The short version: you can turn gaming into a small side income, somewhere between £20 and £300 a month for most people, through app testing, playtesting agencies, streaming, coaching younger players, or making short clips for YouTube. But the maths only works if you treat it like a proper side hustle with tracked hours, not a hobby you’re hoping gets rewarded.
I tested this myself, and the numbers were worse than I expected
Last month, as one of my little experiments, I downloaded Mistplay, an app that pays you in points for playing mobile games it partners with. I played for about an hour a night for seven nights, logged every session in a spreadsheet, and cashed out at the end. Total earnings: £6.40, converted from points to a gift card. That’s roughly 90p an hour.
I’m not telling you that to put you off. I’m telling you because almost every article on this topic skips the actual hourly rate and jumps straight to “you could earn £500 a month streaming,” which is true for about the top 2% of streamers and nobody else. If you go into this expecting Mistplay or Swagbucks-style game apps to be a real income stream, you’ll be disappointed within a week. If you go in expecting pocket money for background noise while you’re already gaming, it’s fine.
The five ways that pay, ranked by realistic return
I’ve looked at this for a few clients who wanted a “gaming income” angle for their kids or for content they were building. Here’s what the money looks like, from lowest effort to highest.
1. App-based casual gaming (Mistplay, Swagbucks, PogoPass)
Pay: 50p to £2 an hour, paid in points redeemable for gift cards. You won’t get cash out of most of these. Good for filling dead time on a commute, useless as an actual income plan.
2. Playtesting for real money, not points
This is the one people miss. Companies like PlaytestCloud and uTest pay real cash, not points, for testing unreleased games and apps and giving feedback. PlaytestCloud typically pays around £8 to £12 for a 15 to 20 minute recorded session where you talk through what you’re doing. uTest pays per bug found or per test cycle, often £15 to £30 an hour for structured testing work if you’re accepted onto their paid projects. The bar to get in is higher (you often need to pass a short application and sometimes a test task), but the pay is roughly ten times better than casual app gaming.
3. Coaching or teaching younger or newer players
This is the one that surprised me most. A client of mine in Manchester has a 17 year old son, Josh, who’s good at Fortnite and Rocket League. He coaches younger players on Discord and Fiverr, one-to-one sessions, usually 30 to 45 minutes, at £8 to £15 a session. He does three or four sessions a week around school and makes roughly £150 to £200 a month. It’s not exciting money, but it’s more than double what he’d get stacking shelves part time, and he’s doing something he’d be doing for free anyway.
4. Streaming on Twitch or YouTube
This is the path everyone thinks of first and the one with the worst odds. To become a Twitch Affiliate (the first paid tier) you need 50 followers, 500 minutes streamed over 30 days, on 7 unique days, with an average of 3 concurrent viewers. That’s the entry bar, not the payoff. Most affiliates make somewhere between £10 and £50 a month from subscriptions and bits unless they’re consistent for a year or more and build a real audience. The people making thousands are putting in 30 to 40 hours a week on camera, which stops being a small income and starts being a full career bet.
5. Turning gameplay into content, not just live streams
Short clips, highlight reels, and “how to beat this boss” videos on YouTube can earn ad revenue slowly, plus they’re searchable long after you’ve stopped playing, unlike a live stream that disappears. This is closer to content marketing than gaming, and it’s where the skills cross over into other side income work, which is why I’d point anyone serious at a broader list like how to make money online, because the platforms, editing tools, and audience-building tactics are identical whether you’re reviewing games or reviewing kitchen gadgets.
The uncomfortable bit nobody selling this idea wants to say out loud
Here’s the thing that gets glossed over: none of this is a job, and none of it comes with any protection. If you spend six hours a day gaming for money and develop repetitive strain injury in your wrist, there’s no employer, no sick pay, and no claim to make, because you’re not employed by anyone. I’ve written before about how workers get support for repetitive strain and other workplace injuries when there’s an actual employer on the hook (see maximizing compensation for workplace injuries for how that normally works), and the entire point is that it depends on there being a workplace. Gig-style gaming income has none of that. You’re on your own for the chair, the wrist supports, the eye strain, all of it.
The second uncomfortable truth: platforms can switch off your income overnight and you have no recourse. Twitch changes its monetisation rules, YouTube demonetises a video for a copyrighted soundtrack in the background, Discord suspends an account over a false report. It’s the same risk professionals face when a LinkedIn account gets banned or restricted and years of built-up audience disappears in a click, except most gamers have never even thought to back up their subscriber list or export their community anywhere else. If you’re serious about this as income rather than pocket money, build an email list or a Discord community you own the contact details for, separate from the platform.
How I’d set this up if I were starting from zero
If someone asked me to plan this out, here’s the order I’d do it in, based on what worked for people I know rather than theory:
- Week 1: pick one paid playtesting platform (uTest or PlaytestCloud) and complete their application. This gets you real cash fastest with the least audience-building required.
- Week 2: set up a Discord server or join two or three existing ones for the game you’re best at, and offer free coaching sessions to two or three people to build reviews before charging anything.
- Week 3: start charging £8 to £10 a session on Fiverr for coaching once you have three or four genuine reviews.
- Week 4 onwards: if you enjoy being on camera, start a YouTube channel alongside the coaching, recording your best sessions or highlight clips, so you’re building a searchable asset while the coaching pays the actual bills.
- Track your hours weekly in a simple spreadsheet, hours in versus pounds out, and be honest with yourself if the hourly rate stays under £5 after two months.
That last point matters more than anything else in this post. Track it or you’ll convince yourself you’re earning more than you are, because the fun of playing masks the poor hourly rate.
Where this crosses over into real business territory
I’ve seen this go somewhere interesting a couple of times. One person I know built a small Discord coaching community, then used it exactly the way you’d use any audience, as a warm list for other offers. The same principles that work for lead generation tactics in any other business apply directly here: your Discord members and Twitch chat are a list, and if you ever want to sell a coaching course, a strategy guide, or merchandise, that list is worth more than any single month of ad revenue.
I’ve also had companies ask me about running gaming tournaments as part of staff events, which tells you the appetite for this stuff isn’t just teenagers on Discord, it’s corporate too. If you’re curious how organisations use structured competition and shared activities to build culture, it’s a similar logic to what’s covered in corporate team building activities for better collaboration, and it’s worth knowing some coaches and streamers now get paid to run these sessions for companies directly, which pays considerably better than public Discord coaching, often £50 to £150 for a single hosted session.
And if all of this sounds like a lot of screen time for not much return some weeks, it’s worth remembering gaming doesn’t have to be online or monetised at all to be worthwhile, sometimes it’s just downtime, which is the whole idea behind lists like 1000 free offline games you can play with no wifi, no income angle, just something to do that isn’t trying to squeeze a few pence out of every hour.
What I’d tell anyone starting this next week
Pick one method, not five. Track your actual hourly rate from day one. Don’t build anything you can’t export or back up somewhere you control. And accept upfront that this is pocket money territory for the first three to six months, not rent money, unless you’re already unusually good at one specific game or unusually consistent on camera. The people who quietly earn £100 to £300 a month from this aren’t the ones chasing viral streams, they’re the ones doing paid playtesting and small coaching sessions on a schedule, week after week, which is duller to talk about but far more reliable.
Frequently asked questions
Can you really make money just playing games online?
Yes, but the amount depends entirely on the method. Casual app-based gaming through things like Mistplay pays under £2 an hour. Paid playtesting through uTest or PlaytestCloud pays £8 to £30 an hour. Coaching other players on Fiverr or Discord can add £100 to £200 a month with a few sessions weekly. Streaming pays very little for most people until you build a real audience over a year or more.
How much do Twitch streamers earn when they’re starting out?
Most new affiliates earn between £10 and £50 a month from subscriptions and bits. The Twitch Affiliate requirement is 50 followers, 500 minutes streamed across 30 days, on 7 unique broadcast days, with an average of 3 concurrent viewers, and that’s just the entry bar, not a guarantee of meaningful pay.
Is playtesting games for money worth doing?
Yes, it’s the best hourly rate on this list for beginners. Paid platforms like PlaytestCloud pay around £8 to £12 for a 15 to 20 minute session, and uTest pays £15 to £30 an hour for structured paid test cycles once you’re accepted onto a project. Both pay actual cash, not points or gift cards.
What’s the biggest risk people don’t think about with gaming income?
Two things: there’s no employer safety net if you develop strain injuries from long hours, and platforms can suspend or demonetise your account with no warning and no appeal that works quickly. Anyone treating this as more than pocket money should build an email list or owned community, not rely purely on Twitch, YouTube, or Discord staying exactly as they are.
Related reading: Good Side Hustle Ideas When You Already Run a Business and How to Download Videos From Threads Onto Your Phone.
