MobileAppDaily recently had the opportunity to interview the Co-founder and CEO of Pawns.app, Karolis Toleikis. In this interview, we learned about his professional journey, and educational background, and also got to know more about the foundation of IPRoyal and Pawns.app ventures.
This interview has given us some insights that helped us in finding answers to the questions like how Pawns.app survived the initial era of skepticism to establish itself as a trustworthy money-making option, and how its survey feature benefitted the app to grow further.
Also, the inspiring journey of Karolis that started with creating websites to establishing and growing a full-fledged organization is something that can be guiding for our readers out there. So, without further ado, let’s have a look at the conversation we had with Karolis Toleikis.
AI got my first computer at a very young age. For me, it was something truly special. Instead of spending time outside, I was on my computer every day, trying to figure out new things, using software, playing video games, and exploring the internet.
Between 2009 and 2015, I was mainly learning about creating websites by myself. This experience helped me understand how to develop successful projects and gave me valuable programming knowledge. It’s easy to communicate with programming and create the whole project process if you know what is possible and what might not work that well on the programming side or create issues in the future. While I don’t code anymore, I still do my best to keep up with the newest trends so I can ensure that our projects use the best practices.
After working on a single project for eight years, I decided it was time to move on to something else and learn some new things. The proxy idea came from leasing IP subnets. IP subnet leasing was initially an investment, but I quickly realized there’s a tremendous demand for proxies, especially for companies who need to scrape the web, access the internet without limitations, and increase their online security overall.
With the help of developers, we created a system that allowed us to start working on our proxy project. During those early days, I mostly dealt with everything myself - SEO, marketing, and support. This experience helped me better understand the proxy niche and the market’s needs. After a couple of months, I realized that it was time to expand our team if we wanted to grow. Fortunately, everything worked out pretty well.
Pawns was initially a side project for us. We developed it to help IPRoyal build a bigger pool of IP addresses since that’s what our clients needed. However, later on, we decided to transition it to Pawns.app and develop one of the top-earning apps that any person in the world could use to make some extra money. We added the Surveys option, and we’re currently working on bringing it to every supported country. Also, we plan to add more ways for our users to earn money in 2023.
Pawns.app allows the user to choose how they want to use it. To earn money through Surveys, all they need to do is sign up and provide an email address. On the other hand, if they want to earn a passive income by sharing their internet connection, they’ll also have to share their IP address with us. Of course, we require all our clients to confirm their identity before accessing our network. We also monitor all traffic 24/7, so Pawns.app users don’t have to worry about their IP addresses being abused in any way.
Pawns.app is still pretty new. We’ll be expanding our team to work separately on this project soon. In other words, 2023 will be a big year and we plan to show the true potential of Pawns.app. Our goal is to make it one of the top 3 global survey applications and we expect our user base to increase five times by the end of the next year.
In most cases, you need to share some data with a third party to earn money. With surveys, companies looking for honest, unbiased feedback pay you to answer questions about their products, services, marketing efforts, and other areas of interest. There are also other ways for users to trade their data for money without any negative consequences. In fact, we’re already sharing a lot of our information online. From search queries on Google to purchase history on Amazon - companies use this data to tailor our experience and present us with information we might be interested in.
The only key difference here is that they don’t pay the user for this data. That’s what we’re aiming to change with Pawns.app - our users get paid for the opinions and experiences they share through surveys. We have many exciting ideas and new ways to earn money coming to our app in the near future.
Some people were initially skeptical about Pawns.app, which is understandable. Sharing your IP address in exchange for a real passive income does sound strange. After all, the internet is full of scams, so a healthy dose of skepticism doesn't hurt. However, as soon as the first payouts started rolling out, we started gaining credibility, and things became much easier. More and more people started joining the app and making money with it. After a while, we added the Surveys feature, which helped us reach an even bigger audience and made it easier for our users to choose how they want to earn with Pawns.app.
We decided to separate Pawns.app from IPRoyal and develop a leading money-making app. Our team recognized the opportunity to provide people worldwide with a reliable income source and several ways to earn money. Our ultimate goal is to have between 5 and 10 ways to earn a side income in a single app and let our users choose which ones work best for them.
Users who participate in surveys agree with the terms and conditions and allow businesses to use the provided answers in their market research, product development, marketing strategy development, and more. However, it’s important to note that our users don’t need to provide any personal information - we don’t need their names, IDs, or any other identifying data. We only ensure that we deliver surveys to users in countries or regions our clients are interested in. Everything else is anonymous.
I’m currently 32 years old, with around 14 years of experience in the IT sector, if we count my first internet radio or e-commerce project as a starting point. Here’s what I learned during that time about creating successful projects:
With a mixture of literature, cinema, and photography, Manish is mostly traveling. When he is not, he is probably writing another tech news for you!
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