Do you like to play games on consoles or on Windows computers? An even better question - would you like to make money playing video games? Wouldn’t it be great if we could combine “pleasant with useful” and if we could make money by playing games? If you want, you can, but making money by playing games is not as easy as it seems. A large number of people who start playing games in order to make money after a year or two give up because the segment of making money in players "kills" the desire to play. Instead of doing what they love, players often end up doing something they eventually hate, which they once loved. Likewise, this is not something that guarantees immediate 100% success. If you’re not single, if you’re not young (meaning in your early twenties or younger) and if you’re not willing to invest at least a few years doing something that may not pay off for you at all, it might be best not to even start. But either way, if you want to play games and make money it’s good to know that such a thing is still possible! In the rest of this article, we will say something about five potential ways you can play games and make money. Let's get to work.
Make money by playing live streaming games One of the ways you can make money by playing games is by playing games and streaming them to the internet at the same time. The thing is quite simple, but at the same time it is not. For starters, all you need is as many people as possible to watch your streams. Each video stream can be further monetized through different subscriptions or advertisements of different products and services. So all you need to do here is essentially a loyal audience that tends to increase (because the more people watch you say you cross the latest Resident Evil, the better). But this way of making money also has some downsides. One of the biggest, so to speak, negative sides of making money by streaming any content is the audience. The audience, that is, the people watching your streaming are essentially bringing you money. So if you plan to make money this way, arm yourself with patience, because as you gather a few thousand or hundreds of thousands of viewers you will need not only time but also a reputation among the audience. After all, why would anyone watch your streaming when they can watch another player play the same game? This is essentially the craziest part of the whole story and that’s where you need to get on stage because you need to find your unique way to keep the audience watching just your streaming. Before you start, make sure you have a computer that will be able to withstand "streaming" games, because if the audience sees that your gameplay is not promising and that you still play "box", you will hardly be able to keep them to continue watching until the end.
Try your hand at gamer journalism Another way is to write articles, guides, reviews, walkthroughs, and announcements of video games you’ve played or had the opportunity to test. For example, if you decide to write for a website, you can be paid per article as a "freelancer". You can also start your own website dedicated to video games (for a specific platform or for several of them), and in this way you can further "thicken" your earnings with advertisements or subscription options. What are the challenges of gamer journalism? First of all, it is very competitive (after all, like everything else in which at least two people participate) because a very large number of people want to write about video games and thus earn a living. What can help you a lot is the pre-existing experience (which is gained over time, meaning that sooner or later you should have started "from scratch"). Furthermore, if you have been a gamer for many years and if you regularly monitor the market situation, the better. The point is to be as informed as possible about what you want to write and to understand (and you can understand each other if you’ve been say a gamer for ten years) the games you want to write about. If you’re a beginner and don’t know where to start, know that success won’t come overnight. Such a thing does not exist. You will need work, effort, patience and a willingness to be criticized (yes, the negative ones as well). But if you are persistent, if you are willing to learn and if you put your work into some objective parameters, over time you will get better and better.
Write (or publish) game guides and explanations While this may not be a new way, but just a “subspecies” of another way, writing or posting various guides, tutorials, and explanations for games online can also be one way you can make money playing games. A lot of players who have just started playing the game like to know how to get that particular weapon or what are the easiest ways to get rid of that boss, so this can be a very lucrative way to make money. What are the "negative" sides of this method? First, anyone can write some sort of guide (or they can record it on YouTube and later post it on their YouTube page). What you want again is for your guides to be the most watched or read. To achieve this again you need effort and patience. There is nothing without effort and patience. You need to "know how to write". This means that your style should be recognizable, that it should recognize the charm and the "something" by which you will stand out from the crowd of other competitors. In addition, the guide should be comprehensive, but at the same time interesting to read or watch. Again, if you are willing to learn over time you will get better.
You can get paid to test games Today, almost every game, during its development, goes through different stages. Before the game is fully completed and launched, developers will often want someone to test their product. This is where you can enter the scene as a game tester. During testing, your job will be to test everything the developer asks you to test or try to find in the game (such as the possible existence of any bugs or problems that could lead to the game crashing). The biggest "disadvantage" of making money as a game tester is that the job is harder than it seems. Plus, “pay” isn’t exactly something, so this is a way to make money while playing games where maybe more than anywhere you need to be willing to start “from the bottom”.
Create a podcast or YouTube channel You can make money playing video games by creating daily, weekly, or monthly online video posts that relate to a segment of gaming. These can be game-related discussions, tips and tricks that will relate to a specific game or a series of interviews with famous players or "youtubers". Of course, for everything we want to publish on the internet in the form of text or especially video content we will need an audience. The audience is acquired over time. Depending on how good your content is and how much it can attract an audience, you will be more or less successful.