Fortnite streamer Ninja makes $500,000 per month

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Ninja talked about his success in an interview with CNBC.

Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, who recently teamed up with Drake to destroy Twitch's concurrent viewer record, confirmed in an interview with CNBC today that he earns roughly $500,000 per month—that's right, per month—as a streamer. Blevins said that much of those revenues come from Amazon and Twitch Prime subscribers, as well as a massive number of followers on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. 

"The combination of all those things is really where the collected revenues is coming from. This deal that Amazon Prime and Twitch Prime have together is incredible. Twitch Prime allows people to claim loot and collect loot with specific games, and they recently did a deal with Fortnite, which is the hottest game right now, and that is actually one of the main reasons of influx of subscribers to my stream." 

Despite his runaway success, Blevins also offered some moderating words for would-be streamers hoping to follow in his footsteps: Stay in school. 

"I maintained my job that I was working, at Noodles and Company, and I stayed in college while I was doing all these things. I continued to do well in school and focused on the future of my life, as well as working on streaming and competing in Halo," he explained. 

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"All the kids out there, you can't just drop everything and focus on playing videogames for a living. It's also becoming a very competitive career choice right now, and you want to make sure you're securing your future and putting in the extra time to try to make this happen as well." 

It's easy to say when you're making that kind of book, sure, but it's an admirable attitude nonetheless: Making any kind of living as a streamer, much less the kind of stratospheric big bucks Ninja is pulling down, is a tough gig, and it's not getting any easier. But it's not hard to understand why people would want to follow in Blevins' footsteps. 500K a month playing Fortnite with the likes of Drake? It's nice work if you can get it.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.