Hay day: Top 6 tips, tricks, and cheats to save cash and grow your farm fast!

Hay Day is one of the most popular free to play games on the App Store, but it'll cost you a bundle in in app purchases if you're not careful. Here are some tips I've figured out on how to get ahead in the game without paying a dime.

Hay Day puts you in charge of rehabilitating a farm that's seen better days. You grow and harvest crops, raise livestock, clearing land, and make goods you can sell to local businesses and consumers to make a tidy profit. With each new level comes new goods you can make, new livestock and crops, and some other assorted goodies to help make your farming experience better. Like most free to play games, there's an in app purchase mechanism that you can use to buy a hard currency in the game (diamonds) which will get you ahead and get you out of jams. The tips I've come up with are to keep you out of those jams.

1. Don't run out of seed crops

Every crop you plant will double its yield upon harvest — one unit of corn planted in your field yields two corn units in your silo. As tempted as you may be to use up all the seeds in your silo to fill a lucrative order, don't. Plant those seeds and make sure to keep enough on hand to create the products you're going to need later. If you do, you'll have no choice but to use diamonds to buy more seeds.

Especially as your farm grows, you're going to need to constantly supply your livestock with feed — to that end, you should always have a good stock of wheat, corn, soybeans and other feed in your silo at all times.

2. Plant slow-growing crops at night or during work hours

Some crops only take a few minutes to pop up — wheat, corn, and carrots, for example, all take less than ten minutes. Others, like pumpkins and indigo, take hours. Make sure to plant those crops before you go to sleep or if you're going to busy with work or school for a few hours; that way they'll be ready when you get back and you can harvest and use them as you need to.

The same rule applies to livestock and to finished goods you're making. Some take hours to get ready, so make sure they start production before you're off to bed, and they'll be ready when you wake up the next day.

3. Don't bother with visitors to your farm

Visitors to your farm want to buy your goods, but they typically don't want to pay a premium for them. So don't be afraid to say no. They won't take offense and they'll come around again soon enough as soon as the mood strikes them.

About the only exception I make is when I have a total glut on something, like chicken eggs, or something I can make really fast, like wheat.

This brings me to my next tip...

4. Use your roadside stand to fill your coffers

Rather than selling goods to visitors, sell them to your friends and followers who are also playing Hay Day. You can check your newspaper to see what your friends are selling products for and follow suit. What I usually do is just max out the price of the good then knock 10 percent off. Usually it sells right away.

5. Don't be afraid to say no to orders

Your bulletin board will pile up with orders from nearby businesses that need your goods — stores, salons, schools, churches and more. They're usually willing to pay a fair price, but sometimes you don't have enough goods to fill the orders, or it'll take too long, or you may not even have the equipment or livestock to fill the order. Don't be afraid to dump the order in the trash.

You'll end up waiting a few minutes until the next order arrives, but if you can fill it, it'll be more worthwhile than having the limited space you have for orders taken up by stuff you can't or don't want to fill.

6. Balance money with experience

As your orders come in, you'll see two figures appear at the bottom — coins and stars. Coins are the money you'll get for each order, and stars are the experience points you'll get for completing that order.

Succeeding at Hay Day is as much about leveling up as it is about making coins, so look at those orders carefully. It may be worth your while to go with an order that offers less cash but more experience to help you level up faster.

7. And a cheat - reload the game to refresh the newspaper

I've already given you six tips and tricks, but I promised you a cheat too, so here you go: Your newspaper shows you the current deals that other Hay Day players are offering. You can force the newspaper to refresh if you quit the game entirely, then relaunch it. (And when I say quit the game, I mean get it out of active memory - if you're unfamiliar with how to do so, follow these instructions.) The newspaper should be refreshed and you'll see new deals.

Your top tips, tricks, and cheats?

So there you go — six quick tips for getting the most out of Hay Day. Do you have others? Are you frustrated with Hay Day? Or has it already cost you a bundle in in app purchases? Sound off in the comments and let me know what you think. And if you haven't already tried Hay Day, make sure to check it out in the App Store.