user13077: I am unable to earn money from solving blocks, but I think I could make money from transaction fees. The issue is that pools hide the transaction fees from the miners. The miners earn the solved blocks. How would I go about processing transactions on my own?
This will satisfy two goals:

earn transaction fees
any transactions I perform, I can process myself


user12809: The short answer is: You still have to mine a block, the transaction fee is added to the block reward.
The detailed answer: The idea of transaction fees is to supply miners with enough BTCs so the can keep on mining blocks. Because we keep all transactions on the block chain, it's important for the BTC ecosystem to have a big miner community. Eventually the prize for solving a block will drop, but the number of transactions will increase in such a way, it'll add sufficient number of BTCs to the miners.
After a point, BTC price will hopefully high enough to give miners a incentive to continue mining.

user11253: The only way to collect money from transaction fees is to solve blocks; they are one and the same thing. The reward for being the first to successfully mine a block is:

the coinbase reward (currently 25 BTC), and
any transaction fees for the transactions included in the block

There is no way to separate these two.

13077: <p>I am unable to earn money from solving blocks, but I think I could make money from transaction fees. The issue is that pools hide the transaction fees from the miners. The miners earn the solved blocks. How would I go about processing transactions on my own?</p>

<p>This will satisfy two goals:</p>

<ol>
<li>earn transaction fees</li>
<li>any transactions I perform, I can process myself</li>
</ol>
 12809: <p><strong>The short answer is:</strong> You still have to mine a block, the transaction fee is added to the block reward.</p>

<p><strong>The detailed answer:</strong> The idea of transaction fees is to <strong>supply miners with enough BTCs</strong> so the can keep on mining blocks. Because we keep all transactions on the block chain, it's important for the BTC ecosystem to have a big miner community. Eventually the prize for solving a block will drop, but the number of transactions will increase in such a way, it'll add sufficient number of BTCs to the miners.</p>

<p>After a point, BTC price will hopefully high enough to give miners a incentive to continue mining.</p>
 11253: <p>The only way to collect money from transaction fees is to solve blocks; they are one and the same thing. The reward for being the first to successfully mine a block is:</p>

<ul>
<li>the coinbase reward (currently 25 BTC), and</li>
<li>any transaction fees for the transactions included in the block</li>
</ul>

<p>There is no way to separate these two.</p>
