In this approach, you don't put any actual money into the effort of getting skins. This is more difficult, but obviously cheaper. All of your skins will first come from drops or possibly hand outs. You will have to do a lot of trading using this tactic. JUST REMEMBER, THIS WILL TAKE A LOT OF TIME! (The community market and trading sites will be your life!)

THE BEGINNING: You may not get as much attention as those trading thousands of dollars of skins, but you will get attention at some point. If anyone offers you cases in exchange for skins, don't accept! If you don't want to spend any money, cases won't be of any use, unless you are ok with just selling them for a miniscule profit to buy more skins without real money. Try to figure out the prices of skins before you trade them. Aim for a profit on the skins. But remember, there is a tax on the skins in the market, so figure out what your PROFIT will be. Once you start getting out of Industrial and Consumer and into Mil-spec and Restricted, the trading will probably go faster.

THE MIDDLE: You have gained quite a few skins, mostly Restricted and Mil-spec, and maybe a few Classified's or, if you got lucky, a Covert weapon! Now you should get more serious, learn trade values, float value, general prices, margins, inflations, demand, etc of items. You should probably start getting into community trade servers, seeing as it it a great way to trade skins and, better yet, make connections. You may trade with one person, become friends, and have a strong connection for trading.

THE "END": You now have tons of skins, your inventory is a shining heaven of Covert, Factory New, Stat-Trak weapons. You may have even aquired a knife. At this point, you probably are satisfied with your inventory, have some of the best skins for every weapon. So either continue to just make money or, just enjoy your spoils.

In this approach, you will either fully pay for your skins, or sometimes put some money in your account but also use trading and the market to your advantage. This won't take as much time, depending on how much money you put in, but will still take some time to aquire a sizeable inventory.

THE BEGINNING: You may start off buying a few skins, mostly Mil-specs, maybe a few cents each, like 10-20, just so you have something to go off of. At that point, you can get right into trading and marketing. A lot of Mil-specs, even though they arent that rare, are some of the best looking skins in the game, hence their high demand. (BTW only some Mil-specs have a high demand, not all of them. No skin fanatic wants your Field-tested Negev Terrain..., only scrubs want that skin). So get some nice looking skins, you can get quite a few for a low price. Then, if you want to trade, you should trade in bulk. Bunch them all together for a few better gun skins. Again, make sure you check for a PROFIT, not just price increase.

THE MIDDLE / END: You probably are already sufficient in skins, using Coverts like chump change, and laughing at Mil-spec skins. You probably already have a knife or six, due to the high amount of AK47 skins you sold in bulk to a guy who gets off to the sound of an AK first bullet headshot. Once a knife is acquired, you can bunch it with some other nice skins, to "upgrade" you knife.

THE END: You literally have everything you even wanted skin-wise. You have a Stat-trak Factory New AWP Asiimov and a Stat-trak Factory New AK47 Aquamarine Revenge. You also show off your Stat-trak Factory New Karambit Marble Fade. There is literally no more point in trading, so you, just like the free approach, enjoy your spoils, and the game.