How To Make Money Playing Minecraft – 10 Best Methods
With over 125 million active users, Minecraft is one of the most popular video games on earth. People around the world love joining its servers, building skyscrapers, and fighting off creepers at night.
Now, while Minecraft doesn’t actually try to sell you anything aside from the game itself, there are plenty of opportunities for everyday users to make some extra money!
Today, I'm covering 10 different ways you can make money playing Minecraft so you can start making money playing video games.
Some of these ideas are easier than others, but for a passionate minecraft player, it’s all fun at the end of the day.
So, if you've ever wondered how to make money with Minecraft, this is absolutely the post for you.
Let’s get straight into it!
Want even more money-making ideas? Checkout:
- Branded Surveys: Share your opinion to earn free PayPal cash and gift cards!
- Rewarded Play: A leading Android gaming app that also lets you win free gift cards.
How to Make Money Playing Minecraft
These 10 ideas can potentially lead you to a small side hustle or even a full time job, if you're a bit lucky.
Just keep in mind, some of these ideas will require you to have a decent understanding of Minecraft as well as some impressive skills to outweigh any competition.
Additionally, a few of these are achievable with a partner or multiple friends, so don’t hesitate to involve the people you play with on a regular basis.
1. Join the Minecraft Partner Program
If you're a serious Minecraft fan and also like design, the Minecraft Partner Program could be your best bet to make money with this game.
The Microsoft Partner Program is a new program that allows users to share and sell their Minecraft creations on the enormous in-game marketplace.
If you are talented at creating anything in Minecraft, this idea is definitely for you.
Here are a few things you can create for the Minecraft Partner Program:
- Add-ons.
- Realms.
- Skins.
- Maps.
- Hosted Servers.
- Textures.
Yup, even things like textures and skins are possible to monetize through this program. All you need in order to join this program is proven experience and a love for Minecraft.
Basically, if you can show that you have an impressive portfolio of high quality content that you’ve shared to Minecraft before, you can apply for this partnership!
To apply, head over to the Minecraft Partner Program website and click apply now. You’ll need to enter some basic information such as your name, email, and address.
The application will ask you the following questions:
- What Minecraft content have you created in the past?
- What would you like to contribute to the marketplace?
- Which platform have you developed content for?
- How long have you been building and sharing your creations?
You’ll then be asked to link to content that you’ve created. Any sort of proof helps including direct links to the marketplace, Youtube videos, or Dropbox files.
If you’re confident that you can provide all this information accurately while also providing high quality content, then you have a very high chance of being included in the program!
2. Stream the Game on Twitch
If you’re into Minecraft, then chances are you’ve watched a Twitch stream or two. After all, that’s where players get most of their inspiration from.
Now, making money with Twitch is definitely a dream for most people, but that doesn't mean you can't start working towards that goal today.
If you have a decent computer, entertaining Minecraft skills, and a mic, you can pretty much start streaming today without any issues.
Don’t get me wrong, growing a fan base on Twitch can take a long time. However, if you stay consistent and you enjoy it anyways, then there’s no real harm in trying!
So how do you make money streaming Minecraft on Twitch? There are actually a few ways:
- Donations.
- Twitch Prime Memberships.
- Selling merch for your channel.
- Promoting your creations on the Minecraft Marketplace.
At the time of writing this post, there are over 300,000 viewers watching Minecraft streams on Twitch!
That’s a huge pool of viewers to split the pot and bring some over to your stream.
Don’t forget, you don’t have to be in this alone. In fact, having friends play with you on stream can make for a much more entertaining experience!
3. Use Buff Gaming
Another easy way to make money in Minecraft is to use Buff Gaming.
Buff is a loyalty rewards program for gamers that lets you earn rewards passively for the time you spend playing. All you have to do is download Buff, launch Minecraft through its client, and you begin earning.
Points you earn are redeemable for a wide range of gift cards, gaming hardware, free video games, and other game-related merchandise.
Plus, Buff also lets you earn rewards by playing other popular titles like:
- Apex Legends
- Call of Duty
- Fortnite
- League of Legends
- Rocket League
- Valorant
The fact this platform pays you to play Minecraft passively is what makes it so appealing. And it's now branchin into mobile gaming as well.
You won't get rich by using Buff to play games. But if you want to make money on autopilot, it's worth trying out.
Download Buff today or read my Buff Gaming review for all the details.
4. Create A Minecraft Youtube Channel
Similar to Twitch, creating a Youtube channel can offer a lot of ways to make money playing Minecraft.
In fact, a Youtube channel might be even easier to grow compared to a Twitch account, especially if you get lucky and a video goes semi-viral.
Now, in order to make money on YouTube, you need to reach 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, so it will take a bit of grinding to get there. However, if you're consistent and work to promote your channel, there's no reason why you can't get there!
In fact, the WebMonkey YouTube channel just started earlier this year, and it's already over 7,000 subscribers with 29 videos:
If you have a mic, computer, and possibly even a camera, you can easily start recording your Minecraft gameplay and make commentaries or general gameplay footage to upload to YouTube.
Once you have videos up, there are a few ways you can to begin to make money from your views:
- Ad revenue (once you're approved for the YouTube Partner Program).
- Sponsored videos.
- Selling merch.
- Promoting your creations on the Minecraft Marketplace.
- Donations from live-streaming.
If you’re not sure whether you should start with Youtube or Twitch first, I’d highly recommend giving Youtube a shot before anything.
It seems much easier to grow in a community like Youtube, where you’re not limited to only live-streaming.
5. Make Money with a Minecraft Server
If you have experience hosting Minecraft servers, you may be able to generate some revenue from your community of players.
While this might surprise you, there's actually a number of private servers on Minecraft where you have to pay to be a member or where you can buy in-game items and skins with real money.
Here are a few ways to make money with your Minecraft server:
- Open a webstore.
- Charge for server access.
- Receive donations from the community.
- Collect membership fees.
- Get sponsored.
- Stream your server’s gameplay.
- Use a monetization software such as Tebex to sell digital products.
There are clearly tons of ways to monetize the server. The only real issue is actually getting people to play on your server consistently.
If you want to stand out, you need to create something that stands out in comparison to other servers.
Create beautiful architecture, invent new game modes, and keep things updated often.
On top of that, you’ll need to promote your server. Having a Youtube channel or Twitch stream could also help bring players over to you.
Be sure to register your server with all the popular server-finding websites and provide extensive detail as to what is included. This could make or break your chances of getting your server recognized.
But if you get your server up and running, this can turn into a great passive income source that's also scalable!
6. Create Minecraft Artwork
Believe it or not, there's a huge market for artists to take advantage of in the Minecraft world.
People are willing to pay for high quality drawings, paintings, and graphic designs of their in-world characters with their specific skins.
If you have artistic abilities and know your Minecraft well, you can start a seller account on Fiverr and charge anywhere between $5-$100 per design! That’s a fun side hustle if you ask me.
You can even create YouTube banners for people or logos to help them grow their brand.
The options are endless from turning skins into anime characters, making thumbnails, and custom Minecraft skins.
Most designs average around $10. If you created a piece of art twice a week, you could be making a solid $80/month!
It’s not gonna make you rich, but if it’s something you love, then it’s a great way to help pay for groceries or funnel into buying more games.
7. Build Things For People
For all my genius Minecraft architects, listen up!
You can actually make money playing Minecraft if you're skilled at the game and know how to construct amazing buildings and maps for people who are willing to pay.
You can make decent cash building things on Minecraft for other people. All you need is a Fiverr account and Minecraft account to get started!
Take a look at some listings on Fiverr and see if your skills can compete with the top sellers. If you can, great! If not, it may be hard to get some sales.
Another thing you can do as a Minecraft builder is to pitch to Minecraft server hosts and see if they need any buildings made for their main lobby.
If you’ve ever seen impressive designs in a server lobby, chances are they were built by some guy that was hired to create all those beautiful buildings.
Most gigs average somewhere between $50-$100, but that’s for basic builds. There is a guy on Fiverr that creates entire biomes for large servers and charges upwards of $300!
Pretty crazy since this is basically getting paid to build in Minecraft which is a pretty fun way to make quick cash.
8. Sell Minecraft Merch
As a fan of Minecraft, I’m sure you’ve seen tons of game designs printed on clothing, toys, mugs, towels, you name it!
If you have the artistic ability to create high quality designs that you think would look really well on the products mentioned above, then you’re going to like this idea.
On websites like Redbubble, you can create a digital print-on-demand marketplace to sell your artwork.
The best part is, you don’t even have to do any of the heavy lifting! Redbubble takes care of the printing, manufacturing, and technical stuff for you. All you have to worry about is what you do best.
You can design stickers, t-shirts, notebooks, mugs, masks, and over 70 more products!
If you have designs on hand already, you can start uploading designs on Redbubble right now.
The only thing I recommend learning before uploading your designs is how to properly word your products. Search for things like “Redbubble SEO” and write some ideas down to help you rank higher on product pages.
Making money on Redbubble can be simple if you know what you’re doing. Learn the basics and you’ll be on your way to successfully selling your artwork!
You can also try websites like Zazzle or websites like Society6 to sell your Minecraft merchandise.
Extra Reading – Selling Printify Products On Etsy.
9. Start A Minecraft Blog
If you're still wondering how to make money playing Minecraft and don't like the ideas on this list, you can also consider playing the game and starting a blog about your experiences.
Now, it might be best to keep your blog niche a bit broader and to write about Minecraft and other video games, but the choice is yours.
However, an advantage of blogging is that you have so many ways to make money if you learn some SEO and grow your traffic overtime. Ideas include:
- Making money with display ads with companies like Mediavine or Monumetric.
- Selling products or ebooks (you could make tutorials for types of Minecraft content or sell products).
- Affiliate links.
- Writing sponsored content.
- Using your blog to push traffic to other sources, like a YouTube channel or your stream.
Blogging can also be incredibly lucrative. For example, WebMonkey makes 20k a month just from ads, and about $500 a day or more in affiliate income.
Of course, blogging is competitive, but if you want to make money with creative writing and own your own website, it could be a fun hobby to try.
If you want to start your own blog, I definitely suggest checking out this post on how to make $100 per month with a beginner blog!
Extra Reading – How I Made $92,000 Blogging In 2021.
10. Sell Minecraft Accounts
If you're still wondering how to make money from Minecraft, one more option is to sell Minecraft accounts and items for cash.
People use websites like MCTrades to sell original Minecraft accounts, ranked accounts, skins, graphics, and various in-game items to other players.
You have to register to post in the forums, but people are buying and selling all sorts of Minecraft items and old accounts.
This isn't the most obvious way to make money from Minecraft, but if you have an old account with a lot of achievements, it might be worth something!
Extra Reading – The Best Ways To Make $3,000 Fast.
Other Paid Gaming Alternatives
Now that you know some of the best ways to play Minecraft for money, here are a few other video game side hustles you can consider to keep on earning:
- Mistplay: A leading gaming rewards app for Android that lets you earn free PayPal cash and gift cards.
- Rewarded Play: Another popular gaming app like Mistplay for Android gamers.
- Gamehag: This platform lets you play popular PC games to earn gift cards and in-game prizes.
- Swagbucks: A popular gpt site that lets you make money with paid surveys, shopping online, downloading apps, and playing games.
Tom has a YouTube video that covers even more ways to play games for money if you're curious!
Extra Reading – How To Earn Money Online As A Beginner.
Final Thoughts
Whether you’re a skilled artist, world builder, server host, or entertainer, one of the ideas mentioned throughout the article will help you make money playing Minecraft.
Can you get rich off of these ideas?
Well, if you grow a large enough audience on Youtube or Twitch, then you definitely can!
However, most of these money-making options are definitely more side hustles than anything.
The main takeaway from all of this is that you should only pursue these ideas if you truly love playing Minecraft. If you don’t, you’re not going to enjoy it down the road.
So ask yourself… is my Minecraft hustle going to feel like a job? If you think it will, then you might want to find another way to make money.
However, if you’re excited to tackle these new ideas, then you should definitely give some of them a try!
Hopefully, the next time you login to your Minecraft account, you're playing a game you love and making a bit of extra cash on the side.
Want even more money-making ideas for gamers? Checkout:
- The Best Apps That Pay You To Play Games.
- How To Get Free Steam Games.
- The Best Games That Pay Instantly To PayPal.
