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The thought of enjoying your favorite hobby while making money is as salivating as envisioning a freshly baked pizza after a long day’s work. Unlike ordering flatbreads topped with cheese and sauce, becoming a paid gamer isn’t straightforward nor guaranteed.
Ways to monotize your game
Getting paid to play video games is a long-standing dream of every gamer.
Like you, many gamers have the same dream, and there are a lot of them across the world.
The good news is today, there are more money-making avenues for gamers than ever. Each has its challenges. However, with some dedication and willingness to improve, you could one day earn some cash by doing what you love.
1. Become a Games Streamer or Content Creator
Streaming on Twitch and making content on YouTube hold a lot of potential for gamers. Given that video games are visual, it stands to reason that they’d make for popular video content.
To start your journey as a gaming content creator, you have to start by picking your niche. It could be a specific title that you play, like Fortnite, or it could be a whole genre. The choice here carries a fair amount of risk. Pick a massively popular game, and your content could end up buried. Go for the games with cult followings, though, and you may not have as big an audience pool to draw from. Whatever you choose, the key is to make content that falls into the following:
- Content others are making but better
- Content that isn’t being made enough
- Content that nobody else is making
2. Start a Niche Gaming Site
This option is similar to becoming a content creator. The difference is that you create an entire website dedicated to a specific game or genre. The emphasis here needs to be put on the word niche.
These days it’s almost impossible to grow a generalist gaming site. There are too many big publications that already dominate this area. What you want to do is make a site that caters to a specific target that enjoys a particular title or plays any games within a category. An example would be a site that makes detailed guides for Fortnite.
A site can open up many avenues for making money:
- Display ads
- Sell products
- Offer subscriptions to better services
- Affiliate links
3. Achieve a Professional Skill Level
This option is one of the hardest ones to accomplish, as becoming a professional gamer is tricky. When most people think of pro gamers, they imagine it’s their skill that makes them stars. That is only one part of the story, though.
Pro gamers are continuously training and improving. For example, Street Fighter god Daigo Umehara is known for spending long hours practicing the same simple sequences until he’s achieved total mastery. The key is that real pro gamers see their gaming as a craft that needs to be honed constantly.
Should you find yourself at a point where you have the skill and the discipline to continuously get better, making money as a pro gamer has a few options:
- Sponsorships
- Tournament winnings
- Brand deals
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