June 8th, 2013. My financial situation changed quite a bit so I decided that I was not going to spend any more "real" money on games. At the time, I had 646 games and this was more than enough that I couldn't justify using my bank account or credit cards on buying more.

I decided that from that point forward I would use "free" online money to buy games instead. This was also an experiment to see how viable this method was; after all, what did I have to lose?

The result? I recently cracked the 1000 game mark, obtaining a total of 368 new games in the span of 1 year!


In case anyone was curious, in a similar situation or simply doesn't have the money for game - these are my current methods:

  • Cards. Steam Trading cards are a staple in my virtual cashflow. Having a decent amount of games to start off with helped quite a bit in having lots of games to obtain card drops from. Making sure you always have more cards coming in is key, more on that in a bit. Here's an idea of how much cards can earn you.

  • TremorGames. Tremor is useful in two ways when going the "online money" route. First and most obviously, the tasks earn a virtual currency that can be used to buy games. Pretty simple, trade some time for some games like any other job. The key to getting the most bang for your buck, however, is taking advantage of their bundle splits. They buy most bundles and allow you to cherry pick the games you want from them. This means you can use it to only grab the 1-2 good games from a bundle or to grab only the games that have cards! Keeping a constant influx of card dropping games into your library helps a ton. Note: Some users have noted that depending on your country, you may have more or less offers available.

  • Playfire Rewards. It doesn't get much easier than this. Play your games, get GMG credit to buy more games!

  • FreeMyApps. So easy and simple, it's hard to believe it works. Download free apps to your phone and get rewarded with Amazon gift cards. A $5 card is earned so fast that I always have more Amazon credit than I know what to do with. Note: Some users have noted that depending on your country, you may have more or less offers available.

  • Apptrailers. Similar to FreeMyApps, except here you watch videos on your phone. Easy to just glance over, hit a video and look away - repeat as much as you'd like. Pays in Paypal which is very useful for buying bundles. Note: Some users have noted that depending on your country, you may have more or less offers available.

  • Trading. Trading with other users can really help stretch that dollar. Use the money from card sales to buy TF2 keys instead of games on Steam. $10 games can often be obtained for 3 Keys, which works out to about $7 when buying from the Steam Market. As well, your spare bundle keys can often be traded for Trading Cards, further boosting your total card sale profits.

  • Patience. Never buy anything that isn't 75% off or more. Skip the BTAs in bundles, the BTA games will show up in the $1 tier of some other bundle down the road. Pinch every penny, when earning them comes much slower you need to really make every dollar count :)


And that's about it. I want to stress as well that I spend about 5-10 minutes a day on the things listed above (besides Playfire, which I don't count as "work"), this isn't a full time job by any means :) Do note, some users have noted that depending on your country, you may have more or less offers available from a few of these services. These are just the methods that worked for me, your mileage may vary. Thanks for reading (if you bothered to do so) and I hope I might have helped at least one of you get some new games! As one last thing, here is a Wayback Screenshot of my account 1 year ago and a link to my profile as it appears now!

https://web.archive.org/web/20130311060816/http://steamcommunity.com/id/ageofarmageddon

http://steamcommunity.com/id/ageofarmageddon/

Feel free to ask any questions below! I'm happy to answer them :)

10 years ago*

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And you're giving out a lot of that on here too. It's incredible.

I remember that a long time ago, before your first win here, you gave me a code for a game, Shattered Horizon if I recall correctly. That could have been deemed nothing by most people, but it was still extremely generous of you. And you've become a pillar of this community since. Congrats, and thanks again!

10 years ago
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Hey thanks man :)

10 years ago
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I've paid about 7$ for my games and I have some pretty nice games too. I have 227 games at the moment :)

10 years ago
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10 years ago
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10 years ago
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Thanks, i've made a neat 7 dollars

10 years ago
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I don't begrudge you your accomplishments, but I prefer my job to yours.

10 years ago
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10 years ago
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If you haven't, you might consider adding playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to the list. I play a few hours a week and make some money selling the drops. Of course, you have to actually play the game, so this wouldn't work if you didn't like the game.

10 years ago
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Idle servers. I made an easy $40 profit from Operation Phoenix.

10 years ago
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Haha sounds like I might need to get that game one day!

10 years ago
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Well, that's across four accounts, and you can't really play any other games while idling, so you'd need something to do in your browser for an hour or two. You could also leave it on overnight, but eh. The operation ticket costed three dollars then I sold every case for six dollars. Next week, three. Next week, two. And so on. It goes on sale pretty often, and even the publicly available cases sell for a nice penny.

10 years ago
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I don't idle since I enjoy the game and made about $15 off Operation Phoenix.

10 years ago
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I do artworks for games...but lol it's like money when you think of the time you spent to do the art

I believe you surely spend some time doing it... it's more or less the same as using money but it's more fun

10 years ago
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Another way to make money (paypal) is with Peko in iOS. Only in the united states AppStore

10 years ago
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You have way too much time on your hands.

10 years ago
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5-10 minutes a day is too much time?

In the time it takes to make a few forum posts or watch a couple of YouTube vids (which most of us here do anyways) I do a handful of tasks instead. In turn, I don't pay out of pocket for any of my games. The trade-off seems more than fair to me!

10 years ago
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I like to believe people, but if you are trading AND doing playfire rewards... thats more than 20 minutes right there...

10 years ago
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I did mention in the OP that I don't count Playfire in the 5-10 minutes figure. I don't consider playing my games as "work" :)

Also, I don't trade everyday. In fact, I only go to the trade boards when I want to buy something new or to sell off spare bundle keys.

10 years ago
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How exactly does the apptrailers thing work? I already use playfire and do the card thing, but I'm not sure about this. I downloaded it on my android, clicked WATCH on a couple of videos, I had 50 points to start with, and they stayed at 50. I scrolled around, saw that the MOVIES tab had videos with POINTS written under WATCH, so I clicked a couple of those, but still, it is 50. I realise I can get points one time by listing a referrer, but what about after that?
PS: I assume you have another email/facebook/twitter to handle all the spam you probably get? :D

10 years ago
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I get "you can't play this video" from all the App Trailers videos except one =\

10 years ago
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Solved, thanks for the giveaway!

10 years ago
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Hell, you beat my games that I got in 4 years - in 1 year :D

I already knew about some of the places (TremorGames, Playfire) but I'll try the other ones too, thanks.

10 years ago
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easy if you live in usa

10 years ago
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I live in Canada :)

10 years ago
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ok, but it is almost the same.
from here, i can't buy from amazon, the prcies are higher on gmg, no offers for my country on tremorgamers and on other sites and apps.

10 years ago
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I dont even want to know how much time you spent infront of your pc playing "tremor games" collecting cookies on your pc and having deals with people who just wanna scam you.

1 week of work in your local gas station would have brought you more money.

Sorry to say.

10 years ago
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+1. I know he said 5-10 mins a day is all it took, but I find that unbelievable. Good for him on getting the free games though.

10 years ago
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As I said in my opening post, I spend about 5-10 minutes a day on the activities I listed (not counting Playfire, which I don't count as "work").

I don't play the Tremor games or install any of their shady software. I do a few easy tasks, watch a few videos in background tabs and then log out. In fact, Tremor is not even my main income source and I spend max 5 minutes a day there.

Also, I already have normal income. Again, as I said in my opening post, I don't want to use anymore of my "real" money on games since I have enough as-is. Using these services lets me buy games without dipping into my bank account or credit card.

10 years ago
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You can trade cards or TF2 items for coins, and then buy some games :) That's how I'm getting bundle games from there.

10 years ago
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I did pretty good with playfire until they banned my ass. Sucks because I was going to unload all my credits on the warner bros day of the sale.

10 years ago
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Okay so I refused to give up on AppTrailers and found the support email finally (support@appredeem.com for those who want). It seems that it recently got updated which changed a few things but I'll put the email responses from the support, I have to say something though, the responses were really fast.

My first email:

Hi,

I have tried everything in order to get the app to work on my iPhone (iPhone 4 iOS 7.1.1) but the app doesn't seem to want to do anything.

The only times I got points for anything was from the scratching and even that was like few hours after I installed the app and restarted it multiple times. On my first day I got, I think, 20 points from the free scrach card and then used the 10 point scrach cards until I lost everything. Watching videos doesn't add me anything and all the app trailers are maked as +0 points. The only thing there that isn't marked as +0 is registering the email and that doesn't work either since I put my email and nothing happens.

I tried everything possible on the account, logged with facebook, put email, put paypal email and even changed email and nothing seems to work.

I heard a lot of good things about your app and I am disappointed about not being able to use it.

Thanks in advance.


Response:

Hello,

I can understand your frustration, I have personally experienced this too.

You will not receive points for videos or trailers that do not have an Ad in front of them. The +0 is the regular trailers without an Ad, which is why you do not receive points for these trailers. Also, most of the Ad's are geared towards users located in specific countries, so this is an additional reason why you are not receiving points for all of your activity.

Also, We have updated AppTrailers to follow the New Guidelines of the App Store. The new version of AppTrailers will be the new look of AppTrailers going forward. You can still earn points by watching the WebApp, Movies and Uploaded trailers. There is also other ways to earn points, for example receiving likes on an uploaded video, inviting friends through Facebook, and completing Promos.
We are looking into other ways for our users to earn points within our app.

I really appreciate you being our customer.


My second email:

Thanks for the fast answer. However, this doesn't explain why "Register Email: Register your e-mail with AppTrailers and Get Points Now!" which gives +50 points doesn't work(Tried 2 different emails) as well as all the videos in the top of the main menu that show "+5" don't give points either for watching.

Thanks again.


Response:

Thank you for getting back to us.

This is a remnant of an older process we used to follow. We used to not have customers register their email address right away. Then later they could register for 50 points. However more recently we have changed this such that the email registration is prompted the first time you launch the application, and you are awarded right away. I am sorry for the confusion, but actually this makes it easier for our customers, we just have to get that offer pulled down so it does not cause ongoing confusion for more users in the future.

Also with regards to +5 points issue, I would like to inform you that there is no way to ensure an Ad plays before the video unless we have the inventory of Ad's available to our user. We are always looking for new ways to gain higher amounts of Ad's for our users so the point value for our Blue Box trailers can stay at +5. But if there is no Ad available before the trailer, then no points are issued.

Thank you for understanding. Please let me know if there is anything else that I can assist you with in the future.

10 years ago
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Lots of good info here at least. Seems that different countries might have entirely different experiences with the app based on how many advertisers are actually targeting that demographic.

As usual, North America will likely have the most luck. We must be more susceptible to ads or something :P

10 years ago
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Yeah, they just need to update the app again to remove that email offer and in my opinion they must put an explanation.

10 years ago
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Anyone wanna be my Playfire friend? :P

10 years ago
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i got a question ageofarmageddon, if you got your hands on some booster packs
do you sell the booster packs as themselves or unpack them and sell the trading cards individually?

not sure if this question was asked before though, i may have overlooked some comments
10 years ago
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Always unpack. Booster usually sell for about 3x the price of a normal card but you have a shot at a foil when you open it.

No foil, no big deal. Just sell them normally and you get the same money as the booster would have given you.

10 years ago
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cool, thanks for answering me question :)

10 years ago
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Not only that, I got a booster pack 2 days ago and it was going for 0.3, I opened and got 0.36 out of it because none of the cards sold for 0.1(Yeah, not much but still better).

10 years ago
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Just to ask, does AppTrailers work internationally? I would hate to download it only to find I can't use it.
Also, do you have any issues with the app?

10 years ago
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I've never had issues with the app personally, but based on some of the replies in this thread it seems like some countries may not be able to earn with it.

Since it pays you based on watching ads, only countries that have advertisers targeting them will be able to make money.

10 years ago
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Nice tips been doing the same thing for a lil while now thanks for posting up a few more missed opportunities that I can pounce on =)

10 years ago
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bitcoin too :)

10 years ago
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I pay for my electricity, bitcoin mining would cost more than it would make :)

10 years ago
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I've always enjoyed reading your posts and occasionally bumping into you in a GA or thread. I like what you did here. Although, this rings so true after reading some of the responses, "Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces." I think you ended up helping many people which aren't complete fucking morons.

To the bitches that shit all over his thread here about "wasting time fo so little reward," how much time have you wasted trolling forums and comments? Exactly, shut the fuck up.

10 years ago
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Thanks for the nice comment :)

Some people can be a little rude but I don't make these threads for them. There are good people in the community to balance out the idiots so I don't let it bother me too much. This is the Internet after all!

10 years ago
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So, my experience on a few days of using new apps:

FreeMyApps: terrible. Got only 3 rewards and 1 didn't went through. All this in 5 days. So maybe in a whole year I might make like 5 bucks?

AppTrailers: even worse. There was an issue where I couldn't watch videos (only could watch one) and I contacted support. They asked me for a screenshot. OK. I took the time to send one. Then, they asked me for a screenshot in JPG form (!!!!!). Idiots. So I send it, and then asked me for my device and OS which was the VERY FIRST THING I DID when I contacted them.


In all, these are very good tips but you should make a separate section about these two apps and tag them with the correct countries (like, NA, CA, UK and a couple more) so it isn't a waste of time. The only services that actually work regardless of country are Playfire and Tremor Games (I should get on to this one).

10 years ago
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Yeh, quite a few people have noted that offers will vary greatly depending on where you live. Where I can make $5-10 on FreeMyApps in a week, others make nothing.

The thing is, I have no idea where there will be offers and where there won't. I'll edit the post to say "Your Mileage May Vary" as I'm not sure exactly which countries will have which offers.

10 years ago
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Ah... Alright, I don't want to sound like some general party pooper, but there are limitations to some people here. Here's some problems people might face when dealing with these methods:

Tremorgames - Neat little site, I keep hearing that the majority of the people are actually earning a lot of games from them. Playing their games for the achievements is way too time consuming, but you didn't pick that, which is great. However, a lot of the offers there and anywhere else are limited to the USA, UK or other places like that. Basically, if you live in central Europe or in India, or God forbid a third-world country, then those won't be available for you, and you'll be left with next to nothing to choose from. However, it was way more than a year ago when I last gave this a try (from Hungary), and things might have changed ever since, so if I'm wrong about it, feel free to correct me.

AppTrailers - I don't know, I might be wrong about this but... is this anything like a PTC site? Because if it is, then I'd not get involved if I were you, but if it's not then disregard all the horrible things that I'm about to say. Well, don't disregard it, because all PTC sites are like this, but yeah. Basically in a PTC site you register and click on ads or watch videos for a certain amount of cents. Hell, actually some of them gave me 0,001 CENTS for clicking on an ad and I wish I was just fucking joking there. The problems about these sites is that, the first time you can redeem your balance is way too far away from your registration. I mean, the fastest one that actually paid me was either Neobux or Onbux, and I could earn only about 4 cents each goddamn day at best, and they both only paid if you earned at least 2 dollars. Do the math, and take into account that I missed a few days and sometimes only 2 cents were available for the day. Ever since, the last time I checked Neobux turned into something that gave me like 0.1 cents for each ad, and they are barely less limited in how many you can click for the day, and Onbux just flatout scammed everyone once it started going bankrupt. This is always the way these PTC sites will go, so DO NOT APPROACH them, just look away. They're not worth your precious time, of which they cumulatively took 1-2 hours a day from me, and I earned less than 5 bucks in 3 months. Learn from my mistake there. If Apptrailers is not working by this scheme, that's fine then, give it a try, but NEVER give a PTC site your trust, EVER. End of discussion, I'm not acknowledging any arguments against that. Seriously.

FreeMyApps - Again, not going out against this thing, but Amazon itself. Even though I set an american adress for shipping for everything so that I can buy games from them, they block me from spending my MP3 credit that's earned similarly through free Amazon Store android games. Hell, I wanted to buy an album for 10 bucks because I found it nowhere else, not even Bandcamp, but they wouldn't let me because my credit card has a non-US address. Similarly, I earned some gift cards like this a few times for games and software, and I didn't find a way to check how much of that I have because it shows me everything that I ever earned, and not how much I have at the moment. Also, buying any kind of games, even android ones, it never applies there, so it might be another one of those region restricted things. Good for you 'muricans, but everyone else might want to hold off a little with these.

Playfire rewards - Amazing little thingy, it even encourages you to actually play your owned games. I love the concept, and when it works, it's fantastic. When it works. Mine never worked, and I opened a support ticket towards them way more than a month ago. Communication is slow (had to wait 2 weeks for one reply from them), and my problem is still there. This rewards system is also full of bugs, so it may be causing you a lot of headaches. Still, probably you should go for it.

That's all the neggies I can think of, but otherwise yeah, this is a good way to cut expenses. I wouldn't encourage anyone to avoid searching for a job in favour of these though, but spending only this sort of money on your games is not only healthy for your wallet, but also your gaming habits. You won't be too jaded to choose one goddamn game from your hundreds of titles to play, because like this, you'll only get the stuff that you actually really want. And believe me, you don't want more than that, as it will be painful.

As a sidenote, I can only second what a lot of people said here, which is investing in CS:GO. Throughout the year I actually managed to preorder Thief, South Park and Transistor with it, as well as get Shadow Warrior, Papers Please, The Stanley Parable and some other games at full price too. Cards helped some with those, sure, but for the most part, I earned more with weapon case drops. Don't sell them when they're lower than 1 dollar though, just wait half a year after they stop dropping in that case. And don't be afraid to use the weapons contract in-game, it can be helpful.

10 years ago
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Regarding Tremor Games, I don't have many offers there(Mostly video a day at best) so I just got a bunch of referrals(95 to be correct) and I get 10% of what they make from offers(Without taking their actual coins) so that is also a possibility for who ever has hard time making coins.

I dunno, I make my money from CrowdFlower(No refs for this site). They have really decent tasks that are less time consuming and pay nicely($0.05 for 20 seconds - 1 minute for example) and you can even do it while work if that doesn't interfere with your work.
Cashed out $55.5 from them already since the beginning of March and I have $38.07 on there now ready for withdraw for the sale(Planning to make more before the sale). But don't think I've made those $95 in 3 months, there has been quite a while where there were no less time consuming tasks to do(Hate doing 4 minute tasks).
And they cash out straight to PayPal.

10 years ago
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I've edited the OP to note that "Your Mileage May Vary" for some of these methods. Not that I would have any way to know which countries had which offers, but since about 50% of the posts in this thread have been about region restrictions I figured it would be worth doing.

As for Apptrailers, if PTC means you see a list of app/movie trailers and are paid to watch the ad for it then that's what it is. I just keep my phone beside my mousepad, click a video and then go back to what I was doing on my PC. I never just sit there and stare at it, only takes a second to start a video.

Sucks you had trouble with Amazon. I'm from Canada but have never had issues with my US account. Granted Amazon credit is not as useful as Paypal, they still have some decent sales here and there.

Also sucks about Playfire. Not sure why it works for some and not for others. Hopefully they get the bugs worked out of that as I've heard others have had issues as well.

Maybe I'll give CS:GO a try one day. I still don't own it as I'm not big on competitive multiplayer shooters but it sounds like it pretty much pays you to play it :) That might just be what it takes to warm me up to the idea!

10 years ago
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That's fine and definitely give CS:GO a try. I'd even go as far as to say buy the Operation passes when they come out, granted they give you exclusive stuff. Phoenix cases cost over a dollar for months, and they helped me get a lot of cash which I spent on games. Don't worry about the competitiveness, you can actually idle this like TF2 in the old days, and the number of drops are rather low, so you're not going to be required to do that a lot. But aside from that, it's fun to play, and the operation exclusives only drop if you play on their levels, so it's better to actually play it.

Also, a friendly advice: PTC sites always turn either bakrupt, or just become scammers after a while, if there's a referral system in them, which is like, the foundation of 99% of them. Pyramid schemes is all I'm going to attach to this method of running a site. Just keep a close eye on them every week or so, and follow feedback on them constantly. Onbux didn't scam me per se, but they refused to pay anyone who started earning after a while, but you can look it up at PTC investigator sites to get a full story. Hell, maybe Apptrailers is there too, you should keep checking on its status there on a weekly basis. Just to cover all bases, you know. Otherwise, good luck with it!

10 years ago
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I cash out my Apptrailers balance every $1 earned so the most I'll ever lose is under $1 if they fold up :) They've been working fine for me over the past year and I'm pretty sure they were around before that. I'm not too worried about it, even if they disappear tomorrow it's not a big deal.

10 years ago
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I have same experience(issues) with sites like TremorGames here in Czech Rep. After few days of trying you'll get like 10 cents. It's not only you have nothing to do - you are being redirected there and fro, after few clicks and 4 other sites you'll get error or „not today“ message or, if you are not lucky enough, you'll just end up in redirecting loop. I understand that we are not the 1st world market but it's not even working properly.

I was just curious and got exactly what I had expected. :)
However good for you OP and thanks for sharing your know-how!

10 years ago
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