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