No More Excuses: Getting to Level 1 without spending money [if you can't, I may have a key for you]

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More than 850,000 users on this site are Level 0. This means they haven't created a single giveaway yet (at least not for a game that wasn't already given away for free). Now, I highly recommend creating giveaways for the warm fuzzies, but even if that's not appealing enough there's another good reason. It provides access to many more giveaways and improves your odds of winning.

It may sound complex or expensive to reach Level 1, but don’t fret. I'm assuming here that you already have some games on Steam but that for whatever reason you can't afford a $1 bundle. All you need to do is this:

Play your Steam games that drop Trading Cards. An easy way to find these games is to use Lorenzo Stanco’s excellent Steam Library Filters, enter your Steam ID, and then use the Trading Cards filter. You can also use Steam Idle Master to get the cards quicker (google it).
Sell your cards. If you use Steam inventory helper extension for Chrome browser you can use the "Instant Sell for..." button to quickly liquidate the cards in your Steam Inventory into dollars in your Steam Wallet. If you're not in a hurry "Quick Sell for..." to get a better price. You may also want to try this script which is recommended for selling all cards.
Go to steamdb.info Sales page, Special Promotion section and click Price to sort the sales, listing the cheapest games at the top. Currently there are games like "The Slaughtering Grounds" going for $0.14 and "Escape Machines" and "Flesh Eaters" for $0.15. If you have enough money in your Steam Wallet, be nice and choose a game with better rating (check the rightmost column). "Star Savior" for example, currently costs $0.79 and has a rating of 81% from hundreds of users.
Once you decide on a game, create a new giveaway for it. If the game is on sale, make sure the giveaway ends while the game is still on sale. To be on the safe side, you may want to pick a game which is cheap even when not on sale. Ok, back to the giveaway creation. Select Gift and continue as normal (see the FAQ for details). Mention in the giveaway description that you'll send a friend invite to the winner over Steam and will deliver the game as a gift. Edit: Because of changes to how gifts from the Steam store work you should also limit the giveaway to regions that are within 10% of the price you're paying. You can look for the game on isthereanydeal.com and use the Compare Regions screen to check pricing in other areas. A safe and easy alternative is to limit the giveaway only to your own country, but then it won't be accessible to most users on this site.
Once the giveaway is finished and you have a winner, add them on Steam and purchase the game. After you add the game to the cart select Purchase as a Gift, then select the winner from your list of friends and complete the purchase.
As soon as the winner checks the Received checkbox here on SG, you'll complete your first giveaway and will become Level 1 and a contributing member of this community. Isn't that nice? :-)

Good Luck!

Mini on-going event

If you're a Level 0 user ~~who can show you don't have market access (and therefore can't use the guide below) and if you never traded~~, let me know. I'll be happy to send you a spare key to create your first giveaway. Offer is limited to the first 5 users who reply to this post and meet the criteria (and are not rule breakers). Reply to this comment.

Edit: As several people have mentioned below, the guide is only applicable to Steam users who have access to the market (basically anyone who spent $5 or more on Steam). If you don't have access to the market see this excellent post by Nokkenbuer about alternative solutions, such as getting games on TremorGames or using a prepaid card on Steam to get access to the market.

Thread title when not doing key drops or events: "No More Excuses: Getting to Level 1 without spending money (a short & simple guide)"

8 years ago*

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300 Comments

Rahul

Still the same thing. This has an opportunity cost associated with it. And I would rather gift a game that I know is good rather than go for the cheapest game.

Personally my first giveaway was dungeon siege which I got from raptr that came bundled with AMD drivers. I got it thinking it was the best from the list then decided that someone else would probably benifit more from playing it. Back then I had no idea about these levels.

8 years ago