Best ideas for 11 year old boy who is addicted to minecraft

Let him build a product over MineCraft and sell it.

By the way, he's only 11, Ithink it would be better for him to have fun than earning money and deal with business.

i will tell you this much. I myself was addicted to runescape for a good 2-4 years. I regret having wasted so much time playing games now that I think about it. But playing video games taught me a lot of things (including discipline, effort and so on). I'm not saying you should let him play and waste 4 years of his life, because although I learned a lot from that time I also could've used the time better. However I do think you should allow him to find his own way.

With that said if it's a serious addiction, that he truly spends day and night playing that game and you want for him to stop playing, you will have to separate him from the game and the computer in general for at least 3 weeks (that's how long it takes for the addiction to wear off and for him to begin thinking normally and rationally). Once you have gotten him away from the computer he will have to figure out what he wants to do with his time.

I honestly think is very good that you want him to focus on business and to learn a real skill but you have to understand he is quite young and if he doesn't have a real strong reason to make a business or start a company he won't do it. My recommendation is you get him off the game, and show him that making money, making an interesting business and being entrepreneurial can be fun as well as rewarding. But if business is not his thing give him some time to figure out what he wants.

He's 11!

I'd say let him have fun doing what he likes doing, with Minecraft, rather than looking to make money.

Not sure any business idea, no matter how easy, will work in this case. The distraction of a highly addictive game on the same computer as you're doing work is, well...incredibly tough.

If he has a choice of "working that boring method (but it does bring in some $)" or "double clicking the minecraft icon" then you know what is going to happen...

However, it's good that he's already doing vidoes ("Let's play..." I assume). Is he already getting enough views to monetize with adsense for youtube? The competition in this kind of space is obviously pretty big.

You could have him do something silly or funny in minecraft and doing recordings of that, or just something nobody's ever done before (probably going to be difficult) and then post a video with all the appropriate tags and optimization. If he has one of his videos going viral then he might start to see the opportunities and how he could combine them with his passion of playing the game.

I think it's great that you are getting him into thinking about money and business at his age. Yeah it's good for kids to have fun but I agree with you that it's also important that he understands the value of money and learns some business skills along the way. Why not get him blogging about his minecraft experience - that way he can turn his passion into cash! I've written a useful blogging guide here. Hope it helps and hope you get some results. Why not post here and let us know how he gets on?

There's many opportunities, but there are no opportunities for making money in regards to minecraft.

Minecraft is not a good niche to be in, for there really aren't that many products related to it. There are of course shirts and novelties, but they market is already saturated.

Youtubers barely make any money, and most of the popular youtubers have a mature voice, a voice I doubt an 11 year old has.

Why not just let him play minecraft? He's only 11 years old...

Well if your Boy like making video for that game then he is almost ready to make some money out of it! What he now needs to do is looking for 3 a 4 great keywords with like 1000 searches per month! let him make 1 video for every keyword apart!

When making up a title for your video's be sure to put in your keyword first.
So when you have made like 4 video's then you make 4 different titles (every single title must contain your keyword you want to rank for in google).

This also counts for your description of the video's
also 4 different descriptions! So for every video you have you make an seperate description with the keywords in it. Just let him write a short story about what he is doing in this video. But be sure to put in the keywords in the desription.
Be sure to put in a link in your description off an affiliate product (to make money) You can check out clickbank for this! there should be a product about gaming etc...
I just checked and they even have a minecraft product to promote don't know if its any good minecraftersecrets.com
But it can be any product related to gaming etc...

For the Tags:
Just fill in your keyword you wanna rank for.

Now when all that is Done he has now like 4 different SEO video's!

Now focus on 1 video first! Important!
Go and build related backlinks to that video! like from bookmarking sites etc!
or blog commentc, articles! or outsource it on fiverr.

Do this till you are on first page of google for that keyword!
Then go step on to the next video etc....
once your boy has al the 4 video's on first page he will get some great traffic and viewers to his video's! and some of the people will click his affiliate link and maybe even purchase LOL!

Well thats what i suggest what he could do with mincraft! Let him make some awesome ingame video's with some great ingame tips!
Also let him try to find some forum related to the game! he can maybe put his link to his video's in there!

Well good luck!

Greetings gothilda

If he's addicted to Mine Craft, let him play and try to participate in his game play.
The biggest idea was to develop an ebook together with your son, about Mine Craft tips and tricks. On this way you can get some money to pass to your soon without any problem.

If he loves it, he will comprehend how a passion can drive you to cash thanks to your knowledge.

See you soon,
Alessandro

If he likes making videos then there is MONEY to be made there...

I have a venture in the world of video games the he may be able to get involved with, especially as we are building a powerful network of gaming related video content... send me a pm with some details and I'll happily have a Skype condo and discuss some possible options...

Plugged minecraft into google keyword tool and this pops up?

minecraft character skins
Low
12,100

Not sure what a minecraft skin is but there is obviously a high demand for it 12k searches per month ... I'd start with this idea plus his videos and let it grow. For revenue sources I would say ads, since most of your site visitors will not be able to actually purchase something. So CPA ads about the "gaming" industry world of warcraft guides, free games, hints & cheats ect.

Hope this helps.
-Your only a kid once, dont grow up to fast-

He would need to be able to create videos in order to create a product on Mine-Craft...

Wait, he's 11?? Isn't video game addiction pretty normal at that age?

At 11, unless he has a big interest in business, I'd let him play his games. Taking the fun out of his computer time could destroy his interest in computers.

My son spent ungodly amounts of time wasted on the computer and is now by his own choice an IT professional.

Show him some success stories. Tell him to make his expertise public through youtube.

Possibly the best troll post I have seen on WF since I got here.

Good work.

Ahahahaha this guy is clearly an 11 year old looking for ways to make money.

Nice try

Edit: Or just a troll.

I think you should help him with setting up a blog related to minecraft where he shares his experience, tricks n tips etc. But partial, not everything. Also help him with setting up a news letter / mailing list, and getting subscribers. Then you help him with writing a premium quality guide about minecraft (just like minecraft-secrets), and then upload it on clickbank. And then guide him on promoting it to his subscribers.

And if all goes well, he will be earning xxxx's of dollar$. And I am sure he would love it, and will take it even further on his own from that point on. Just dont forget to expain and illustrate everything to him (setting up the list, putting the product in CB etc.), so he can grow on his own from that point on.

Hope that helped! :-)

The best strategy is to try and make a Minecraft server for him. It may cost you some dollars, and there is no guaranteed payment or success.

I think he can start a website for mine craft, then add google adsense, click bank products related to mine craft and promote his site to earn money. As he has vast knowledge and interest on the game, I am sure he will succeed.

Regarding a previous post, what I would suggest (I have a 12 yr old boy who loves Minecraft, too) is maybe just "getting advice" from him or having him help or even guide you on creating a product for Minecraft. The audience for Minecraft is HUGE and I think you could develop something that could be sold easily. I've seen books on Kindle that give you ten or so blueprints for buildings and how to build them - basically a bunch of screen shots - that sell for $2.99. Just have him help you out - after all, he is the expert on the game, not you. I have thought about and might just do this.

Everyone giving actual advice for how to monetize on his 11 year old's minecraft addiction in this thread isn't thinking clearly.

It is pretty easy to play, stream and record your actual play time. Stream live or record to places like www.Veetle.com You can then as suggested earlier, either write a guide on how to beat other players or you can even set up a private channel for live instructions or set up an online community of players where you can have competitions. I love it...I'm 60 and I have an 11 year old and he keeps me young.

PS: All 11 year old's are smart. They are not looking for tips on how to play, they want tips on how to KILL and BEAT the crap out of other players.

Too young to make good products. Let him play, but not all day!

When I was 11, I was always out riding my bike. Those years are some of my best memories.

Im not sure if anyone else here has mentioned health, but sitting around for hours on end at 11 years old cant be healthy long term.

Get him out of that chair. Otherwise by the time he's 30, he'll be 20 stone.

he can create site on minecraft let him take his first step

This thread could benefit from a little balance.

OP hasn't said his son is addicted. He hasn't said he's sitting on the computer eight hours a day playing games. He said minecraft was an 'addictive game' (post #1), which he doesn't mind his son playing 'sometimes' (post #8). Maybe he is addicted and plays all day, but OP hasn't said that.

Nothing OP has said gave me the impression he was looking to leverage his son's interests for slave labour, prevent him from having fun, or that his son doesn't otherwise have healthy outdoor interests and activities (which I agree are super important).

He asked for advice on whether there was a way to encourage his son to use his natural intellect and interest in something whilst getting exposure to what I presume would be age appropriate education about money, business and reward for effort. OP probably used IM as a potential way to turn time playing a computer game into something which might ultimately benefit his son a bit more, because no doubt IM is something OP is interested in.

I don't quite see how looking at an opportunity for a little father/son bonding over the merging of common interests is a bad thing, provided it's done right.

It's revealing that some people's only constructive contribution to OP's reaching out is to call him stupid.

There's plenty of information about the benefits and best ways to teach kids about money, investing and entrepreneurialism. Try forbes, inc.com and specific websites dedicated to it which, you might be interested to know, suggest kids can benefit from this type of education from parents from as early as five years of age.

Does that mean tying your kid to the desk until they rank their first youtube vid. Nope...but then, you weren't suggesting that were you?

As with many things, balance is the key. Good luck Mike.