I have been earning a passive income with my extra Splinterlands cards for over a year and love it very much. Before the NFT assets got popular third party 
Prior to the recent Splinterlands popularity booming the game's developers have collaborated with Peakmonsters developers for months if not years on a new rental system that would work more efficiently and separate from card delegation. The new rental system I have only been using it for a little over a week and I am in awe by it as I enjoy each day watching my fruit and labor of the past come back with great rewards. With the current growth in popularity I am going to take full advantage of what I can earn with this new rental system. Here in my post I discuss my journey and what I intent to do to maximize my earnings as best I can.
Rental Versus Delegation
When Splinterlands was created the back bone of the game already have a way for players to lend out cards to other players to play. This process is known as "Delegate Cards" and once the card is lend to user there is a seven day cool down period after user's last use of the card. From the very beginning the developers of the game already had the intention of allowing a way for NFT owners to earn income for owning assets.
Peakmonsters came in and developed a feature that would allow owners to list cards they wish to delegate for a fixed daily price. Peakmonsters.com would become the portal for which these delegated cards would be visible for lenders and renters. Peakmonsters would make it clear on their website that the cards being presented as rentals where labeled as such, however the actual function of lending and borrowing the card still went through the internally in Splinterlands as delegated cards.
The initial drawbacks of this process were that only players who were aware of Peakmonsters would know that cards could be rented out. In addition borrowers who uses a card only once or use for a short period of time and then ending the contract with still inhibit the use of the card for the owner for seven days. This meant the owner losses seven days of opportunity to rent the card to someone else.
As mentioned earlier for months Splinterlands worked along side with Peakmonsters, 
(A Snapshot of www.peakmonsters.com rental web page)
My Rental Experience
When I first started playing Splinterlands I had little to no resources as I did not have much to spend. However I saved enough through upvotes from steemit/hive blog posts to earn myself crypto in the form of Steem and Hive to purchase cards. Along the way I rented out only once and I remember it vividly as once I utilized the rental system once I was hooked on believing I could earn a great passive income if I had the best cards for renting. The feeling of earning an income for doing no work is what many of us who work our 9 to 5 job aspire to do. We work towards saving for retirement and hoping in our golden years we can live off the earnings we saved while working. Hence I felt the same way with owning Splinterlands cards and after renting once I never did it again. My main goal in the game was to own the most amount of cards that I could rent out and earn as much as possible.
My Experience as a Lender
In Peakmonsters.com original rental system I have been using for over a year. In fact snapshot below shows some of the rentals that started over 6 months ago is still active. For sake of organizing my rentals I decided to keep these active for the time being. However I do intent to switch all my rentals to the new system once the cards expire in the old system.
Back in the old system I was earning at peak around $0.50 a day in passive income with all my lending. Note at the time game was not as popular as presently, and in the old system the rental price was reflected in $ amount / day, which I think lead to many who borrowed felt hesitant to unless the price was low enough. Present rental system on the other hand, although still represented in $ amount / day, it is paid in the form of DEC. This provides DEC another reason to increase in value as it has an additional in game use.
With the use of the new rental system I am now earning more than 800 DEC a day. Converting that equates to around 8 Hives or close to $3.20 if Hive is at $0.40. This is over 6 times my earning from the old system. I favor the use of this new system much more.
For over a year I have been saving and snatching Alpha summoners cards when ever possible. I have amassed close to 40 cards with a majority of them in the range of level 3 and level 4. From in game playing experience I knew this was a sweet spot for the cards' level and decent win rate in silver/gold league. The goal was to someday rent out these cards for passive income.
I recently set the price most of these summoners at single digit DEC / daily but realized they were being sweep up from the market pretty quickly. I then compared how other lenders were pricing their rentals and I come to find I have been low balling my cards. I have been use to the old system knowing that a certain price was the sweet spot for renters. However with the current market DEC prices steady at 5x from parity and many new players arriving I believe I will increase the prices of my rentals.
From my very own experience I have found that winning a match even in silver league when my DEC energy bar is above 80% still racked in for me over 30 DEC per win. This meant that if a renter was quick enough to spot my deals they were basically renting out all five rare alpha summoners and be able to pay the daily fee with just one win. Of course there is also the monsters to considered but the most important cards in the game is the summoners. Without the right summoner/s at specific levels the monsters are unable to be set on the field.
(Snapshot of some of my alpha summoners listing on Peakmonsters)
My first approach in trying to maximize my earning potential for sake of catching up with the card prices is to raise my rental prices by 3x from where they currently stand. If not all cards are rented I will par down the cost and adjust until they rent out. However with the current demand for cards from so many new players I believe I will be able to rent them out even if it is not daily.
Conclusions
I had spent countless hours over the months playing Splinterlands to amass a decent size amount of level 3/4 alpha summoners. This required me a lot of time and patience as alpha summoners are in itself some of the rarest cards in the game. Not many were being sold and some were leveled up higher making it much less feasible to own without deep pockets. I am now ready to reap the rewards that I sow and with the new rental system developed I believe this is achievable.
The popularity of the game is rising and after listening to today Splinterland's AMA I do believe there is a lot to be made by all the veterans who had spent months if not years holding and playing Splinterlands prior to current boom. One of the hidden gems of this game is truly the rental market it has in place. It underscores how undervalue Splinterlands was and still is as new series of cards is slated to be on sale in September and the activation of plot lands for in game use not far behind.
I look forward to utilizing the new rental market and see what opportunities it will lead me to. As of today I have only sold a dozen of cards in my collection in the past week but it has earned my at least a couple thousand Hives. I have use those Hives to power up my account and in turn earn more income by curating other posts. Its a win win and I look forward to continuing this as the game progress while making all its participants richer.
Until next time thanks for reading!!!
I have plenty of other cards for rent! Just go on peakmonsters and check out the market place and if you are curious what I offer here is a link:
If You have yet to take part in playing this great game called Splinterlands please click on my referral link. It is free but in order to earn real assets such as cards and token you would have to invest in a starter deck or purchase game cards. Join the discord to learn more. Good luck!