The rise of professional gamers and a gaming business that offers millions of dollars to victors of professional tournaments during the past 10 years is an intriguing phenomenon.
In addition, the emergence of fan-funding websites like Patreon and Twitch, as well as streaming services like Facebook Gaming and Twitch, has given rise to a whole industry of people who can make money—often a full-time living—from videogames.
While earning money while playing or reviewing video games may seem like the ideal job, there are several things to consider before going pro.
The fundamentals of earning money from gaming will be covered in this post, along with suggestions for anyone interested in doing so.
How much money do gamers make professionally?
For good reason, folks who desire to start earning money from gaming frequently ask this issue.
However, there isn’t a universal response.
You become a content creator—someone who produces stuff for others to view—when you earn money from gaming.
In essence, this is similar to starting your own firm, except that there are no regular paycheques in the world of business.
Additionally, there are numerous ways to profit from gaming, and for each method, there are various sums of money that customers are willing to pay.
The majority of professional gamers currently have five different sources of revenue, which we’ll go over.
Donations
Donations are one method that players profit from their subscriptions.
People who are watching can financially support their preferred streams or commentators on Twitch and Facebook Gaming.
Outsiders to the gaming industry might find this weird, but it’s typical for fans to want to support their favorite designers.
Each donation benefits the person who is making the gaming material as well as the community by providing resources and inspiring game developers to keep making their products better through user feedback.
When streaming, it’s not unusual for broadcasters to regularly receive donations in the $5 to $100 range.
Advertising
Advertising is the second-largest source of income for gamers after subscriptions.
Both Twitch and YouTube have advertisements that break up the video feed and promote brands.
A player receives a set sum of money, which varies slightly depending on the advertisement that ran, for each view they receive on Twitch or Youtube.
A gamer who uploads a video to YouTube will receive about $15 for every 1,000 views of the video. The Viper, a professional Age of Empire II and IV player, gets about 20,000 views for each of his YouTube videos, which may not seem like a lot.
He uploads about two videos daily, which works out to $300 per video.
Additionally, when more people discover these films over time, they continue to generate income.
The Viper occasionally posts videos with a few hundred thousand views.
The more views and viewers a video receives, the more money it makes.
In many ways, the streaming and gaming industries are similar to the old TV and newspaper industries.
The foundation is made up of subscribers, followed by casual readers, and the more subscribers and viewers there are, the more eager are advertisers to pay for access to those readers or viewers.
With internet gaming, there are significantly more opportunities for gamers to generate money.
Gamers have the option of finding corporate sponsors in addition to advertising for views.
Subscriptions
Monthly subscriptions to their streaming services, which are primarily offered by Twitch and Facebook Gaming, are the main source of income for gamers.
The idea is that gamers will support you by giving you, say, $5 a month, in order to encourage you to release more monthly content for the games they enjoy.
Twitch gets a 30% cut of each subscription and manages all aspects of subscription services, including payment processing.
The gamer now has $3.50 left over from each $5 subscription.
Each gamer has access to a variety of subscription tiers, and frequently, subscribers who pay more receive extra benefits like access to exclusive content or personalized games that they can showcase in the gamer’s chat room.
For instance, twitchtracker.com reports that as of October, former Overwatch professional gamer XQCOW had 84,012 active memberships, making him the gamer with the most subscribers at the moment.
For the player, this comes to over $200,000 every month!
A respectable living for doing what they love.
Even though XQCOW is now at the top of the rankings, many gamers make $1,000 to $2,000 each month by broadcasting.
Although subscriptions are the main source of income for professional gamers, there are other factors involved as well.
Added revenue streams for gamers.
Sponsors
Smart online gamers are individuals who produce entertaining stuff for viewers and discover their preferences.
Over time, gamers come to understand that their audience could enjoy particular products, so they work with those businesses to secure sponsorships.
Look at how many different company logos are on the uniforms of soccer teams to see how prevalent sponsorships are in professional sports worldwide.
Even though it involves advertising, this is not pay per view.
Instead, the gamer consents to promote a company’s goods in exchange for a lump sum payment each month or each year.
These collaborations can be between tiny businesses who sponsor a gamer and mega-corporations that provide a single player tens of thousands of dollars.
Merchandise
Branded goods are a source of income that are frequently ignored in any industry.
These might be as straightforward as t-shirts bearing the gamer’s brand or as intricate as digital goods like NFTs or labels that spectators purchase on websites like Twitch.
Inside jokes and special moments can be collected and turned into products that fans can buy as the gaming community expands.
The limitations of merchandise opportunities are frequently only the bounds of the player’s imagination.
And through these statistics, we have reached the end, and we hope that you have benefited.
