Introduction
One of the more popular videos on my channel, How to Make Money Playing Video Games, has been getting a lot of comments lately. There are a few people who are a little bit confused with some of the things that I ended up talking about, so because of that, I want to use a specific game as a reference so you can kind of understand my process on how I would go about making money with that video game. That way, you can do it yourself. But there’s one thing that I want to say to everybody that is watching this video: I have nothing to sell you. All of the information that I’m providing to you is what I would do personally and something that I have been doing.
Realistic Expectations and Long-Term Strategy
I say it that way because a lot of these gurus that you’re watching on YouTube explaining how to make money for certain things are telling you information that is going to cause you to need to buy their course in a couple of months from now because everything that you are doing is just not working out. That is not what I’m going to do. I’m actually going to provide information to you that will be extremely valuable and stuff that you can begin using yourself to begin making money playing video games.
And that is another thing that I need to clear up right now: even though everything that I’m about to tell you will begin earning you money, it is not going to be a lot of money until a year down the road from now. Gaming is extremely popular. If it was easy to make a lot of money playing video games, everybody on this planet would do it. So because of that, I need you to keep your expectations realistic with yourself and understand that this is going to be a long-term thing that you will need to spend time growing.
Step 1: Build a Platform
Let’s begin this video. I have probably between five and ten different things that I’m going to explain in this video. This is nothing that I’m going to script out—this is just actual stuff that I would do myself to start earning money playing video games today. Right now, and within a year from now, you’re going to realize that you’re going to be making $50, $100, $150 a day and it is going to continue to grow.
The first thing I would do: I am not saying that you need to start a YouTube channel, I’m not saying that you need to stream on Twitch, but you do need some sort of platform to share things with and you need a following with that. Whether that’s Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, some sort of Facebook Community or Facebook group, you need something with an audience.
Step 2: Focus on Providing Value
The game that I’m going to use as a reference in this video is Call of Duty and how I would go about earning money playing the game Call of Duty. So, when you start this social media platform and you start getting a following, I want you to think about value. What type of videos are you watching on YouTube? It’s probably valuable content, right?
This is a huge thing you need to understand: you cannot make videos for yourself. You need to make videos that give value to the people that are actually watching the content that you are creating. Unless you are extremely good at the game that you are playing, nobody wants to watch your gameplay. Okay, you need to accept that nobody cares about you playing Call of Duty. Do you watch that? Do you just watch random people playing a game that’s titled Call of Duty gameplay? I’m going to take a wild guess—the answer to that is no.
You’re probably looking up what the best weapon is, looking up Call of Duty tips, or if you do like Call of Duty gameplay, you’re probably looking up Call of Duty gameplay commentary or some sort of funny type gameplay. You need to create value for the type of content that you’re about to produce for the people that are watching your videos.
Step 3: Start Affiliate Marketing
Once you do that and you gain your following, you’re going to be able to start doing affiliate marketing. You can, of course, do affiliate marketing beforehand. What affiliate marketing is: you sign up for a program. I’m going to use Amazon Associate or Amazon Affiliate because that is extremely easy to get into and is extremely powerful, simple, and will take you maybe three days to figure out if that.
What happens when you sign up with Amazon Affiliate is that every single item on Amazon, it doesn’t matter what it is—it can be a bottle of lipstick, it can be a gaming mouse, it can be the PS5, it can be a pre-built gaming PC, it can be a camera that you film with, a phone, protein bars, a fan, lightbulbs, it can be anything. When you click on these items on Amazon, you get a special link for having an Associates account or an affiliate account with Amazon. When you promote that to your audience, every person that clicks your link and is sent over to Amazon, you will earn a commission—a percentage off of anything that they buy within the next 24 hours.
But I want to say something to you right now: do not promote anything that you would not use yourself or that you do not know is a good product. What’s going to happen if you do that is you’re going to lose your following and you’re going to lose the trust with the people that are watching your videos. But not only that, you need to understand that nobody wants to watch or see their subscription feed full of a bunch of sales.
Step 4: Offer Value and Be Transparent
You need to, like, just kind of keep in mind you’re creating content for people. You’re not trying to sell people stuff on a daily basis. Provide value with what you promote. Like, if you’re playing Call of Duty, the game that I’m referencing in this video, go over your favorite mouse for that game, go over your top five favorite gaming mice for Call of Duty, go over your top five gaming keyboards for Call of Duty.
I’m trying to think of a way that you could go about doing this on a console—go over, you know, your favorite controller mods. I know Scuf is one of them, but I don’t think Scuf is on Amazon, and I’m not 100% sure whether or not Scuf has an affiliate program on their website. I’m sure if you contact Scuf, they probably have an affiliate program, and they can give you a special link for your channel and everything.
But anyways, you know, go over your favorite controllers that have the paddles on the back of the controller and stuff for Call of Duty. And these affiliate programs, your favorite monitor to play Call of Duty on, the PC you would use to play Call of Duty on. So, that’s what affiliate marketing is and how you can use it with your social media following.
Step 5: Sponsorships and Brand Deals
Now that we went over the social media stuff and the affiliate stuff, those are things that you can do now—right now. Once you start building your social media following, there’s going to be sponsorships and brand deals, and this is where all the fun starts to come into play.
Once you have, like, I want to say maybe 5,000 subscribers, you’re going to start getting sponsors, brand deals, depending on how many views you’re getting. I mean, if you’re getting tons of views at that low of… I mean, YouTube’s kind of a learning thing, and this is something that I went through myself: you think your videos are good, but you’re going to watch your old videos three years from now, and the odds are you’re probably going to do what I did: make them all private so that nobody can see them because it’s embarrassing for you and the content that you were making.
It is a learning process, and your content will improve over time. So the fun—and why do I say this is fun?—is because I’m going to take a wild guess that you would be extremely happy to get games for free. If you’re watching this video, you would probably enjoy getting games for free. You would probably enjoy getting laptops for free, gaming PCs for free, new monitors for free, TVs for free, lights for free, gaming mice for free, a lot of stuff for free.
Step 6: Turning Brand Deals into Extra Income
And it’s cool because you can then start promoting these products through affiliate links without needing to buy them for yourself, and you earn money—not only through the affiliate programs—you not only get to have fun with new stuff that you can use yourself, but you can give value. You can give more value to the people watching your content.
Is this mouse good? This mouse was literally given to me, and I’m using it right now. I haven’t promoted it because I’m using it. I’m using it to find out whether or not I would recommend it to people, and that’s value. That’s value to people. Now, the wrong way to go about this is getting this mouse and promoting it without using it. Because what would happen if this was a piece of crap? Then everybody that buys it remembers that you recommended this mouse to them, and it’s a piece of crap.
It’s not a piece of crap—it’s actually pretty nice. It is different than the one that I normally use. This is the one that I normally use—it’s a wired one, MMO. But anyways, you know what I mean? Like, that’s what I mean by fun, and it’s cool to be able to—when you get to the point where brands are reaching out to you and wanting to send you stuff, it’s like a win-win for you.
Conclusion
The steps that I went over will help you start your journey in making money playing video games. Remember, success in this field takes time, dedication, and offering value to your audience. Realistic expectations and a long-term approach will lead you to success.
