74 To change.

In the last 30 days and after receiving 214 ads, I have earned 3,297 BAT, which I will collect on August 8, which is $1.35 at current exchange rate. They will be added to the existing 4,250 BAT and then I will have $3.09. It’s true that I don’t suffer from using apps that promise to make money, but the truth is that since June 14, using the browser for seven to eight hours a day, making three bucks… not much. .

Win at Brave.

What can I do with these tokens that I have stored there? I can tip it to a verified creator (e.g. some Twitter user or a youtuber), Switch to a Gemini wallet to convert them to something else like ETH and then euros; After creating and verifying an account with Uphold, I can exchange them for gift cards or save them through the TAP platform (a card from Amazon, La Casa del Libro, Nike or Zalando).

Little money, little reward, how boring 1) the claim system and 2) **** so get ten notifications per hour mobile only, Slack, mail, etc. from the browser where daily notifications should be added. Does this “attention economy” sound familiar to you? The brave reward system is a very good example.

problem or advantage depending on your point of view, you learn to ignore notifications. It’s painful to hear notifications every two or three in the first days, but over time you get used to it and eventually you ignore it. Moreover, in my case it’s even easier, because I disabled the vast majority of PC notifications, so my brain learned that notification sound = Brave announcement = completely ignore it.

I get it but it’s not worth it

After testing this Brave system, I came to some conclusions that I think are worth sharing. First thing, I keep it as a browser. More agile, efficient and powerful than Edge, Chrome, Firefox and other browsers I have tried. I like the way it works and after this experiment I will use it as my main browser.

The second is Brave’s purpose seems noble to me, but inefficient. Brave shares some of its revenue with users (70%, they say on their website) through this reward system. For using their software, I think it’s a good idea to reward the user (by viewing ads) in exchange for helping the software stay. The problem, as we’ve seen, is that the nuisance/reward ratio isn’t worth it.

Now, if it’s not a drama to have notifications nagging you every few minutes and spending time on the browser (come on, you use it as your main browser), you will definitely have a piquillo in a few months to exchange it for a gift card to help you buy something. At least it’s free. It’s slow, inefficient and annoying, but it’s free.