The most common question in mining is where the coins went. You have been running for days and the wallet is still empty. Almost every time, the rig is working and the pool is holding your balance until it is large enough to send.
Pools do not pay out every share.
They hold your balance until it crosses a minimum payout threshold, then send it on a schedule.
On a small rig that can take days.
So an empty wallet tells you nothing on its own. You have to look at the pool.
Open the start file or flight sheet you launch the miner with.
You are looking for two things.
The pool address you are connecting to.
Your wallet address, which is what the pool tracks you by.
Copy the wallet address.
Open the pool's website.
Find the miners or workers lookup and paste your address in.
Every pool puts this somewhere different. Click around until you find the box that takes an address.
Your rigs appear, one row per worker.
Each worker shows a reported hashrate and how long ago it checked in.
The check in time is the number that matters.
A worker seen 28 seconds ago is mining right now.
A worker last seen 13 minutes ago has stopped, and it will drop off the list shortly.
A hashrate figure next to a stale timestamp is history, not a live reading. That combination fools people into thinking a dead rig is fine.
Pools split your balance into immature and pending.
Immature is credited but not yet confirmed.
Pending is confirmed and waiting on the payout threshold.
Find the minimum payout, usually stated on the pool's front page.
Compare it against your pending balance.
A pending balance of 0.57 against a minimum of 1 means everything is working and you are waiting.
Pools also pay on an interval, anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, so crossing the threshold does not mean instant payment.
Some pools let you set your own payout threshold in your settings.
Getting paid more often sounds strictly better and is not.
Worker checking in and a growing pending balance means you are mining. Wait.
Worker missing from the pool entirely means the miner is not connecting. Go look at the rig.
Worker present but hashrate far below what the card should do means it is running and misconfigured, which is a different problem from not mining at all.