Despite the huge freedom/space for high return, crypto is a highly volatile and versatile market. However, it paves the way for several sources of earnings, listed below are different phases one can look upon for earning in crypto market. 

1: Airdrops

 2: Quests

 3: Bounties

 4: Scam/Ponzi

 5: Exploits

 6: Legit Long Investment (Stake, Contributor) 

 7: Trading

The top 5 phases are Highly effective and Efficient based on the Participant moves. Ahead of digging deeper into the top five phases of earning in the crypto market, one must determine; 

1: Are we investing our time in luck or reality? 

2: What's the probability of getting or winning?

3: How realistic it is? 

4: Are we getting used to other promotions for free?

It’s crucial because several crypto users just invest their time and energy but won't gain anything back and end up losing interest in the emerging crypto market. Interestingly, it is easy to make thousands of dollars without investing a single penny, let me brief you several programs you can opt for; 

1- Airdrops or giveaways: I participated in several airdrops or giveaways which have never asked me to like/share their social media posts. Generally, projects offer tokens under “Bounty program” for individuals against sharing or liking their posts on social media which eventually helped in the promotion. 

2- Quests - We have a huge advantage here. Using our intelligence, we can solve/play treasure hunt games which leads to making more than even S1000. For instance, Binance treasure hunt, Akropolis, RiveX Wanchain and so on. 

3- Exploits: I am not going to talk about this at all. I don't like to share anything :)

4- Scam/Ponzi: Sometimes, we can even earn high returns from the Ponzi scheme but one must be smart enough to find the availability of these projects and must also know when they should distance themselves from these projects. 

Example: Bitconnect, Devorcoin, etc.

Those who invested in these projects with their smart move and high risk made a huge amount of money and withdrawn their rewards. But, I feel sorry for those who followed early investors and got rekt by their runaway (:

5- Long term or Investment:

 If you are a long term investor, you must analyze the project in the following ways; 

1: Read their white paper and analyze how realistic it is.

2: Total money raised by the project through a private sale or ICO or IEO.

3: Is that New idea or competitor to a superior project like ETH or BTC? 

4: Observe them closely for whom they are targeting most (Clients or users) - It depends on project type.

5: Developers ( How many core/back end and front end developers involved)

6: Do they spend money more on marketing without delivery? 

7: Transparency - How transparent the team leads are 

8: Activity of development in Github and other online sources

From my experience being in crypto more than 2+years, simply follow these steps:

1: Analyse 

2: Differentiate

3: Work/Invest based on Reality, not luck 

Disclaimer: I am starting my vision and opinions, I am not giving you any financial advice and if you invest in any project, you are responsible for it. You are investing at your own risk and we cannot cover your damages. Always invest only what you can afford to lose and try to diversify your investments. Finally, do your homework and learn about the project use case, road map and team.