Turning my hobby into money

I will like to start this article by first clarifying the meaning of hobby. According to dictionary.com, a hobby is "an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation". Just to take it further, vocabulary.com defined it as something that you do for fun — not money — and you typically do it fairly regularly. So, that's basically it: something we do just for the fun of it.

Life is a journey or as some people will say; a marathon and just like any other marathon, it's crucial to have pit stops that refuel your spirit and help you to catch your breath. That's where hobbies come in; those delightful escapes that light up our souls and breathe color into our daily routines, and that's why the definition of hobby by vocabulary.com referred to it as something that is typically done regularly.

For me, that something is mobile gaming. Even when I'm choked up with lots of workload and other academic activities in the university, I always find time to play mobile games because it's the major thing that helps to relax me. For some people, it's cooking, while for others, it's movies and I will admit that I'm also part of the movie watchers but I particularly lean more towards gaming.

Once upon a time, some of my hobbies included drawing and dancing, that was back when I was still in secondary school and I didn't have a smartphone, the games back then were very limited, so when I got bored of them, I explore other options such as drawing cartoon or game characters and dancing. I had several drawing books back then and I even sold some of them after filling them up with wonderful sketches of my favorite cartoon characters which can be as simple as Tom and Jerry or complicated like Optimus Prime (transformer).

Now, the major hobby I'm into is video games but I occasionally watch movies sometimes as well. The games I play these days are usually competitive (think Call of Duty, mobile legends). I mostly play these because I never get bored of them and that's because I'm playing with and against other people all over the world, unlike the games I used to play back in the day which involved playing against non-player characters (NPC) or what some people especially in Nigeria simply refer to as "computer" (playing against computer).

The beauty of competitive games or let me use the more generic term: "online or internet gaming" is that it can fetch you some cool cash if you're very good at a particular game. The most common way some people use it to generate income is through content creation, typically doing tutorial videos, tips and tricks, etc.

Last year, I actually helped a friend create content for Call of Duty and apex legends games by screen recording my gameplays and sending them to him for editing and uploading on his YouTube channel but he wasn't consistent and dedicated to it, he eventually gave up after a while. Another way I can make money from gaming is to take part in game tournaments and competitions.

For example, we have the Call of duty mobile (CODM) championship and the recent one has a grand prize of $1 million! Crazy right? And there is also mobile legends bang bang (MLBB) yearly tournaments and the last one had a grand prize of $300k. Aside from these tournaments from the creators of the games, there are also private competitions organized by individuals and they also come with very good cash prizes.

But the problem with these ways of making money I mentioned is that they are not easy at all and is going to take a lot of time. For the content creation path, it will take a lot of time to grow a new channel and possibly pay for ads that can help to promote the channel but if I'm serious with it, I will be able to accomplish it in a couple of years. But for that, I will have to be extremely good (the best of the best) at the very game I'm creating contents around.

As for the tournaments and competition routes, that one is even more difficult because there are lots of super good gamers out there who have gears that put them in a huge advantage. Things like very fast internet connection (very important), gaming chair, High-end phones or even tablets, gaming headsets, and other things that makes gaming easy for them. Most times I will be playing mobile legends or Call of duty and my ping will be flashing red at around 250ms ☹️ (only gamers will probably understand this).

But the truth is that I have no plans (at least for now) to monetize gaming. I believe taking it to the professional level takes out the fun from it. It's a different ball game when you're playing just for fun with no strings attached as against playing professionally with a $1 million cash prize hanging over your head. I can't handle the pressure of such competitions, especially when I'm playing as part of a team, just like we have in COD or MLBB. For something that I do just for fun and to relax, using it to make money is surely going to do the opposite of that.

Thanks for reading

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