The purpose of this post is to show you that it’s possible to make money selling anything online. If that wasn’t already made obvious by one of my podcast guests from last year selling worms then I can give you another example from my own personal experience.
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How I Made Over $10,000 Teaching People How To Play Halo
Yes, that’s right – I just tallied up the numbers and I’ve made over $10,000 teaching people how to play Halo. I’ve written before about how Halo is a large part of how I was able to build an online business in the first place, but I wanted to share an update on my income stats for Halo.
$3,000+ via Paypal From Halo 1 On 1 Lessons
When I first started making money online I was running video game forums. After getting up to 500,000 page views per month on my top forum and only hitting $500 a month with Adsense I knew I had to reevaluate how I could make some extra income from my online endeavors if I wanted to leave my job. One of the ideas I had was to try leverage the fact that I was well known in the Halo space and genuinely really good at the game (still am). So I decided to start selling Halo lessons at $50 an hour. At the time I was still working a day job that paid me a lot less than $50 an hour so I thought it would be a good way to generate some extra income. The strategy worked pretty well and for about a year I was making some decent extra money for the amount of “work” I had to put in playing Halo. The only problem is that because I was working by the hour for the money Halo started to feel like a job and so I grew tired of it stopped doing lessons. So I decided that when the next Halo game came out (Halo Reach) that I would create a video training course and put everything I knew about Halo into these videos instead of doing one on one lessons.
$7,000 From Clickbank BecomeAProGamer Sales
After closing down my lessons I simply filmed videos of myself playing the new Halo game with my friends (just the screen of course) put together the product, put it up on Clickbank and did some minor affiliate emails. Since that time I’ve generated $7,000 passively from sales of my Halo training course:
Income dip in 2012 now that Halo Reach is old. Halo 4 is due out in November 2012 though.
The actual creation process of the product was relatively easy and I documented that in more detail here. Half the reason why I created this course was to prove that you can pretty much make money doing anything online so I could write about it on this blog. If you weren’t already familiar with my story then I bet you didn’t know that people would be willing to pay $50 for a one hour lesson on Halo or that hundreds more people would be willing to pay for a video training course on how to get better at Halo.
Realistically I’d probably have been able to sell even more of my training course had Halo not taken a dive in popularity following the release of the Call of Duty games, but things should pick up again when Halo 4 comes out. I haven’t decided if it’s worth it to film a new update to the training course for the game because I’m making even more money from my main business than I was when I filmed the videos. Overall I’ve really put very little time into this project and at least from Clickbank earned over $7,000 in passive income from it that’s not too bad.
Overall – Have You Thought Of Creating An Info Product?
This mini case study just goes to show that the field outside of internet marketing is pretty wide open especially if you were focused on just one niche. Remember, I created this product in my spare time (when I’m not running my main business) and after setting up the sales page never updated it again. I didn’t even contact affiliates until I had one affiliate who sent me a noticeable amount of sales. In fact, I know a lot more money is made than “just $7,000” in the video game training niche because I’ve spoken with some of the other product creators AND that’s just one niche.
Have you thought of creating an information product before?
Chris,
This is a great example of how thinking outside of the box and using a talent that is uniquely your own will always trump a “proven strategy.” I truly believe that if people just sat back and thought about what they were good at and created a product or service revolving around that talent, that we would see many more success stories. Awesome job dude.
Hey Vin,
Agreed. The problem most often is that people want to make money with something but they want to learn everything about some method or topic before they start rather than just getting the work done and out there.
Chris
clickbank always a mystery to me
after reading this article i want to grab this
i will try this again
Wow, this is really nice to see we can even make money by selling info product on how to play games!
One question: How you shoot video when you’re playing games?
I never tried creating my own products still now, Maybe in near feature.
I use a capture card device it’s a Hauppague HD PVR that the video runs through before going back over to my TV. So it can be saved onto my computer and then displayed on my TV at the same time.
[…] of Make Money On The Internet demonstrates that it is, indeed, possible to make money in any niche, as he talks about the $10k he made out of the computer game Halo – “One of the ideas I had was to try leverage the fact that I was well known in the […]
This is really inspirational and a great post for learning about making money online, choosing a topic you are passionate about. Did you have a mailing list of affiliates?
Thanks
Dave
Hey Dave,
No. I actually paid the money to approve the vendor account with Clickbank while I was at a conference and had plans to do other stuff when I returned but I was already getting sales without contacting any affiliates. Once I started getting sales from larger affiliates I made it a point to try and track down who they were and then follow up with them to see if there was anything else I could do to help them sell more etc but that was about it. This was more of just a hobby product / something to write about on this blog than a complete focus for me to make money with.
Chris
Great point Chris. You made money from something you love as I have heard you talk about gaming on many podcasts. I would have gladly paid 50 bucks for a lesson when I was into gaming back when UnReal Tournament was big (especially if it was from Gitzz). I’m sure players like Fatal1ty charge way more than $50 though. This kind of reminds me of the DeucesCracked or CardRunners membership sites for poker. Thanks for the article.
Hey Tommy,
Yah when people heard I was doing it they were always surprised, but if you wanted help working out you’d paid for a physical trainer and if you wanted to be better at Halo why not pay for some one on one attention with someone better than you 😀
Chris
How did you find the affiliates for the Halo course?
Hey Joe,
Just answered that one below check it out. Mainly they just came to me. I did have my VA create a list of Halo websites I could contact but that didn’t work out as well as I expected (many of them were already selling lessons or not interested – that’s just the audience I guess)
Chris
great post, product creation is what it’s all about! Do that with some hard work people will be well on their way to success!
Love this post. I love learning about your success Chris!
That’s an awesome story, Chris. I think that if someone has an expertise in any area, the internet allows them to create a digital product and make money with their expertise. It’s a wealth of opportunity. (pardon the pun) This is a great example of that in practice.
Again that is very informative post Chris. I will definetly try to make a info product to sell.
The idea of making money from a video game is an inspirations. Thanks Chris
I think that if someone has an expertise in any area, the internet allows them to create a digital product and make money with their expertise.
I love this. Your mindset is what is inspiring about this. If this isn’t an a ha moment for someone, then I don’t know what is. Now I’m thinking about all those hours of my life I lost playing world of warcraft that I could have possibly made a few dollars on.
I would have gladly paid 50 bucks for a lesson when I was into gaming back when UnReal Tournament was big (especially if it was from Gitzz). Thanks for sharing..
Thanks Chris for this honest open share
Hi Chris, Thanks for this wonderful article, I’m expert in those games which is in Clickbank. I can make my video playing that game and I can also make a website to promote products, but my problem is that I’m not expert in SEO etc. I don’t know about keywords, Google etc.
Anyway thanks for sharing this article.
Pretty pumped about Halo 4. Reach was pretty good (loved last scene where you just “Survive”) and ODST was so-so I thought (still fun). Most excited about the return to traditional Halo gameplay….rather than the team gameplay in Reach or “wimpy” gameplay in ODST.
Sorry for getting off-SEO topic.
Interesting figures! It’s really amazing how you gain that much. How long does it take you to profit this amount?