Gaming and streaming have been booming with growth in the last decade, opening a sea of opportunities for passionate gamers to convert their hobby into a business venture. With the technology developed, as new platforms come in, and with the constant popularity of eSports, the scope to base one’s career on passion for playing video games is growing like never before.

Regardless of whether one is a beginner professional gamer, a streamer, or just someone looking to make extra money on the side, there’s plenty to go around here.

This article will examine various methods of generating income through gaming and streaming, encompassing platforms for monetization, strategies for audience development, and additional related topics.

1. Streaming Platforms for Gamers

The most popularly used ways of making money from game production are through streaming. There are various places that a person can live stream in order to play and therefore it becomes easy to get followers who can possibly source their income. Among the key services include,

No doubt, the most popular and well-established site for gaming streaming is Twitch. It has live streaming that enables viewers to see video games as played in real time, whereby the viewer may also interact with the players and also partake of the community. In addition, through Twitch, one can utilize different avenues of monetization on their content.

The details which are the most relevant include the following

Twitch

Subscriptions: Subscriptions are possible to any favorite Twitch streamer’s channel. Many benefits include receiving higher powers in a particular chat room and an advertisement-free experience on their account; however, this only generates half of the revenue for the streamer.
Gifts: almost each fan streams money to his favorite channels at a go through services and even different sites like PayPal, or on other third-party platforms with include Streamlabs. Prices range from the smallest cash tips to huge ones.
Ad revenue: Ad Revenue is another source from which the streamers make money. The advertisements are displayed while streaming and this is facilitated by the platform Twitch. In this regard, the platform ensures that the streamer gets a percentage of the ad revenue. This percentage however depends on the number of views and engagement that the stream attains.
Bits: These enable users to buy virtual currencies called Bits, which the users can then donate to the broadcaster in-stream live on the broadcast. A fraction of the earnings goes towards the user, the streamer.

YouTube Gaming

YouTube Gaming is yet another leading body within the gameworld and streaming sphere. Though YouTube is extremely popular for its recorded video content, it also utilizes live streaming content. Other than that, YouTube has a great many other forms of income generation:

Ad Revenue: Similar to Twitch, revenue generated from adverts is distributed to the streamers in the share of revenue, depending upon view volume and other engagement values that may feature on the respective channel.
Super Chat and Super Stickers: Audiences can buy Super Chats to generate more attention of their own messages in a live stream thus assuring them of being observable. Super Stickers may further be bought as a means by which one’s followers can support streamers.
Youtube memberships: Through YouTube membership channel; the creators can afford their various creations and make money due to viewers’ subscription whereby subscribers watch their favorite content adverts free from charges.

YouTube premium permits the creators to charge revenue generated by the paying freeviewers that will keep using them with no single form of advert.

Facebook Gaming

Facebook Gaming is growing fast as a legitimate alternative to Twitch and YouTube. With millions of active users on Facebook, it establishes itself as a powerful monetization platform. Facebook Gaming offers:

Stars: For Facebook Gaming, it is possible to have viewers buy Stars and send those to favorite streamers, and those Stars earn the creators money which they can collect later.
Ad revenue: Streaming is also a source that generates revenue by the streamer since it allows them to possibly have the running ad revenue of Facebook through their live streams, thereby transforming this stream into income-generating activities.
Brand sponsorships and partnerships: Brands contract Facebook Gaming streamers directly to produce sponsored content. Some examples include product placements and partnerships.

2. E-sports tournaments and competitions

E-Sports is a good source of income for competitive gamers. The competition gaming industry grew into a multi-million-dollar industry, and tournament has remained the source of money for the big players.

Participate in Tournaments

Major eSports competitions stage over many games, including Fortnite, League of Legends, Dota 2, and Call of Duty, as examples. The following organizations can facilitate both online and offline, awarding prize money for the winning teams- Battlefy and Toornament.

Entry Fees and Prizes: Most tournaments have entry fees but normally the prize money is much. In the case of professional gamers, the highest winners are given thousands and millions of dollars in prize money.
Sponsorship and Sponsorship Endorsement: Most eSports gamers have sponsorship agreements with various firms, companies, and manufacturers of gaming equipment. Those agreements make them have another source of income besides the sponsorship deals. –
Team Salaries: eSports players are employed as employees with their team at fixed wage incomes. They also get training, coaching, and services that will aid them in competing and participating in tournaments and other events.

Streaming eSports Events

Other people who do not consider themselves competitive gamers but like the sport of eSports still have a good opportunity to earn money by streaming large tournaments and other events. ESL Gaming and MLG Gaming is some of them that hold the biggest games and such big events go viral to millions of viewers.

3. Affiliate Marketing and Sponsorship

Affiliate marketing and sponsorships are brilliant ways through which players and streamers can earn without requiring the viewers to subscribe to their services or donate their money.

Affiliate Marketing

Earnings of the commission occur on a particular product for which they advertise on their channel. One of the popular affiliate programs includes:

Amazon Associates: Using Amazon Associates allows the gamer to share a link for any hardware, game peripherals, or any other associated product being sold at Amazon. For every purchase that is carried out from such a link, the user gets a percentage from the sale.
Gaming Hardware Affiliates: Most of the hardware-based gaming companies have an affiliate marketing program that allows users to earn money through promoting their products. The companies known include; Logitech, Razer, and SteelSeries.
Game Developers and Publishers: Game developers and publishers too come with affiliate or partnership programs, where streams can earn via the other players who click through their games in the website streamers.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship is one of the biggest revenue sources a games’ industry can provide, with large gaming companies and technology firms sponsoring popular streams on platforms such as Twitch along with energy beverage companies. Besides being monetarily compensated, many other rewards come with such sponsorships including free products.

The largest streamers and pros receive paid deals with companies such as Red Bull, NVIDIA, or Corsair. Typically, sponsorships entail promoting a brand in a stream, using the organization’s equipment, or giving unique promo codes for viewers to use.

4. Merch Sales

Other cool streams off a gaming brand through which one derives their income include the sale of their Merch products, branded personally. Streamers are most likely to support the hobbyists by selling these: merchandise products such as shirts, accessories, among numerous other products. This might come as a practical method toward realizing passive income: establishing merch stores.

Merch sales platforms

Teespring: Teespring lets the creators create merchandise that’s up for sale. Teespring will then print, ship, and even provide customer support for teespring for t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, and much more products that can be designed, and again, no upfront cost.
Spreadshirt: Spreadshirt, more on that a bit later, when talking about print providers where again, no upfront cost is required.
Merch by Amazon: The other approach is not to incur front-end costs by making designs through Merch by Amazon. This platform allows easy making of designs and then the instant sale of products on Amazon, thus allowing the selling of products to a multitude of buyers running into millions.

5. Production and promotion of digital products

Digital products range from a large variety of offerings, like:

Game Guides and Walkthroughs: There are such countless quality game guides, walkthroughs, and tutorials that gamers would pay for. One can create such content and sell on Gumroad or Patreon-
Exclusives Content: Most provide exclusives such as behind-the-scenes content or even tutorials for their paid subscribers and even have customized material that may need their subscribers to pay. Sites, like Patreon and Ko-fi, make such projects so money-generating.
Modding and Game Development: Steams has its own site [Workshop]. From here, one might sell his work, selling individual mods on his or her own sites directly.

Conclusion

Game streaming is offering the world different scopes to earn money. Some of them are amateur gamers whereas others are professional gamers. Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and Facebook Gaming always provide a way to monetize streams through ads, subscriptions, or donations. Furthermore, eSports competitions, affiliate marketing, sponsorships, sales of merchandise and digital products, all amplify earnings exponentially. It is not that difficult to convert an interest in games into a realistic and respectable source of career income by developing variability in their earning sources along with a following.

How to Make Passive Income from Gaming and Streaming