Gaming For A Living - Stacking Skills To Increase Success

Part of the post Gaming For A Living --Lifestyle Design introduced the concept of "talent stacking" briefly. I want to cover that a little bit more in depth regarding the execution of the strategy.

One useful talent is "leverage" You want to strategically leverage popular sites. Another talent is integration. You want to integrate a video into your blog, for example. Another talent is finding demand. Stack these three together and you have leveraged integration of an in demand game.

For example, say you make a video walk through of a specific game for a specific system that you know is popular. You use leverage by using Youtube, the most popular video search engine that also can allow you to easily integrate them into a blog. You may use blogger or wordpress or another content management system to leverage someone else's work formatting posts and tagging and siloing and SEO with the possible additional leverage later of blog networks and directories and search engines once you develop the skills.

You can simply make a post with a similar title to your youtube video, embed the youtube video walkthrough and post it with a few tags and categories which as you'll learn later is good for SEO.

This is a good start. Most people just upload a video and then they're done or make a blog post then they're done. You actually did both. The use of a blog to develop a platform where you have and promote your own content is a great thing and leveraging youtube's platform with perhaps a description to the blog post is even better.

Now let's leverage some more.

Once you've posted the video walkthrough you may make derivative works such as a written walkthrough that may embed the video as well as provide a link to the prior post at the end or beginning of the post. If you want people to click on the video walk through you should have it at the top, otherwise if your goal is to have them read the article, put it at the bottom.

This leverages previous posts and additional posts with new posts and begins the process of leveraging search engines by creating multiple pieces of content, leveraging old content, adding words that people may be able to search for, and help search engines determine if your web page is relevant to the searchers query.

Now maybe you make a handful of posts or break your walkthrough into parts so you can create several follow up posts. You also want more than just walkthroughs so you post secrets, tips, tricks, gameplay, reviews, unboxing of games, strategy, and entertaining highlights. You can also create miniblogs that only focus on the efforts of one single game as well as blogs that focus on entire gaming genres for a system as well as supersites that focus on an entire gaming platform or system, as well as a large supersite that focuses on everything gaming.

Your miniblog will be ready the earliest on and most relevant for people searching an exact term related to a specific game, but have a limited amount of use. Your largest site just on "gaming" in general will require the most work, but eventually carry with it the most authority and once you complete it with perhaps several hundred entries, and you simultaneously link to it from your smaller blogs as well as leverage other skills later on like search engine optimization, your webpage will carry with it more authority on all things gaming and it will be easy to create a new gaming blog, link to it from your super sites, create several posts on your new gaming across your websites and quickly get a lot of viewers to your entire network of blogs.

This is sort of a nice system's approach where each "failure" (videos getting below average views and blogposts getting a low number of views) actually contributes towards building sort of an infrastructure that helps you long term. Failure is literally the engine that powers your gaming "network" in this regard.

You also may leverage facebook and/or twitter and/or other social platforms, article directories, high traffic sites, and so on. Publish to journals and magazines and wherever possible. Conduct press releases about your achievements and launching of your websites. Establish forum profiles with a signature that points people to whatever miniblog you're looking at at the moment as well as referencing your facebook, twitter, etc accounts.

Leverage and integration. create social bookmarking of blog posts and websites to try to "boost" your site's performance and spread it.

So far we've created a strategy for accumulating a large following if you develop and impliment some of the skills mentioned. There's several more such as "entertainment, persuasion, attractveness, site layout, font size, use of images, layout, site structure and linking structure, design, interactiveness of comment section, ability to increase the "quality" of viewers, and so on.

But a successful web empire requires:
1)Accumulating traffic
2)Providing a Product Or Service
3)Monetizing Your Traffic (Using A Service and/or ads)
4)Convertion Rates Traffic To A Service

You could probably merge 2&3 if you wanted since monetization is providing traffic with a source for earnings which is essentially the same. However, monetization can also be: creating back end products, upselling, using text based ads or banner ads.

So persuasion is not only a successful skill in getting people to want to view your blog and/or your video by seeing the title, getting them to subscribe, getting them to click your website and influencing their rate of buying. Persuasion is a huge part of having high clickthrough rates and conversion rates and sale rates and re-subscription rates. You want a quality product or service too, but more than that, you to be able to convince them that they like your product, convince them to tell friends, convince them to get more and convince them that they like it.

Persuasion is influencing over time. The more time you apply a skill, the more likely you are to motivate a larger percentage of the population. With an initial page view, you only have a short amount of time before they click elsewhere. You want to quickly get them to either click on an ad (0-5% is the common range, images that subliminally seem to point to ads or highlight ads as well as a color blend that fits the page and doesn't look spammy or stands out depending on your audience. In some fields, people are used to ignoring ads, where as others they are primed to click on anything that stands out. You have to apply the skills of rapidly testing, tracking, tweaking, improving and moving on when you have enough data to draw a conclusion that is appropriate given your strategy.

However, you will do much better persuading people that are subscribed for a long time to actually purchase. So rather than get 5% of viewers to click on a link and leave your site while making you a dollar or so per click, it may be better to get 1% of customers to subscribe to an email newsletter where you can build a relationship and apply persuasion over a longer period of time.

Of those 1% of viewers who subscribe to your email address, they're already going to want to justify their decision to subscribe to your email list by reading it, and you can prime them to buy with persuasion skills. If you can get 20% of your email subscribers to subscribe to a monthly service, many of those subscriptions will stay longer than a single month and earn you money each month. This may end up being worth far more than a single quick purchase.... however, getting them used to purchasing by making a few $1 purchases and then moving the price up as they go while also rewarding them for purchases by unannounced loyalty offers and free products and perhaps exclusive videos hidden from the public you can reward them and encourage them to buy again and then beginning a process of going for additional sales and subscriptions. You have to test before you can decide which is best.

Remember that some things are going to fail so from the beginning plan on some method towards taking customers with you. By blogging in the structure mentioned, the posts are not in vain if they help get you youtube subscriptions and build link authority to your large supersites and other blogs and pass through credibility to the visitors of your other blogs and video channels.

By building a list of subscribers, you can hopefully maintain the relationship even if they don't buy and funnel them into the next project you are working on that is most similar. You can also practice different methods of persuasion and compare one list vs another when converting them to a new fiedl and bring forward your knowledge you gain from testing.

update:11/28 Scott Adams has a post about talent stacking that you should find interesting.

Video Gaming For A Living Lifestyle Design

The first thing you are going to want to do if you decide that you want to game for a living is that your entire lifestyle has to be able to support the idea.

I'm going to come at this from a bit of an unconventional angle. If you are going to be gaming for a living you have to be in the elite category of gaming earners. This is a histogram of household income. It's meant to show the disproportional amount of success relative to the number of people achieving it.

This is for a very good economical reason. People who are just a little better can offer regular growth of earnings for companies, and companies are willing to pay a lot. If you can grow a billion dollar company by 10% and I can grow it by 11%, that 1% difference is worth 10 million dollars more to the company in earnings for one single year. Of course people who are just a little bit better are going to earn substantially more.

The same thing is true in gaming. Youtube wants to use their video platform to make money and they are willing to share some of the earnings.  If you can give people a little better experience long term, and can attract viewers at a little faster rate and produce more enjoyable videos that showcase ads that people watch with enthusiasm, you are going to be worth more to youtube for every video you make, and if you can make lots of videos that difference is going to compound and make a huge difference to the bottom line. It has to be that way. The alternative is everyone makes the same, less gets produces, everything costs more and there is less to go around and businesses fail to grow so people get laid off and everyone starves... Well, perhaps not that dramatic, but it IS that way, so rather than get emotional about it, resolve to be the best.

 

The good news is, like any endeavor, the least amount of competition is actually at the top. Few people have the skills and ability to get to the top. Few can match the best game tubers, and so those with elite skills get disproportional benefits. The CEOs of companies earn millions a year, sometimes 50 times more than the average employee. Similarly, the winning horse may or winning golfer will earn disproportionately more money than those that are average. This is the way life is, so if you want to succeed in gaming for a living, you must resolve to move far beyond average in content, headlines, SEO, publishing, marketing, gaming, hours per day working, work per hour, number of videos total and generating referrals and whatever other categories are important.

If you can do enough to surpass the averages you have a disproportional amount of opportunity available.

Those at the top are not the best gamers in the world, the best marketers, the best at writing headlines, the best at social media, the best at marketing, or the best at generating referrals... However, there are an extremely few people in the entire world that are in the top 20% at every single category AND that also work many hours a day gaming and editing videos and publishing them and generating links AND that also persist long enough to succeed. That's a stack that you will need to succeed.

Your goal is to get better every day at one or more of the most important categories. Your goal is to outwork the majority and work smarter than the majority and to persist long enough to surpass those that would have quit. Regardless of the field, good things will happen if you do things right.

So now we can finally provide the context for what this post is about: Video game Lifestyle Design.

If you are like most people, you have to generate a certain amount of earnings each month to provide shelter over your head and food in your refrigerator. So the vast majority of you are going to have to start out gaming part time. The goal is to generate an environment in which your chances of success at the above are high.

There are really 3 paths that I see, each eventually will move towards gaming for a living, but you have to start somewhere:

1)Part time Gaming

2)Full time Gaming As a "Trial"

3)"Full Time" Gaming WITH side income on an AS NEEDED basis.

The smart, prudent way is Part Time Gaming, but this offers few advantages over the crowd unless you are extremely dedicated or can get by on very little sleep.

The interesting way is taking a leave of absence for a month or when you are between jobs or if you have another job you will start in a month and can quit your old job a month before the next. You will be going "all in" into gaming but for a brief period of time. This may give you a much better idea if you can do this day to day every single day, but a single month is not enough to generate more than maybe 100 subscribers.

The fun, but risky way is to basically "go all in" on gaming until the money runs thin, and then to do tasks that generate enough money to get by and then go back to gaming full time.

Some may consider it a fun challenge after saving a large sum of money up to quit your job and do what you can to see if you can survive. This is a challenge that probably requires avenues of earning outside of gaming on an as needed basis, and/or a lot of savings.

Another way to look at the same 3 options is in terms of hours spent earning directly, vs hours spent generating more "passive income".

Option 1 basically spends as many hours getting direct earnings that you can to generate the cash you need to spend while building up savings.

Option 2 you basically are using your savings for a month to get by and spending 100% of your waking time gaming or publishing videos or marketing those videos.

Option 3 you are doing the opposite of option 1. You are spending as few hours possible getting direct earnings, and only doing so as needed.

Once you decide how you are going to approach things, you need to consider your environment.

Perhaps you put up some ads in college campuses that you are looking for a roommate who wants to pursue a dream of gaming for a living. Perhaps you have a friend in mind and you can convince him or her to live together, share expenses and give this dream a shot. Having a second person allows you to share expenses, collaborate together, and specialize in tasks and it reduces the workload. It also allows you to do split testing where you do one thing and your roommate does the exact same things except for one variable and you see who comes out ahead to compare strategies.

Perhaps you need to move out, or perhaps to reduce expenses you want to move into your parents or friends basement. Everyone is going to have a different situations so you need to try to maximize the number of hourss you have and dollars you have.

You should look at the money in terms of time so you convert them to units in terms of how many hours towards gaming and how many hours away from gaming (such as writing articles or free lancing for income or raking your neighbors lawn.

Also, growth is geometric...

source:http://bio1510.biology.gatech.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/geometric-growth-CS.jpg

Well, actually it may be "logistic" because there is a limited amount of people on youtube at one point in time.

source:https://media1.britannica.com/eb-media/39/150639-004-5A7C80A0.jpg

The point is, for quite some time you will be only getting a few dozen or a few hundred viewers. Each video may get you a subscriber. But over time those same videos will get you subscribers and more people that like one video will check out another and more videos generating more views every month as you publish more and as you improve your skills will lead to growth.

For quite some time you will not be seeing much progress and it may feel more linear, or it may seem to not be going anywhere but eventually if you persist you can make really good things happen if you have the right approach.

So think about how many hours you have in a day, and how much you can dedicate to recording videos/gaming, editing videos/waiting for the upload to render, publishing the video/waiting for the video to upload, and writing a description and video title and generating blogs, articles, and links and promotional material to your video as well as eating, sleep, and seeking out promotions/affiliate links/sponsorships as well as potentially doing whats needed to generate earnings.

So let's take another look at the options and break it down. 

Option 1 is just managing the time you are not working into gaming and publishing and promoting and sleeping.

Option 2 you are just managing the time for a month into gaming publishing and promoting and sleeping.

Option 3 you have to manage income and understand when you get paid and make sure that you have enough money as needed, which means you have to plan your working around your expenses.

So If there are 30 days in a month you have to consider how much you will pay for rent and how much you spend on food and whatever else. Let's say $1000 total. If you have $1,000 on hand, you are going to need another $1,000 fairly quickly since at the end of the month you will have zero and you presumably will still need groceries in addition to the cash you earn now not necessarily being paid until the end of the month. SO I would always plan to have 2 months worth and if I didn't, I'd be earning next months now.

So if you have to earn $1,000 that means that if you can make about $15 an hour that you need to generate 67 hours of work or more in 30 days or about 2 hours and 15 minutes of work per day every day. With 8 hours of sleep and let's say 3 hours of making food, eating, taking breaks, etc in addition to over 2 hours of work this leaves under 11 hours a day.

Even though Option 3 is supposed to be "as needed", I would probably do a little bit more until I had 6 months worth of savings because you never know when your TV could break or car breaks down, or perhaps you have to go to the doctor for an emergency or some expense comes up or your power goes out and perhaps you can't work.

When choosing which option you want and also managing your time given that option, it's important to fulfill your wants and needs as well. Managing your time should probably be as consistent with your values as possible as well while still meeting your gaming needs and monthly needs (rent money or mortgage payment money and food and expenses) since feeling fulfilled and feeling purpose is really the goal. If you value having a social life, you may need to spend a little more going out with friends or meeting other gamers. If you value health, you may need to spend a little more on food than just buying Ramen noodles. If you value the gaming experience you may spend a little bit more on a better TV, a newer game and higher quality software and tools. You should think about what you value most and make an effort to incorporate time towards that activity so you can feel more fulfilled.

Many people have everything they think they ever wanted and find themselves unfulfilled because in pursuit of their goals they neglect other important values and forgot what's really important to them. This dream of doing everything you thought you ever wanted may become like a chore and you may lose perspective that it's supposed to be fun. Or perhaps you'll neglect health. 

Without the right foods your body literally cannot produce enough good feelings. Certain proteins convert to brain chemicals that determine how you feel. Specifically, amino acids like Tryptophan produce neurotransmitters like serotonin that promote happy feelings, while amino acids like Tyrosine produce Catacholamines like Dopamine that promote energy and focus.

So it's not enough to live your dream if you neglect the emotions you want to feel which can be achieved partially through eating right. Aside from the right proteins, your body may need certain vitamins or even to get enough sunshine to produce the chemicals that lead to the feelings you want to have more of.

This is why I call it "Lifestyle Design", it needs to go far beyond just time management and doing things right in pursuit of your dream of video gaming for a living, you also have to do the right things to live the right way as well so that it can be everything you hoped it would be and more.

Remember I said this would be a bright look at gaming for a living. Now you see I wasn't kidding. Nor was I just talking about optimism. You have to look holistically at everything gaming as a profession entails, and make sure that you live your life in alignment with your goals in order to live life to the fullest. I'm not going to just tell you how to go about gaming for a living, because if you do that and aren't happy, that's not the right approach. But if you can find that the experience turned out to be even better than expected, it's something worth achieving. Now you can imagine experiencing a better life than you even thought possible, and it can get better and better. And you can step inside that life and sieze every opportunity to make life even better.

Hold that thought for as long as you can, now we are going to talk next about managing the actual costs of gaming and equipment and look at some of the bright opportunities available for free and quality gaming.

Video Gaming For A Living Introduction

As it turns out, the modern era has brought numerous opportunities for someone pursuing their dream as a video game enthusiast, seeking to make it more of a profession.

This blog is going to be a bright look at the world of video gaming as a profession. There are plenty of blogs out there telling you that you can certainly do it for a living, or those that discourage you. This is going to be an optimistic look at what it takes, but at the same time a realistic look at what it takes to succeed as a gamer.

This is something I am considering myself, so this blog will serve to record all of the ideas I come across and sort of catalog my bright thoughts on the matter.

The top 10 gamers in the world certainly make enough to make a luxurious rich living, but if you compare yourself to them, you'll just be disappointed.

So instead, this blog will be a look at sort of the systems approach where you are going to compare your efforts to yourself and look to grow subscribers through daily tasks which progress you higher and higher towards a brighter and brighter future.