How Do Cosplayers Make Money

Cosplay is a fun hobby. If you've been cosplaying for a while, you know how much skill goes into creating and modeling your costumes. In that location must be some way to utilise your talents to make a little coin doing something you love. Ameliorate even so, mayhap you're thinking of turning cosplay into a career.

Yous can brand coin from cosplay past selling trade, creating deputed costumes, or by becoming an online content creator. If you build upward a social media following, you tin can plow cosplay into a lucrative side hustle. However, very few people are able to turn the hobby into a total-fourth dimension career.

Whether y'all're looking to become a professional cosplayer, or you just desire to make enough coin to fund the expensive hobby, there are a wide variety of activities you lot can pursue to get paid. With the rise of social media and platforms similar Instagram and TikTok, comes more opportunities to be constitute for sponsorships, modeling, and commissioning opportunities.

Related reading: What to know about copyright protections before yous make a business cosplaying

Is cosplay a viable career path?

If all yous want to do is create costumes and go to conventions, being a professional cosplayer is probably not the career for y'all. In addition to constructing elaborate costumes and modeling them at conventions, a professional cosplayer has to:

Build a following and interact with fans. This applies both to in-person events and online social media.
Promote booths at conventions and other events. You won't be able to savor the convention as much since you'll have commitments running booths or making guest appearances.
Larn to market themselves at conventions. Yous'll need to network with cosplayers and companies in social club to find better deals and offset to exist invited every bit a guest cosplayer.
You have to go to a lot of conventions. It might seem like a good thing at first, but going to conventions every single weekend is exhausting and generally not sustainable long term.

Non only is the career much more stressful than the hobby, merely you also need a lot of time, dedication, and a little flake of luck to build upward a following big enough to be noticed.

I don't want to completely discourage you lot from following your dreams of becoming a professional cosplayer. With the growing use of sponsorships in social media and the connected popularity of cosplay, there actually are people who turn this into their full-time careers.

Just it's also important to exist realistic in your expectations. Y'all'll have to put in a lot of work creating amazing costumes and marketing yourself if you lot want any hope of turning this into a career. On the other manus, it's absolutely possible to treat cosplay as a side hustle and brand some extra money out of your passion for the hobby.

When would you be considered a professional person cosplayer?

The definition of a professional annihilation (cosplayer, lensman, etc.) is a fiddling bit fuzzy. Some would say you could call yourself a professional if you are making any money at all from cosplay. You lot certainly don't have to exist cosplaying as a total-time career to be a professional cosplayer, just making $5 from the hobby probably isn't enough to warrant adding information technology to your resume.

Most people wouldn't telephone call themselves professional cosplayers until they are making a substantial percent of their almanac income from sponsorships, appearances, or modeling opportunities that are related to the hobby. If you desire a more than physical dominion, if you are making about half of your annual income from cosplay-related activities, y'all would be considered a professional cosplayer.

How much money do cosplayers brand?

The reality is, nearly people who attempt to make coin from cosplay don't make very much. For the virtually part, yous can consider yourself lucky if yous make enough to cover the cost of the costumes you create. For an expensive hobby like cosplay, that's not insignificant. Only information technology's as well non going to pay the bills.

If you lot exercise become to the point of existence a professional cosplayer y'all tin can make a liveable income. If you can sell merchandise, get sponsorship deals, or regularly become hired to man booths at conventions you lot might be able to make $50k-75k in a twelvemonth. Only the very superlative cosplayers are able to earn more than this, just they might even make more than $50k per appearance.

You don't have to be a pro cosplayer to make money

There are other opportunities inside the cosplay world for making money likewise. Many people brand money at events and online selling costume pieces (like horns, wings, and ears), wigs, cosplay materials, contacts, and more than. If you have whatever highly marketable skills related to cosplay, you can also await into one of these adjacent areas and look into opening a shop.

Yaya Han is one of the most famous cosplayers in the US who was able to turn her passion into a full time career.

Peak means to brand money from cosplay

While people may automatically think of professional cosplayers as guests at conventions or models at merch booths, there is a much wider array of activities you can use to make money from cosplay.

ane. Social media content creators

In this day and age, social media is probably the virtually important aspect of making coin from cosplay. With a presence on Instagram and TikTok, y'all can build a following and collaborate with your subscribers. The more fans you get the more than you'll be able to utilize the other tips on this list.

Social media can be monetized past achieving sponsorships, affiliate marketing (sending people to a website to buy a product, and then getting a pct of the sale price), and a fanbase for selling prints and trade.

While it's a piddling more than piece of work, yous tin also create a presence on YouTube. If you lot abound your channel to over 1,000 subscribers, you tin can monetize it and get coin from ads that play on your videos.

2. Patreon

After you've been able to gain some followers of your work, you can fix a Patreon for your fans. This is i of the best ways to create continuous income every calendar month. However, the amount you brand depends on your followers and how many want to support you lot.

Patreon works by giving fans a chance to support contained artists. They can commit to giving $5-$10 (or more than) to you per month then that you lot have the chance to continue producing costumes and going to events. In return, y'all would typically offer some exclusive content for these top supporters. Cosplayers will offer annihilation from exclusive photos of a new costume to tutorials or work-in-progress images.

3. Photo prints and merchandise

While not quite equally popular at present, prints of professional photos of cosplays used to be one of the major money-makers for cosplayers. They withal accept their place in the cosplay world, since many people like to hang posters and wall art of people cosplaying their favorite characters. However, you lot might besides desire to venture into other trade opportunities.

Other items that people find useful include calendars, notebooks and folders, mugs, or fifty-fifty T-shirt designs. Even though elementary prints and posters seem similar the obvious thing to sell, you tin see at that place are so many more than options that might be more appealing to people.

4. Commissions for other costumes

One way to plough cosplay into a legitimate side hustle without having thousands of followers is by taking commissions. If yous have developed skills with costume construction, prop making, or wig styling you can make these items for other people.

Y'all can actually make a pregnant amount of money doing this, particularly if you are very skillful at the technical aspects of making a costume. One commissioned costume could brand you $300-$500 or more, specially if it has an elaborate blueprint.

Of grade, creating other people's costumes is a picayune more difficult than making your ain. You need to work with different measurements and have to make certain the quality is top-notch for the person purchasing your services. No cutting corners.

5. Selling patterns

Because cosplay costumes oftentimes need to be made in unusual shapes that don't match normal, everyday garments, information technology'due south difficult to find patterns that work for specific characters. If y'all've taken the time to create your ain patterns for the characters you cosplay, you can sell digital copies to other cosplayers looking to recreate the same graphic symbol.

The aforementioned tin can be said for EVA foam patterns. Skilful EVA foam patterns for armor and props are incredibly useful to other cosplayers. You tin can sell yours for a digital download to anyone who's looking to create a similar look.

ranka from Macross Frontier — Ranka from Macross Borderland was a popular character for a long time and so information technology was like shooting fish in a barrel to resell the costume. You may have more problem with lesser known costumes and characters.

half dozen. Selling old cosplays

At some point, you will need to create infinite in your cosplay closet for all the new costumes y'all want to brand. Instead of tossing the old outfits that y'all'll no longer wear, y'all can sell them online. If it'due south a well-constructed costume and y'all're a fairly popular cosplayer, you can make a lot of money by selling the old costumes.

As someone who is definitely not a professional cosplayer, this tactic is pretty hit or miss. The costumes for pop characters sold pretty easily, only nothing else ever left the shelf. Then, this is something where you'll accept a better render if you look until you lot have a following.

7. Build a cosplay website

Oh, look! This is something I have a niggling feel in. If yous like to write about your cosplay feel or want to make cosplay tutorials for people to follow, you tin make coin past publishing a website. If you have you lot're own site, you tin can identify ads to brand coin every time someone visits the folio.

You tin as well hands recommend products you utilize and provide affiliate links within your articles. This way you can make a small-scale commission if someone purchases the detail y'all recommend. It's non easy to build a website. In fact, information technology takes quite a lot of time. Nevertheless, if you have the patience information technology tin can create a monthly income for you lot that can be plenty to fund your side by side cosplay project.

8. Sponsorships

Sponsorships are typically something you can accomplish once your social media following is large plenty. You can accomplish out to a company with your stats (or they'll achieve out to you) and promote their products or services to your audience.

To kickoff with, yous might only be able to make $10-$50 per sponsored post. However, as you lot build a bigger following, y'all'll be able to piece of work with better companies and make more than money. Fifty-fifty though all sorts of companies might approach you, it'due south a good thought to stick with companies or products within the anime, comic, gaming, and cosplay communities so that you don't alienate your audience.

9. Booth cosplayers

You might be approached past companies who hire cosplayers to man their booths at conventions. The idea is that skilled cosplayers will attract more than attention and help to sell more merchandise. In some cases, you'll exist expected to be a salesperson and assistance sell items at the booth. In other cases, you will stand near the booth, maybe dressed as a grapheme from an upcoming game or anime.

Yous can likewise be involved in promotional events and selling at booths exterior of conventions. Big gaming and comic companies volition hire cosplayers to create costumes from their games and promote the visitor.

10. Cosplay competitions

Almost every anime or comic convention has some sort of cosplay contest. These volition judge the craftsmanship of the costume, and then they're great for people who are good at the technical side of sewing and garment making.

Most of these competitions will only offer pocket-size prizes. Yous might go a simple ribbon, but you can besides receive a small cash prize (up to $300 if you win). However, there are a few really big contests (similar the Globe Cosplay Summit) that offer larger prizes.

11. Convention guests

This is what many people immediately think of every bit professional person cosplayers, but only those that make it to the top tier terminate up getting invited to conventions as guests. Y'all accept to have a lot of followers and exist well known in the cosplay community before you can await to be a convention guest.

You don't have to look for convention organizers to reach out to you though. If you lot want to build upwardly your proper noun in the cosplay community, endeavor contacting the staff at a smaller convention. If you testify them that existence in that location could attract more people to the convention, they may take yous on as a guest. In this case, they will pay for your accommodations, at the very least, but y'all might also receive a few hundred for your appearance. As you go more popular, you can reach out to larger and larger conventions.