Gaming is one of the biggest niches on YouTube, and every day more people jump in hoping to turn their love for video games into real money. But most of them hit the same wall fast: you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours to join the YouTube Partner Program and earn ad revenue. If you’re brand new, that feels impossible.
Here’s what most gaming channels get wrong: they wait on the Partner Program like it’s the only door into the room. It’s not. In this breakdown, I’m walking you through exactly how to make $3,000 or more per month in the gaming niche without hitting those thresholds, using three content types and three monetization strategies that work right now, starting from zero.
What You’ll Walk Out With
- The one content type beginners should avoid in gaming (and why it will slow you down)
- The three video formats that actually build an audience when no one knows you yet
- A keyword research trick using the alphabet that surfaces unlimited video ideas for any game
- Three ways to earn money from your gaming channel before you hit 1,000 subscribers
- How to turn a free Google Doc into a product people will pay for
- What recurring monthly income looks like for a small gaming creator
- Not sure which monetization path fits your situation? Take the free Finder quiz
Why Let’s Play Videos Will Stall Your Channel
Let’s get the hard truth out of the way first. Let’s Play videos and “let’s play together” style content are not the right starting point for a brand new channel. Alston is direct about this in the video: no one knows who you are yet. You haven’t built any credibility. When a stranger lands on your video and sees you just playing a game with no structure or teaching element, they have no reason to keep watching.
This does not mean Let’s Play videos are bad forever. It means they work best once people already know, like, and trust you. When you have an audience that wants to watch YOU specifically, those videos thrive. Before you have that audience, you need a different approach.
The three content types below are built to get you to that point faster. Each one gives a stranger a reason to watch, a reason to subscribe, and a path to a purchase.
The 3 Content Types That Build an Audience Before You Have One
1. Product Reviews
Product reviews are one of the most reliable video formats for a new gaming creator. You film yourself reviewing the gear you already use or gear that is relevant to your audience: your headset, your controller, your gaming chair, your streaming microphone. You talk about what you like, what you don’t, and who it is best for.
Alston specifically recommends focusing on the latest gaming equipment releases. When a company drops a brand new high-tech gaming chair, for example, people are actively searching YouTube to find out if it is worth buying. That search volume is already there. You are not trying to manufacture demand. You are showing up for demand that already exists.
Product reviews work in two directions at once. First, they put you in front of people who are interested in gaming and gaming gear, which means your audience is the right audience. Second, they set you up to earn affiliate commissions on the products you feature, which is the first monetization method we’ll cover in the next section.
2. Comparison Videos (X vs. Y)
The comparison video format is simple and powerful. You pick two products in the same category, maybe two gaming headsets or two gaming microphones, and you put them head to head. You walk through the pros of each, the cons of each, and at the end you make a clear recommendation for who each product is best for.
This format works for the same reasons product reviews do: you are targeting people who are actively in buying mode. Someone trying to decide between two headsets is ready to make a decision. Your video helps them make it. That’s exactly the kind of value that earns subscribers.
And just like product reviews, comparison videos give you a natural way to include affiliate links in your description for both products you cover.
3. How-To Videos
How-to videos are where a lot of gaming channels can grow the fastest. The idea is straightforward: you teach viewers how to do something specific inside the game you play.
Alston uses College Football 25 as a concrete example. When that game launched, people had never played college football on their PlayStation before. They flooded YouTube searching for answers to basic questions: how to kick a field goal, how to run the option, how to recruit. Those are all searches that real viewers were typing in. A creator who made videos answering those questions got in front of exactly the right audience, and built a community of people who trusted them for help with the game.
The key is that you are solving a problem. Not just playing the game. Not just streaming yourself. You are answering a question someone already has. That shift changes everything about how fast your channel grows.
The Alphabet Trick: Finding Unlimited Video Ideas for Any Game
This is one of the most practical research methods in the video, and it works for any game on the planet.
Go to YouTube’s search bar and type: `how to _` followed by the name of your game. The blank space with an underscore tells YouTube’s autocomplete to fill in what people are actually searching for. You’ll immediately get a list of real search queries. For College Football 25 that might look like: how to recruit in College Football 25, how to kick, how to transfer, how to pass.
But that’s just the start. After you do that initial search, go back to the search bar, put the cursor right after “how to,” add a space, and then start typing each letter of the alphabet one by one. YouTube’s autocomplete will surface even more specific searches.
Alston demonstrates this in the video. Type “Q” and you get: how to QB slide, how to QB scramble. Type “W” and you get: how to win, how to win more. Type “E” and suddenly you have: how to enable play selection in College Football 25.
Every single one of those is a real video idea with a real audience. And the method works the same way regardless of what game you play. It doesn’t matter if your game is a shooter, a sports sim, a role-playing game, or a strategy title. The alphabet trick works. You just swap out the game name and repeat the process.
What you end up with is not a list of ten ideas. You end up with dozens of specific, searched-for topics you can build videos around, and each video targets people who are already interested in exactly what you are covering.
Not sure which way to monetize your gaming channel? The Finder quiz at finder.platformproof.com asks you a few questions about your skills and situation and tells you which path fits you best. It’s free and takes about two minutes.
3 Ways to Make $3,000 a Month From Gaming Without the Partner Program
Now that you have content types that build an audience, let’s talk about the money side. These are the three monetization strategies Alston covers for gaming creators who aren’t in the YouTube Partner Program yet.
Method 1: Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is where you recommend or sell other people’s products and earn a commission on each sale. The mechanics are simple: you find an affiliate program for products relevant to your audience, apply to join, get accepted, and receive a unique link (your affiliate link) you drop into your video descriptions.
For a gaming channel, the affiliate opportunities are everywhere. You can become an affiliate for:
- Gaming headsets
- Streaming software
- Gaming chairs
- The games themselves
- The PlayStation (and other consoles)
- Controllers and accessories
Essentially anything that has to do with a gaming setup can have an affiliate program attached to it. Every product review you make, every comparison video you film, becomes a vehicle for affiliate commissions. Viewers who click your link and buy the product earn you a percentage of the sale, and you do not need a single subscriber to start.
This is why product reviews and comparison videos are the best starting content: they are built for affiliate monetization from day one.
Method 2: Digital Products
This is the method that most gaming creators never think about, and it’s one of the most direct paths to real money.
Alston uses an analogy that hits: back when he was young, you could walk into Kmart, go to the electronics aisle, and find gaming guides sitting on the shelf. For games like Mortal Kombat, those guides had all the button combinations for finishing moves, the different specialties, the cheat codes. People paid for those guides because the guides saved them time and frustration.
You can do the same thing digitally. Create a PDF guide that solves a specific, painful problem your audience has. Using the College Football 25 example, that could be a step-by-step guide on how to turn a one-star program into a dynasty and land five-star recruits. The guide doesn’t have to be long. It has to be useful.
The best part: you can write and format this guide entirely in Google Docs at no cost. Once the guide is ready, you need a way to sell it. Alston mentions G bolt systems as a platform that lets you sell digital products quickly and at a reasonable cost. You set your price, send people to your checkout page, and collect the sale.
The second type of digital product is a tutorial or mini course. Instead of a written guide, you record a course that walks viewers through the same process step by step. If the guide shows people the path, the course walks them down it. Both formats solve the same problem for the buyer; they just deliver the solution differently.
Some audiences prefer reading. Some prefer watching. Knowing your audience helps you decide which to build first, or whether to offer both.
Method 3: Memberships
Memberships create something the other two methods don’t: recurring monthly income. That means the same people paying you every month for as long as they stay happy with what you’re delivering.
Alston outlines three ways to build a membership as a gaming creator:
Patreon: The most established platform for creator memberships. You set tiers, assign benefits, and fans pay monthly to be at the tier they want.
Paid Discord: A Discord server where members pay a monthly fee to access premium channels, direct help, and a community of other players working toward the same goals.
Paid School community: School is a platform built specifically for paid communities and courses. You create your space, set your price, and run your community there.
Regardless of which platform you choose, the key is that the membership needs to keep helping people. Alston makes this point directly: if you want people to stay longer, you have to keep delivering results. That might mean running live workshops or gaming sessions. It might mean sharing additional templates, tutorials, or guides each month. It might mean coaching members through a specific challenge in the game.
The membership stays healthy when members keep making progress. If they feel stuck or like they’ve gotten everything the membership has to offer, they cancel. Your job is to make sure that never happens by consistently delivering value that matches or beats what they’re paying.
What the Numbers Actually Mean
Let’s put this in concrete terms without inventing anything. Alston says $3,000 per month in the gaming niche is the target, and there are multiple paths to get there.
With affiliate marketing, your earnings depend on the commissions offered by the programs you join and the volume of clicks and conversions you drive. A gaming headset affiliate program might pay anywhere from 3% to 10% per sale. The more traffic you send and the better your content matches buyer intent, the more conversions you get.
With digital products, you control the price entirely. A guide priced at $15 needs 200 buyers per month to hit $3,000. A mini course at $97 needs 31 buyers. A $297 course needs only 11. These numbers are achievable at a small channel size if your content is solving a real problem and you’re driving targeted viewers.
With memberships, recurring math is in your favor. A $30/month membership needs 100 members to reach $3,000. Because members pay monthly, you don’t have to resell 100 people every month. You just have to retain them.
Most creators end up combining all three. They earn affiliate commissions from product videos, sell a guide to the viewers who want the quick win, and convert the most committed community members into paid memberships.
The Order of Operations
If you’re starting from zero, here is the sequence that makes the most sense based on what Alston covers:
- Pick the game you want your channel to be about and commit to it
- Use the alphabet trick to build a list of 30 to 50 how-to video ideas for that game
- Start filming product reviews and how-to videos, not Let’s Play content
- Apply to affiliate programs for the gear and software you cover in those videos
- Add affiliate links to every relevant video description from day one
- As your audience grows, identify the most common frustrations and questions your viewers have
- Build a guide or mini course that solves the most common one
- Use G bolt systems or a similar platform to sell it
- Once you have a core audience that trusts you, introduce a membership and give them a reason to join
This is not a get-rich-quick sequence. It is a build-something-real sequence. The difference is that each step you complete makes the next step easier and more profitable.
Find Your X
Every creator’s situation is different. Maybe you already have a gaming setup worth reviewing. Maybe you have deep expertise in one specific game. Maybe you have 30 minutes a day and need to know where to focus first.
The free Finder quiz at finder.platformproof.com helps you figure out which of these methods fits your skills, schedule, and goals. Answer a few questions and walk out knowing exactly where to start.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need expensive equipment to start a gaming review channel?
No. Many of the best-performing gaming review videos are filmed with a basic webcam or even recorded straight from a capture card. What matters more than production quality at the start is whether your content answers a real question. Your first product review can be for gear you already own.
Can I really earn affiliate commissions without 1,000 subscribers?
Yes. Affiliate programs care about your audience’s buying intent, not your subscriber count. A new channel with 50 subscribers publishing well-targeted product reviews can earn commissions immediately. You don’t need the Partner Program to get affiliate link access.
How do I get into affiliate programs for gaming gear?
Most major gaming hardware brands have affiliate programs you can apply to directly through their websites. Amazon Associates is one of the easiest starting points because they carry almost every gaming product imaginable. Some streaming software companies have their own programs as well.
Is the alphabet trick safe to use for keyword research?
Yes. You are reading YouTube’s own autocomplete data, which reflects what real users are searching for. There’s nothing to game or manipulate. You’re just listening to what the search bar tells you people want.
How much should I charge for a gaming guide?
It depends on the depth of the problem you’re solving. A short cheat sheet covering one specific mechanic might sell at $7 to $15. A comprehensive guide walking through an entire game mode like a dynasty playbook could go for $20 to $30. Start on the lower end while you build trust and raise prices as you collect buyer feedback.
What should I include in a paid Discord to keep members subscribed?
Live gaming sessions where members can play with you or ask questions in real time tend to have the highest retention. Beyond that, members stay when they feel like the community is active and helpful. Weekly challenges, exclusive strategy threads, and early access to your guides and tutorials all give members a reason to stay.
Can I run affiliate marketing, digital products, AND a membership at the same time?
Yes, and eventually you probably should. They serve different buyer types. The affiliate links in your videos convert people who are shopping. The guide converts people who want a quick fix. The membership converts people who want ongoing support. You don’t have to launch all three at once; build them in stages as your channel grows.
What game categories work best for how-to content?
Games with steep learning curves, a lot of in-game systems, and large player bases are the best fit. Sports simulations like College Football 25, complex role-playing games, and multiplayer shooters with deep mechanics tend to have the most searchable how-to demand. If people are frustrated and Googling answers while they play, that’s a signal there’s video demand.
Read Next
If you’re building a gaming channel from scratch, growing to 1,000 subscribers is still a milestone worth chasing because it unlocks more tools and opportunities. This post breaks down a concrete path to get there:
Do This to Get 1,000 YouTube Followers in 30 Days
Sources
- YouTube Partner Program requirements: 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours (referenced in video)
- College Football 25 how-to search examples: demonstrated in video via YouTube autocomplete
- Monetization methods: affiliate marketing, digital products, memberships (Patreon, Discord, School) covered in video
- G bolt systems mentioned as a platform for selling digital products
- Gaming guide concept drawn from Kmart in-store gaming guides (Mortal Kombat example in video)
*Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.*