I wanted to make this thread to share personal experiences and hopefully start some discussion around the lesser-known side hustles one can have in Torn City.
I hope this provides an interesting read and maybe inspire a few people to explore the entrepreneurial side of Torn.
For context, I’m very new, exactly 12 days old as of today, so I’m by no means an expert. But I guess that proves my point when I say anyone can start experimenting with these side hustles even if you’re starting with zero capital.
But obviously being new comes with its challenges. For starters, people are (probably rightfully) skeptical of making deals with a 5 day old, level 4 player. But beyond that, trying to operate while lacking knowledge that many others consider basic can be reallyyy difficult.
I’ve basically been working as a full-time sponge, absorbing as much info as possible. So much that some people have asked if this is an alt account or if I really started only 12 days ago which I’ll take as a HUGE huge compliment haha. Although honestly… it feels like I’ve aged 15 years in the last two weeks so theres also that.
Within my first 10 days in Torn, I managed to reach 150m net worth, and I even began renting a Private Island around day 7, my first irresponsible splurge. (Many more to come)
I should point out that while most of my progress and money has come from side hustles, I’ve also had a lot of help along the way.
The WTF faction took me in around day 7 and have been very supportive since. I’ve also had four higher-level players send me extremely generous gifts, which I’m incredibly grateful for.
But the most valuable gift I’ve received from experienced players is their time, showing me the ropes and sharing their very valuable knowledge and experiences.
Let’s get into it.
I’ll go through two major categories of side hustles, Recruitment which can be done almost immediately with a very low level of knowledge and Brokerage which is much more advanced and can be extremely profitable.
These aren’t the only side hustles in the gam, they’re just the two I’ve personally experimented with so far.
First major category: Recruitment
(You can check my uploaded images for past work)
I actually stumbled into this one accidentally.
I helped a company director find a newcomer to fill a job opening he had. And since I still have access to the newbie chat, it was very easy to spot who’s an active newbie.
The director was extremely grateful, which made me wonder if this is something directors would actually pay for.
So I started messaging multiple directors and to my surprise, many were more than happy to pay $500k per recruit. It was an amazing moment, I felt like had discovered a cheat code.
So I began working really hard, was easily doing 10 hour days juggling conversations, responding to director inquiries, tracking multiple orders that came in, and coordinating with newcomers to fill these orders.
After a day or two I began to understand the main problems directors were facing. So I improved my service by filtering newcomers, making sure they understood company expectations, mainly activity and loyalty.
Once I had a better system, I realised I could probably increase my price, so I had a go upping it to 1M per recruit.
Despite several discouraging messages telling me it’s going to work, many directors were still very interested.
And the demand was very high to the point where it became difficult to manage alone. I mean at one stage I was recruiting 25 newcomers per day (roughly $25M daily plus tips).
Even then, I wouldn’t recommend charging more than $1M per recruit. While some directors would pay more, this price is both fair and sustainable.
Especially early on, the focus should be building long-term relationships, not running after a few quick wins.
(I say this because I saw a level 3 player on a forum asking for $7M per recruit)
As I say, eventually the workload became too much, so I actually created a small recruitment agency with a few other chronically online players. I showed them my process and systems so we could split the workload.
An interesting observation, messaging directors, you can see there is huge demand for high work-stat players, with some directors willing to pay very steep prices.
I didn’t get the chance to explore this area myself yet, but it seems like an untapped market.
My honest ratings:
Newcomer Recruitment -
Complexity: 2/10
Learning Curve: 3/10
Time & Effort: 8/10
Demand: 8/10
Profit Potential: 5/10
Recruiting Higher Stat Players -
Complexity: 7/10
Learning Curve: 5/10
Time & Effort: 9/10
Demand: 10/10
Profit Potential: 8/10
Moving onto the second category of side-hustles, Brokerage.
After setting up the recruitment agency, I finally had more time on my hands which allowed me to try out brokerage, one of the more sophisticated side hustles.
In simple terms, brokerage is connecting buyers and sellers.
Some players want to sell companies, while others want to buy them. But finding each other can take lots of time and effort, which is where you as the broker come in.
Your job also includes collecting and organising all relevant information about the company like the upgrades that were completed, sellback value, running costs, whether employees are staying post sale, etc.
You then present this information to the buyer while you negotiate pricing with the seller.
If both sides agree on a price, then the transfer takes place and you get your brokerage fee.
Fees could be flat like $20M or a percentage of the deal. Tupixal percentages are 2.5% for large deals, even lower sometimes, and 5-10% for smaller deals sometimes even more.
I have found that it is best to agree on the fee at the every start to avoid awkward situations later.
A cool thing I came across is the option for a buyer/seller to pay an additional consulting fee for deep market research which makes sense as many buyers have massively overpaid without even realising, with hundreds of millions wasted in some substances all because they didn’t know how to do the research.
I’ve had a good few deals that I’ve worked on in the past two days.
For example, last night a $1.3B deal for a 10* LS company that iw irked on was finalised. We had agreed on a 2.5% brokerage fee which meant $32.5M as payment for my services.
I’m currently working on a much larger and more complex 18-20B mining company deal. It actually go so complex that I had to organise everything into a Google doc to track offers, company details, and my client’s preferences.
Once the client chooses which company to proceed with, I’ll then negotiate a good final price and connect both parties for the ownership transfer.
Important note: The biggest challenge with brokerage is the learning curve. Nothing is more embarrassing than helping with a company sale and having to ask what sellback means or how a company ownership transfer works.
You should only go into brokerage if you’ve done some deep research into atleast the basics to avoid being put in awkward situations. And when you start, begin with smaller companies and gradually work your way up.
And btw, brokerage work for both company and faction sales, but it’s important to specialise in one rather than doing both.
And in my opinion, company brokerage has a steeper learning curve because of the large variety of company types. In hindsight, I should have probably got into faction brokerage because of this.
My honest ratings:
Company Brokerage -
Complexity: 7/10
Learning Curve: 10/10
Time & Effort: 9/10
Demand: 8/10
Profit Potential: 10/10
Faction Brokerage -
Complexity: 5/10
Learning Curve: 8/10
Time & Effort: 9/10
Demand: 7/10
Profit Potential: 10/10
(Largely depending on deal size obv)
If you’re considering trying any of these side hustles, I’d advise you to maintain organisation from the start, since you could be having 15 plus active conversations at once, and waking up to 40 unread messages. Without setting up a system, it’s really easy to lose track of important deals.
Also make sure to read Torn’s advertising rules carefully. They’re really strict. You cannot advertise in the newbie chat for example and forum advertising is limited to if you own the thing being advertised which makes both recruitment and brokerage much harder to do. But you can still message people in private.
That said, Torn staff have been really helpful, and always start with warnings and explanations rather than punishments.
Anyway, that’s been my experiences so far experimenting with torn city side hustles.
I’d really like to hear about other creative money-making strategies people have tried.