Have you heard of ‘Kyle Giersdorf’?

Guess not, but if you are in the loop with the world of gaming, you must know the name “Bugha”.

That is the nickname of Kyle, the first solo world cup winner of the video game “Fortnite”, bagging $3 million.

You read that right, and the 17-year-old is currently worth $4 million.

The gaming industry made approximately $146 billion in 2019, completely outclassing sectors like movies and music.

But the best part is, the industry gives back to the players.

The biggest e-sports organization, ‘Cloud 9’ is worth a whopping $400 million. And the company now gives most of the money to the players. There are also many other ways of making money playing video games.

These methods will show you some of the best ones.

Become a Video Game Tester

The games you play don’t look or run as well initially. They go through multiple phases of testing to ensure the game looks as good as it can and remains bug-free.

People who develop the games are already doing a tough job. So, there is a job opening for a position called the “Quality Assurance Tester”. If you’re an avid gamer, this can be your way to earn money playing video games all day.

Playing video games is going to be the biggest and most time-consuming part of your work, but that will not be the end of your responsibilities.

You need to test the games in multiple ways and find all the problems.

You also need to report the problems to the respective sectors. If it has something to do with the graphics, you may need to report it to the art team.

If the game isn’t functioning properly, you will have to contact the programmers.

You will also need to do regression testing, that is replaying the problems you have reported and ensuring the problems are gone.

Suppose you’re testing a 1v1 fighting game similar to Street Fighter. If the game has 20 playable characters, you will have to test all scenarios making it 8,000 unique matches. This part is called matrix testing.

Overall, your job is to push the game to its limits and ensure it doesn’t break after all the fixes. You will have to be an analytical person who can take on a repetitive job. At certain times, you may have to work as much as 80 hours per week.

Finding these jobs can be a bit tough. You will need to keep checking on video game companies and see if there is an opening.

Once there is, you will have to give an interview to prove your worth and go through proper training.

The jobs are usually contract-based, and it is hard to build a prospering career out of it.

But working diligently can increase your pay slowly with your experience. You are likely to start out around the minimum wage of your area.

Once you gain some experience, it can reach around $18 an hour.

The average salary of a video game QA tester is around $55,000. That’s a pretty good number for an enjoyable job you don’t need a degree for.

So, brush up your skills and keep an eye out on LinkedIn and other handles of the video game companies.

Become a Twitch Streamer

Do you know Ninja? No, not the Japanese mercenaries.

Tyler “Ninja” Blevins is American, and he has an estimated worth of $25 million.

How did he become this big? The professional gamer rose to fame by streaming on Twitch, on average 12 hours a day!

If you have any doubt about what a big platform twitch is, tech giant Amazon bought this site for a massive $970 million back in 2014.

Twitch is by far the biggest live streaming platform in the world. The site has around 1.4 million viewers on average at all times. The record for the number of max concurrent viewers is nearly 4 million people on the site.

Understanding the massive viewer base and considering that videogame is the niche that is pretty much singlehandedly blowing up Twitch, any person who has a wish to make money by playing video games needs to have a twitch account.

You can create an account on Twitch and start live streaming immediately, but you need to touch some benchmarks before being eligible to earn money from the site.

To start earning money directly from Twitch, you need to become a partner.

You need to live stream for at least 500 minutes in the past month (30 days) for starters. Within the same timeframe, you also need to live stream 7 separate times at least and have 3 simultaneous viewers.

Finally, you need a minimum of 50 followers on your channel.

All of this will give you the eligibility to become a partner. Twitch currently has over 41,000 partners who earn directly from the platform.

Your primary revenue comes from your subscribers who can subscribe to you for a monthly fee of $4.99, $9.99, or $24.99 depending on the tier they choose.

Other than that, your viewers can also donate any amount of real and virtual currencies to you.

There are also ad revenue earning potential from twitch.

However, the company takes 50% of the partners’ revenues on average. An average partner may earn $5,000-$10,000 monthly while top streamers like Ninja can take the numbers up to millions.

Once you get popular, you can earn from brand deals, merch sales, and many other ways.

It is considered imperative to have a Twitch account if you want to be considered as a gamer. So, it is high time you put on your gaming gears and get started.

Start a YouTube Channel

YouTube is the platform with the most diverse content out there. However, it is gaming that has really defined YouTube in the past decade. From the PewDiePies of the industry to the MatPats, most big names have been connected to gaming in one way or another.

PewDiePie, the biggest individual creator on the platform is a gamer and has a net worth of over $40 million.

MatPat, who covers a plethora of video game-related topics in his game theories, is worth $18 million.

Joe Vargas of the AngryJoeShow is a video game reviewer who is worth around $2.5 million.

There are way too many ways to earn from YouTube while being connected to video games.

You don’t even need to be exceptionally well at playing video games to be successful on this platform.

Your connection with your audience and how entertaining you are will play in as the biggest factors.

You will need a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months to be eligible for YouTube ad revenue. But there are more ways than that.

Brand deals, merch sales, affiliate links are only some of the ways you can earn money from the site.

You can get sponsored by video game companies for reviewing the game if you are a video game reviewer. Gamers get sponsored by various games all the time as well.

YouTube also allows live streaming options where you get to enable Super Chat. This feature allows your viewers to donate to you as you live stream yourself playing videogames. This also helps you to drive up your channel’s watch hours.

YouTube takes 45% of the ad revenue and 30% of your Super Chat revenue. The site also has features of paid memberships and other ways to make money.

You can learn to make money and be a successful YouTuber from this article: “Insert link”

Much like Twitch, it is considered a must to have a YouTube channel if you want to be connected to the gaming world in a monetary way. Whatever job you’re working on related to games, your YouTube will be the showcase where people will judge your worth.

Participate in E-Sports Tournaments

Remember Bugha? The teenager who earned $3 million from a single tournament? Well, you’re in for a shocker because that’s still nowhere near the highest prize money paid in an e-sport tournament.

Dota 2 event held by Valve known as The International gave its winner Team OG a humongous $15.6 million in the tournament’s 9th edition in 2019. The 10th edition is set to surpass that with the total prize pool being already set at $40 million.

Choosing the right game is significant when planning to go pro. Dota 2, LoL, Fortnite, PUBG, Overwatch, CSGO, CoD are just few of the biggest names. Apex Legends and Valorant have become some of the newest hits in the sector.

Many professional e-sport athletes are known to practice well over 10 hours a day. Consistent practice along with maintaining proper physical and mental health is a big part of the process.

But that alone will not help you go pro. You need to actively seek out tournaments and try your best to join a professional team. Your YouTube and Twitch will help you immensely here. Building a connection with the gaming community is essential.

You need to join LAN parties and attend small tournaments to get started. You can join tournaments from sites like Toornament and find LAN parties from sites like LAN Party List.

You can also find competitive matches in platforms like Challengermode.

Once your skills are good enough and you have communicated enough with the community. You may find people hooking you up with organizations.

You can also lookup recruitments on sites like Hitmarker.

You will earn in many different ways once you’re famous in the pro scene, we all know how many revenue sectors the Faze Clan members have.

You’ll have to start with winning a few hundred bucks in small tournaments, but if you have the skills, you can earn millions in this sector.

Create a Blog on Video Game Merchandise

Video games have boomed themselves, but they have also caused another sector to boom. It’s the merchandise sector.

Hardcore fans are hell-bent on getting merches of their favorite games and video game content creators.

When you combine these two with a blog, you have a great chance of doing well. This isn’t directly playing video games, but your experience with playing video games is what will take you far on this road.

You first need to select your niche and a good site name that isn’t taken. Once you do that you should use your video game expertise to churn out content. You can write anything from reviews to walkthroughs and much more.

You will have to use a web hosting service like WordPress. There, you can easily buy your payment plan and set up your website. Make sure you customize it properly and upload all your content there.

Putting out regular and relevant content is key here. You can then sign up for Google AdSense to start earning money or you can approach businesses directly for ads to get higher revenue.

You can also find affiliate deals from sites like Clickbank.

All that can earn you money. But once you start focusing on merch with your articles, you can also start selling them.

You can design your merch yourself or use freelance sites like Fiverr for cheap designs. You can use sites like Oberlo for dropshipping.

Pick the relevant merch that your audience will be interested in and keep doing well with the blog. This can become a good source of earning making you $20,000 a month or more.

Create News as a Video Game Journalist

Depending on which route you want to take, you may or may not need a formal degree to pursue this. Video game popularity has turned video game journalism into a massive sector as well.

You can start a YouTube channel where you talk about and provide the latest news about the gaming world, or you can try to get hired by professional sites like IGN.

The former requires no degree and your skills can find you success, but you are likely to need a journalism degree for the latter one.

You should follow all big events of gaming like E3 and follow all big companies like Valve, EA, Bethesda, etc. You should also follow Sony and Microsoft to be in the loop with consoles. When you read and watch a lot along with brushing up your gaming skills, you can make a great video game journalist.

You may try to apply for sites like IGN by keeping an eye on their LinkedIn and other handles to catch a job opening. Or you can try to break it with YouTube or your own blog site.

Professional video game journalists earn around $50,000 on average annually; on YouTube, it is no different than your YouTube earnings.

Work as a Customer Service Representative for a Video Game Company

Once again, this does not directly make you money from playing video games, but it allows you to earn money because you play video games.

If you’re good at gaming, you can provide technical support to other gamers over call working as a professional customer service representative for various gaming companies. Many games also require in-game customer service through chat.

You will need to look out for openings in different video game companies’ handles like LinkedIn as well as their websites. Whenever there is an opening, you may apply for the position. You can also try tech support platforms like Sutherland Global Services to find similar jobs.

In this sector, you don’t need formal education. Your video game skills will definitely help you a lot and might even provide you with priority, but it is your communication skills that will really allow you to excel at this job.

You probably have experience of chatting and talking with gamers in multiplayer games, you can use that experience here and start earning. Your starting wage might be around the minimum wage of your area, but as you grow with experience, you may earn as high as $20 per hour.

Become a Video Game Coach

This is a very demanding way of making money. The demand comes from both ways. There is a demand for gaming coaches with the prevalence of video gaming as a profession; there is also a lot the students demand from their coach.

If you are highly skilled at a certain video game, you can use your expertise to earn money from this method. Initially, you may need to follow several of the methods mentioned above. Having a YouTube and Twitch to showcase your skills will increase your credibility massively. If you play for a professional organization then that will skyrocket your acceptance.

But even if you don’t have these, you can slowly start building from now. You can apply to websites like Gamer Sensei to get started. There, you can teach students like a tutor and earn as much as $25 per hour.

If you have popularity on YouTube, Twitch, or E-sports, you have a very good chance of becoming a professional coach of a professional E-Sports team. This will allow you to earn hundreds of thousands in hard cash.

 Conclusion:

The video game industry is the fastest-growing entertainment industry at the moment. It does not look like the industry is planning on stopping anytime soon. This is an industry that has a lot of loyal people constantly and consistently supporting it.

If you enjoy video games, this sector can provide you with limitless opportunities and can even turn you into a star overnight. The booming industry is creating new openings every day. Once you manage to enter the space, you will keep on finding more and more ways to make revenue using various methods. This is the era of video game enthusiasts, your time has come.