Another day another writing contest. By now we know the drill so let's just dive right in shall we?

I can't remember when I started playing Upland.Me. I can say it was over a year ago and the first article I wrote about it on Publish0x was on July 13th, 2020. So I would assume it was shortly before that. I do remember when I first started I spent $10 to get up and started but haven't spent a penny more since then.

Let's round up and say I have been playing for 2 years. You would think if someone was playing a game for 2 years they should have amassed quite a huge in game wallet. Now while my net worth pails in comparison to other players I am happy with what I have achieved in my 2 years. I won't lie when I first started playing the game I was on the fence to recommend the game to others. But I can honestly say now that I have been around the block with it a while I can whole heartedly recommend the game. It does not require much effort at all to play. You can play the game as a set it and forget it type of game. You can play it every day if you want. You will get out of it what you put into it.

Without further ado here is my explorer in game as of today.

I have a net worth of 193,395 UPX. 

I own 18 properties.

I have 0.5 SPARK.

I earn 1,225 UPX per month just from the rent on my properties.

Those numbers are awesome for me and how much I play the game. I would be lying if I said I haven't forgotten about this game from time to time. That is the beauty though of Upland.me. You can start the game and get your feet wet and forget about it while still earning passive UPX income. When you log back in you can collect your UPX.

You can see here how much I am collecting after being away for a bit. It is not a ton but it is 'free' passive income. You can collect your earned UPX every 3 hours at minimum. 

How can you earn income you say? If you own a property then you will earn income from it by default (basically rent). You can also earn income from people travelling to your property. Why would someone travel to your property you ask? Well other explorers may travel to your property in order to find the chests that spawn on the map. It's another part of the game that you can win more UPX if you find it. I have always had issues with it myself but people earn a ton of UPX from finding them.

If you go to a property you own you will see a 3 dot button on the top right.

If you click on it it will show you any visitors you had recently. It will also have a green "Set your Visitor UPX Fee" button. Click on that guy.

You will be able to set your Visitor Fee here for just this one property or all of your properties. This is always a gamble as to what to set it as. I like to set mine at 40 UPX personally but you can choose whatever you want. Just keep in mind before someone travels to your land they will see the price and if it's really high they will most likely pick another property close to yours that is cheaper to move to.

How else did I make money in Upland.me? Selling properties of course. I tend to purchase properties that are under 10,000 UPX. But that is not all that I look for. I tend to log on and see where my little explorer guy is and check the properties around him. If there are a few properties for sale under 10k on the same street then I will purchase as many as I can afford.

I do this for a few reasons.

1) Buying properties in a row I feel like increases my chances of someone actually buying a property from me as opposed to say 5 properties spread out over a huge city or multiple cities. 

2) Before I can flip the property and resell it I can usually put those properties into a collection to earn boosted income. This is a small step but really helps out in the long run.

3) I just like to be able to see multiple properties when I zoom in on the map and not have to constantly scroll around the map because as you know the US is a pretty big place.

Before I list a property for sale I do my due diligence though. I don't just buy a property for 10,000 UPX and put it up for sale for 100,000 UPX. It will probably never sell. I look at properties around my area and see what they are selling for. I try to mark my properties competively but also hopefully making at least a 100% profit on my selling of it. If I bought it for 10,000 UPX and I sell it for 20,000 UPX then I would in theory make 10k UPX but there are fees associated so I try to mark it up around 105% above what I paid.

There was one time where I awoke one morning to 3 notifications that somebody put in offers to buy 3 of my properties in San Francisco. They offered 15,000 UPX per property. I checked what I paid for each of them and they were all around 8 or 9 thousand UPX and I quickly sold all 3 properties to that person. Could I have waited and maybe made more UPX down the road? Sure, but taking the 45,000 UPX (minus fees) for 3 properties I paid roughly 26,000 UPX for was a good deal to me.

Upland is a waiting game by nature. You need to be able to play the long term in order to actually play this game. If you are looking for a quick buck you are in the wrong game. This game is for those of us who want a game that looks like it will be around for a LONG LONG time. I mean they only have a handful of cities open at the moment and there are so many more that will be opened in the coming months/years. In the screenshot above you can see that 4 weeks ago I sold 3 properties on the same day and then the time before that I sold properties was 4 months ago. For me it has been a hurry up and wait game for sure.

Let's not forget that they are constantly updating the game as well. I just decided to take a train from Chicago to Cleveland and there is animations for the trip.

It's nice additions like that they let you know A) the dev team is constantly working on the game and B) they want to make the game fun and enjoyable for the players. Both are which are really nice to see happen.

I touched on it a bit before and I wanted to circle back to "collections". Before you buy properties you need to browse through the possible collections. All that a collection does is to enable certain properties to earn more rent then they normally would. If you have 5 properties in the same city on the same street you can put them into the collection called "King of the Street".

Another one I like is called "City Pro" where you just need 5 properties in the same city. You can see in the above image that those 2 collections boost the properties 1.3 times their normal value and 1.4 times their normal value. It's a little bit but it adds up. You can also only have 1 property in 1 collection at a time. So the 5 properties I have in San Francisco that are in the 'City Pro' collection can not be added to the 'King of the Street' collection unless I remove them from the 'City Pro' collection. You need to plan out where you buy your properties with collections in mind. 

This is also why I tend to purchase properties on the same road in a given city. Because you never know when some of your properties might sell and then your collection gets wiped out so having backup properties or even properties in another city to fill the collection comes in handy!

I also personally stay away from down town areas. They are usually picked up by people who jump the gun when a new city goes lives and then resell them for astronomical prices. I am a suburban kind of guy really.

And there you have it. Those are the ways I build my wealth in Upland. It truly is an easy game to get started playing. Once you get a good collection it gets addicting and more fun to play. Something to note is that if you are a new player then you need to find plots of land marked with FSA. Those are for new players and are at a reduced price just for them.