Hello! Can you tell us something about your background?

Outside the web I go by Ray, but ‘Flignats’ is my handle and pretty unique to me. I started with web development in the late 90s. I served in the US Navy for several years, putting anything tech related on pause. Afterwards, I took up software development and moved to Silicon Valley. I co-founded a skill gaming community, SkillvilleGames.com (now dead) and worked with many tech related startups. I then migrated to Los Angeles and have been working in the cinema technology industry.

What are you currently working on?

My current project, REQLoot.com, is an online free-to-play cryptocurrency scavenger hunt. Users are tasked with the challenge of finding hidden Request Network (REQ) tokens placed in over 500,000 possible locations.

As of today, nearly 1,000 users have signed up to play and search for tokens. More than 30,000 searches have gone into finding the current jackpot — currently worth nearly 1,700 REQ. Each day there are ~1k new searches in the game, so players are working hard to find as many tokens as they can.

What motivated you to get started with REQLoot?

I had been wanting to engage with some project in the cryptocurrency space and was unable to find a good opportunity. So, I began to brainstorm ideas that were efficient for a 1 man team.

I knew that I wanted to somehow use traditional marketing revenue to help support cryptocurrency adoption. In effect, how can I make online advertising revenue work for crypto. Also, it had to be free to the user.

REQLoot’s core concept as a game was a natural fit for my background and allowed me to easily create a minimal viable product feature set and primarily focus on the development. Since mvp, REQLoot’s community has been growing and users have helped a lot with the evolution into its current state. It has way more features than I had original conceptualized and really matured into a fun game. Plus, every single day there are users earning REQ tokens — and those tokens were bought from traditional fiat revenue.

I can’t stress the importance enough on how one of REQLoot’s primary benefits is this transition of fiat to crypto — making the old technology work for the new technology.

I’m a dead cat. You’re rewarded with tokens when you’re on the winning team!

What went into building the initial product?

The idea was conceptualized in December 2018, but development was infrequent until the new year. After a few months, the app was released to the public in beta on 2/28/2019. Since beta release, the community has had an influence in each of its new features and evolution of the game.

REQLoot is written in Angular with Google Firebase as a back end. It’s available in the web, in the Google Play Store, or on iOS (add to home screen when visiting reqloot.com).

How have you attracted users and grown REQLoot?

Mostly just word of mouth and Reddit. Having users share the game with the friends is really important to REQLoot’s success. The entire game is bootstrapped — which means that it doesn’t have much money for itself and/or it’s coming out of my pocket and from donations. While the game does earn enough to cover the tokens users have been winning, it would not cover costs for marketing.

What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

The game pretty standard revenue generators, but all of them go into everyone earning more REQ tokens.

The majority of revenue comes through rewarded video advertising. Users can earn REQ and stamina (used for additional plays in the scavenger hunt) for have videos play in the background of their normal computer use. This an easy, no-effort way to start earning tokens immediately.

The game does have traditional banner advertising, but the revenue is very low and we do not show many in the game.

There is also the opportunity to earn substantial tokens through our affiliate offers. Users have earned hundreds of tokens at a time by signing up for services like Hulu or even simple, free surveys that pay out frequently.

Finally, REQLoot has a subscriber only scavenger hunt with a special 2,200+ token prize waiting to be found. Users that are Amazon Prime members can become subscribers for free, by subscribers through Twitch Prime. There are several other subscriber benefits, like free stamina giveaways and an instant +10 REQ for new subscribers, so I encourage anyone with Amazon Prime to check it out.

What are your goals for the future?

Continue to grow out the games’ feature set and implement Request Network V2 when released. Then the game can start contributing to the network and tokens being burned.

REQLoot helps burn them tokens!

Unfortunately, being a game and not a traditional finance related application causes some misconception about the potential value it can contribute, which is quite a lot. REQLoot is low effort, free, and provides financial value to users — so the potential for user adoption and a high amount of traffic is likely. That can easily lead to a significant amount of network activity and token burn, which is a win for everyone.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced and obstacles you’ve overcome?

Advertising networks. It seems that anything crypto related is simple not allowed to advertise on most traditional networks. Google & Facebook ads won’t allow advertising. Even Reddit won’t allow me to advertise on r/cc. The reasons are the same, relation to cryptocurrency.

There are some crypto specific ad networks, but they are much lower traffic and quality.

Have you found anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

The community has been a huge help with the direction of the game and user testing. I’m unable to test each new feature to the degree that I would like to, but I know that there is a community of players that will help me identify the areas of improvements and necessary fixes.

What’s your advice for new players who are just starting out?