I Tried Solitaire Cash. Then I Found Something That Actually Pays

About five months ago Alston downloaded Solitaire Cash. The ads were all over YouTube and social media promising that you could make real money by playing a game you already knew how to play. He figured why not make a few extra dollars while watching TV or waiting in the school pickup line. One hour in, the results told a different story.

After he posted the results, his audience kept asking the same follow-up question: so are there real ways to make money online? The answer is yes. This post breaks down five of them, including what each one pays at the beginner level and at scale, how to get started this week, the biggest mistakes to avoid, and a step-by-step plan for making your first dollar.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The three myths that keep people stuck on apps like Solitaire Cash
Why affiliate marketing can pay you more in a single week than Solitaire Cash ever would
How to create and sell your first digital product in one weekend
The white-label SaaS model that generates recurring monthly income without writing a single line of code
What those first 100 pieces of content actually do for your long-term income growth
The four mistakes beginners make and how to dodge each one
A free tool that matches your skills to the right income method at finder.platformproof.com

Three Myths About Solitaire Cash and Apps Like It

Before getting into what actually works, it helps to understand why apps like Solitaire Cash feel so appealing in the first place. Three myths drive most of the downloads.

Myth 1: You Can Get Rich Just by Playing

Unless you are competing in Esports tournaments or streaming to tens of thousands of live viewers, you are not going to get rich playing casual mobile games. One of the first things Alston noticed while testing Solitaire Cash was how inflated the player counts felt. At any moment you wanted to start a tournament, there were competitors ready to go. That does not happen organically. Real people are not sitting there at every hour waiting for you to start a match.

More critically, the “free” path to winning real money was mostly an illusion. To win anything meaningful, you had to deposit real money first. After every single game the app pushed you toward paid tournaments. That is not a feature. It is the business model.

Myth 2: Keep Playing and You Will Eventually Hit Big

This is exactly how a slot machine works, and it creates the same psychological trap. Alston tested this by investing 40 gems for a chance to win 200 gems back. What actually happened was that the winnings got split among the top three players. He walked away with 20 or 30 gems at best. The big-payout tournaments existed, but they were structured like casino mechanics: the odds stayed in the house’s favor while the jackpot promise kept you feeding in more.

Myth 3: It Is Still Better Than Doing Real Work

This one deserves a direct answer. Alston has not worked a traditional job since 2020 and is not telling you to go clock in at a gas station because he loves the idea. He is telling you that if you calculated the time spent depositing, playing, and trying to withdraw from Solitaire Cash and converted it to an hourly rate, the return would be lower than almost any entry-level job. Your time has value. The real question is whether you are spending it building something that grows, or something that just takes.

Method 1: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is recommending other people’s products and earning a commission when someone buys through your unique link. You do not need your own product. There is no inventory to manage, no customer service queue, and no product creation required. You partner with established brands and recommend things you already know and use.

Alston explains the concept with a simple example: your friend asks what you think of the new Star Wars film. You tell them to skip it and go see a different movie instead. They do, they love it, and they come back thanking you. That is affiliate marketing. You gave a recommendation based on real knowledge and experience, and the person trusted you over a faceless corporation. That trust is exactly why people buy from regular creators instead of going straight to Amazon.

In the video he holds up a security camera and walks through the logic. He could create videos titled “best indoor security cameras for 2025” or “best cameras to monitor a baby,” do keyword research to find what people are already asking, and place his affiliate link in the description. The content attracts the right audience. The link does the selling. He does not have to hard-pitch anyone. Some of the largest YouTubers alive today, including MKBHD and Sean Cannell, both got their start through affiliate marketing.

There are over 11,000 affiliate programs available. Amazon Associates is the easiest starting point, though it pays relatively low commissions, so you need volume to make serious money there. For higher payouts, look for direct affiliate programs from the specific brands whose products you already use. The process is the same: apply, get approved, receive a unique link, and place it strategically inside content that solves a real problem.

Earning potential: Beginners typically see $100 to $500 per month. With an email list, multiple products, and consistent content traffic, $10,000 per month is realistic, though it requires actual systems around email marketing and audience growth, not just a link in a bio.

Who this is not for: Anyone who gets nervous when someone says “click the link in my bio,” anyone who refuses to learn what a URL actually is, and anyone not willing to be consistent. Affiliate marketing is sales even when it does not feel like it.

Method 2: Selling Digital Products

A digital product is any file you create once and sell repeatedly with zero marginal cost. Ebooks, planners, templates, cheat sheets, Notion dashboards, music beats, Canva graphics, workbooks, and PDF guides all count. You create the file, upload it to a platform, and it sells while you sleep. No shipping. No returns. No inventory. No customer service unless you choose to provide it.

Alston’s first digital product was a 60-second business blueprint. He typed it over a weekend in Google Docs, saved it as a PDF, and delivered it through Google Drive. That was the entire operation. The product sold. From that starting point he iterated toward more polished products over time, including a Notion-based planning dashboard built to help creators stay consistent and actually finish what they start.

The margin advantage over affiliate marketing is significant. With digital products you keep roughly 99% of every sale. Your only real costs are the sales funnel tool you use (Gumroad, Payhip, or Systeme.io) and whatever your payment processor takes per transaction. Compare that to earning a 3 to 4% commission on an Amazon sale where you drove all the traffic.

Earning potential: $50 to $300 per month when you are just getting started with a single product. With a well-stocked Etsy shop or your own website, multiple products, upsells, and consistent traffic from social media, $10,000 per month is achievable. The ceiling rises with each new product you add and every income stream you attach to the audience you build.

Alston’s weekend launch plan: Friday you outline the product. Saturday you build it inside Canva or Google Docs. Sunday you create the sales page and go live on Gumroad, Payhip, or Etsy. That three-day sprint forces you to ship something real instead of polishing something that never launches. Version two can be better. Version one just needs to exist.

Once the product is live, you promote it through TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, or anywhere your target audience already spends time. The promotion never stops. The greatest PDF ever written will not sell if nobody knows it exists.

Who this is not for: Anyone who will spend three hours picking a font for their cover, anyone unwilling to learn basic Canva design, and anyone who skips understanding what specific problem their product solves. “A general guide to making money online” does not sell. “The exact checklist I used to land my first paid brand deal in 30 days” does.

Method 3: Creating Content

Alston realized at some point that he was spending three hours a day consuming content and earning exactly zero from it. The fix was straightforward in concept: switch from consuming to creating. Whatever you are already watching and reading about, start making content on that same topic.

You do not need to dance. You do not need to follow trends or make faces into a camera. You can sit down and talk about what is already being discussed in your niche. React to viral videos in your category. Share your take on news relevant to your target audience. Use Google Trends, Twitter, and YouTube’s trending section to find what people are already searching for, then add your perspective and experience to the conversation.

The power of content creation is that it attaches multiple revenue streams to a single output. One video or post can drive YouTube Partner Program revenue, TikTok Creativity Fund payments, affiliate commissions from the description, digital product sales from the call to action, and brand deal inquiries from sponsors watching your growth. One piece of content driving five income lines simultaneously is the compounding math that makes content creation so attractive at scale.

Earning potential: $0 to $300 per month in the early phase. The beginning is hard. You post, almost nobody watches, and it feels like you are talking to yourself. Then a few videos break through, an audience accumulates, and the growth curve starts to bend upward. Creators regularly making $10,000 per month through content typically have three to five income streams attached to their audience, not just platform ad revenue.

What the first 100 videos actually are: They are your practice rounds. They are the test runs where you figure out lighting, framing, how to speak clearly into a camera, and what your actual voice sounds like. Alston recommends watching your videos back and picking one thing to improve each time. This week focus on looking directly into the lens. Next week focus on cutting the filler words. That compounding improvement is what makes video 101 a completely different product from video one.

Who this is not for: Anyone expecting results in month one, anyone who refuses to learn basic editing, and anyone who cannot take an honest look at their own work and identify what needs to get better.

Not sure which of these five methods fits your actual situation?

Answer a few quick questions and get a personalized recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

Method 4: White-Label SaaS

SaaS stands for software as a service. Think Netflix, Hulu, GetResponse, or Clickfunnels. Customers pay every single month for access to software they rely on. The part most people miss is that you do not need to build the software yourself to profit from this model.

Alston’s company G-Bolt Systems is a white-labeled version of GoHighLevel. He did not write a single line of code to build it. He purchased GoHighLevel at the agency tier, rebranded it under his own company name with custom pricing, and now resells it to clients who need sales funnels, email marketing automation, and CRM tools. His clients pay him monthly. GoHighLevel runs the infrastructure in the background. Alston collects recurring revenue without touching the technical side of the product.

Other white-label SaaS platforms include Systeme.io and SweepDash. The setup is similar across all of them. You apply your branding, pick a niche audience (real estate agents, content creators, coaches, local restaurants), create a basic onboarding process, and start collecting monthly payments. The platform handles billing automatically as long as your clients remain active.

This model is picking up momentum right now for a specific reason. AI has made it easy to generate written content and basic course outlines, which has reduced the perceived value of information products. But AI still cannot duplicate a fully configured sales funnel, email automation sequence, or complete CRM system for a small business owner. Software tools hold their value in ways that information products are struggling to maintain. That gap is the opportunity.

Earning potential: $100 to $500 per month with a handful of clients. The math is simple: at $100 per month per client you need 100 clients to reach $10,000 per month. At $50 per month you need 200. The recurring structure means you do not start each month at zero, which changes the entire feel of building an income.

How to start: Sign up for a white-label platform like GoHighLevel. Apply your branding. Build one focused offer for a specific niche, for example email marketing tools for local service businesses starting at $47 per month. Create a simple landing page. Create content about email marketing or sales funnels to attract the right audience. Collect signups. Let the recurring revenue build.

Who this is not for: Anyone who does not want to play tech support in the early months. Your first clients will have questions. They will get stuck on settings screens. If walking someone through a platform issue at 7 PM feels like your nightmare, this model will frustrate you until you can afford to outsource support. That day comes, but it is not day one.

Method 5: Online Memberships

An online membership is a paid community or ongoing program where members pay you every month to keep solving a specific problem for them. You help people with productivity, digital marketing, fitness, journaling, parenting, financial literacy, or whatever area of real knowledge you have. As long as you keep delivering genuine value, they keep renewing.

The format is flexible. Some memberships run weekly group coaching calls. Others do two live Q&A sessions per month. Others deliver a steady stream of templates, workshop recordings, and training videos without any live component at all. You can host everything on School, Kajabi, Patreon, Circle, or even a free Facebook Group for the community layer with a paid tier built on top.

The structural difference between a membership and a single digital product sale is in the income floor. You are not starting every month at zero hunting for new customers. Each member who renews adds to a predictable baseline. Ten members at $30 per month is $300. Fifty members at $30 per month is $1,500. One hundred members at $97 per month is close to $10,000. The compounding power of retention is what makes memberships worth building through the slow early phase.

Earning potential: $10 to $300 per month in the beginning with a small or low-ticket group. Mid-ticket recurring memberships with a solid audience and upsells can reach $10,000 per month. The ceiling depends mostly on your audience size and how consistently you deliver results that justify the monthly renewal decision.

How to start: Pick one niche topic you can help people with on an ongoing basis. Decide on your delivery format (live calls, templates, videos). Set your monthly price. Start by building a free Facebook Group to test demand before paying for a premium platform. Grow the free group to 50 to 100 members, introduce the paid tier, and move over the people who want deeper access and accountability.

Who this is not for: Anyone who is inconsistent. Members are paying monthly because they expect you to show up. If you go quiet for two months when life gets busy, your churn rate climbs fast and the income floor you built collapses. This model works best for people who genuinely like helping others and want to build a long-term community rather than just make a one-time sale.

The Four Biggest Mistakes Beginners Make

All five of these methods work. They also can become five new ways to waste your time if you approach them the wrong way. Here are the mistakes Alston sees most often.

Mistake 1: Trying all five at the same time. Pick one. The methods all work, but none of them work when you are simultaneously trying to launch a YouTube channel, build a digital product store, start a SaaS company, and run a membership community. Pick the method that best matches your current knowledge and what you are genuinely willing to do every week. Alston recommends starting with content creation because the audience you build makes every other method more effective over time.

Mistake 2: Expecting results overnight. You may work for six months without earning a single dollar. You have to keep showing up anyway. The people who succeed with any of these methods are not the ones with the best ideas. They are the ones who executed a decent idea consistently until it became something real. A mediocre idea that launched and was iterated on is worth more than the best idea that is still sitting in your notes app.

Mistake 3: Creating without a monetization plan in place. Do not build content, an audience, or a product and then figure out later how you are going to make money from it. Before you create your first video or product, decide which affiliate programs you will join, what digital product you will eventually sell to your audience, or what the paid tier in your membership will look like. That clarity shapes every content and product decision you make going forward.

Mistake 4: Treating AI tools as a shortcut that replaces actual knowledge. ChatGPT and DeepSeek are genuinely useful. They can help you outline content, generate script ideas, and get a first draft 50 to 60% of the way there. But if you do not understand your niche or your audience, bad input generates bad output. AI enhances what you already know. It does not replace the need to build real knowledge and develop real relationships with your audience first.

How to Start Today: A Step-by-Step Plan

Alston closes the video with a clear action sequence. Here is the exact plan he lays out:

Pick one method from the five above. Just one. Write it down right now. Not next week. Now.
Use AI tools to get your first draft or product 50 to 60% built. Give ChatGPT or DeepSeek your niche, your target audience, and the specific problem you want to solve. Let it help you outline and draft. You finish the rest.
Start imperfectly. Do not wait for the perfect website, logo, thumbnail, or lighting setup. Launch messy and improve. Done beats perfect every time, and a launched mediocre product teaches you things that a polished idea stuck in your head never will.
Track your progress. Whether you use a Notion dashboard, a spreadsheet, or a paper notebook, tracking forces consistency. You cannot identify momentum you are not measuring. Set micro-goals (post 5 videos this month, make one product listing, sign up one client) and mark them off.
Improve as you go, and hire help when you can afford it. Once you are generating any revenue, put some of it toward outsourcing what you are worst at. Hire a graphic designer for thumbnails. Hire a copywriter for your sales page. Your job is to take action and improve one thing at a time, not to be perfect at every skill involved from day one.

The bottom line from the video: Solitaire Cash was a distraction. The five methods above actually pay. They are scalable, they are available right now, and you can start all five for free or close to free using AI tools to help with the work. Momentum beats perfection every single time. Start small. Start today. Start messy. Just start.

Find Your X

Five methods is a lot to sit with. If you are not sure which one fits your actual skills, your available time, and where you genuinely want to be in 12 months from now, do not guess. The Platform Proof Finder walks you through a short set of questions and matches you to the right starting point based on your real situation. It is free and takes about two minutes. Go to finder.platformproof.com and find your path.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Solitaire Cash actually pay real money?

It can pay small amounts, but the structure requires you to deposit real money first to enter paid tournaments. What Alston found was that the payouts rarely exceeded what he put in, and the tournament mechanics felt artificially inflated rather than populated by real competing players. When he ran the hourly math, the return rate was lower than almost any part-time job, while the risk of losing your deposit remained constant.

Can a complete beginner start affiliate marketing with no audience?

Yes, but expect a slower ramp. With no existing audience you need to build one before the affiliate links drive any meaningful volume. The most common starting path is a YouTube channel or TikTok account focused on a specific product category, consistent content creation around that category, and affiliate links placed in descriptions. You likely will not see significant income for three to six months, but the content compounds over time as your library grows and search traffic finds older videos.

What is the easiest digital product to make as a first timer?

A PDF checklist, guide, or template built in Google Docs or Canva. Alston’s first product was a one-page business blueprint that took one weekend from idea to live listing. The goal is not to make something impressive. The goal is to make something useful and find out whether anyone buys it. Version two can be more polished. Version one just needs to ship and solve a real problem.

How does white-label SaaS work legally?

It is entirely legal and widely used across the industry. Platforms like GoHighLevel are specifically designed to support white-labeling at the agency level. You purchase an agency plan, apply your own branding and pricing, and sell access under your company name. You are the seller of record for your clients. The underlying platform operates as silent infrastructure. Many established SaaS businesses operate this way, reselling and rebranding tools built by other companies.

How much does it cost to start an online membership?

You can start for free with a Facebook Group. Once you want to add paid tiers or more robust community features, Patreon starts free with a revenue share model taken from each payment. School, Kajabi, and Circle charge monthly platform fees ranging from roughly $40 to $150. The smart approach is to prove demand in a free community first before committing to a paid hosting platform. Move to a paid platform only after you have enough paying members to cover the cost.

How long does it realistically take to make your first $100 online?

It depends heavily on the method you choose and how consistently you work at it. With a digital product on Gumroad or Etsy targeting a specific buyer with a real problem, some people hit $100 within their first 30 days if the product lands in front of the right audience. With content creation from scratch, three to six months of consistent posting is a realistic expectation before monetization kicks in at any meaningful level. Affiliate marketing can move faster if you already have a small existing audience.

Do you have to show your face to make money online?

No, but Alston recommends it. Faceless channels and anonymous digital product stores can work. However, people buy from people. Trust builds faster when there is a real face attached to recommendations and teaching. Watch time, conversion rates, and brand deal attractiveness all trend higher with personal connection versus anonymity. If privacy is a concern, starting faceless is a reasonable option. But build a plan to transition to showing up as yourself when you are ready.

Which of the five methods is best if you have no tech skills at all?

Content creation is the lowest-tech starting point. A smartphone, decent window light, and a free mobile editing app are all you need to begin. Affiliate marketing is a close second since it mostly requires a free account on Amazon Associates or a brand’s direct program plus one social profile or YouTube channel. Digital products, SaaS, and memberships all require a little more setup (Canva, landing pages, payment processors) but none of them require coding, web development, or advanced technical knowledge to get off the ground.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “I Tried Solitaire Cash. Then I Found Something That Actually Pays” (YouTube, Fb0zCNReoXw)
GoHighLevel white-label SaaS platform: gohighlevel.com
Amazon Associates affiliate program information: affiliate-program.amazon.com
Gumroad digital product platform: gumroad.com
Payhip digital storefront: payhip.com