Because crypto currency is just another money, you have to manage it and keep your eye on expenses It is good to know what type of fees you have to pay and why it is necessary. Here I'd like to cover Pool fees.
If you are solo miner you don't have to pay any fee to get your coins if you have found a block. However due to the difficulty increase most of us should use mining pool in order to get more or less stable and short-term income. Pools however have some expenses, which should be paid. There are three type of fees associated with the pool:
- Pool fee - This is around 2-3% on smaller pools and around 1% on big pools. This is not the rule however. Sometimes this fee can be 0%. This fee is set by the pool and changes by its owners. It is taken every time your account is credited by block reward.
- Donation - This is a percent you can set by yourself and it is 0% when you just created your pool account. I guess it has different meanings depending on the size of Pool fee. If Pool fee is 2-3% on small pools or 1-2% on big pools, then donation is more like your gratitude for something special about this pool, e.q.it is very stable, finds blocks quickly etc. If the Pool fee is 0% or 1% on the small pool (it's total hashrate is small), than donation is more like necessity for the pool future existance, so you have to set it to some value you consider appropriate. This type of fee is also takend during reward process for the found block.
- Transaction fee - this is a fee, which is taken for money transfer outside the pool - to your wallet for example. There are two types of transactions: automatic and manual. Fees are also different. Automatic transactions present on every pool I've ever seen. This is the type of transaction which will occur automatically if the ammount of money on your pool account is bigger then certain threshold value. This value you can set by yourself in account details. Automatic transactions can be cheaper then manual, but not always. There are pool where they are the same. Manual transaction is the type of transaction, where you set the ammount of money to transfer and press a button to do this. The money will be transferred to Payment Address you have entered in Account details. Transaction fee is not a percent, but fixed amount. This means that transferring bigger ammount of money at once will cost you less, than smaller ammounts in its percentage equvalent.