How to Earn Money Making Gaming Shorts

Post Before You Try to Monetize Anything

Most native monetization programs, TikTok's Creator Rewards, YouTube Shorts, Instagram bonuses, have minimum thresholds you need to hit first: followers, watch hours, views, whatever.

Trying to grind your way to those numbers from a brand-new account is slow and honestly kind of demoralizing. Better to build the habit first (three or four videos a week is plenty to start) while you look at other ways to get paid that don't require you to already have an established audience.

Improve With Every Post

Don't just post and move on, but rather, look back at what worked and what didn't. You don't need a viral video to get better. You just need each video to teach you something the last one didn't. And you need each video to be better than the one before it.

Once you’re confident with what you have, that’s when you apply to platforms that will help you get paid for your content.

Try Jestr

Native ad revenue is built for people who already have scale. Campaign-based creator platforms are a faster way in, because studios are paying for views on individual videos.

This is basically the whole idea behind Jestr. It connects game studios with short-form creators to run CPM-based campaigns across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. 

The system is pretty simple:

• Studios post campaigns. They provide assets and keys, set a CPM rate and a budget, and lay out basic guidelines.
• You make the video your own way, which includes stream clips, first impressions, news, showcase, whatever fits your channel, then post it and get paid automatically based on how many views it gets.
• Jestr handles the view tracking, communication, and payments.

The nice part for anyone new is you're not cold-emailing brands or negotiating rates. You just join campaigns and get paid for what you post. That's a much shorter road to your first payout than sitting around waiting to qualify for platform-native monetization.

Use Your First Paid Video as a Portfolio Piece

Honestly, the money from your first campaign matters less than what it proves, which is that you can actually execute. Start building your media kit. Add any videos you’re proud of, any campaigns you participated in, any viral videos you have, etc.

You can pretty much add anything that can attract future sponsors, and use that media kit as your portfolio. As a side note, we provide a free media kit to all Jestr users.

Increase Your Output

Nobody's living off one income stream this early, and you probably won't either. Once that first payout hits, start layering in:

• Native ad revenue once you clear the thresholds
• More campaigns through Jestr
• Direct brand sponsorships once you've got a media kit to point to

Our mission at Jestr is to bridge the gap between huge content creators and the ones just starting out by providing a simple way for you to get paid doing what you love.