Money from Video Games other than WoW?

Sounds like a good idea. Warhammer is rather new and people havn't done much for it.

Whereas the tabletop game is also a hugely unexplored niche. People could use guides to make their own armies and strategies to use.

There are a few ways to make money with video games but not many. people buy video games to play them, that's it, the only product they might buy is somethign that enchances or helps with that game play.

You could promote gold/item selling for all massively multiplayer online role playing games (mmorpgs) wow being the biggest of them all and clearly most profitable, but there are many, many others (also all of them combined will likely have less than half of wow's subscription base so meh) Another thing you could try is to sell guides, again this is somethign that is being done for wow, but you could try to sell guides for other games (also, since those other games have lower # of people, it's not going to be as good as promoting wow)

There are some other idea, but you need to find what people will pay for. Most people who buy let's say ps2 games aren't looking for anythign else (maybe a free guide/cheat sheet) where as wow features many time sinks so buying gold is fairly popular there.

Ha Ha Ha! No, not really. Unless he manages to make the best character ever and sell the account for a heap of cash on ebay, he probably won't be able to make too much, if anything off of wow.

So, yes, PSchhhh.

At what point did you sell your account for Asherons Call?

Because I know of at least 4 accounts which were sold
on ebay for almost $6,500 each all on the Wintersebb
server not to long after it opened.

I literally watched the guy do it as he was the first to
perch the Olthoi Vault weeks before anyone else did.

Me and the guy had a basic agreement, he macroed his
accounts on all the perches I looted the Olthoi sold
the stuff and kept his macros filled with arrows or spell
compenents.

Then I fellowed him to Aerlinthe where he was the first to
perch the Coral Golems, many many many months before
the others that eventually did the same thing.


As for the original post, here are some things to think about.

Many of the players of these games are kids.

Many games have ToS agreements that say if you sell ingame
items or accounts you will have them banned. WoW being
one of them.

Having seen alot of these guides as they were bought by
people then passed around freely and almost endlessly mocked
because they are so horrid in there general details.

What's worse is I've seen some people on this forum selling those
things with affiliate pages it makes me not trust their judement at
all for doing so.

Go to ebay and look at the video games / internet games section.
You can kind of get an idea of what's being sold and you find some
things you might not expect.

Also realise that you are going to be going against people in other
countries who don't mind making tiny amounts of money for playing
a game. They supposedly are like sweatshops for game players
where they all mass play a game and collect items to sell and basically
undercut everybody else in price and quantity.

Also if you sell ingame items you might run into the problem I did.
I gave a guy the items that I was selling in my auction after he
had paid for them with his paypal account. About a day later he
got the payment reversed and I complained to paypal literally
giving them the screenshots of the ingame transaction and they
said it's not a tangible item and ended up closing my account for
suspicious activity.

So if your going to sell items in a game I wouldn't use paypal.

The get paid to test games thing is almost 100% bogus. Those
ebooks are steaming piles and I would stay away from them. To
literally test games your probably going to have to be a local
residence to where the game is being made and you are probably
going to have to have some sort of technical degree.

As the people creating those games are looking for people to find
bugs that they can fix, they are not looking for some kid to sit
around and play a game and give them a review of it and then
pay them for their review.

You could always do reviews and make them more entertaining
like the Angry Video Game Nerd or the Irate Gamer. Both are
sort of big on youtube.

Or you could make a story sort of like PurePwnage. I think they
are getting multiple millions of people watching their videos when
they actually release them which is in my opinion really amazing.

Another thing is to actually create a game and sell some stuff
for your game. Two browser based games that you might
check out as models are Kingdom of Loathing and RaceWarKingdoms.

Kingdom of loathing I think only sells one item for ingame, then that
item is used to purchase different special items that are upgraded.
There is also people on ebay selling stuff to this game which I don't
know if it is against the games ToS or not.

RaceWarKingdoms sells multiple items for ingame that allow access
to different things.

I don't know much about SecondLife. I read all these things about
it and yet I don't think it lives up to it's hype of selling all kinds of
things and making people alot of money. It might though I don't
honestly know.

One game to avoid in my opinion is EntropiaUniverse, at least when
it comes to making money. Now the game actually uses and actual
conversion of real money to ingame money and ingame money to
real money. Yet it plays more or less like an mmorpg casino with you
not knowing if or when you will actually find anything that's worth
anything.

You also might keep a look out for upcoming games that might allow
for a few months of gameplay that will make some money. One
supposedly coming out soon which is Darkfall which is supposed to
be an all open pk world. The crafting ingame looks really tedious from
the beta leaks I've seen which might lend to someone playing and only
gathering the resources to sell to others for real money.

Although it being a pk world might end with you just getting beat up
and all your items taken before you can even make the trade.

Another game that is coming out supposedly in a few months is Mortal
Online which is supposed to be another pk game like Darkfall. The only
video is a trailer I have seen for it and the trailer looks amazing. If
you want to make money then being the first or most known might lend
itself to a big audience. Especially if you talk about the game and
it's really informative or entertaining.

Just some things to think about.

From what I've personally witnessed, I'd not overlook 'Rock Band 2'...as a niche to break into for selling a physical product..

Laugh all you want...if you are indeed laughing...but I can assure you I've personally witnessed a serious 'rise' in the # of entrepreneurs who have come on the RB scene and have found a 'kink in the armor' and have provided a better quality product at a competitive price...

I'll also add this..

There are few 'gaming niches', where the players who play the game want to add as much 'realism' as possible in order to more thoroughly enjoy their game play...and I can name those that instantly come to mind...

Those who want to take their 'flight sims' gaming to a new level...with Flight Cockpits, multiple monitors, real world flight controls, etc.,etc.,

Those who want to take their 'sim-racing' gaming to a new level...with the addition of aftermarket racing wheels, pedals and racing cockpits...
NOTE: I'm one that has spent THOUSANDS of dollars for my 'sim-racing addiction' buying said products.

Those who want to take their 'drumming' to a new level...by using a 'real electronic drum kit' to play a music game.

Damn..this just gave me an idea...

Anyway, just my $0.02 worth..


Ray

Not all the games have it in their ToS that selling items / accounts
is rule breaking. Some games like Asherons Call turned a blind eye
to it.

Other games like WoW have it in their ToS that it is a violation.

You also don't necessarily need multiple accounts to make alot
of ingame money provided that the ingame economy is actually
there.

Alot of the games I played I had only one account and I traded
for alot of the things I had.

When people break the ToS and they get caught they lose their
account so it's the risk they take. I know of one guy who had
like 30 facebook accounts to play a game called Pet Society
just so he could sell GMB's or coins he got caught and lost all
his accounts because I think it's in Facebooks rules that you
can only have a single account.

Looking at it all though the people who make the most are
probably the ones selling information about how to do things
in game even if the info they are selling is complete junk. They
make more just for the simple fact they don't have to keep
regaining whatever items they might be selling.

It's more of a business instead of a service. I don't know if selling
info about a game is wrong unless you use images of the game.

I myself wish I could find a game in which I could sell some stuff
with again as all the games I used to do it with don't have the
amount of people playing anymore or it's just plain impossible.
I haven't made any money off any mmorpgs since early 2002.
In total I made around $4,600 in about a 7 month span. $4k of
it coming in just 2 months of that time. That money from games
is about half of what I've made in my lifetime and it'd be nice
if I could make some money playing games again someday.