Sooner or later, every gamer thinks over a question: “How could I earn some money on my favorite hobby?” Of course, light minds of people invented several dozens of ways to monetize their hobby long ago, and this article will touch the most popular ones.
Disclaimer: due to clear reasons, you won’t find a literal “how-to” action guide below. This text is not a learning material to teach you get a lot of funds in your pocket, it only describes main ways to earn funds in computer games. Telling about more detailed things, every particular case has them different. We’re sure that you’ve heard about most examples shown below, but we still hope we can wonder you.
1. Esports
Esports is probably the first thing people mention when it comes to earning funds on computer games. Throughout recent years, the market of esports competitions grew up multiple times, and hundreds of millions of dollars get invested into it every year. Nowadays, esports balances on the edge between big professional sports and show-business, and this allows it taking only best features from both fields.
Becoming a pro player is a great job and it has no matter what discipline you play at. “Extra-class” gamers competing with each other on world level tournaments can earn 10-15 thousand dollars monthly and get percent from competitive victories and advertisement or sponsorship contracts. There are not many masters of such a high level but they exist.
Obviously, the level of incomes depends on professional results directly. The better you play, the thicker your wallet becomes. The main pleasure of this system is that you don’t really have to be best of the best in order to get enough money for a good life. Amateur and half-pro teams create great conditions for career growth of players. If you have a talent and a wish to go on with development, you’ll find a team with good system of bonuses/encouragements easily. Then, you’ll only have to win small tournaments and wait for your chance to enter the world’s arena.
2. Betting
If you were not lucky enough to be born as a esports player, don’t get desperate! Yes, the professional gamer’s career will remain only a dream, but you still can earn funds on games of other people. Of course we mean bets on matches through different esports betting services.
Only lazy betting portals do not pay their attention to esportss nowadays. Luckier and more serious companies work in this field for a long time already. Earning on esports bets is quite risky, but almost everyone can get big money in this activity if provide systematic approaches and careful analysis. All you need is a good knowledge of esports scene, a reliable betting platform (or some of them at once) and some luck.
Remember, there are websites where you can bet in-game items (skins, cases, weapons etc.). So, you don’t even need to have startup money to begin betting. It is enough to find some unnecessary things in your Steam inventory.
3. Trading
Selling in-game items is another popular way to earn money on gaming. If to take a look on projects by Valve, victories in DotA 2 and Counter Strike: Global offensive can bring you different rewards as things, skins, item-sets etc. If you are lucky enough, you can earn good money after selling such things. But this income source will doubtfully make you happy due to its instability: worthy (expensive) things are extremely rare to appear.
Being a trader means being aware of all changes on “your market” all the time. You’ll have to monitor price dynamics regularly, track the demand of users and other traders. If you are decisive enough to start trading, you better store patience: it is a time-taking business impossible to get much money instantly with it.
4. Streaming
It is difficult not to mention how the age of video bloggers gets gradually changed with the age of streamers and “let’s-players”. Modern internet technologies combined with the diversity and availability of streaming services (GoodGame, YouTube, Twitch, Azubu, Hitbox, etc.) can turn almost everyone into a “screen star”. If you like playing games, have an attractive look, pleasant voice and charisma, just let other players watch how you play. Money will come on its own.
The main goal of any streamer is to expand their audience and increase the number of channel subscribers. The logic is simple enough here: the more people watch the translation, the more money a streamer receives. Chasing the number of viewers, many home standup masters act on the edge of rules and often get their channels banned by moderators. Nevertheless, there appear more and more people willing to earn this easy money.
Additionally, the streamer earns percent from advertisements and partnership programs for the number of subscribers on their channel. At this point, every streaming service has different rules we won’t discuss here. One more source of income for streamers is donation: charity transactions from thankful viewers. Ways to ask for money are limited only with your imagination, moral principles and streaming service rules.
5. Coaching
What to do if you don’t know how to play? Of course, to teach other people! In our times, personal “coaching” is not as popular as it used to be a few years ago. This field touches individual games mostly. In team disciplines and MOBA games it can be used much rarer.
The main task of a coach is to analyze the “student’s” gaming skills and to help them improve their level. The criteria of a successful coaching are usually the player’s progress in ladders or moving from a low league into a higher one. The most frequent people to become coaches are experienced players having much theoretical knowledge in their minds but unable to use them in practice due to some reason. Still, people say that a teacher has to be just one step forward of their student to teach them.
If you don’t have a relatively successful esportss career behind your back, then your chances to become a coach are low. Reputation and past achievements play huge roles in this field. Every coach evaluates is or her job individually, depending on the coaching methods, time spent and final results.
6. Account Boosting
There frequently happen situations when people don’t want to spend time improving their gaming skills. They are sure about their strengths, and their weak leagues or low MMR is just a system error of calibrations. Boosters who reach required ranks on their accounts help such people and take some money in exchange.
Boosters can be met in almost every competitive game starting with StarCraft 2 and ending with Counter Strike: Global Offensive. As a rule, they are people spending much time in a game and having good ladder statistics but unable to make it to pro-level due to some reason. The booster’s income depends directly on the difficulty of the task. If it is required to boost the account from nothing, the sum is high. If only a slight calibration is needed, then the payment is different.
Boosting income can’t be regular, and you will doubtfully be pleased with your earnings. On the other side, if you spend days of your life playing games, then it is better to find some sense and financial profit in this activity.
7. Game Services
Continuing the topic of account boosting, let’s take a look onto other types of in-game services. It is better to make a step away from esportss and look on MMORPG genre. Special features of incomes in this field are better visible in the particular game or even a particular game server while paying attention to the local gaming environment. The main principle is stable almost all the time: stronger players help newbie ones dealing with troubles and dangers of virtual worlds. Of course, they get paid for their time and experience.
The highest demand exists on assistance to pass special in-game quests. Newbie players often buy a “guide” through the instance or a whole team of “mercenaries” helping to deal with raid bosses. In-game items are valuable goods which can be easily monetized if you have an interested and lazy client.
Except items, in MMORPG games you can sell everything: from in-game currency to a special “coverage” from strongest players. There are numerous possibilities and everything depends only on your imagination.
8. Dealers
Dealers belong to a special category of people: they don’t usually play games but are important elements of any game universe. They help regular users complete financial operations in the certain project.
If you want to make a donation into the game to buy some fashionable things for your character, the system will offer you using payment options set by game developers only: Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, some additional services and that’s it. Dealers can offer much wider withdrawal possibilities. They have dozens of bank accounts in different countries around the world and they work with all popular payment systems. Additionally, many dealers can give credits, especially if the client is stable and trustworthy.
Of course, dealers work not for free: they get a commission percent from every withdrawal which gets changed depending on the payment option you choose. Dealers provide whole clans with services and mostly cooperate only with stable clients. They value their reputation very much so there is no way for them to cheat you. In some projects, even administration representatives can guarantee the official dealer’s reputation.
To Conclude
At this point, our small training about earning money in computer games comes to an end. Maybe we’ll come back to this topic in future and describe other interesting income sources. We hope you liked the article. If you’ve got an original concept of getting financial profits from any game, please share it in comments.
