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

Even though 3.4 billion people play video games—and even though the industry is larger than the music, box office, and sports industries combined—gaming still gets a lot of eye-rolls. For many people, gaming conjures the image of a teenage boy isolated in his mom’s basement. The reality is that the average age of a U.S. gamer is 35; that close to h... See more

A prime example is Fortnite, whose massive 350M+ player base represents nearly the same in-game population as the United States… 85% of whom purchase in-game upgrades, skins, and other downloadable content to the tune of $3.7 Billion /yr in sales.

MMOs already make money this way. A common insult on Fortnite is to call someone “Default”, which means that the person is using free skins (free outfits and weapons). The cool players, meanwhile, pay for exclusive, sought-after skins; buying skins is a way of buying status in the game world.

The Author’s Guild reported that the average U.S. full-time author “earned a median annual income from writing-related activities of $23,329 in 2022, of which an average of $12,000 was from their books.” (The median American worker brings home an estimated $54,132 a year.)

Now if that doesn’t scare you off, I don’t know what could.

And I regret sayin... See more