19-year-old who makes $10,000 a month from his video game side hustle: 'I never knew that writing could make me' so much money

The final and most recent piece of the creator triad is monetization. Being a creator is hard and often unforgiving work. One study found that reaching the top 3.5% of YouTube channels—which means about 1 million views each month—only nets you $12,000 to $16,000 a year, around the federal poverty line.

What’s fascinating, though, and I alluded to this earlier, is that it’s a fluid community. We have a community where creators come in. We have creators who are designers, artists, musicians, and businesspeople. They dynamically form teams in our community. As studios, they produce an experience and then can reform into other teams. It’s an evolving... See more

So How Can You Survive?

Simple. You provide something nobody else can ever provide. Something cool and distinctive that people will rather pay money for your game than get someone else's for free.

Consider me. I'm an OK programmer. I'm not good at art and visual stuff, and I haven't been since I was a kid.

But I can write well. I make good settings a... See more

Despite skepticism, gaming is big & rapidly growing: $152bn and ~10% CAGR. Netflix said “We compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO”. Very few business models work in gaming other than simply building successful games: most of the money in the industry stays with the game developers/publishers and the major gaming/streaming platforms.

One monetization opportunity that felt authentic for Jack was helping launch a TikTok page and series for a media company. The company reached out cold and offered Jack an attractive economic package to create and post a video based on high-level guidelines from the company, with incentives for viewership over certain thresholds. (16% of income)