Dota 2 Guides

9 Methods to Earn Real Money with Dota 2 With Pros and Cons

How to earn real money with Dota 2
Updated on 24 January 2019

Most of the times we are not allowed to choose gaming as a profession for the sole reason that we can not earn money with it. However, we have made a list of all the methods with which you can Earn Real Money with Dota 2.

1. Organize Dota 2 Tournament

By organizing tournaments, you can earn real money with Dota 2 depending upon how successful your tournament is. However, you’ll have to get it approved by steam if you want your ticket to appearing in the Dota 2 store. You can earn via entry fee and also by sale of tickets in the Dota 2 store.

Pros
  • If you are well known in a community and can gather good amounts of teams and have a good organizational setup, you can earn really good money in just 7-10 days.
Cons
  • If you are new in this thing, it can take you lots of time to get your self recognized in the Dota 2 community. Moreover, it requires quite some time, dedication, experience and above all a good organizational team to complete a tournament successfully.

2. Earn from Dota 2 Workshop

You can make cosmetic items if you have requisite skills in 3D software. You can then submit those to steam to be released by them officially. Once your items are available for sale, you’ll start earning money. That money is transferred directly to your bank.

Pros
  • If you are good in 3D software and have some sound imagination, you can really rock and earn almost $15,000 per year from Dota 2 workshop items.

Cons
  • Valve gives you a 25 % share. that means if your item is sold for 10$, you will get 2.5 % for it. So if you sold 100 items, the total amount will be 1000$ and you will get 250$. But when getting this money out to your bank, you will have to pay an additional 30% tax. So out of $250, you’ll get $175 in your account. So, for sale of an item for $1000, you get 175$, Valve gets 750$ and US govt gets $75. Now, it is totally up to you what and how much you want to earn. Most of the time, it is you who has to advertise that item too to get it in-game and to get more sales. Valve/steam only promotes if you make some extremely high-end products. For the rest of the items, it is you who has to promote the product your self.
  • Once your items are sold in the steam community market, you don’t get any margin out of it. So, it means, you’ll get paid for your hard work just for once and that too small share.

3. Sell Dota 2 Cosmetic Items for Real Money

There are many Dota 2 gamers who don’t have a credit card or Paypal facilities, but still, they want to equip their heroes with awesome skins and cosmetic items. So they ask to pay money by meeting up or by local money transfer methods. If you have enough amount of Dota 2 cosmetic items, you can sell it to those who are looking to buy it with real money.

For example, DMarket has a marketplace where you can sell Dota 2 items in a few clicks: just put your items on the sale and get real money after they are sold. It usually happens within a couple of minutes, but it depends on how attractive your offer is. Anyways, you don’t have to put any effort into this, the platform does everything for you; thus, you can try selling them a little bit expensive at first.

Pros
  • You don’t have to spend a big amount, you can start low and then go on.

Cons
  • Almost 1 year ago, once you used to get items drops that were marketable and trade-able, you could sell those in the steam community market or to someone who was willing to buy it from you personally to earn some steam wallet or real money. But now that option is over. But now, 1st of all, the item drop rate has reduced many folds. Secondly, you get items that are not trade-able, not marketable and can only be gifted once. So if you get trash items, you can only give them away or delete it. Almost no use of it.
  • Getting trade-able items for free dream is almost over. You can only get such items via betting. See the next option.
  • Many chances of scam are possible from both the buyer and seller sides. However, you can use LootMarket to sell your items and then get the real cash to your online money accounts.

4. Betting on Dota 2 Pro Matches

You can bet on different Dota 2 betting sites etc and if you win, you will get items other than your own. However, if you lose, you will definitely lose your items too. So this is like a double edge sword. You can either win lots of items, or you can lose really easily. I suggest that you should only bet if you are totally into Dota 2 pro scenes and know all the stuff going on and you don’t skip even 1 match. We have carried out a detailed review of Dota 2 Betting sites. Must have a look at it.

Pros
  • You can win lots of good items if you know about Dota 2 Pro team’s performance history.

Cons
  • You’ll need a little investment of items to decently with bets.
  • There are also great chances of losing your bet and hence your items investment. So, whatever you do, play and plan carefully.

5. Win Dota 2 Tournaments

If you have got a good team with great gameplay, then you should start participating in Dota 2 Pro and Premium tournaments where sometimes prizes are in 6 digits. However, you can only get to that amount if you and your teammates are really good. This is the best and most paying method to earn real money with Dota 2.

Pros
  • The easiest way to become a millionaire. Once you win a major tournament, there are many many chances that you will clean sweep in small tournaments.

Cons
  • You can not start alone in this. You need to have a great team and team play.
  • Your game must be awesome so you can actually beat the legends.
  • If you are mediocre in-game, then there is almost no chance of earning big, however, you can still participate in Amateur tournaments and win the different amount of prizes.

6. Develop Custom Games for Dota 2

Recently valve added some cash making opportunities for custom game developers. They have started a pass system. Once people purchase a pass, they get extra benefits in that specific custom game. More like League of Legends where you pay money to get awesome heroes and then dominate the game even with low skills. But thankfully it is only for some custom games. Here is what Official Dota 2 Blog said about it.

Custom Games Passes will be limited to a small number of high-quality games that have established themselves in the community. Purchasing a pass directly supports the creators of the custom game as well as granting you extra features for that game. All custom games will remain free to download and play.

Pros
  • If you know to code and especially Dota 2 related coding and you have some awesome ideas for a custom game, you can develop a custom game, make it so awesome that it gets to the top and then you can start earning real money once steam releases a pass for your game.

Cons
  • You can not use this money-making method if you don’t know to code.
  • Your game must be fun to play and absolutely bug-free if you want to develop a good fan base.
  • You must have advertising skills or advertising budget to promote your custom game to get more fans and players to climb the ladder of success.

7. Earn by Live Streaming Dota 2 Gameplay

You can live stream your game on Twitch TV or other live streaming platform and if your fans/viewers like your stream they will donate money to you. If you are a girl, you can easily earn money by showing your cleavage and desperate gamers/viewers will donate money to you, almost no one cares about your game if u are a girl. However, if you are a male, you must be extremely entertaining with a great game to go for this option.

Pros
  • You can earn money while having fun playing Dota 2. Once you become famous, you can earn a good amount of money.

Cons
  • This method can not make you a millionaire in a night. Most of the top streamers earn up to $100-$150 per stream on peak days. But still, there are some who earn some real amount of cash just from Live Streaming Dota 2 games.
  • If your game is normal and you are not that much entertaining, then there is almost no use of streaming your game live, as there are very fewer chances that people will watch your game.

Earn Real Money with Dota 2

8. Cast in Dota 2 Tournaments

You can not only earn money by organizing and winning Dota 2 Tournaments but rather you can also earn some money by casting it to some audience. Usually, tournament organizers need someone to commentate the in-game happenings to their viewers so they know what’s going on in-game. Pro tournament pays quite some handsome money to casters.

Pros
  • Have fun watching the game and earn money for commenting on it.

Cons
  • Same problems as in live streaming, you need to be entertaining and your analysis must be up to date and great.
  • You cannot be hired directly by top tier tournament organizers, you must be someone in casting scene before you can hope that you’ll e hired. However, you can start from a small tournament, learn the art of casting Dota 2 tournament and then climb your ladder up to success as you gain experience.

9. Scam

You must not be expecting that I’ll add this method in this guide. But I wanted to show you ALL the means by which you can earn money either good ways or bad ones. So you can scam people for their account, you can hack their accounts to steal items and then sell those in the market to earn cash.

Pros
  • You don’t need any investment for this, you can start with almost nothing and go on.

Cons
  • You can not go on with this method for long. Almost all the scamming ways are closed by Steam. However, still, there are greedy and dumb gamers around who are eager to be scammed. But this method is extremely time-consuming with almost no outcome.
  • Once you are caught scamming, you’ll be labeled and banned by Steam and also by SteamRep and you won’t be allowed to trade or sometimes even communicate with other gamers. So, simply you’ll lose it after 1 or 2 successful scams. My Suggestion, DO NOT DO IT

I guess you must be thinking now that those days are gone when your Mom used to say that you can not earn real money with Dota 2, so get off your computer and study. Tell us in the comments below how you are making money with Dota 2 if you are making any. Suggestions and positive criticism are always welcome.

3 thoughts on “9 Methods to Earn Real Money with Dota 2 With Pros and Cons

  1. Ary says:

    Scam? what a loser will do that!!

  2. Amir says:

    What a Complete Article. Thank You Writer.

  3. scammer eh? says:

    if ya dont want ppl to scam then why did even add it to this list smh

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