When we started making the Stellethee Group Alternate Reality Games, we obviously knew how dumb it was to charge a player for a casual ARG.
That said, making an alternate reality game, and one that is actually fun and thought-provoking, needs something to help it pay for hosting/domains/etc.
"All About The Merch" is the primary chatter. It's the most significant help to pay for the current games running and the hobby resources to continue the next games in the set.
Right now, we do have the ability to work with the referral system of "SwagBacks" which gives us $3 if you decide to join and follow their promo guide (instructions, nothing complicated). We've been in contact with people from the company a long, long time ago, in an HTML specification far away.
Okay, back to the now. SwagBucks issues Gift Cards and PayPal payments for whatever you want to do there. There are a whole bunch of options, and I had earned over $500 before the games started being finalized, aka anyone (besides a few dozen people) knowing about them.
I hit over $1,000 in the last few weeks of tinkering with the final edition of the first ARG.
( In completely un-needed disclosure, I worked with people ending up in many of the same circles of what became Swagbucks, as a hobby for myself. The "stellethee" project has absolutely nothing to do with the net profits of the Internet businesses I ran. I just like the fun of being able to get free stuff for "playing" an alternate reality game. You can read more about projects I've worked on within the Stellethee3 book. )
Using SwagBucks Search at the top of the SwagBucks site lets you earn SwagBucks dollars for searches, it will usually give you a small "bill" to claim a few times a day. They also have stuff available like filling out surveys, not really my cup of tea, but also trying out products like Games and The Chime Bank. The Chime was my favorite personally, it was worth approx US$200 when I had signed up, I still use Chime for Banking, but the best bet was a combo, and it gave me something to do when I was bored. It made a good use of time during COVID.
If you decide to use the SwagBucks Search a few times a day, you'll actually earn SwagBucks to play the alternate reality game which is super awesome, and I don't know if anyone has encouraged someone to get paid to play an ARG before.
Here is the Tangent originally written on Prevent The Trace ARG, our first alternate reality game.
Alternate Reality Game First: If you aren't part of SwagBucks, you can get $10 in rewards if you want to sign up through us. (*terms apply) Once you're signed up through us, you can earn rewards several ways, including doing searches for research on the game and other parts of The Stellethee Group and Stellethee University.
It's incredibly easy to use for Shopping Rewards by clicking from the site to activate the Reward (usually you get a percent back of 1% to 10%, sometimes more) and you can use Search for Swagbucks on their site, or enable SwagBacks search directly with an extension if you are playing Prevent The Trace on a desktop or laptop.
We get a referral credit for players (or anyone) who chooses to start using SwagBucks. We aren't affiliated with them besides them giving us referral bonuses. We just love them.
When you join, please remember to turn off your ad blocker first (if you have one) so you can make sure you get your sign up credits. Their official site will give you additional instructions on how to get the most SwagBucks. Always make sure you see "Activated" to earn rewards if it pops up. If it asks "Activate?" you will have to click it. If you have any other rewards extensions, it can mess up their entire rewards program, so decide to use SwagBucks versus other extensions based on whatever your personal needs are.
I've already earned over $1,000 in rewards through their program so far over the time I've been using them. The sign up page confirms the amount over $1000 so you can validate the program really works.
Thank you for supporting this game and earning rewards for it, if you choose to earn them!
Once you're in, you can pick up our three game hintbooks for a few dollars a piece plus tax, if required, if you want to get going in our game faster.