HOW TO MAKE A LIVING BY PLAYING GAMES ALL DAY
Nightblue3, real name Rabia Yazbek, is a 23 year old League of Legends streamer most known on the platform Twitch. Being 4th most followed on Twitch and having nearly 1 million views on YouTube per daily upload, Nightblue3 operates numerous social media platforms to generate tons of gaming content for his fans. His main source of income and material comes from his live game streams on Twitch.
Twitch is a live streaming platform for gamers. Just like YouTube, individuals are able to make a living from Twitch if they so desired, by streaming themselves live whilst playing games. Their source of income will be by monthly subscriptions of $4.99, donations which are usually $10 or less (but not rare for popular streamer to get donations of $100+), advertisements during the streams, as well as sponsors and affiliate sales.
Nightblue3 is seen to be one of the most successful gamers who does not attend competitive e-sports tournaments; which usually is how professional gamers get famous. Instead he created a whole community and culture surrounding his streams, with humorous and informative gaming content, popularizing catchphrases like CY@ and KAPPA which are massively used in the League of Legends society to mock the opponent after ‘killing’ them in game.
The aspect of his massive online presence that I find especially mind-blowing is his ability able to utilize social networks in such an efficient way. By this I mean that while he live streams on Twitch every few days for an average of 5 hours, highlight videos of this are posted every day on his main YouTube channel which has 1.7 million subscribers , as well as on a Chinese subtitled channel which has 250,000 subscribers — one piece of content is spread across an additional 2 channels.
In addition to these 3 media ‘exposures’ of the same content, he also has his own music channel. This channel came about because his music playlists; which he listened to during gaming, obtained substantial popularity, and so he created his own music channel which shows his favorite track selections, as well as recommendations from fans. He also promotes his main ‘occupation’ on this extra platform by actively commenting on the music videos through his main account. Uploading every day and generating an average of 200,000 views per upload, the gaming giant has gained nearly half a million subscribers in just 3 months.
No different to any other person in the 21st century, Nightblue3 also has a well followed Facebook and Twitter page where he is very active, mostly posting daily updates about new uploads and live streams.
All of this put together means that Nightblue3 has managed to create and sustain a dominant presence online by streaming himself gaming to adoring fans, and is earning a load of money because of this— amazing.
