Very few gamers get sponsorships. It is not an easy way to make a living. Your argument is equivalent to telling everyone to forget about minimum wage jobs and practice throwing curveballs, on the off chance that they can score a position as a pitcher in the major leagues.

I think he was referring to the farming and selling of virtual goods.

Farming digital goods can be done by anybody , so you will have to compete with chinese farming groups who are happy with a return that's about break even with what the electricity and broadband would cost in the west.

At least with transcribing english text you have some advantage by being a native english speaker.

No, I'm saying before you waste hours and hours doing tedious tasks on Turks, just get a job at McDonald's. It will pay more and probably be less tedious.

It's the difference between a guaranteed payout right now vs a possible payout down the road. In order to get paid for online games you probably have to practice for quite a few hours for free before you might get good enough to be compensated.

True, but at least you might enjoy it.

Not much...

I am a avid gamer, but I gave up forever in going pro, because practice to reach pro level is tiring, VERY tiring...

One pro player lived unoficially with me (actually, he lived somewhere else but hated his roomates, so he hanged around my house instead), he would arrive from university, sit on the computer, and play until 4 in the morning, eat delivery McDonald every day, drop on the floor (yes, the floor, not a bed, or a cushion, or anything like this), sleep, wake up at 7 and go to university (without taking a bath...)

Sometimes he would get too smelly or clearly lacked decent food, then I and other roomates would kick him out back to his house, and let him return about 3 days later.

He is a player I still don't enjoy playing against (Because he wipe the floor with me), but even with all that amount of ridiculous practice, and winning championships, he still do not got sponsors... Now he went to do something else, and play for fun only (and his performance decreased accordingly actually... during his pro years, I would lose 100% of the matches against him, now I only lose about 70% of them, and I am sure I don't improved, since I did not play for 2 years in a row and since my return I had in total about 30 matches, while a pro player could pull 20 practice matches in a day)

How many hours do you have to practice a day to be a pro?

The barrier to entry for being a worker in Mechanical Turk is extremely low, and the system is very flexible. I could see it being very attractive as "side job" type work to monetize spare hours, rather than as ones' long term primary form of employment.