Making Money - Let's talk about it

The path may look a little different for you

Author

Johnathon Eva
August 18, 2025

The Plan to Get there-

Before you settle in on this approach though, let’s stop and think for a second - This was developed by Tintin Smith, former producer for Ali Abdal, and it’s a pretty good roadmap. But chances are, if you’re playing video games and making content, this might not fit for you. Unless you fall into the small group of creators that teaches how to play a game.

So what does making money look like for you?

I’ve taken the liberty of fixing the chart just a bit -

I know some of the stuff is hard to read - I’ve broken them down further below

1) Make videos - an unskippable step. Make videos. Everything else builds on this

2) Build audience - assuming you’re doing step one, and doing it well, you’re going to accomplish this step, but just in case - you want to foster your audience as well. Respond to comments, heart, like, give them BTS, let them know they are appreciated

3) Support - Some of you don’t have money because you’ve given your already existing audience NO way to support you. There are a ton of ways but here are a few -
Skool, Patreon, BuyMeACoffee, YouTube through subscriptions.

4) Value - When a lot of creators try and tell you how to make money they’ll say to offer something of value, and usually that is a product or service, but for you it’s different - for you it’s showing up. You’re entertainment, so your value is showing up. Step 1. The more value you provide the more you’ll build your audience, and the more the money will add up

5) adSense/Sponsorship - To be completely candid, you likely won’t make that much from adSense until you’re at about 100k subscribers, or getting like 10-40k views a video, and even the amount varies greatly on type of game and RPM. Sponsors on the other hand can literally pay your bills, maybe even make it to where you can increase your team.

6) Merch/Affiliate - Having merch could be it’s own letter, so I’m not going to focus on it here save to say that a lot of creators pay bills by selling their merch, (larger creators). Affiliate marketing on the other hand, or the process of getting paid by having affiliate links for stuff you probably already use is a completely viable way to start building up the dollars in your bank account.

I can’t promise that this will get you to 100k, but it will get you past 0.00 which is where some of you are now.

Thumbnail Review

I don’t hate this thumbnail, it’s certainly not the worst we’ve reviewed in this letter- but for this channel’s average, it can be way better

A.) These small elements can either be bigger, or they can be removed, where they are (left side) is distracting to the main image

B.) Nothing wrong with a little highlight, but best practice is to ensure that it’s not distorting the overall picture, this yellow highlight does the image a disservice, just a simple black shadow normally suffices

C.) The FIFA Golden Age is - a little too plain. Nothing wrong with a plain title, but this one is just a smidge too pain

Creator - Ace-Less

Want me to rate/review your thumbnails? Let’s connect - just reply to this email with the title (Thumbnail Review)

Thumbnail Review

Same creator- same type of video, different game, different style, 118k views

A) The character is front and center, and the title really adds to this thumbnail

B) This subtle drop shadow is perfect, and sets the contrast nicely

C) Just having the specific title of this game as well as “was” and PEAK in caps sets the title up for success

Creator Spotlight

I get it, you want examples of creator’s killing it - right now. Not three years ago, you want visceral proof of concept, well here’s one, meet FreshiMinecraft

127k views - 70x outlier

Storytelling through thumbnails

29k views - 16x outlier

Titles that intrigue

98k views - 54x outlier

Vibrant juxtaposition

Here’s why they work -
A) Storytelling through thumbnails - Look at the visual style, these could easily be Netflix covers for an epic series/show

B) Look at those titles, they aren’t your typical title and that’s in part what makes them so intrinsically clickable.

C) Notice how the eye is drawn toward the center of each of these thumbnails in a different way for each thumbnail. Spiral, juxtaposition(contrast), and lighting. Notice how the first thumbnail is dark around the edges, but brighter and brighter as you get toward the center.

Final Note

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

If you got value out of this letter would you do me a favor, and forward it to someone that would ACTUALLY read it?

See you later Space Cowboy