Money for nothing? Does it rain out of digital clouds?
Like many others my life has been turned upside down by covid and its economic impact. Life before involved designing burger ideas for McDonalds, KFC and all the other big chains in my country. Life after has seen only a slight return to normal. Definitely more eating burgers than designing them!
In the meantime I have been burying myself neck deep in crypto and all things around it. While it hurts to have my pockets drained by the lockdowns, its allowed me the patience to just learn. Then after learning, to try and see what I could earn while stuck at home.
While I have made other investments on Uniswap and the like, here I will focus on the crypto ive earnt for free.
My experiment was-
Would it be possible to add any significant gains to my portfolio without spending a cent, and without being a shiller, or referral king? This is an ongoing experiment with some coins still not listed and I will post future updates.
Alien Worlds- mining for TLM in a blockchain game
I will start with the biggest surprise- Alien Worlds. I started this mining game only a few weeks ago and have managed to upgrade to the 'three drill' setup which is very useful and economical. I would love some of the 'heavier' equipment but the three drills do okay and have a quick cooldown time.
In this time I have mined 350+ TLM as well as scoring two Cryptomonkey NFTs (value appx 4 wax each) and a bunch of AW tools which I have staked to rPlanet and are earning Aether (1964 Aether).
With the player growth in the game these staked tools have also increased in value on the secondary market.
Why was AW such a surprise? Those 350 TLM are currently valued at $4.52 each (AUSD 10/04/2021 coingecko) for a value of $1582.00 for no investment! I have actually mined more TLM but I traded some for wax to buy a bundle of NFTs in the hope they will be more valuable later on. If id known the price of TLM at the time, I would not have done this!
$1582
UHive- the second biggest surprise
UHive is a social network which rewards users for time and engagement with their native HVE2 token. If you spend at least 10 minutes a day on there you receive some tokens and then there are bonuses for engagement. The bonuses multiply each day you log on and complete the daily tasks until they are multiplied by 4. Up until the end of March (including one week in Feb) I have accumulated 17 800 HVE2 tokens without any referral bonuses.
Coingecko has the price of these today at AUSD $0.00385 for a value of $68.53. Not a bad return at around $10 a week or just under $2 a day for my social media scrolling.
*If you do want to help my cause and score us both 100 HVE2 use my referral- V5NJHM
Torum- no value yet as not listed
Torum is my new favourite place to hangout. Its a social media site for crypto lovers and so far only has around 25k users. I only signed up for this 3 weeks ago and have so far collected 454 XTM and NFT gifts valued at 53 XTM. When these are listed I think they will have a reasonable value as the site is great and they have BIG plans in the short term. I highly recommend checking it out. If you do, look me up 
There is a halving in the daily 'mission' rewards soon- so get in quick for the XTM bonuses.
Signup bonus referral for 75 XTM here- https://www.torum.com/signup?referral_code=lonelyboy
Writing for Tips
Ive found progress on PublishOx and LEO Finance slow in terms of gaining followers, but I havnt put a big push into it and have only written 3 short posts. Id love to collect more of that FARM on offer though. We all want to be Chad Farmers dont we! Give me a follow 
Dogeland- I know I hear you- its a scam!
Maybe this is a scam but for now we will include it. I have no money invested and have so far accumulated 103 DOGE which are $0.083 on 10/4 for a value of $8.549. Who knows- if Elon tweets about it enough this could go to a dollar each so I think its worth the risk of it being a scam!
Zencash Faucet- waste of time, most faucets seem to be!
I have logged in faithfully but may discontinue soon as the value so far is $0.14
A tip on Faucets- you are better off going for the unknown or cheapest coins as you never know if one of them will moon. Trying to faucet your way to a litecoin or even a DOGE takes time and patience and then some more time!
NFTs and other Giveaways- over 100 NFTs
By joining discord channels, entering a million Twitter giveaways and competitions and through the generosity of others (no begging) I have collected over 100 NFTs without purchasing any. These include KOGS, CryptoMonkeys, ArtistByron, Upland, Alien Worlds, Metaforce, Alpaca Worlds, Alien Horrors, Cartombs and others with an estimated wax value on Atomic of 190 wax $48
Discord and Twitter
These two have been a bit of surprise. You would be amazed at the generosity of people in Discord channels such as the CryptoMonkeys and the Banano channels. Theres always the chance of landing FREE NFT monkeydrops (be sure to do a good introduction), users regularly share crypto airdrops, and theres a good chance to score NFT drops from people like Dr Yunani. Watch for his metaforce drops but you better be quick on the trigger.
In the banano discord you can chat with the designers of the CryptoMonkey NFTS like @SoggyApplePie and there is always competitions to win Banano and those precious NFTs
Airdrops
I signed up to over 100 airdrops with many of them still yet to close, and many looking like a waste of time. I included OCC below as its such a large amount and will include these other drops next time. So far I have received the 1554 OCC ($11.66), 100 FREE coins ($1.12), 10 DFI ($0.23), 20 MERGE ($4), CRO ($25)
Alien Worlds- TLM $1582.00
UHive- HVE2 $ 68.53
NFT Collection WAX $ 48.00
Coinbase Quizes
Stellar XLM $ 16.88
COMPOUND $ 12.21
CELO $ 5.99
GRAPH $ 4.25
NUCYPHER $ 3.95
PublishOx-AMPLEFORTH $ 1.37
-iFARM $ 1.61
-ETHEREUM $ 0.55
LEOFinance $ 0.26
DOGEland DOGE $ 8.55
Faucets- Zencash $ 0.11
- FreeCardano ADA $ 0.60
- Pipeflare DOGE $ 0.34
- Pipeflare Zcash $ 0.26
- Cointiply BTC $ 0.13
- BTCpop BCH $ 0.12
- Banano Banano $ 3.88
- OCC Airdrop OCC $ 11.66
Total- $1,771.25
Accumulated but no value yet- - Pipeflare Tokens 553.16 staked at 5% APY
- XTM Tokens- 454 and NFTs valued at 54 XTM
- Pi Tokens- 254.2303
- Bee Tokens- 737.4206
- GeoCash Tokens 95.59
- Sperax Tokens 94 (only started 7/4/21)
- Coingecko Candies x 3700
- Kucoin Candies x 2800
- Upland 3 properties, 1 NFT, 1391.59 UPX
Does this mean crypto money really does rain from the clouds? Maybe?! What do you think? Can TLM hold its value, will it grow, or will it die? I will kepp you posted!
Happy Hunting!