How Much Money Do Gaming Influencers Make?

We all have dreams of becoming a gaming influencer. Who wouldn’t want to play video games for a living, gather an audience of fans, and be able to make the type of content you want without anybody telling you what to do? It’s an amazing career with a ton of incredible benefits.

But is it possible for you to make money as a gamer, or is the career of gaming influencer just an unachievable pipe dream reserved for the likes of Jynxzi and Dr. Disrespect?

We’re here to tell you that you can make a career as a gaming influencer. It takes a lot of work, but it is possible. We’re going to break down how much money you can expect to make as an influencer, depending on what size your channels are.

So let’s get into the weeds of streamer finances so you can know what to expect on your quest toward gamer freedom.

What Is a Gaming Influencer?

First, let’s define what exactly a gaming influencer is and what they do. Of course, a gaming influencer is an influencer that makes gaming content. They post on social media, make videos on YouTube, and use their influence to recommend products to their followers through tools like sponsored posts, ads, and product placements.

However, a gaming influencer is a little different than a normal Instagram influencer. The main difference is Twitch. Your run-of-the-mill social media influencer probably doesn’t have to do much live streaming. But for gamers, it’s basically a non-starter.

You’ve got to livestream yourself playing games for multiple reasons. For starters, it’s a great way to grow your following. It allows you to engage with your audience directly and connect with them in a personal way.

More than that, it allows you to prove to your audience that you know what you’re doing. Your audience will trust you more if you’re a clutch player who’s a gaming expert. Streaming lets you show off live and in person.

How Do Gaming Influencers Make Money?

So we know you can make money as an influencer, but just how do your favorite creators do it? Well, here are some of their main sources of income.

Twitch

While streaming on Twitch makes for a bit more work, it also makes for a lot more revenue. Twitch is the first big source of income for streamers. Subs, gifts, bits, cheers, and donations can all be incredible sources of income if you get a big following. Your die-hard fans pay to get exclusive content and engage with you. It’s a win-win for everybody.

You also get to run ads on your Twitch channel. Choose times throughout your stream to run some ads, and you’ll be able to make a few extra bucks per stream.

YouTube

YouTube is another big source of income for gamers. YouTube also allows for paid subscribers and live streaming, so those sources of income are possible on YouTube as well, even though it will likely be less than Twitch.

YouTube is where some major ad money can come into play. Ad space on YouTube is incredibly valuable to brands and advertisers, and it can translate into influencer earnings in your pocket.

Your Instagram account and TikTok can be other sources of income. If you can make amazing clip videos that go viral, you can get tons of followers and views and even get into programs like the TikTok Creator Fund.

It might sound like a lot of work to make short-form videos with these social media platforms, but programs like Powder can create automatic clips from your livestreams, making it super easy to get quality, short content for social media.

Sponsorships

These are the influencer’s bread and butter. Once a creator gets big enough, they’ll start to get into brand partnerships like affiliate marketing. As you grow your affiliate program deals and start to make lots of sales, you’ll become more appealing to brands.

At that point, you might land a sponsorship deal or influencer marketing deal, where companies pay you to rep their brands on your platforms through things like sponsored Instagram posts. Every sponsorship is different, but becoming a brand ambassador can mean a fantastic payday and even some free products for you.

The Wide Variety of Pay

As you probably know, it’s super unlikely that you start streaming one day and are making full-time job money the next day. The gaming influencer world is an incredibly competitive one. There are tons of players in the field, making it incredibly difficult to break through.

In fact, gaming content accounts for about one-third of the total traffic on YouTube. So, if you want to make a good amount of money, you need to figure out how to set yourself apart from the crowd.

With that in mind, here are some of the average influencer incomes of creators of different sizes.

The Beginners

Let’s start out with what you can expect at the start of your gaming-influencing career. If you’ve only just managed to reach the milestone of Twitch Partner and unlocked monetization, you’re probably not making that much online.

If you’ve got between five and 20 average viewers per stream, you’re probably making between $50 and $400 a month. It’s not much, but it’s not nothing, either. On YouTube, if you have a small following of about 500-1,000 subscriptions, you might be making around $50 to $100 a month. And you probably won’t be making much, if anything, from social media.

This adds up to between $100 and $500 a month, depending on your engagement rates, how loyal your viewers are, and several other factors.

The Veterans

Now, let’s look at some of the more experienced content creators. These are micro-influencers who’ve been doing it for a while and have a medium-sized following but are still far from the cream-of-the-crop gaming influencers.

If you’ve got around 100 viewers on Twitch per stream, you can pull in upwards of $1,000 between ads and gifts. Again, this isn’t quite a livable wage, but it’s a substantial amount of money.

On YouTube, if you’ve got around 10,000 subscribers, you could be making around $1,000 a month. It could be more if you have a high CPM. You might even start making $50-$100 a month from social media like TikTok.

This makes you a mid-tier influencer and could get you at around $2,000 or more per month, which is pretty significant! This will allow you to slow down on your other job and dedicate more time to your gaming!

The Top Flight

Now let’s look at the best gaming influencers in the world. Keep in mind that this is an incredibly difficult feat to accomplish. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to consider “The Top Flight” to mean anybody who can make gaming and influencing their full-time career.

To be a macro-influencer, you probably need to have about 1,000 subs on Twitch and about 100,000 subs on YouTube. This would earn you around $4k to $5k a month. But at this size, you’d also have access to sponsorships with bigger pricing packages, increasing your earnings even more.

This might not sound like a difficult metric to achieve, but becoming a top creator is far from easy.

Of the more than 100 million active YouTube channels in existence, only about 450,000 have 100,000 subs. Of the 7.5 million active Twitch streamers out there, only about 1,000 of them have over 1,000 subscribers.

That means if you hit those number of follower metrics and can make streaming your full-time job, even modestly, you are a top influencer in the highest fraction of a percent. And if you’re able to become a mega-influencer like TimTheTatMan or Pokimane, you basically won the lottery.

How To Make Money As a Gaming Influencer

No matter where you’re at in your journey, there is always something you can do to increase the amount of money that you’re making.

Spread Across Multiple Platforms

As an influencer, it’s incredibly important to utilize as many social media as you can in order to grow your audience. Not every potential fan is on every platform. So meet viewers where they’re at and make content that fits the platform wherever you post.

Once you start to boost your follower count, drive them toward your most successful platform. If you monetize Twitch the best, plug your Twitch channel as often as you can on YouTube and TikTok. Also, it’s a great idea to do collaborations with other creators to hit new audiences and demographics.

The more revenue streams you can have, the more ad revenue you can generate and the better your earning potential becomes.

Optimize Your Ads

When you air ad breaks on your YouTube channel or Twitch, if you can, choose the right type of ads for your channel. Air advertisements for products you know your fans will like so your channel’s ads will perform well.

If your ads do well, you’ll have great data to give to potential sponsors, which could be the difference between you making the deal or losing it.

Keep Grinding

The most important thing to do is keep working hard. Post diligently, stick to a schedule, and make the highest quality content that you possibly can.

Creators like Jynxzi are proof that if you keep working and keep getting better, you can really get somewhere as a streamer or influencer. So even if your audience is small, keep after it, and you might just be able to make it as a streamer.

For more information about streaming, content creation, and becoming a gaming influencer, check out the Powder blog.

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