The Global Offensive Dream: Making Money While You Play
Ever since the Half-Life mod, counter-strike came out twenty years ago, many of us have been hooked. And while it’s been a whole seven years now since Global Offensive first wowed us; there is still huge appetite from fans on places such as the CS GO Forums. And, of course, interest grew last year when newcomers to the franchise discovered the game when it became free to play.
The dream is obviously to be able just to play video games all day long and get paid to do it. How achievable is it to make money? Here are a few ways you may be able to make a bit of cash.
eSports And Betting
One of the real draws to Global Offensive is in betting. The eSports industry is massive with huge prizes for professional gamers who have the skills to reach the top. We’d all love the chance to win some of these prizes, which can be as much as $1,000,000, however, competition is hard, and there might be easier ways to win, albeit smaller amounts.
Surrounding these tournaments, there are plenty of opportunities to bet on competitors, with many bookkeepers ready to take your money. This is gambling, so there is a chance of losing anything that you put in, and there are obvious risks of addiction; so it advised to research and understand the odds involved before placing a bet such as this.
There are smaller tournaments you can enter with cash prizes, which you might have better odds of winning on sites such as Toornament or FACEIT.
Trading Inside The Game
There is money to be made in trading skins. You can acquire skins in-game in a number of ways, such as finding drop-boxes then buying a key to open them, buying skins from the Steam store, and then selling them at a higher price. You could sell them to another player in-game, or take them to a dedicated site for reselling.
Get YouTube Famous
If you’re a creative enough, you could create a Twitch or YouTube channel and stream your gameplay. The trick here is to make enough interesting content to get yourself an audience. You’ll need to find plenty to say, be fairly confident at taking, and entertaining too. You’ll need to get plenty of views to attract the advertising that you need to get on there, but with regular videos it is possible. Affiliate links are a potentially easy way of monetizing your videos and blogs too, where you can earn money from clicks through links you have placed on your page. You can use sites such as Patreon to build a paid subscribers network; all you need to do is supply the content.
There are definite ways of earning money from playing and taking an interest in gaming. Whichever of these options you choose, do plenty of research. Find the top players making money that way and study what they are doing. It might sound like money for nothing, but you will need patience to make it pay.