A couple of years ago, live trivia apps were the rage. And why not? The enticement of answering a few questions and possibly making a decent amount of money pulled in quite a few people. A couple of months ago, it seemed as if the genre had dried up. But recent developments have breathed new life into live trivia, at least temporarily. So, is it still possible to make money from this?
What’s Changed Since 2018
I wrote about the then-burgeoning live trivia app industry in January 2018. At the time, the biggest app in the category, HQ Trivia, was among the top ten most downloaded apps in any category. At least one knock-off had appeared by the time of my previous post, and other apps would pop up to try to get in on the action before 2018 was halfway over. Most of them are gone now…what happened?
As with many a crash-and-burn story, there were multiple reasons for the quick downfall of the live trivia industry. Chief among those reasons was almost certainly an inability of pretty much any of these apps to meet their budgets. Intertwined with that was that these apps just could not hold on to viewers. Of course, we can’t overlook the unfortunate fact that some of these apps just were not run well.*
(Oh, and at least one app, Reward the Fan, which allowed prize redemptions not for cash but for tickets to music, theatre, or sporting events, necessarily had to suspend operations due to the COVID-19 shutdowns going on at the time of my writing this. The hope is that they’ll be back when events requiring tickets are up and running again, but if not, I got to go to two Denver Broncos games thanks to that app.)
Whither HQ?
HQ Trivia was the first live trivia app on the scene, and to date, no one has come close to duplicating the number of viewers they had at their peak. Think of it: in spring 2018, at least one broadcast of HQ pulled in over two million people. Less than two years later, in February 2020, they abruptly announced they were gone.
What happened in between their peak and that low could eventually be made into a low-budget movie. Don’t believe me? TechCrunch hits the low, er, high points in this article.
And then, in March, HQ announced it had found a new benefactor, and nightly broadcasts started up once more. HQ went back to its original format: 12 questions, limited extra lives, and $5000 pots. (At the time of my writing this, though, some players occasionally cannot cash out winnings from HQ. The official explanation is that these winnings are still under review. But they seem to be paying since their reboot…eventually.)
To play, search for “HQ Trivia” at the app store and use the referral code “snowedin”!
Gone (and mostly forgotten)
I could write a whole post about the apps that came and gone since HQ exploded onto the scene, but since it doesn’t appear that any of them will come back, I will simply give a couple of them a quick mention. Foremost would have been Facebook’s attempt, called Confetti, from which I personally won over $2000. It was the best alternate to HQ, but for whatever reason, Facebook never promoted it. At all. Ever. And their viewership numbers (or lack thereof) spoke to that lack of promotion.
The all-time worst in terms of operation was a badly thought-out app from Fox (yes, the television network) which was given the rather juvenile name of FNGenius. (Say it fast.) It lasted – I kid you not – one night. One night in which its third and final game glitched and eliminated virtually everyone playing. That particular app kept promising another game and failing to deliver.**
So who else is left?
I mentioned The Q two years ago; it looked like a cheap knock-off then, and, honestly, it doesn’t look too much better now. Prizes for games rarely go above $100 and are usually split among 100-200 people, meaning that it takes quite a long time to get to The Q’s minimum payout of $25. And then, there are the blatantly incorrect answers which occasionally pop up…
To play (if you still want to do so after that), click here and use the code “snowedin”.
Probably the most consistent performer of the live trivia apps which popped up in 2018 has been Swagbucks Live. Obviously an offshoot of the perennially popular Swagbucks, this app has pretty much had the same format since it began, as well as the same general number of players each time. While they have had games with big wins, most of their games seem to follow the pattern of having several thousand winners of something like a dime each.
To sign up for Swagbucks, click here!
And, right now, there is Millionaire Live, which is presented in conjunction with the return to ABC of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Aspiring winners could hit it big with this one…its prize each week is the same as the amount won by the first celebrity on the broadcast that would have just finished airing before the game, assuming you live in the Eastern or Central time zones. In its first non-test broadcast, one player walked away with $125,000. Pretty good for 15 minutes’ work.
To play, simply search “Millionaire Live” at the app store. (No referral program that I know of.)
Why you should try these apps
The most compelling reason to try one of these trivia apps, of course, is the nonzero chance at free money. I, personally, have now made over $5000 playing these apps in the past 28 months. Why not check them out?
* Many people might mention the prevalence of cheaters as a reason, but I would say letting cheaters ruin the game for others as just one of many things which falls under “not run[ning] well”.
** I guess I shouldn’t complain too much about it, since I did get a few hundred dollars out of that app.
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