9 Achievable Side Hustles for Gamers that Pay Over $50/Hour

Stream on Twitch ($5-$50/Hour)

Streaming on Twitch is a very popular and passive way to make income as a gamer. You can stream any game you want, and you do not necessarily have to be extremely good. If you can engage with viewers and entertain them, thats what matters. You can get started streaming with just a few important things set up. 

A majority of gamers who stream earn the majority of their income through donations, until they reach a larger fan base. To start getting donations, the best way is by connecting your Paypal to your Twitch account. To better advise you, it may be better to not entirely advertise donations immediately until you know you have a few viewers who are genuinely enjoying your content. 

Create Guides on YouTube ($12-$35/Hour)

Similar to streaming, however a bit more tedious, creating guides on Youtube is not only in demand but a great way to earn extra income. I would highly recommend crating guides on games that are very new or maybe do not have a large fan base (yet). This can be indie games or maybe even NFT games. They are typically easier to break into. 

Monetizing on Youtube can clearly take some time to master, and you will need to dedicate to creating a content plan and to post daily (or weekly) to keep up with the Youtube algorithm. Here are some popular features that Youtubers use to help them with making money on their channel:

Gamers flood Youtube daily, and a good trick to help you stay up to date is to double stream from Twitch to Youtube, so you can reach mutliple audiences. You can also take content from pre-recorded streams and use that to create videos on Youtube. This way, you do not need to spend more than a couple hours on Youtube a day. 

Play Games on Freecash ($5-$25/Hour)

Freecash is a popular platform to play new and fun mobile games for a great value of rewards. You can earn up to $50 a day by completing tasks and leveling up your account. Freecash currently has over 16.677 offers available, with 27,39 earned just from yesterday. 

Its easy to sign up, it only took me a few seconds, and the cashout process is one of the smoothest out there. Simply choose from 21 withdraw methods, and receive your reward. 

Here is how I got started on Freecash:

You can do other tasks too such as answering surveys or even testing out products, but as a gamer, I think we could both make way more bank racking up these levels in mobile game offers. Some offers like Call of Dragons offers over $1,000 just in rewards, you just need to grind it out. 

Be a Game Coach ($30-$100/Hour)

If you are rather skilled in any particular game, offering coaching sessions to newer gamers is a great side hustle for any gamer. There are websites that directly allow you to create a coach profile, like Superprof or Metafy. Otherwise, you can create a gaming coach profile on Upwork and/or Fiverr, or even advertise it on Youtube (if you take up that sort of side hustle as well). 

A few popular games that most gamers need help with are:

You can also offer trading card lessons in games like Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, or Yu-Gi-Oh! which has been rising in popularity. 

Game Boosting ($10-$200/Hour)

Maybe you are pretty good at a game (like the ones mentioned above), but you don't really have patience to teach others how to do better. However, you are still a beast in competitive mode. If thats the case, game boosting is a great side hustle for you. Earn from $10 to $200 an hour depending on the rank and the account type you will be boosting, and simply get money for gaming.

Game boosters upskill other gamers profiles to help them reach higher ranks faster. Let's say someone has been stuck in Platinum rank in League for months and just need someon to make that edge towards Emerald. These players would usually pay someone to help them achieve that. 

I would just be careful on how many people you advertise being a game booster too, as there are a lot of toxic gamers out there who would say you give people fake ranks. Which sure, but you are also giving a hand to someone who may not have 10 hours a day to get better. 

Alternatively, you can create multiple accounts and sell them once they earn a bunch of valuable assets and/or are highly ranked. Some game boosters have earned thousands of dollars for selling their accounts on websites like GameBooster.

Compete in eSports ($12-$70/Hour)

If you are a hardcore gamer, and you want to make a name for yourself, competing in eSports is one of the best ways to start earning money for your favorite hobby. This is a great side hustle, because you can still work a 9-5 while ensuring you block out a few horus a week dedicated to competitive gaming. 

To start competing in eSports events, you need to make sure you are well trained. Whether you are with a team, or going solo, this requires a lot of strategy and dedication, and can be dissappointing the first few tries. However, if you succeed, you can earn more than a full time wage and become famous among gamers as a winning competitor. 

Here are some helpful tips to get you in the eSport ranks:

I personally would love to go for competitions and large eSports events. Unfortunately I make dumb moves in competitive play, and my anxiety takes over everything. However, if you are determined, and you set your mind to it, I truly believe you can accomplish dreams such as earning money as a gamer. 

Create Game Concept Art

If you love gaming, but maybe you are not a pro, but you have some artistic skills, hundreds of large gaming industries are looking for game concept artists, along with landscape art, 2D and 3D Art Leads. This would be a great opportunity to dig into, and an awesome side gig as a gamer. 

I am an artist myself, and I am actually working up to making this my next side hustle as a gamer. There are tons of ways to get started here, however I am starting slow, and making sure I know the fundamentals of concept art and how to create designs. From there, you can create a portfolio (as I plan to do), and start offering small projects to clients on websites like Upwork and Fiverr.

A small comission of about $200 is average fo rmaybe one or two characters. However you can easily start earning over $50 an hour for large projects, making it a very sustainable side hustle. Im no pro gamer, but if I can help my favorite game studios make some sick concepts, Im all in. 

Be a Game Tester ($15-$40/Hour)

Game testing is a rather popular side hustle to get into, however it could require a lot of technical knowledge such as backend programming. Nontheless, you can quickly learn what it takes to be a Game Tester through my rundown. There are many studios worldwide searching for gamers to list hundreds of bugs and flaws within a game before their release. Its important to find these flaws to help the studio better the game. 

You can find Game Tester jobs everywhere including LinkedIn, Indeed, FlexJobs, Upwork, and Fiverr. You can work from small indie developer projects to large AAA game projects (which could require full time contracts). Depending on your motive here, you could become a well known tester, providing great feedback to developers. 

Write Gaming Guides ($5-$30 per Article)

If you hate programming, teaching, or video editing, writing guides in a blog of your own, or of another publishing company is a great side hustle for gamers. Write guides like how GameRant and IGN provide guides has helped millions of gamers worldwide, and you can be a part of that. 

Being a writer or journalists for gaming doesnt pay much, maybe $10 an hour if you are lucky. However, if you are really good, and earn promotions like lead editor or content lead, you can easily make from $15 to $30 an hour writing about your favorite games.