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Online gaming is a legitimate way to earn cash on the web. While this might sound too good to be true for those who love gaming, the fact is that not just anyone can do it. Like any work from home job, it takes effort, strategy, skill, experience, and social skills to effectively make money through online games. With that being said, as long as you have a strong Internet connection and a decent laptop, there are different ways to start doing this.
Live Streaming Platforms
Today, live streaming video games is the most popular way for most gamers to make cash. The best part is that you can choose whichever game you want to stream – as long a there’s an audience for it. Through live streaming services, gamers can rack up viewers and subscribers, ask for donations, and work their way towards earning ad revenue.
On popular streaming platform Twitch, there’s even a system that lets viewers cheer on streamers and pay them at the same time. It’s called Twitch Bits, and players can use this unique virtual currency to fund online streaming accounts. Apart from Twitch, alternative streaming services like Mixer, Facebook Gaming, and Owncast are slowly raking in more players as well.
Virtual Poker Rooms
If you fancy yourself as a formidable poker player, America’s favorite card game can now be played across a variety of virtual rooms. As a game of skill, poker is one of the few online casino games that players can actually make money from on a long-term basis.
Remember that online poker is currently only legal in 5 U.S. states – Nevada, Delaware, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. However, through the use of cryptocurrencies, you can legally make money playing poker wherever you’re located. In fact, lots of players in the U.S. use cryptocurrency to fund online poker accounts. To date, the largest online poker crypto jackpot is $1 million – now a Guinness World Record. With crypto and other blockchain technologies paving the way for poker sites to rise, some experts speculate that this could lead to across-the-board legalization for online poker. In fact, playing virtual poker isn’t the only way to use crypto in the online gaming sphere.
MMO Marketplaces
Massively-Multiplayer Online (MMO) games like PUBG, Fortnite, World of Warcraft (WoW), and DOTA have spawned their own virtual marketplaces. And through years of regulation and deregulation, these marketplaces have become complex negotiating grounds for virtual skins, items, currencies, other assets, and even entire accounts. As game providers hash it out with regulators, developers have been looking to blockchain technologies to establish their own virtual economies.
Nowadays, it’s still possible to make fiat cash by trading stuff in any of the aforementioned MMO games. However, some items are also increasingly being traded as blockchain-verified non-fungible tokens, like the ships in WoW. Meanwhile, through the Liquid Network, in-game currencies are being transformed into verifiable tokens akin to cryptocurrencies. We can expect more of these money-making innovations to develop alongside these rising virtual MMO economies.
Competitive eSports
Currently valued at a little over $1 billion, the global eSports market is expected to rake in $1.62 billion in revenue by 2024. Much of this is growth is because of ad revenue, sponsorships, and events driven by elite eSports players and teams. And if you get seriously good at games like PUBG, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Halo Infinite, you might legitimately earn a place in any of the rising eSports teams around the world.
It’s also a good idea to search your area for local eSports tournaments. But if you mainly just want to have fun, you can also live stream any of these popular eSports titles, as they tend to have more viewers and subscribers on streaming platforms.
These are just some of the most common ways for online gamers to make money by doing what they love. Keep the aforementioned tips in mind and you can start making real cash while playing games from the comfort of your own living room.
