Keep in mind that the Stacker News wallet is centralized, so it's a good idea to take control of your sats by connecting your own wallet. Also, Stacker News is moving towards a decentralized, self custody model. The timeline is unclear, but you might as well get a head start.

Regarding fees, I have been both zapping and receiving sats to my own node for over a week now. It's pretty seamless, and I don't pay fees because I opened a channel on my node to stacker news. You may opt for an even simpler solution that might cost you a few sats. It's your choice.

To send and receive sats directly, there are various ways to attach a wallet and node to SN:

Learn more on why you should attach your wallet here and here.

I am a beginner in S.N and as a weekly task everything I accumulate in the week I must give a report and withdraw it to my blue wallet.. I almost always withdraw an average of 4000 or 5000 sats and most of the time they don't charge me any commission.. and I think that's great.!!

When we are non-custodial, those attachments will allow you to send and receive real money.

When sending, you pay for fees to SN's node.

When receiving, SN pays the fees from SN's node to your node (but only to a reasonable level else you'll receive cowboy credits).

The whole point of attached wallets is that SN never custodies funds. It's up to you whether the wallet you attach is a custodial wallet provided by someone else or a non-custodial wallet.

Attaching a wallet gives SN the information you provide about your attached wallet. In addition, it gives SN anything SN can learn through that information (e.g. your node's pubkey).

However, no one else but SN sees this information. When people zap your attached wallet, SN hides your node's pubkey from them. They see SN's node pubkey.