Ways to Earn Money for Playing Video Games: An Ultimate List
Do you think that gaming is a hobby? What if we say that it’s more than that?
Today, many people earn their living by playing video games. In this article, you will find out ways to make money playing video games, how much money is possible to earn, and the best apps and websites that will pay you.
Table of Contents
How to Make Money Playing Video Games?
Today, people are looking for new ways to make money based on their hobbies and interests. And what’s amazing, is that the internet, social media, and different technologies open new opportunities to earn online no matter where you are based. So, if gaming is your hobby, you should consider this as a great opportunity to earn money.
Does it sound too good to be true that you can enjoy your hobby and earn your living at the same time? If you are a crazy gamer, why not use this great opportunity to earn some extra cash. But, first things first, you need to find ways you can use your knowledge and expertise to make money. So, don’t delay, many people are already ahead of you.
Become a Professional Gamer 🎮
If you are an avid gamer that knows everything about the game industry and the latest trends, you should consider becoming a professional gamer. Professional gamers take part in different events and compete all around the world. They win millions of dollars from professional gaming tournaments and competitions. Also, you should know some companies that are interested in professional players and are looking to find the best ones.
But if you are not sure that you have enough knowledge or expertise, here are some steps that will help you to become a pro within no time 👇
✔️ Start with investing in high-quality gaming gear
✔️ Take part in gaming tournaments even if you know you can’t win, but you will be able to hone your skills
✔️ Choose the video game genre or a specific game that you play the best
✔️ Practice as much as possible
✔️ Join gaming forums and communities
✔️ Attend gaming events
So, now let’s answer the most important question; how can you make money as a professional gamer? For professional gamers, there are different ways to earn money 👇:
✔️ Sponsors
✔️ Salary
✔️ Prize pools and prize money
✔️ Bonuses
✔️ Competitions and tournaments
💰 Who hires professional gamers?
Many large and well-known companies such as Microsoft and Nintendo are looking for professional gamers. These companies are ready to pay millions of dollars to players who are already expert gamers. Because this work requires a very difficult skill set that is narrowly focused on.
Compete in Tournaments 🏙️
As a participant, you will compete against other players at small or big tournaments. You don’t need to be a pro gamer to take part, you can start even if you are a beginner.
The number of tournaments is growing year by year, allowing more gamers to join, improve their skills and earn more money.
So, how can you make money competing in online gaming tournaments?
💰 Take part in competitions and win
Competition in which you take part can be: partnerless, partnered, or in a group.
💰 Find sponsors
For example, advertise products, energy drinks, brands, etc.
Start Your YouTube Channel 🎥
As a gamer, you should consider having a successful YouTube channel. The financial income on YouTube is very high. That’s why many people try to become popular on YouTube.
YouTube is full of possibilities. For example, you can video game soundtracks, playlists and upload videos, explanation videos or tips and tricks.
If you are looking for a way to start with YouTube, here is what you need to know:
✔️ Find high quality equipment
If you can’t afford it, just rent. Equipment is a very important part of starting a channel and making videos. You need basic gear like a microphone, a mirrorless or action camera, tripods, lenses, studio lighting, etc.
✔️ Start with simple editing software
✔️ Plan your content beforehand
✔️ Video game reviews, tutorials, and general gaming are some of the very popular content. Also read some tips to find YouTube content ideas for your channel
💸 How can you make money on a YouTube channel?
Starting your own YouTube channel may seem too easy at first glance, but believe us or not, what comes after starting is quite difficult because earning money on YouTube is more difficult in comparison to Twitch and Facebook. It’s a full time job that will require everyday dedication and persistence.
💡 Quick Tip: As a YouTuber, you can
🔛 Run live streams or pre-recorded videos of your games
🔛 Give video game reviews
🔛 Present game tutorials
🔛 Share tips and tricks
🔛 Share the latest video game industry news
Create Game Play Tutorials 📹
You can start with creating gameplay tutorials for more income. You can focus on one single game or 2 or more games at the same time. Creating game-playing tutorials is a great way to gain your audience’s attention.
Many people all around the world play video games, but not all are skillful players and need some guidance. If you consider yourself as an expert or knowledgeable enough, you can create game-playing tutorials. Showing off your skills and what you know, you provide useful information to many newbie gamers.
After creating tutorials, you can share them on social media platforms, your blog or YouTube channel.
Here are some important points for success 👇 :
🔛 Understand your target audience
🔛 Choose popular games to work on
🔛 Use less text. The use of a lot of text is not a good choice for a game-playing tutorial. The players will get bored and skip the text, even if in the text you provide very important information.
🔛 Don’t give all the information immediately. It is a very common mistake among game tutorial creators. When players get all the information immediately, they get confused and most of the information will be forgotten later.
🔛 Keep the process fun
People always learn better when the process is interesting and exciting. Use funny elements of the game in your tutorial.
💰 How can you make money from game-playing tutorials?
You need a lot of time to start earning money from tutorials. But remember the better is content and marketing/promotion, the larger is your audience and the more is income.
Write Video Game Playing eBook 📒
Today, many companies hire people to write video game eBooks. As a writer, your main responsibility is to write as much information as possible about a particular game. The writer of eBooks must be well-informed about the game. This is an essential condition, because in these types of books the author must include every aspect of a game.
So the expert video gamers have better chances for this job. But, you know what, why write an eBook for someone else? You can write your own book and sell it on Kindle or Amazon, and maybe get published someday.
Create Video Game Podcasts 🎙️
Creating video games podcasts is one of the most beneficial ways to make money by playing video games.
How do podcasters make money? Here are the main tips to know 💰
💸 Get sponsors
💸 Earn through affiliate marketing
💸 Paid subscriptions
💸 Premium or bonus content
Work as a Video Game Coach 🧘
Most amateur players and starters don’t know how to start their career as video game players. Here, video game coaches will help them, as they are people who have already specialized in this field.
So, one of the best ways to start earning is coaching video games. The responsibilities will be different depending on the game and your client’s needs.
🤑 How can you make money as a video game coach?
Most beginner players are looking for coaches, so you can advertise your talent and skills on social media apps or via your website. Here are a few steps for starting your career as a coach:
💰 Find out your target audience.
For example, coaching a team of players differs from coaching a single player. You need to understand which one is closer to your style.
💰 Be a teacher
You must develop your teaching skills to have satisfying results from your work.
💰 Replay Analysis
Your clients will send you their gameplay to review. You must review the game with the client and mention the most important parts that need improvements.
💰 Play games
Sometimes your clients will ask you to play with them to have a better experience.
Work as a Video Games Q/A Tester 🔍
As a Q/A tester, your work will be directly connected with testing the interface, quality and other specs and features of the game. As a video gamer, you may be asked to try to find errors and bugs in the game and write a full report about each error you find. So after playing pre-made games, if everything is correct, the company will present the game to the players.
As a Q/A tester, you are supposed to 👇
💡 Find and report issues, bugs or errors
💡 Play a game several times to check the overall user experience
💡 Report how you feel while playing
❓ How can you start as a Game Q/A Tester?
As a game Q/A tester, you can find various platforms or game development companies where you can start your career. You don’t need a degree to become a game tester, but some companies require a degree in the computing or tech field.
✅ Develop skills and knowledge that will help you accomplish your work goals
✅ Start with small companies
✅ Make a competitive resume
Become a Game Developer or Designer 💻
We can say game design and development is a modern branch of art. Game designers and developers create a game first in their imagination. They picture every single detail of the game and make it reality.
Although game developers aren’t involved in the playing process, they must understand how video games work.
💰 How can you make money as a game developer?
You can choose to work at a big company, at a small company, or work as an independent game developer, it all depends on your preferences. But whatever you choose, you must learn how to code and design a game. Fortunately, there are a lot of free or paid game development and game design courses out on the internet.
💸 Other ways to make money are:
💰 Create video game tools and assets
💰 Design video game NFTs
💰 Teach game development
💰 Make a game yourself using different online platforms
Who hires game developers?
Most beginner game developers work individually on their own projects to improve their skills, without joining any company. When they gain experience and reach some level in game development, they join a video game development company.
Video Game Designer 🎨
This is a very interesting and highly creative work. Video game designers design in game environments, the characters and general visual content in the pre-production phase. Technical knowledge and video gaming experience is quite an important skill.
There are different types of game designers 👇
🖼️ Testers
Most designers give some time for game testing. They test game coding and focus on others’ mistakes.
🖼️ Lead designers
Lead designers are team managers of the design teams.
🖼️ Mechanical designers
They focus on the stability of the game and the rule system.
🖼️ Environmental designers
They create a game environment: build props, and nature elements.
Video Game Content Creator ✍🏾
As a video game content creator, your job is to create attractive and interesting content by blogging or writing articles. It is one of the most competitive fields. You need to be very creative, and be broad-minded. Many people start their careers as game content creators, but very soon they leave this field.
If you are willing to become a successful one, we separated the main things to focus on 👇
💡 Making game tutorials
💡 Give reviews of games
💡 Unboxing products
💡 Give live-streams
💰 How to make money as a video game content creator?
Possible ways:
🤑 Affiliate marketing – Brands pay commission to an external website for sales.
🤑 Licensing on YouTube – Applying for a license on YouTube, the channel owner must have
- 1000 subscribers
- 4000 views over the past year
- Product selling
- Subscriptions
- Donations
- Advertising
💰 Who hires video game content creators?
Video game content creators are basically self-beginners. They start their work on social media or websites such as YouTube, Twitch, or other job boards.
Stream Your Online Play 📺
A live-streamers work is real life communication with real people. As a successful live-streamer, you must be a sociable person and have an expertise in video gaming. You need to catch your audience’s attention and gain their trust and respect. If you don’t have enough knowledge or sit silent, your viewers will leave your channel and look for a better one.
When you play online and stream your game you should 👇
💡 Give valuable information, tips and tricks
💡 Use interesting and sharp comments
💡 Keep the audience’s attention on your play
💡 Answer questions
How can you earn money through streaming an online game 💰?
💸 Payments from viewers
💸 Sponsorships
💸 Brand or product advertising
💸 Payments from the amount of views
How Much Money is it Possible to Make Playing Video Games 💰?
According to different sources, you can earn $20-200 dollars in an hour.
How much you will earn depends on 👇
💡 How skilled you are
💡 Your experience
💡 The game you play
💡 Your content
💡 The platform you work
Professional gamers earn an average of $60,000 per year through live streams and sponsors. It can be more surprising when you learn that the top gamers can earn $15,000 per hour.
If you work at a gaming company as a professional player or a game journalist, your salary can vary from $50,000 to $100,000+ a year.
One of the top earning video gamers in the world like Tyler Blevins, known as Ninja, has earned about $10 million from playing online video games through his YouTube channel.
Nonprofessional gamers or amateur players can earn a few thousand dollars a year.
Video Games That Pay Real Money 💸
Have you ever thought that your favorite activity or hobby may help you earn your living? If yes, you were right. Today, many video games pay money for playing their games. Are you looking for such games? Here is the short list 👇:
▶️ Solitaire CashMGM Slots
▶️ ElvenarLucktastic
▶️ Bingo Blitz
▶️ Grand Mafia
▶️ Forge of Empires
▶️ Lord of the Rings: Rise to War
▶️ King of Avalon – Dominion
▶️ RAID Shadow Legends
▶️ Slotomania
▶️ CUBE CUBE
Apps and Websites That Will Pay You to Play Video Games 🤑
These apps will pay you real money just for playing video games. All you need to do, download the apps, which are available on iPhone and Android Devices. Here is the list of the apps 👇:
🎮 21 Blitz
🎮 Skillz
🎮 Mistplay
🎮 Swagbucks
🎮 MyPoints
🎮 Long Game
🎮 Giviling
Games That Pay With Cryptocurrency 💵
Many video game apps and websites pay their players with cryptocurrency. Crypto games are a whole new industry and offer new opportunities for gamers. Players can buy game characters, level them up and sell them at a higher price
And here is the list of video games that pay with cryptocurrency 👇:
₿ iRazzo
₿ Guild of Guardians
₿ Thetan Arena
₿ Plant VS Undead
₿ Gods Unchained
₿ Axie Infinity
₿ Gala Games: Town Stars
₿ Illuvium
₿ Decentraland
₿ Age of Rust
₿ Spider Tank
₿ Binemon
₿ Bomb Crypto Game
₿ STEPN
₿ Mirandus
