Playing Video Games Is a Full-Time Job for This Twitch Streamer

Every kid who has ever touched a Nintendo 64, PlayStation or any other gaming console has thought to themselves, “I wish I could play video games for a living.”

That’s exactly what Jeffrey Shih, 26, does.

Every morning from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT, tens of thousands of viewers tune into Shih’s educational video-game stream on Twitch, a popular live-streaming video platform. Here, fans know him as “Trump,” one of the best players to stream Hearthstone, Blizzard Entertainment’s virtual card game based on the lore of their popular titles Warcraft and World of Warcraft. It is similar to traditional card games such as Magic: The Gathering.

SEE ALSO: Twitch Changes the Mobile Game With Live Streaming

Streamers like Shih make a living off of broadcasting through Twitch’s partnership program, which allows them to earn revenue by running ads, as well as a subscription program that enables a viewer to subscribe to their channel for $4.99 a month. What's more, some streamers accept donations via PayPal if fans are feeling particularly generous.

All of this adds up to quite a large amount of money. In an interview with GQ Magazine, Michael O'Dell, team manager of a professional League of Legends team called Team Dignitas, noted that one player made $8,000 from streaming in one month.

Shih started streaming in 2011 after graduating from New York University with a Bachelor’s degree in management and finance. In his first month of streaming, an average of 2,000 to 3,000 people would tune in to watch him stream StarCraft II — a respectable number of viewers, but nothing like the 15,000 who now watch him every day.

Shih wasn't immediately successful with streaming, though. Even in his first year, which many streamers would consider a great start, he continued to work another job. But Shih put in the time and dedication to grow his audience and numbers, and eventually decided to make the tough decision to quit his job, and commit to streaming full-time. Since then, he hasn't felt the need to work another job.

“When I started, [my earnings] would definitely qualify as less than minimum wage,” Shih said. “Now, I’m making a comfortable amount to live on.”

Shih estimated that an average of 5,000 viewers could provide a “respectable income” through ad revenue. However, he added that streamers who have around 2,000 viewers, combined with a particularly loyal fanbase, can get plenty of donations, and sustain a comfortable lifestyle through the generosity of others who find certain streamers entertaining.

Numbers aside, the simple act of viewers tuning in to their favorite streamers has given thousands of people the opportunity to stream full-time — a fact that Twitch acknowledged.

“From a Twitch perspective, and knowing the numbers intimately,

I can say with a resounding yes that people are making a living just being streamers on Twitch,” Marcus "djWheat" Graham, Twitch's senior manager for new partnerships and pro-gaming expert, told Mashable.

But like any job in entertainment, those who are lucky enough to call themselves professional streamers are a different breed of people. Graham said streaming is not for everyone, and does not provide universal success.

“It’s realistic to think that if I want to be an NBA All-Star, that I could be and it’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of practice and some luck along the way,” Graham said. “But I also need to have a realistic expectation that I’m not going to be an NBA All-Star. And I kind of always say that streaming is very similar.