Splinterlands | How To Earn 100$+ Monthly (Complete Guide)

I managed to earn over 100$ on average each month in 2020 playing Splinterlands now making a Complete Guide to help anyone who also wants to potentially earn with this game in 2021...

WARNING: MANY PLAYERS WILL LOSE
This mostly goes for players who come in thinking they will be able to earn a quick easy buck and those who will eventually come in too late. Getting to a point where you are earning 100$+ a month takes quite some effort when building it from the ground up. At some point, the game will reach a peak making it harder to reach these numbers and possibly losing on any investment once there are more sellers compared to buyers. Making the estimation if the game is something for you and if demand will be higher compared to the supply is something everyone has to make for themselves!

THE PROFILE OF EARNING PLAYERS
Right now, I would say that players who really enjoy the RPG gameplay loop of starting from nothing, finding ways to grow stronger, collecting cards leveling up, improving skills, being willing to grind it out consistently seeing everything grow in the process are those most suited to become good earners in the Splinterlands game. Having this as the real game while the card game itself is merely a shell helps to keep it all more enjoyable once you reached a certain level.

HOW TO APPROACH EARNINGS
Those that from the start look at earnings as something they can just withdraw won't get very far. Instead, you first need to get to a point where you have confidence in the game and the economy behind it. Once you are there, you just see your card collection value as your earnings in the game that you are able to sell at any given time in case you want to exit. Only when you have a card collection you are happy with you can start using the direct earnings to cash out as an income stream. To reach this point it takes a lot of time and effort (or a considerable investment depending on how much you want).

-> Checking Your Card Collection Value
The best way to check how much your current card collection is worth is to go to the Splinterlands Discord scrolling down to the @sm-voters-hut typing the command $stats yourusername after which the bot will show your card collection and what it is currently worth on the market.

STEEP EARNINGS CURVE
Splinterlands is giving out rewards to players that have a real value and can be sold. If everyone could just come in creating 100+ accounts for free running bots, this would never work. While the game can be tried out for free within a minute, in order to unlock the ability to earn rewards, the Summoner's Spellbook which costs 10$ needs to be purchased. This will get you started at the lowest level with all the Common & Rare Untamed set cards leased out to you and a collection value of 0$ (unless you sign up with a Referral Link) which currently will give you 1 random card from the @sl-giveaways account. Unless you are lucky, this card will most likely be worth somewhere between 0.02$-0.40$.

What you will be able to earn from the start is very limited since the game requires your card collection (POWER) to be worth more if you want to enter higher tiers that give more rewards. In Bronze 3 you get 1 Loot chest each day if you manage to complete the daily quest and 5 Loot Chests at the end of the season which lasts 15 days.

So basically those who go about the game in a way to buy the 10$ Summoner's Spellbook trying to get earnings just from loot chests rewards will need a lot of luck in they want to quickly recover that 10$ to start off with. Instead, it will leave them with a rather frustrating experience playing 40 minutes+ to complete a quest to end up with a 'worthless' potion many of the days if they are unlucky. Once they climb to a rating of 400 Power or more, they will be blocked by a 'paywall' which pretty much tells that they haven't spent enough money on the game to get more rewards.

MULTIPLE EARNINGS SOURCES & COMPOUNDING EFFECT
However, Splinterlands is allowing players to earn in multiple ways that add up for everyone that is willing to put up the consistency. By reinvesting all these earnings to buy more and stronger cards building your collection, you will be able to slowly but surely reach higher leagues which give more rewards and higher DEC payouts which will get the ball rolling speeding up what you are able to earn along the way. These are different ways everyone can use to earn from the game...

General Approach
All the different ways of earnings from the game offers come together very well when you become part of the great community this game has. One of the most fun things for me is following the development, making some friends, theorycraft strategies, writing about the game, speculating how it will evolve, complain about things I want to see changed, ... There is always something happening and a lot on the horizon to look forward too. Making this game in something of a hobby and daily activity/routine will highly help those that also want to earn from it. I would say, join the Splinterland Discord along with the blog from the Splinterlands team (@splinterlands) and other players that are into the game on splintertalk.io

1. Complete Daily

Completing these Quests almost religiously each day is one of the best-earning sources the game provides especially once you reach Gold League or higher. Each win will also earn you some DEC that can be used to grow your collection and get stronger. Playing for 20 minutes daily with a balanced Level 5 & Level 3 account consistently earned me around 40$ a month in 2020. They can be quite frustrating to complete if you don't balance your collection and go yolo having 1 summoner at a much higher level compared to the others.

You basically want to have at least 2 and ideally 4 or more Summoners at a balanced level if you don't want to get stuck. If I would start from zero, I would probably start out focussing on getting 3 summoners to a higher level just skipping the daily quest on average once every 8 days. Refreshing to the new quest and completing it is also something I do pretty much each morning around the same time which helps to stay consistent.

2. DARK ENERGY CRYSTAL Earnings

Each win in ranked will earn you some Dark Energy Crystals (DEC), each player starts with a 100% capture rate which goes down with every ranked game played to regenerate over time. Playing a lot of games will result in your Capture rate going down which earns less DEC. Ideally, you never want to have it at 100%. If I'm correct, each game reduces it by around 2% and every hour regenerates around 1%. The DEC that is being given out depends on the number of players at that moment, so if fewer players are online playing, more will be given out to encourage activity in the game so everyone finds a matchup. These low activity moments are pretty much the times you want to grind it out like crazy. Having friends in the game who give notice helps a lot to get the timing right.

The average DEC payout in Gold League is around 30 DEC for a won game (including bonuses from Gold/Promo cards & Guild bonus). At the right times, this has gone up to 100 DEC which equals 0.10$ of in-game purchases just for winning a single game.

3. Season Rewards

At the end of each season (every 15 days) Season rewards will be given based on the league you managed to reach. These go from as low as 5 Chests for Bronze 3 players and add up to 150 Chests for players in Champion 1. There are also Pack Rewards for the Top 20 / Top 25 / Top 30 / Top 40 / Top 50 of individual league rankings depending on what league you compete in. These ranks are only really for players who have close to complete card collections based on the levels that are allowed on each of the leagues. The average player earns more just trying to reach as high as possible even though this will give a more frustrating experience since you will get matched up with players that are way outside of the card levels you own giving you no chance to win many of the games. It will allow you to earn more daily quest and season rewards though.

4. TOURNAMENTS

Tournaments are a good way for outside money to come into the game rewarding the players as anyone can organize them to promote their own brand or project to a specific audience. It also very much is 'pay2win' though and without a rather big card collection players pretty much stand no chance similar to the League Leaderboards. Most tournaments also have capped limits so players with just bronze, silver, or gold level collections can actually compete. 200k dollars worth of prizes have already been given out and if you are a good player with a balanced collection, you certainly will be able to get a share of the future rewards.

5. BLOGGING EARNINGS

For new players who aim to build up their card collection and earning without being willing to make an investment, getting active in the community and starting to blog about the game is without a doubt the best way to do it. On the Hive Blockchain, there is some inflation with gets distributed by upvotes from those that have Hive Locked Up. Since Splinterlands as a project needs a lot of Hiver Power (HP) in order to provide their players with the needed resource credits to transact on the blockchain and play the game, they also are able to give out good-sized upvotes to reward the community.

The Team is organizing a lot of different Contests and Challenges each week that all players regardless of their investment in the game are free to join. Most of them are designed in a way that users help to promote the game outside of the hive ecosystem. If you make a decent quality post about the game and share it on other Social Media you can join the weekly Social Media Challenge and get a nice upvote. The same goes for the weekly Battle Challenge, the At Contest & Trivia Challenges. The value of the post (minus curation rewards & SPS) is paid out 7 days after posting and as a new player, these will give you a huge boost as they can be used to buy more cards growing your collection very consistently without the need to invest anything but some time.

I really enjoy writing and try to make somewhere between 7 and 9 posts each month. This is what they earned me in December not even counting post-earnings from the Splinterlands that are also focussed around finance which earn LEO tokens or the earnings from Uptrennd where I also cross-post.

Everyone that gets a Splinterlands account signing up with the game and buys the Summoner's Spellbook will also get a free Hive account in the form of their private keys which will allow them to use the Hive Blockchain blogging platform to start blogging or engaging with the community.

6. SPT Earnings

SPT is the native currency of the Splintertalk.io platform where all the content around Splinterlands is being displayed. When you use the splinterlands and/or SPT tag in your posts, you will automatically be able to also earn SPT. Good posts tend to get picked up by the @monster-curator which has around half of all the SPT Delegated to them. SPT right now is not worth all too much but it is anticipated to be implemented into the actual game at some point in the future. I personally continue to stack it up and delegate everything out to @monster-curator who pay 100% of the curation rewards they are getting to those that delegate on a daily basis.

There is no guarantee that this will work out but it certainly has the potential to turn into earnings that are really worth it over time.

7. Affiliate Earnings

The game offers an Affiliate Program where 5% of all purchases made with credits. Especially when you are also blogging about the game and are willing to promote it outside of the Hive Blockchain, you potentially can earn some good affiliate earnings. I started using some spare duplicate cards I had at the start of last year to offer a win-win deal for new players who want to get into the game leasing them a whole bunch of extra cards to give them a head start in the game. I used most of the affiliate earnings to buy more cards so I was able to always improve the deal I was able to offer to attract more players since my Referral Link for as far as I know is still the most favorable way to get in on the game. Splinterlands has not yet seen any exposure/adoption among the real gamers and there is a huge potential left for those who aim to promote it getting some nice affiliate earnings in return which could help tremendously to grow and reach higher earning levels.

SIGN-UP PROMO OFFER

I continue to offer a win-win deal for everyone that tries out the game using my Referral Link the moment they end up getting the Summoners Spellbook. Make sure to check the Full Sign-Up Deal which will count for 2021 or until further notice.

8. Join a Guild

Joining a Guild, especially when it already is somewhat established can help to make some friends and get an increased DEC payout on each and every won match you play. It is also a great place to get help or help others out when in need. More functions for guilds will also become available over time.

9. Join Giveaway Contest

There are many giveaway posts on Hive which you can easily find on the Splinterlands Discord Server in the @sl-giveaway-posts channel. Many of these tend to be a free pass to make a shitpost getting some post rewards in return. It certainly is a great way for new players to help them grow as every card counts and adds up over time.

Above are some of the examples where you have a fair chance to earn a free card or some DEC just by joining in. These were posts from @clove71, @cryptofiloz, @massimoc23, @pacolimited, @drazeus, @robinsonr810, @stever82, @mango-juice

10. Trading Cards

Cards are being bought and sold all the time with prices fluctuating meaning it's possible to speculate and make a profit on them. Having a good eye on values and what cards go for can be knowledge that comes in handy. Changes in the meta of the game when new rules or cards are being introduced also help to be able to pick up cards cheap and sometimes they go at dumping prices from someone who wants to sell without being willing to wait.

Tips & Tricks

There are and will be more ways to earn with the game like leasing cards for passive returns or being able to mint cards in the land expansion.
Learn how to play properly, getting to know all the cards and the best ways to play them is part of the fun in the game and will make a difference in at least part of the matches that you will play.
Keep track of your earnings. Individual rewards don't seem that much but when you see it all added up, it brings good motivation.
You can speed up the pace you are able to play matches by muting the games and pressing the battle icon on top once a match is about to start which pretty much skips everything making you able to play more matches in less time. Don't do this from the start as it will take away from improving your skills.
If you want to skip the early grind and invest in some cards, find someone who is willing to sell their entire collection directly to you as it will be cheaper for you and more convenient for them. You can find people selling their collection on the Splinterlands Discord
Don't get addicted to buying packs. It is fun and you can get lucky, but buying cards on the market, in the long run, gives you more value for your buck.
Use monstermarket.io if you want to buy cards on the market, they give 3% cashback paid out in DEC on Hive-engine.
You can check how many of the reward cards have been printed on this Website. Cards tend to increase in value if they are no longer being printed.
You can keep track of Fundamental statistics on the game on this Website
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To get a better insight into actual earnings and what you can expect, feel free to check my detailed monthly earnings reports from 2020...

To understand what the game is about and how it can be played check the video below!

Important: Treat games in the first place as games and not as investment opportunities, Splinterlands allows you to earn some money and get good returns but you are much better off flipping burgers in Mcdonalds when looking at the money earned for the time invested. Investing also comes with a risk of card values going down.