Games That You Can Make Money From
Mar 01, 2021 They make money playing games on Twitch through: Paid subscribers. A viewer can pay a between a $4.99 – $24.99 a month to support a channel. Receiving “Bits”. Bits are bought on Twitch and are given to a streamer to show your support. These are ads that can be played by the streamer during a stream. Best Games Apps to Earn Money 1. There are many ways to earn money from Swagbucks. Making money from playing games is one of the best ways. MistPlay -Earn money playing games. One of the popular Game apps to earn money from your smartphone is Mist Play. Long Game – Earn.
Video games are a huge source of entertainment for many people worldwide. Gaming is a way to escape reality for a brief moment of time, and enter entirely different worlds of possibility.
Thanks to the invention of the internet, people are no longer forced into the 9-5 rat race as there are many different paths to making an income online, and one such avenue is through video gaming.
If you grew up playing video games just 20 years ago, you would never have imagined that people could earn money today by simply playing their favourite video games.
If you love video games, then why not make some money from it at the same time?
From making a few dollars as a side hustle, to turning your side hustle into a fulltime career passion, below are 9 ways you can make money playing video games right now.
1. Create A YouTube Gaming Channel
YouTube is a popular video-sharing platform, where people can create video content and then upload it to the platform. But you know that.
What you may not know is that you can either do pre-recorded videos or live videos, where people can watch you play games and then listen to you describe the games as you play. And you can make money from this if you have enough viewers!
The live video option also allows you to communicate live in chat with your subscribers, to add more engagement.
However, before you can start making any money from your channel, you need to understand that your YouTube channel will need to receive 4,000 hours of watch time and 1,000 subscribers before you can start monetizing your videos with ads.
If your subscribers really enjoy your content, then you can also setup a Patreon account, where people can donate money to you, to help support your channel and content. Or you can add affiliate links (for example, a link to Amazon that sells the game you are playing) in the description and mention them in the video.
To stand out with your gaming channel, you will need to provide a unique experience for your viewers, so that they will feel entertained and will want to keep watching each time you upload a new video.
If you plan to play video games or review them, start with more niche games and then work your way up to the most mainstream games (once you have gained a good following).
In the beginning, it can be difficult to gain followers, since the most popular Youtubers such as Ninja, PewDiePie and Markiplier will be playing the most popular games and receiving the most views from their videos.
However, do not give up just because you are not seeing immediate success in your channel, as it can take several months to start gaining any significant traffic to your channel and people may prefer your style over others.
The popularity of YouTube has even caught the attention of celebrities, such as Zac Efron, Will Smith and The Rock, who have all cashed in on their popularity, to start their own YouTube channels.
A couple of celebrities have even started their own gaming channels, such as Jack Black and James Buckley (Jay from the Inbetweeners).
2. Become A Twitch Streamer
Twitch is essentially a website dedicated to all things gaming. Twitch offers live streaming of thousands of gamers playing live, plus the ability to chat with and send messages to other users, as well as product announcements and events.
Twitch streamers can earn money through donations, advertisements, subscriptions and sponsorships.
There are several different ways for Twitch streamers to make money, however the four main ways include:
- Donations – viewers give money to the streamer, if they like their content
- Subscriptions – viewers can subscribe to a streamer’s channel, which will directly give money to the streamer each month (3 tier level ranging from $4.99 – $24.99 per month)
- Advertisements – streamers can add 30 second advertisements before their stream start
- Sponsorships – if a stream is popular enough, then companies will pay them to promote their brand
Some of the top Twitch streams do live streaming as a full-time job, however, you will need to create a large following for this to happen, which takes time and dedication. You can also use the videos you post on Twitch and upload them to YouTube to create another income source for yourself.
3. Game Testing (Playtester)
If you enjoy finding all the problems in a game and trying to break a game (while also getting paid to do so), then game testing is the job for you.
As a game tester, you will be able to get first access to certain video game pre-releases, (before they make its way to the masses) and asked to play the game extensively, with certain guidelines to follow and complete.
Mobile Games You Can Make Money From
You will be required to write detailed analysis reports on how the game operated and if you were able to find any bugs (sometimes you will be granted a bonus amount of money if you can find a bug that no one has yet identified).
Some testing requirements may require participants to be in certain geographical locations, such as North America, Australia, or Canada. However, most companies will accept participants in remote locations too.
To become a game tester, simply keep an eye out on your favourite gaming company’s website or social media, as they will occasionally ask their community for testers. The alternative is to search on websites such as Playtestix, ErliBird, PlayestCloud and BetaFamily
4. Become A Gaming Coach
When sports progress, an entire industry grows along with it. Wherever there are potential professional players, there are always many teachers and coaches behind them, helping them along in their journeys.
If you already have an impressive status as a professional gamer (or are at least a skilled gamer), then you can become a coach of new up and coming gamers through recruiting students directly.
However, if this option isn’t working for you, then you can also use the approach of signing up to sites such as Gamer Sensei or Fiverr, where teachers can earn upwards of $30/hour for their skill and expertise.
Another option is to become the coach of an Esports team, where reportedly coaches of large teams can earn upwards of tens of thousands of dollars per year, while also receiving complete benefits.
5. Create Gameplay Tutorials & Guides
Gamers always need guides and tutorials to find hidden Easter eggs in games, or getting help on a level that they have been stuck on for a while and have no idea how to progress further. To create these guides or gameplay, you can either upload videos of gameplay to YouTube, create a website dedicated to writing gaming guides, or simply publish a guide as an eBook on Amazon.
The first 2 options generate income for you through monetization with ads, while the eBook can generate money through sales.
To make money through creating gameplay tutorials or guides, you will need to focus on popular games. However, the more popular the game, the more competition you will encounter from others also creating gameplay tutorials.
To make your tutorials stand out from the crowd, you will need to offer a unique experience for users, with more meticulous detailed information than others, which means you will have to spend additional time to demonstrate your understanding of each game.
In addition to becoming an expert in your gameplay tutorials and guides, you will also need to have fundamentally sound writing skills. Guides need to be written in meticulous detail and presented with enough understandable material to keep the reader interested, while also engaged in the content.
To get started, find a popular game, such as a new release game, where players are having trouble solving a problem or where not many tutorials have yet been released.
Next, learn all the ins and outs of that particular game problem, then show others how to solve the issue for themselves with your tutorials.
In MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games), focus on creating gold guides, levelling guides and raid guides. For PvP games, such as Call of Duty, Battlefield or Overwatch, focus on creating build guides and mechanics guides.
6.Become A Professional Gamer
Becoming a professional gamer and trying to carve out a lucrative career from professional gaming is the hardest task to achieve in this list, but if you like competition and are willing to put in the long hours to master your craft, then this may be an option for you, but not a guarantee to make money.
If you want to earn big money from professional gaming, then you will need to get into eSports, either by joining an already existing team through tryouts, or creating your own. The big money comes from winning eSports championships and landing investors or endorsement deals.
As eSports continue to grow in popularity, the prize money also continues to grow into the millions of dollars. Just recently in July 2019, an American teenager from Pennsylvania took out the top prize of $3 million for winning a Fortnite tournament in New York.
Global revenues from eSports competitions will hit $1.1 billion in 2019, an increase of 29% since 2018, thanks to the surge in popularity and the revenues from sponsorship deals and advertising.
7. Play Online Games Through Point Clubs
There are several sites such as Swagbucks and MyPoints, which offer their members the opportunity to earn points by playing online games, and then convert those points into either gift cards or PayPal payments.
However, this method often requires the user to spend some money upfront (e.g. you have to purchase some tokens to play the games initially). If you like to play games such as Deal or No Deal Slots and Bejewelled 2, then this option is great for you, and will allow you to earn some gift cards or PayPal payments in return for playing games.
8. Farming Game Characters
This strategy won’t make you rich, but if you like to play games for hours on end, then this can be a useful way for you to earn some extra money, while also having fun playing games. The best games to try this strategy on, are RuneScape and Counter Strike.
The strategy works as follows:
You can create a character in game and “level” him or her up (raise their skills). You can find people that will actually pay money for a high-level character that they don’t have to level themselves, because they don’t have time or they find the leveling part of the game boring: They just want to do the missions and other fun stuff and skip the boring parts.
In the case of RuneScape, the higher the characters level, the more quests you will have access to and will be able to complete.
The easiest way to do this is to “farm the character”. This means you spend a lot of time doing boring things in the game to level up the character, such as repetitive missions or fighting non player characters or even just trading, whether it be for a particular skill or for in-game money.
A game like Eve Online has passive skill learning, where you buy the skills in game and set them to level up even when you are not online.
These don’t take much effort to learn (because your character doesn’t have to do anything in the game), but you do need to earn in game currency to buy the higher level skill books, which may require you to run a few missions here and there.
So you could potentially create a few different characters and only need to login every now and then to micro-manage their skill learning, then sell them on playerauctions.com or playerup.com once they have “matured”.
You can actually make a lot of money doing this, as some characters can sell for over $1,000. Others sell for less than $100, depending on what level they are at.
This method really depends on how much skill you have at levelling, and how motivated you are to play the game.
9. Selling In-Game Items
Another way to make some money is to sell items that you acquire in a game. Usually the more popular online games have a marketplace where players can trade items such as weapons, skins, clothes, etc.
Some games that allow this are Counter Strike: GO, Team Fortress 2, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds and DOTA 2.
These games all have large market places on the Steam community forums where you can go and sell your items. Some rare items have sold for thousands of dollars in the past, although most items sell for just a few dollars and even a few cents.
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Most of the time, these items don’t even give you any advantage in the game, they are purely for cosmetic purposes and bragging rights ie: “I have this rare item and you don’t, so I’m better”.
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If a game is new and seems to be generating a large player base, this can be quite a lucrative opportunity for a skilled player who can play long hours of the game when it first comes out.