Trump’s Empire is a hot new Telegram game that builds on the number-goes-up premise of earlier tap-to-earn games, albeit with an unofficial Donald Trump vibe and a slick interface. And given Trump’s return to the White House and launch of a Solana meme coin, it’s particularly timely right now.
We’ve been playing loads of the game ahead of the eventual airdrop, and we’ve discovered a few tips and tricks that can hopefully help you maximize your earnings. Some tips are simply ways to get the most dollars per second, while ignoring others could be catastrophic to your income.
So if you want to earn more tokens, or just make the numbers in Trump’s Empire get bigger and bigger, these are the tips and tricks you need to follow.
Always close the game
This is a weird one, and something the dev team should fix. If you are in the game and actively playing with it on your screen, you’ll earn money. If you close the app and return to the Telegram interface, you’ll earn exactly the same amount of money. But if you close the overall Telegram app while the Trump’s Empire mini app is still open, you’ll earn nothing.
In short, the worst thing by far that you can do in Trump’s Empire is to close the Telegram app before closing the Trump’s Empire app. Always make sure you fully exit Trump’s Empire every time you stop playing, otherwise you’ll be throwing away potentially sizable passing earnings.
Screenshots from Trump’s Empire. Image: Decrypt
Hire managers ASAP
A follow-up to the previous point is the fact that managers are what you need to start earning passive income. Without them, you’ll have to tap the button to start the next earning cycle for each of your businesses—but when you hire them, they will do that as soon as it comes off cooldown, effectively turning your business into a nonstop money making machine.
Get managers for each business as soon as you can. It costs a little bit of in-game income, but they’ll more than make up for the investment… and pretty rapidly too.
Scaling upgrades are hidden
It might seem that the only way to increase the money each of your business makes is to level them up, but hidden away in the upgrades menu—which is mostly filled with premium currency upgrades—there are some you can purchase for in-game currency that provide a 3x multiplier on your profits.
While a standard business level-up will give you a static increase of dollars per second, these upgrades give you a multiplier that scales the higher your dollars-per-second rate goes, making them incredibly valuable. You don’t want to pick them up as soon as you get a new business, as the percentage multiplier won’t mean much—but they’ll provide a nice, big boost once you’re on steady ground.
Claim investors wisely
After a while, Trump’s Empire gives you the option to reset your progress to zero and effectively start over, but with a massive bonus in the form of investor tokens. These grant a 2% profit bonus for each one you hold, plus you can opt to spend some on other in-game benefits.
You can see how getting a few of these can increase your earnings, but selecting the right time to reset your progress is key. Within the space of just a few hours, the amount of investor tokens I could earn with a reset almost doubled, so picking the right time to do it is key.
After a while, resetting and claiming your investors will start to feel like a common part of your gameplay routine. Heavy players are likely to want to reset and claim once or twice a day, as you’ll get a potentially massive earnings boost and you’ll be able to re-purchase all of your various upgrades within a few minutes. It’s a relatively painless process.
Screenshots from Trump’s Empire. Image: Decrypt
Earn/spend STARS and Climbtokens
There are other boosts in the game called STARS—which, confusingly, aren’t the same as Telegram’s in-app Stars currency—and Climbtokens, both of which can be extremely helpful for boosting your earnings.
You’ll earn in-game STARS for inviting friends and completing social tasks, for example, and those can be spent either on a one-time lump sum of in-game funds or exchanged for Climbtokens, each of which provides a sizable 7.77x boost to any of your business efforts.
We find it more valuable for serious players to invest in the long-term boost rather than the short-term cash infusion, but play it your way. Just don’t miss out on these extra benefits.
Unlock and play other worlds
A couple months after launching, Trump’s Empire added two additional themed “worlds” that put a slightly different spin on the familiar formula, called Trump President and Trump Businessman. These can be unlocked with in-game currency, and while the gameplay is identical to the main Trump’s Empire experience, they offer additional ways to earn ahead of the airdrop.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
Editor’s note: This story was originally published on January 22, 2025 and last updated with new detail on April 15.
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