Compare volume to cash

I recently took my first steps towards becoming involved in forex trading and have been paper trading Sniper as a way to get me started.In MT4 you have to select a volume when placing a trade eg 0.02,0.03 etc.What does this mean in hard cash?Spread betting appears to be so much simpler as we just stake an ammount we choose per pip without the need to understand leverage.The very word leverage scares me as it seems to be linked often to reasons why people lose large ammounts of cash.Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.Jcop

I don't use MT, but I'm thinking a 0.01 is a micro lot, or 1000 units of the base currency. The base is the first one listed in the pair you're trading (e.g. GBP for GBP/USD). To match that up with what you're used to in spreadbetting, you simply define your trading size such that the pip value is equal to what you want. For example, with EUR/USD the pip value of a micro lot is $0.10.

Thanks RT for that speedy reply and simple explanation.