Forget Trivia Crack: This Site Pays Cash for Your Useless Knowledge
If you have a couple of minutes to spare each day and a general knowledge of history, pop culture and weird facts, you could make money playing an online trivia game.
Givling hands out cash prizes to players who correctly answer true-or-false questions on a wide range of topics. I’ve been playing for a few months, and I’ve already won more than $150!
Want to get paid for your random trivia knowledge? Here’s what you need to know.
How Does Givling Work?
Each player earns points by answering true-or-false questions, which range from relatively simple, common-knowledge topics, to challenging, niche areas of history. (Some examples: “The word ‘allegro’ is a term that means slow and sadly.” And “Benjamin Harrison was the first president to use electricity in the White House.”)
You only get eight seconds to answer each question, so there’s no time to Google your answers. You have to know your stuff!
The more questions you answer correctly, the more points each ensuing question is worth. The first question is worth 10 points, the next 20, and so on. You’re allowed three wrong answers (“strikes”) per game, so try not to strike out before you get to the big-point questions!
Here’s the catch: You’ll randomly be put on a team with two other Givling players, and your scores are tallied together. If you’re lucky, you’ll get paired with some smarties who can boost your team’s score with their bountiful knowledge, but be aware that some of your teammates might not be so scholarly.
If your team gets the highest score for a given day, you get paid! You can win bonus prizes for individual high scores, so there’s a silver lining in case you get stuck with a less-than-brilliant teammate on a particular day.
How Much Can You Make?
The cash prizes depend on how much money was raised the previous day. 20% of each day’s earnings go toward prizes, so if the site raises $1,000 on Tuesday, Wednesday’s payout will be $200.
Depending on the day, expect to see the total payout at the top of the site at anywhere from $100 to $1,000. Weekends tend to have lower payouts, presumably because fewer people are playing.
That’s not much, but the big payout will come once the total amount of funds raised passes $10 million, according to Wired Magazine’s Rob Boffard. (This money comes from the players, which I’ll explain in greater detail below.) At that point, half of the money will go toward giant prizes for the highest-scoring teams, while the other half has a special use — which we’ll get into later.
To date, Givling’s website says it’s paid out more than $100,000 in prizes, and that number should increase as the game becomes more popular.
The downside: If you live in Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Iowa, Maryland or Tennessee, you can’t play the game. Sorry!
How Much Does It Cost to Play?
You can play Givling for free once each day. The company sends a daily code via text message, and you redeem this “token” for your free play. Right now you can play on your computer or tablet, and the company is working on a mobile version.
After you’ve used your free token, you can choose to buy more tokens for 50 cents each through PayPal, with an additional 30 cent transaction fee
If you’re going to buy tokens, it’s smart to buy a bunch of them at once, rather than paying multiple transaction fees for smaller purchases. The tokens never expire. On the rare occasion I purchase tokens, I buy 10 to 15 at a time, though I usually stick to the free ones.
During the last four months, I’ve spent just over $25 in tokens but have won $155 in cash! The site sends your winnings via PayPal, so collection is simple.
Givling Helps Pay Off Student Loans
Here’s the cool part I mentioned — what happens to the other half of that $10 million the company’s aiming to raise.
Givling started as an endeavor to help pay down the overwhelming amount of student loan debt in the United States. Sound crazy? Don’t say that to Kevin James Foster — Givling paid off $32,000 of his student loans.
That’s the beauty of paying to play this trivia game. Any money you spend on tokens goes to help someone else become debt-free.
There’s an active queue of other debt-ridden hopefuls who may get the opportunity to have their loans paid off, provided Givling continues to grow in popularity. I’m one of those candidates, in line at #1,266. Who knows, maybe someday Givling will be able to foot the bill for my remaining $70,000 in student loans!
Not into trivia? You don’t have to play the game to join the queue. If you have student loans, you can sign up to join the list and potentially have some smart people pay off your debt.
Your Turn: Have you tried playing Givling? How much have you earned?
Jacob Trowbridge is a freelance writer from Madison, Wisconsin who enjoys writing about saving money almost as much as he likes actually saving money.
