A fascinating trend of the past decade has been the emergence of professional gamers and gaming businesses. So, you may be wondering: how do gamers make money?
With the birth of streaming platforms like Twitch and Facebook Gaming and fan support platforms like Patreon, video games have become a viable source of income for many people who earn a decent amount of dollars through tournaments.
If you want to make money through gaming, this article is for you.
In this article, you will explore how gamers make money and what you need to become a professional gamer.
So, let’s get started.
How do gamers make money?
The following are ways through which professional gamers make money:
1. Subscriptions
The base of gamers’ incomes comes from monthly subscriptions to their streaming service, thanks to popular streaming platforms such as Twitch and Facebook Gaming.
The concept affords viewers to pay a certain amount monthly to support and encourage more gaming content from gamers.
For example, Twitch handles all of the payment processing and details of the subscription services and takes 30% as its share of each subscription. That leaves the gamer with 70% of the total stream income.
Also, there are many levels of subscriptions that each gamer can offer. Often, viewers that pay more for the subscription get extra perks like special content or custom titles that they show off in the gamer’s chat room.
However, while subscriptions are the bread and butter of professional gamers, there’s more to it than just that.
2. Advertisements
Advertising is the second-largest source of income for gamers after subscriptions. Twitch and YouTube have ads that break up the video feed and promote different brands. And gamers receive a set sum of money, depending on the ad.
For instance, YouTube pays creators about $15 for every 1,000 views on their video, and the more views a video generates, the more money it makes.
The gaming and streaming industries resemble the old TV and newspaper industries.
The foundation is made up of subscribers, followed by casual readers. The more subscribers and viewers there are, the more eager advertisers are to pay for access to those readers or viewers.
With internet gaming, gamers have significantly more opportunities to generate money. Gamers can find corporate sponsors in addition to advertising for views.
3. Donations
Donations are another way through which gamers make money from their subscriptions. Twitch and Facebook Gaming now allow subscribers to make donations to their favorite gaming channel.
This might sound strange if you are unfamiliar with the gaming community, but it is a usual practice for fans to want to support their favorite creators.
And when you donate to a gaming channel, you are helping the creator and the community at large. The standard donation prices range between $5 to $100.
4. Sponsorship
The savviest gamers are the ones that create engaging content for viewers and have learned what the audience like and dislikes. This, in turn, skyrockets the traffic the channel generates, attracting sponsorship deals.
This is a form of advertising, but it is not the same as pay-per-view. Instead, the gamer agrees to promote a product in exchange for a lump sum of cash, depending on the agreed deal.
This is common for small businesses and even the big ones to sponsor gamers and pay a certain sum of money as part of a partnership.
5. Tournament prizes
Winning tournament prizes is the oldest and easiest way professional gamers make money. If a gamer does well enough in a tournament, they get a share of the prize pool, just like in traditional sports.
Over the years, the prize pool for tournament winners has reportedly increased to hundreds of millions of dollars. And for every imaginable genre of game, a dedicated subset of gamers would enjoy participating in a tournament.
However, there is more at stake than just monetary prizes. Even when they do not win the tournament, they can still earn a steady income through memberships and advertising provided they attract a large enough audience and deliver engaging content.
6. Merchandise
Merchandise is an often-overlooked source of revenue for gamers. Merch can be as simple as displaying t-shirts with the gamer’s logo that viewers purchase on sites like Twitch.
Also, as a gamer’s community grows, inside jokes and shared experiences can be branded into purchasable merchandise.
How much do gamers earn?
This is a common question among people looking to launch a career in the gaming industry. However, there is no single correct response to it.
Making money in video games means you have entered the ranks of a content creator, which makes you create content for people to consume. Quite similar to starting a business, there is no such thing as a guaranteed paycheck.
However, as of September 21, 2022, a gamer in the United States makes an average of $55,922 a year. That’s about $26.89 an hour, $1,075 per week, and $4,660 monthly.
What do you need to be a professional gamer?
No one ever said becoming a professional gamer would be cheap, but practicing with the right devices will help you feel more at ease getting you started. Here are what you need to practice:
- A gaming laptop or computer
- A reliable internet connection
- Headset
- A mechanical keyboard
- A LED monitor
- A gaming mouse
- A gaming chair
- High-quality webcam and microphone
- Surround-sound speakers
FAQs
What skills do gamers need?
Gamers need good hand-eye coordination, quick reflexes, and a deep understanding of the game.
What are the pros of being a gamer?
Gaming helps improve your cognitive abilities, problem-solving skills, and multi-tasking skills, improving your reflexes, etc.
What are the cons of gaming?
Cyberbullying, privacy breaches, online predators, malicious software, and so on are some cons of gaming.
Conclusion
Over the years, the gaming industry has evolved in correlation with rapid technological advancement and has become one of the world’s most profitable and fastest-growing entertainment industries.
While gamers make most of their money from prizes, sponsorships deals, live-streaming, and video-on-demand content.
You can also make money by making video game tutorials on YouTube, setting up a gaming teaching business, video game journalism, QA testing, etc.
I hope you found this article helpful. You can also read to know the benefits of working in a game-based learning environment.
Thanks for reading.
