PokéStop Cash Secret #1: Roaming Pokémon Go Concierge
It’s the middle of summer and Pokémon Go players are roaming the city in search of the best spots full of PokéStops, Gyms, and rare Pokémon. They’re out for hours at a time, spending the day walking, biking, or skateboarding from place to place. Usually thirst, hunger, or a low battery are what cause them to retreat to the indoors, whether it be their home or a restaurant. You can help them avoid having to cut their adventure short. All you have to do is go to them. It has been built, and they will “go.” Get Pokémon Go to find out where the best PokéStop-saturated places are, and meet them there with all of the Pokémon Go trainer necessities: Snacks, hydration, and a charge station. If it’s the winter time, consider getting a set-up that will allow you to offer hot drinks like coffee or hot chocolate.
Create Pokémon Go-themed signs to let Trainers know that you have what they need. Buy in bulk at clubs such as Sam’s, Costco’s, or directly from suppliers to keep your overhead low, but don’t upcharge too much. You still want to look appealing. If at a Gym, you could even inspire competition and offer a discount to the current champions. This would give you an easy way to engage with your customers and encourage Trainers to buy from you–not the uninterested chain store down the street. The beauty of this business model, too? You don’t need a license if all of your products are pre-packaged.
If operating out of your car, purchase a cigarette lighter inverter like this one to use as your charge station. Using a bike and cart set up won’t be as convenient, but the extra mobility will be worth it. You’ll truly be able to go directly to your customers on a bike when faced with an area like a park. Invest in a bike and a cart, each you can easily find for less than $200, and you’re good to go. You’ll also need a generator or high-charge capacity portable chargers for your charge station, all a bit more pricey than what your car can give you, but as suggested, the mobility will most likely be worth it. Plus, a customized cart looks more professional than selling items out of a van!
PokéStop Cash Secret #2: Roaming Pokémon Concierge PLUS
Take your concierge service up a notch by offering products specifically for Pokémon Go players. Purchase Team Valor, Team Instinct, Team Mystic, and even fan-made Team Harmony badges to sell to Trainers, or offer them to Trainers who make a minimum purchase. You can find these easily with a simple Google search, “Pokémon Go Team Badges.”
This can extend to quite a few items you can purchase in bulk online and resell at your travelling concierge business, such as bumper stickers, patches, t-shirts, key chains and more. Look around for the best quality at the best deal you can find—there are already a ton of sellers online. This requires extra work and more time than simply stocking up with basic supplies, but could be worth it. Test out the idea with pins (badges), the cheapest item to stock, and ask customers who purchase them if they would buy other products to gauge interest.
If you’re an artist, or have graphic design skills, make your own products to increase your rapport and reputation with the local community. Give out business cards and offer to do commissions. You could even open your own online shop at a website like Etsy and sell your products both in-person and over the web.
As a travelling concierge, you have many advantages:
- You can go directly to PokéStops, where there will be customers you know will be interested.
- You can lure in those interested in snacks, and then try to sell your other products
- You can lure in those interested in merchandise, and try to sell snacks.
PokéStop Cash Secret #3: Trainer Transportation Service
Here’s a secret among Pokémon Go players: Hitting PokéStops for items and XP; and finding Pokémon, are much quicker and less work when you have transportation. This is why: Interacting with PokéStops takes only a few seconds, but getting to and from PokéStops on foot can take a few minutes. Also, Pokémon spawn rates are affected by the distance travelled. Achieving maximum distance travelled to promote maximum spawn rates is tiring and difficult on foot. In a slow moving car, passengers can take advantage of passing multiple PokéStops fairly quickly, seeing multiple Pokémon spawn, and even hatching a few Pokémon Eggs. Here’s the Egg trick: every minute or so, the game pings the server to communicate distance travelled. If too much distance was covered, that distance will not apply to the hatching of the egg. Going faster than about 10mph will make it so eggs will not hatch, unless you are making frequent stops. If you are driving up to 25mph, as long as you are making frequent stops, you will make at least some progress on Eggs. This all sounds great, right? However, hopping in just any cab won’t work for this, either. To have time to interact with PokéStops, time to catch Pokémon, and effectively hatch eggs, the car must be driven very slowly and the driver must be willing to stop. Plus, communicating with a driver unfamiliar with Pokémon Go will be difficult when giving directions. Well, what about getting a friend to drive? The only problem with this is that drivers cannot play. They must accept the fact that they are a chauffeur, and will miss out on the hundreds of Pokémon and items their passengers are getting.
This is where you come in. Learn the best spots in your city for Pokémon Go. You know downtown is not only PokéStop plentiful, but often has Lure Modules up? Tell your passengers about it, or allow your passengers to direct you. When they say, “There’s a Dragonite behind us!” you’ll know to turn around and find a safe place to stop so your passengers can catch the rare Pokémon.
Charge per person per hour–upsell your Pokémon Go knowledge and your unique service! To make the most of your time, make appointments in advanced.
PokéStop Cash Secret #4: Launch Lure Modules
If you’re lucky enough to have a business in the vicinity of a PokéStop, you’ve hit the jackpot. You can stay put and simply market yourself as a welcoming business and PokéStop, offering promotions for Trainers. Put up physical signs in front of your storefront and make sure to promote your new status on social media and to your email lists. You could even sponsor some of your social media posts to reach Trainers in your area who don’t already follow you. See our full guide and 21 PokéStop Marketing Tips for more info.
Now, you may want to invest a few dollars into Pokémon Go itself to make the most of your prime location. To do this, you’ll need to download Pokémon Go onto your phone, which is free. (You should have already done this, too. How else would you know if you’re a PokéStop?) Once you’ve created your account and log in, you can head to the Store within the app to purchase PokéCoins, the in-game currency. The bigger batch you buy, the more free PokéCoins you will get, so we recommend getting a larger batch if possible. The items you will want to purchase are Lure Modules. These items are attached to PokéStops, which attract lots of Pokémon for 30 minutes, which in turn attract lots of trainers. Since 8 packs of Lure Modules cost 680 PokéCoins, the bundle of 14,500 PokéCoins can get you 168 Lure Modules–that’s 84 hours of Trainer-Attracting-Action for only 100 bucks! For a little more than a dollar an hour, you can bring virtually guaranteed crowds to your business. If it’s slow and you need to increase traffic, attach a Lure Module and post to social media how long you will have Lure Modules active. To make your business even more appealing, offer a promotion or discount to Pokémon trainers. These techniques are a must try!
