Speedrunners can sell route and strats coaching by pricing two different requests: a single strat or skip question as a Paid Private Question, and a full route review or split-by-split VOD breakdown as a Creator Service with a set turnaround. Both run from one link without a booking calendar.
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, when checked in September 2026 (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 FanBell page — rather than surveying every way a speedrunner can earn. Every FanBell price, limit, fee, and refund rule stated here is FanBell's own published product policy, sourced to FanBell's public documentation at fanbell.link/how-it-works and fanbell.link/pricing, and is not an industry-wide standard. Every coaching rate quoted below is another platform's published figure, not FanBell data.
What does "route and strats coaching" mean for a speedrunner?
Route and strats coaching means reviewing a fan'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.
Speedrun.com's own community terminology thread defines a route as "a planned path for the speedrunner to follow" and a strat simply as a strategy. The same community documents strats as a graded set of choices rather than one correct answer:
"Strats are strategies used to save time. Usually, when people talk about them, they're talking about sets of strats. Some strats are used to get WR, but when you're just starting out or at a marathon, you might use safe strats (which could be easier/less likely to crash the game, but will be slower than other strats)." — Speedrun.com forum: "What do they mean by 'tricks/strats/splits?'"
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 fan is actually paying for. Coaching scope can be narrow — one trick, one split, one route decision — or broad, covering a fan'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?
Fans 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 fan's specific attempt, finding where their split is slower than it should be, and explaining exactly what to change.
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" when the page was checked in September 2026. 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 fan can already read the route for free — what a fan 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 route feedback as a Paid Private Question when it can be answered in text, and as a Creator Service when a VOD or splits file has to change hands. The dividing line is whether a file moves, not how hard the question is. Both formats run asynchronously on FanBell, with no live call to schedule (FanBell, "How It Works," fanbell.link/how-it-works).
Use a Paid Private 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?" The fan sends the question as text and the creator answers in a private thread, with no file attached in either direction.
Use a Creator Service when the fan needs to send a run recording for review. FanBell's Creator Services documentation states that a fan can attach their own files when ordering and that delivery is a written note plus up to 5 files — video, audio, images, PDF, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, with video and audio up to 20 minutes — and/or a private link for anything larger. The creator sets the price and the delivery time on each service, and delivery promises max out at 120 hours, which is exactly 5 days (FanBell, "Creator Services & Custom Requests," fanbell.link/features/creator-services; FanBell, "How It Works," fanbell.link/how-it-works) — the same asynchronous structure covered in pricing VOD reviews without booking a call.
| Request | Better-fit offer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "Route A or route B for this category?" | Paid Private Question | Answerable in text, no file needed |
| "Why do I keep dying at this skip?" | Paid Private Question | One specific execution question |
| Full VOD review with timestamped notes | Creator Service | Requires a file upload and longer deliverable |
| Split-by-split comparison against a faster route | Creator Service | Requires analysis and a written or recorded response |
What should a paid route review actually include?
A paid route review listing should name three things before anyone pays: the input the fan sends, the deliverable they get back, and the turnaround. "Route help" is not a scope. "One route comparison for one category, delivered as written notes within 72 hours" is a scope a fan can evaluate and a creator can repeat profitably.
| Package | Input from the fan | Deliverable | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single Strat Check | One written question | Text answer to one route/skip question | Same day–24h |
| Route Review | Their current route or splits | Written comparison against a faster known route, with reasoning | 48–72h |
| Split-by-Split VOD Breakdown | A run recording or VOD link | Timestamped notes flagging where time is lost | 72–120h |
| Category Strategy Session | Recent runs plus goal time | Written plan covering route, splits, and practice priorities | 96–120h |
All four turnarounds in the package table sit inside FanBell's 120-hour (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). FanBell's own Creator Services guidance suggests tiering small services at $10, $25, and $50 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:
| Package | Illustrative price | Published anchor it maps to | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single Strat Check | $10–$25 | Below Gamer Sensei's $24.99 Skills Assessment (Corsair) | One question, 10–20 minutes of work, no file review |
| Route Review | $25–$50 | Around Gamer Sensei's $44.99 Advanced tier and the middle of UpForge's $15–$80 band | 30–60 minutes of comparison and written reasoning |
| Split-by-Split VOD Breakdown | $45–$80 | Gamer Sensei's $59.99 Expert tier up to the top of UpForge's $15–$80 typical band (Corsair; UpForge) | Watching a full run plus timestamped notes is over an hour of work |
| Category Strategy Session | $75–$150 | Inside UpForge's stated $5–$500 full range, priced as a multi-hour package | Several runs reviewed plus a written practice plan |
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 FanBell, and FanBell 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 gaming coaches 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). FanBell is free to start with no monthly fee and charges a 12% platform fee only when a fan actually pays, with no flat per-transaction add-on (FanBell, "Pricing: Free to Start, 12% Platform Fee," fanbell.link/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 fan 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, when checked in September 2026 (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 fan's expectations for what kind of feedback they're buying.
What if a fan's request is bigger than what they paid for?
When a fan's request is bigger than what they paid for, decline the order and refund the payment. 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. FanBell's documentation states creators can decline and refund any request (FanBell, "Creator Services & Custom Requests," fanbell.link/features/creator-services; FanBell, "How It Works," fanbell.link/how-it-works).
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 fans who value the feedback most. FanBell does not connect to Discord or stream chat — creators keep answering there and redirect anyone wanting a paid answer to their FanBell link.
A FanBell link can carry a route-coaching offer alongside other ways fans already support you — a Tip for someone who benefited from a free route guide, or Wishlist / Project Support if you're raising toward a specific goal like capture equipment for cleaner VOD reviews, or toward funding a speedrun marathon. How do speedrunners make money? covers how coaching sits alongside YouTube ad revenue, Twitch support, and sponsorships as one piece of a mix rather than a replacement for any of them, and pairing route coaching with streaming and channel growth coaching gives viewers a second paid offer beyond route feedback alone.
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 when checked in September 2026 (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 a Paid Private Question, where no file is attached in either direction, while a VOD or splits review needs a Creator Service, which accepts fan-attached files and delivers a written note plus up to 5 files or a private link, within a delivery promise of up to 120 hours.
What if the fan sends a run that's way outside my category expertise?
Decline and refund it rather than reviewing a category you don't know well. FanBell documents that creators can decline and refund any request that falls outside what they listed (FanBell, "Creator Services & Custom Requests," fanbell.link/features/creator-services; FanBell, "How It Works," fanbell.link/how-it-works).
What does FanBell charge to sell route coaching?
FanBell is free to start with no monthly fee and applies a 12% platform fee only when a fan pays. FanBell's published FAQ states there is no follower minimum and nothing to apply for, and typical US online card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 applies separately per transaction (Stripe pricing).
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 fan'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 whether a file has to move: text-answerable route and skip questions fit a paid-question format, while VOD and splits reviews need a service format with an upload, a written scope, and a stated turnaround.
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 when checked in September 2026 (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 fan file uploads, holds a fixed scope, and states a turnaround can carry these four packages.
Create your free FanBell page and turn the next "what route do you run?" question into a priced offer.
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