Whether you’re a gamer who loves to play or a fan of Marvel or Pokémon who wants to see their favorite characters on the big screen, there are ways you can make a fortune based on your interests.
Here are just a few ways you can make money online from games:
Become A Marketing Expert
If you’re a natural born marketer, you can take advantage of the digital marketing world and use your skill to promote products and services via social media.
One prominent example of a marketer who transitioned to online marketing and made a fortune is Joe Polish. He became famous for creating the Skittles trading card game in the 1960s and eventually grew the business to $22 million per year in sales. Today, his company, O.C. Marketing, teaches other businesses how to market themselves using social media.
Polish’s success in marketing and how to make money from it in the digital age is a prime example of how marketing has changed. In the past, he would have gone from radio station to radio station pitching sales, hoping to land a couple of clients. Now, with the digital world, he can connect with potential clients on social media and grow his business remotely.
Start A Blog Around Gaming
If you’re the creative type who enjoys thinking up new ways to play games or analyze games’ strategies, you can take advantage of the digital marketing world and use your skills to become the go-to source for any gaming-related content. Your blog can become a place for others in the gaming community to come for content, either through your own analysis of games or your detailed walkthroughs of user-submitted games. This niche has become incredibly popular, as shown by the fact that some bloggers now make a living off their content, as detailed below.
Consulting
One area you can make a steady income stream is by becoming a game consultant. Just as with other areas of digital marketing, there are numerous ways you can make money as a game consultant. The most prominent of these is by becoming a paid traffic generator for other companies, pulling in a steady income from businesses that want to drive traffic to their site.
Freelancing
If you’re a talented writer or capable of creating compelling content, you can put your skills to use and start a blog or online magazine around gaming. You can then use your blog to gain recognition as a freelance writer, author, or content creator. Once you build up a reputation for providing valuable content, you can then pitch your services to businesses that want to hire you.
Blogs, magazines, and other digital media that cover games have exploded in popularity, which has helped make money online a viable option for many content creators.
Start An Affiliate Marketing Program
An affiliate marketing program is when an online marketer earns a commission for directing traffic to a product or service that pays out. For example, you run a blog that covers games. If a company wants to sell their own skin cream, they can set up an affiliate marketing program with you and pay you a commission if someone clicks a product that leads to a purchase.
The most successful affiliates make a living primarily off their blog, using it as a platform to promote products and services they believe in. Some of the world’s best-known affiliate marketers include John Chow, who was the first to truly grasp the potential of affiliate marketing; Michael Becker; and Jake Brill.
Get A Sports Betting Account
Sports betting is a growing industry – the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) found that online sports betting revenue will hit $11 billion by next year. If you’re a fan of a specific sport and want to follow its events online, you can do so using a sports betting account. Just remember, the legalities surrounding sports betting vary by country, so check with the government or your bank before engaging in any online wagers.
You can use a sports betting account in one of two ways. You can either follow the scores of games that take place daily and make money from winning or losing bets, or you can create a betting pool with your friends and family to win or lose wagers on games that interest you all. You can then use a tool like Betfair to create alerts when certain teams or players are involved in a game that you intend to wager on. When that happens, you can direct your attention to the game and place a bet, knowing that if your friends join your bet, you’ll all win or lose together.
Monetising Mobile Games
If you’ve got an iPhone and you’re a fan of games, you can make money from mobile games by using a tool like Apptopia to install apps that earn money. These apps use a combination of marketing, freemium, and/or in-app purchases to make money. You can find many classic games, such as Pockie Sticks and Bubble Bobble, as well as newer games, like Food Fight, that enable you to make money from playing.
The best part about this option is that you can use your phone’s browser to play many of these games, enabling you to play wherever you want and whenever you want. Some mobile games, like Tinder, allow you to make money from chatting with other users, which is why this option is often referred to as “mobile dating.”
Make Money With Podcasts
Podcasts are media that you can listen to at your leisure. They usually rely on interviews with subject matter experts, sports news, or funny stories to keep listeners interested. If you’ve got the talent to craft interesting interviews or make entertaining content, you can use that to your advantage and start a podcast around gaming.
Just remember that to make money from podcasts, you’ll need to be driving traffic to your site or social media accounts. If you can do that effectively, you can integrate Google Ads into your podcast’s design and start making money from podcasts straight away.
Start An Online Store
If you’re the type of person who enjoys collecting things, you can make money online by setting up an online store. You can use your blog to highlight and sell a range of games and gaming-related products, from peripherals such as Xbox controllers and laptop skins to clothing items like hoodies and t-shirts. You can even sell novelty items like keyrings and mugs featuring video game characters or your own design.
This is a way to make money online without necessarily having a vested interest in gaming – if you can prove to people that you understand them and their interests, you can open up a whole new world of opportunities for yourself.
Blogging As A Business
If you’re looking for an easy way to make money from home, you can take advantage of the fact that so many people are now working remotely and start a blog. There are numerous ways you can monetize a blog, from showing ads to users (known as “content-based advertising”) to selling and displaying affiliate links on your site.
If you can build up a sizeable audience, you can use your blog to promote products and services that you believe in, either via affiliate marketing or direct sales. If you decide to go with affiliate marketing, you can get started very easily by signing up with a company like Clickbank, which supplies affiliate marketing platforms for bloggers to use. You can then use your blog to generate revenue by promoting products and services that you believe in.
The Opportunities Are Endless
The above suggestions are just a small selection of the different ways you can make money online from games. If you have an interest in gaming and know how to make money from it, the opportunities are endless. Just remember to have fun and make sure you’re following the correct legal procedures and tax rules.