This is a way how to easily mine altcoins but is also usable for BTC.
In this tutorial, i'm going to use the Minergate pool since it has an easy GUI tool with no console required etc. It's very easy for a beginner.
Step 1. Go to https://minergate.com/a/e9e5ac674b9bfee8efc3b482 (non-ref: minergate.com)
Step 2. Click on sign up in the top right corner and sign up.
Step 3. Login with your new account.
Step 4. Click downloads in the bar on top of the website.
Step 5. Download the GUI miner for your operating system. (it auto detects mac/windows/linux most of the time correctly.)
Step 6. Install the miner
Step 7. Open it
Step 8. Log in (Notice that password isn't actually required for mining but nice for extra info)
Step 9. Mine the coin you want by clicking miner at the top row in the program
As you can see GPU mining is not available for me since I took the screenshots on my MacBook air without a GPU
