You may see how much work your favorite cosplayer completes on that cosplay they are trying to get finished and wonder if cosplay is a career.
Or maybe you follow a cosplayer and see them at a new game launch event and you’re wondering if they get paid for it?
So let’s first discuss if cosplay is a career and how you can potentially make money from it:
Here’s the answer to: Is Cosplay a Career?
No, cosplay is not a career. It is a hobby.
On the contrary, cosplay can be a career if you want it to be one.
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Can You Turn Cosplay Into A Career?
Yes, you can definitely turn cosplay into a career.
Normally cosplaying starts out as a hobby but it can be a career if you put the time and effort into it, just like any other career!
Now you may be wondering how you turn cosplay into a career, and how you can make money from it. I have dug further into this in the next section.
How do you make money by cosplaying?
There are many different ways to make money through cosplay. I’ve created an easy list below to help with ideas if you are looking to turn cosplay into a career, or just make a little extra money from it.
There may be some ideas you didn’t even think existed!
1. Online/Social Media Personality
This includes anything from social media such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter etc.
In this day and age the best place to turn cosplay into a career on social media would be on TikTok. You can make money on ads, send people to buy stuff that you have created and so much more.
The second best would be on Instagram, it really just depends on what type of social media content you would like to create when choosing out of the main four.
2. Youtuber
This also falls under the first category but I wanted to expand on this because it is a lot more powerful in some ways in comparison to the other social media choices.
A cosplayer who uses Youtube for their career has a better shot at showing work in progress videos, tutorials, vlogs, etc as they can submit longer videos.
This will help gain subscribers and viewers which means they can make money off ads alone and not sell their own products.
However, a lot of cosplayers mix using ads in their videos as well as selling their own products/other products that they may be sponsored by.
And if they have sponsors that means that they’re getting paid!
3. Commissions for creating cosplay
This career would be for you if you are good at making cosplays.
Many cosplayers make money off of doing this, someone will commission this person to build/make a cosplay for them.
You may even be commissioned to make only a certain thing for someone’s cosplay (such as a prop).
4. Cosplayer for Hire
This includes everything from being hired by a large company to presenting a new game/movie at particular events or even at their convention booth.
This can also include being hired to cosplay at parties or any event and be paid for your time.
5. Starting a Patreon
This is a platform where people have to subscribe to your Patreon. To subscribe you need to pay a certain amount of money a month. Cosplayers may sell certain content that is only supplied to paid subscribers, it may be behinds the scenes content, cosplay prints, templates etc.
6. Sell stuff like: Patterns/3D Files/Books/Tutorials/Sell Photos
This includes selling patterns for costumes, 3D files you have created, books to help with cosplay, video tutorials or written tutorials or even photos of you in cosplay.
As you now know, there’s so many ways to make money from cosplay and turn it into a casual, part time or even full time career.
So how can you take all of these ideas and turn it into a career?
How to turn cosplay into a career (Tips)
Now you know the different ways to make money through cosplay the first and most important tip is you need to have a social media following. All the ways to make money through cosplay most of the time come back to this point.
If you don’t have a large enough following you will not have as large as an audience to advertise/sell to, which of course makes it a lot more difficult to make money.
So start creating content now, and lots of it!
The great thing about creating content is, it’s free. It just takes your time and your imagination to think of new and different things to get people interested in you.
Don’t want to make content? That’s ok, there are other ways to turn this into a career but it may be more difficult.
You could work on cosplay behind the scenes and get really good at your craft, you can then create a portfolio to show bigger industries (such as the film industry) your work to potentially get hired!
Lastly, remember to have fun and be you. It makes it much easier when your following gets larger as you don’t need to constantly pretend, which just sounds exhausting.
How Much Money Can You Make From A Cosplay Career?
Anywhere from a few dollars to thousands of dollars.
Honestly, the sky is the limit when it comes to how much money you can make from this. It all depends on what method you choose to make the money, how much time you want to spend on this endeavor (i.e., is this a part time job or your full time job?) and once again how many followers you have on social media.
A great example is this video from Kamui Cosplay, Svetlana of Kamui Cosplay talks about commission work and how much it would cost for her to make a cosplay for someone else. She talks about how much a prop would cost to make as well as a set of armor.
The prop alone would cost over $10,000 (see video from 10:00 to 10:20) and the armor (see video from 10:20 10:36) would cost over $30,000.
Most importantly, it all depends on how much you want to charge for your work and what you are selling. Cosplay commissions are just one example.
If you want to see more examples of how to make money through cosplay, scroll up and check out the list I’ve created for you.
As I have noted previously, don’t forget to figure out if you want this to be a casual, part time or full time job and price accordingly.
Most of the time people will price things differently if it’s just something they want to make a little money on the side from rather than it being their full time wage that needs to pay for food/bills etc.
On a final note, your time is worth money, don’t let people make you feel guilty for charging for it.
Is It Hard To Turn Cosplay Into A Career?
Cosplay is very popular around the world, but like any career you need to work for it if you want to earn a full time wage.
It isn’t any harder to turn cosplay into a career than other artistic/creative careers.
In summary, you need to ensure you start a portfolio to show off your work whether you want to work for yourself or work for another company. The best way to do this is through social media.
Soon enough I will complete a more in depth article on this topic, with some proper steps you can take on how to make money through cosplay (i.e., what social media accounts to create, what type of content you should post etc).
It can be extremely overwhelming but extremely rewarding so stay tuned for that one!