Sell Speedrun Route and Strats Coaching to Your Viewers

Speedrunners can sell route and strats coaching by pricing two different requests: a single strat or skip question as a Paid Question, and a full route review or split-by-split VOD breakdown as a custom request with a set turnaround. Both run from one link without a booking calendar. Custom Work lets you offer clearly scoped commissions and services: you set the price, the scope and the delivery time, and followers submit a brief and pay before you start.

Route and strats questions are some of the most common messages a speedrunner gets: "what route do you run?", "how do you land that skip consistently?", "why is your split so much faster in world 3?" Speedrun.com's own About page reports 6.3 million speedruns, 2.9 million registered users, and 54,100 game communities hosted on the platform (Speedrun.com: About). Each of those 54,100 game communities maintains its own categories and leaderboards, so how many people might buy coaching in one category is a per-leaderboard question rather than a site-wide one: Speedrun.com's public game-stats page for Portal listed 5,036 total players, of whom 122 were counted as active (Speedrun.com: Portal game stats).

Each route or strat question takes real time and real category knowledge to answer well. Pricing that time doesn't require a coaching platform, a booking link, or a live call — it requires putting a clear offer on the same page where people already find your runs.

Scope of this article. The sections below document one specific workflow — selling route and strats coaching through a Brillay page — rather than surveying every way a speedrunner can earn. Every Brillay price, limit, fee, and refund rule stated here is Brillay's own published product policy, sourced to Brillay's public documentation at brillay.com/how-it-works and brillay.com/pricing, and is not an industry-wide standard. Every coaching rate quoted below is another platform's published figure, not Brillay data.

What does "route and strats coaching" mean for a speedrunner?

Route and strats coaching means reviewing a client's chosen path through a game, or their execution of a specific trick, and giving personalized feedback rather than pointing them at a public leaderboard comment. The two nouns are community terms with settled definitions: a route is the planned path, and strats are the strategies used along it.

In speedrunning, a route is the planned path through a game, while strats are the safer or faster techniques used along that path. A coach helps a client choose techniques that fit their current skill level and goal time.

The gap between a world-record strat and a safe strat is the whole product: choosing between them for a specific runner's skill level is a judgment call, not a lookup, and judgment is what a client is actually paying for. Coaching scope can be narrow — one trick, one split, one route decision — or broad, covering a client's full category strategy and where their time is being lost against a faster route.

Why would someone pay for a route that's already public?

Clients pay for a publicly documented route because the route itself is not the product. Speedrunning culture treats routes and tricks as collectively discovered knowledge shared across a community, so what a route coach actually sells is personalized diagnosis: watching one client's specific attempt, finding where their split is slower than it should be, and explaining exactly what to change. A route that's already public gives every runner the same starting point; a paid route review is made for one runner, using their attempt, skill level, and goal time.

Route documents on Speedrun.com are written as starting points rather than finished answers, and the site's own published guides say so directly:

"Just about any optimized game has routing input from many players, and copy-pasting my route into your run may hurt your chances of finding something new. I encourage you to experiment and try and optimize things because my route is certainly not perfect." — Speedrun.com guide: "DW2 Any% Route (Virus Start)"

Paid game coaching is a measurable market even where the underlying strategy is public and free. Metafy's publicly posted investor letter for March 2022 reports 570 active coaches, 2,323 active students, 3,599 sessions booked, and $185,975 in monthly GMV on its coaching marketplace (Metafy, "05 - Becoming Ruthless," letters.metafy.gg). Metafy's co-founder and CEO framed that month as evidence of unforced demand rather than discount-driven volume:

"March represented our 2nd best month ever for GMV, and our best month ever for both active coaches AND active students, all without creating artificial demand via deep discounting. March was our turning point – there's a clear need for what we're building." — Josh Fabian, co-founder and CEO of Metafy, Metafy investor letter: "05 - Becoming Ruthless"

Speedrunners sell inside that paid coaching market today: Metafy's public Minecraft coaching directory lists paid one-to-one sessions from coaches who describe themselves as Minecraft speedrunners, and its top-ranked Minecraft coach's own bio described him as "a top Minecraft speedrunner from Australia." Technology journalism describes the same dynamic — that once routes and tricks are public, the differentiator is who executes those community-mined tricks most consistently.

A route review sells consistency and execution rather than exclusive access to information, which is exactly what makes charging for it honest. Speedrun.com's own guides-and-resources tooling is built into every game community it hosts (Speedrun.com: About), so a client can already read the route for free — what a client cannot get for free is someone watching their run and telling them why their execution of that route is losing eight seconds a lap.

Should route feedback be a paid question or a full service?

Sell one written route or strats answer through Paid Questions, and use Custom Work for a VOD or splits file attached by a client. The dividing line is whether a file moves, not how hard the question is. You reply in writing on your own time through Brillay, with no live call, no scheduling. (Brillay, "How It Works," brillay.com/how-it-works)

Use a Paid Question for a single, text-answerable question — a specific skip, a route decision at one point, or "should I use route A or route B for this category?"

Use Custom Work when a client sends a run recording for review. Brillay's Custom Work documentation states that a client can attach up to 5 files when ordering and that delivery can include text plus files of any allowed type and/or a private link, including video and audio up to 20 minutes. The creator sets the price and delivery time on each service, with delivery options up to 5 days, including a 5-day window (Brillay, "Custom Work for Commissions, Reviews and Feedback," brillay.com/features/creator-services; Brillay, "How It Works," brillay.com/how-it-works) — the same asynchronous (no live call) structure covered in pricing VOD reviews without booking a call.

What should a paid route review actually include?

A paid route review listing should name three things before anyone pays: the input the client sends, the deliverable they get back, and the delivery time. "Route help" is not a scope. "One route comparison for one category, delivered as written notes within 72 hours" is a scope a client can evaluate and a creator can repeat profitably.

All four delivery times in the package table sit inside Brillay's 5-day maximum delivery promise for services, so all four packages can be listed as-is without needing a scheduling tool.

How do you price a speedrun coaching package?

Price a speedrun coaching package against published game-coaching rates and the length of the deliverable, because speedrunning itself has no published rate card. Fixed-session game coaching is publicly listed between $24.99 and $59.99 a session, and one coaching marketplace states most of its sessions fall between $15 and $80 per hour. Those two published bands are the closest public anchors available, because no speedrun-specific rate card exists.

Corsair's Gamer Sensei storefront publishes three fixed-price tiers: a 30-minute Skills Assessment at $24.99, Advanced Coaching at $44.99, and Expert Coaching at $59.99 per session (Gamer Sensei via Corsair). The coaching marketplace UpForge states that most sessions fall between roughly $15 and $80 per hour, with a full possible spread of $5 to $500 depending on the coach's rank and demand (UpForge coaching cost; UpForge become a coach). Brillay's Custom Work guidance gives $10, $25, and $50 as example prices for progressively more involved help.

Mapping the published Gamer Sensei and UpForge figures onto the four packages gives illustrative starting prices, each labelled with the outside anchor it borrows from:

The prices in the table above are illustrative starting points derived from other games' published coaching rates, not benchmarks for speedrunning. No speedrun-specific coaching rate card is published by Speedrun.com, Metafy, Gamer Sensei, or Brillay, and Brillay publishes no creator earnings figures of its own, so no source supports a "recommended" speedrun coaching price. What a speedrun category actually supports depends on the game, the creator's leaderboard placement, and demand, which is why the packages above should be treated as a starting hypothesis to test and reprice. How much do game coaches charge per hour? breaks the underlying ranges down in more depth, and it also covers the same pricing logic for VOD reviews outside speedrunning.

Price as a flat package rather than an hourly rate. Written notes and split comparisons don't map cleanly to clock time, and hourly framing invites the wrong comparison: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median annual wage of $47,320 for coaches and scouts as of May 2025, a figure describing scheduled employment rather than packaged deliverables.

What reaches your bank differs by where you sell. Metafy's free Core tier takes 12% of a coach's earnings plus $1.79 per transaction, capped so the combined cut never exceeds 30% of that transaction (Metafy Help Center: Account Types). No monthly fee, you only pay a small platform fee when you get paid. 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work, 5% platform fee on tips and goals. Card processing is separate (Brillay, "Pricing: Free to Start, Pay Only When You Get Paid," brillay.com/pricing). Typical US online card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 per successful charge applies separately on top of any platform's cut (Stripe pricing).

Do you need a world record to sell route coaching?

No world record is required to sell route coaching. Credibility comes from category-specific knowledge and a record of finishing runs cleanly, not from holding the fastest time. Many speedrun categories are small enough that the runner one tier above a beginner is already a useful teacher, and a client choosing a coach weighs category relevance far above global placement.

Category pools are genuinely small: Speedrun.com's public game-stats page for Portal listed 19,581 total runs from 5,036 total players, with 122 counted as active (Speedrun.com: Portal game stats). A runner with a consistent personal best in a pool that size can give useful feedback to someone earlier in their progression without ever holding a record — the same logic that lets a competitive player price a rank-up coaching package well below the top of the ladder.

Being upfront about placement — "I run this category in the top 50 on the leaderboard" rather than implying a world record you don't hold — keeps the offer honest and sets the client's expectations for what kind of feedback they're buying.

What if a client's request is bigger than what they paid for?

Followers pay upfront; you can decline a request. A request outside the listed scope — a multi-hour run submitted as a "single strat check" — should be returned rather than absorbed as unpaid work.

Stating the boundary in the listing — "one route comparison, not a full run review" — reduces how often out-of-scope orders arrive, and the decline-and-refund path covers the ones that still do.

How does this compare to answering route questions in Discord for free?

Paid route coaching and free Discord answers give the same advice; only the economics differ. Free chat answers arrive in an undifferentiated queue, with no way to prioritize the clients who value the feedback most. Creators keep answering in Discord or stream chat and redirect anyone wanting a paid answer to their Brillay link. One link that carries every offer, with nothing to moderate and no community to keep warm.

Your Brillay link can include route coaching alongside other ways clients support you — a Tip from someone who used your free route guide, Goals if you’re raising for something specific like capture equipment for cleaner VOD reviews, or funding a speedrun marathon. How do speedrunners make money? explains how coaching can sit next to YouTube ad revenue, Twitch support, and sponsorships as one part of your mix, not a replacement. Pairing route coaching with streaming and channel growth coaching also gives clients another paid option beyond route feedback alone. Your Brillay link keeps working before you hit Affiliate and after you've gone offline — a viewer who just watched you land that skip can pay for a route question as a guest, right then.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to be a top runner to sell route coaching?

No. What matters is category-specific knowledge and an honest, consistent record in that category. Speedrun.com's Portal game-stats page listed just 122 active runners against 5,036 total players (Speedrun.com: Portal game stats) — category pools are small enough that non-record-holders regularly have teachable knowledge.

What should I charge for a route review?

A route review commonly prices at $25–$50 and a full VOD breakdown at $45–$80, anchored to published game-coaching rates: Gamer Sensei's storefront lists fixed sessions at $24.99, $44.99, and $59.99 and UpForge states most coaching sessions fall between roughly $15 and $80 per hour. Those figures are market anchors, not guarantees.

Should I sell a route question or a full VOD review as the same offer?

Keep them separate. A single question fits Paid Questions, where a client sends one private question and receives one written reply, while a VOD or splits review fits Custom Work, which accepts up to 5 client-attached files and delivers text plus files and/or a private link within a delivery window of up to 5 days.

What if the client sends a run that's way outside my category expertise?

Brillay documents that creators can decline any request that falls outside what they listed (Brillay, "Custom Work for Commissions, Reviews and Feedback," brillay.com/features/creator-services; Brillay, "How It Works," brillay.com/how-it-works).

What does Brillay charge to sell route coaching?

Coaching orders carry the platform fee set out in the pricing walkthrough above, plus Stripe's own card-processing charge, which is separate and never part of that fee. There is no monthly fee, no follower minimum or application, clients can pay without creating an account, and each coaching order is a one-time purchase rather than a membership. Creators can receive payouts in 41 countries; Stripe processing fees vary by payment.

Is this different from posting my route for free on the leaderboard?

Yes. A public route or comment on Speedrun.com is shared knowledge available to anyone browsing the category, and Speedrun.com hosts guides and resources inside every game community it runs (Speedrun.com: About). Paid coaching is personalized feedback on one client's specific attempt — the analysis, not the underlying route information, is what's sold.

Key takeaways

Speedrun route and strats coaching sells because the diagnosis is personal even when the route is public. Split the offer by request format: route and skip questions that need one written reply fit Paid Questions, while VOD and splits reviews with an upload, a written scope, and a stated delivery time fit Custom Work.

Three points carry across any platform a speedrunner uses. First, the closest public price anchors are Gamer Sensei's fixed sessions at $24.99, $44.99, and $59.99 and UpForge's stated typical band of roughly $15 to $80 per hour. Second, no world record is required: Speedrun.com's Portal game-stats page listed 122 active runners against 5,036 total players (Speedrun.com: Portal game stats), so category-specific knowledge and an honest statement of your placement matter more than a leaderboard title. Third, every fee stacks: a marketplace cut, a platform fee, and card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 per charge in the typical US case (Stripe pricing) all come out before the money reaches a bank account. Any storefront that accepts client file uploads, holds a fixed scope, and states a delivery time can carry these four packages.

Create your free Brillay page and turn the next "what route do you run?" question into a priced offer.