How Much Money Do CS2 (CSGO) Traders Make? (Revealed)

How Much Do The Top Traders Make Monthly?

The top percentile of CS2 (CSGO) traders can easily make $5,000+ a month. However, you must remember that these traders have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their inventories.

Most of these traders are also trading full-time, checking prices, using the best CS2 (CSGO) trading plugins, and discussing deals daily. They can spend more than eight hours a day trading skins, just like an average day job.

Has this made you curious about how making a profit from trading works? Let’s dive in to discuss how much traders can realistically make from deals.

Cash Trading CS2 (CSGO) Skins - How Does It Work?

When CS trading first surfaced, players focused on trading items for other items, known as skin trading. However, the CS2 (CSGO) skin industry has developed, and traders now prefer cash trading over skin trading, though skin trading still exists.

Though they are still dealing with CS2 (CSGO) skins, traders are using real money to buy or sell these skins instead of trading one skin for another. By cash trading, traders usually buy skins using real money, flipping them to sell for real money again.

If you want to get into skin trading, you must be familiar with BUFF, the leading CS2 (CSGO) skin marketplace. Though BUFF is based in China, traders actively use the website worldwide. 

Do NOT refer to the Steam Community Market price, but use BUFF market prices instead! Since Steam Wallet funds cannot be converted to hard cash, Steam Market prices have become irrelevant.

With this in mind, how do traders perform cash trades to make a profit?

Buying Skins

CS2 (CSGO) skin traders look to buy skins for around 92 to 93% of BUFF market price. Though it sounds unreasonable for sellers to sell for this percentage, it actually is quite a fair margin. If sellers want to sell their skins on CS2 (CSGO) trading sites, they can be met with payment issues and fees of 10% or more.

By selling CS2 (CSGO) skins to a trader, people selling CS skins can immediately receive money through bank transfer or other payment methods like cryptocurrency, and the process usually takes less than a day. Sellers can sell quickly for fair prices, and traders get the skin for lower than market price.

Prominent CS2 (CSGO) trading YouTubers can even buy skins for 88 to 91% of the BUFF market price since they have huge reputations and fanbases who are often willing to sell their skins at this range.

Selling Skins

Since traders are getting these skins for 88 to 93% of the market price, they can sell liquid skins on the BUFF marketplace for 100% of the price. However, BUFF takes a 2.5% cut for every transaction.

Still, since traders buy skins at lower prices than the BUFF market price, the 2.5% fee is covered, and traders will profit from the remaining amount.

How Much Can Traders Profit From Liquid Cash Trades?

Now that we have these numbers in mind let’s create an example to get a good idea of how much these traders can make.

For example, this CS2 (CSGO) skin trader buys a skin valued at $1,000 in BUFF at 93% of the price. This buying percentage is on the higher side of the range, making it a very realistic amount.

So, the trader would pay $930 for the skin. After holding it for seven days due to the Steam trade hold, they can sell the item on BUFF for $1,000. If the skin is liquid, the item will only take a few days or less to sell.

Since BUFF takes a 2.5% cut, the trader will receive $975 after fees, leading to a $45 profit for this flip. This result amounts to a 4.8% profit from one quick flip.

It is important to note that full-time traders will have dozens of deals weekly, and experienced traders are dealing with skins worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Say a mid-sized trader is flipping liquid skins worth $20,000 per week. Using the example of a 4.8% profit, this trader could make $960 a week.

YouTubers and large traders who can buy at lower BUFF prices could easily make 7 to 8% profit per trade and can deal with $200,000+ in trades monthly! This would amount to a profit of around $15,000 per month.

Illiquid Skins - How Much Can Traders Make?

From what we’ve discussed, we were considering liquid skins, which refers to skins that sell fast. However, there are illiquid skins, such as skins with expensive CS2 (CSGO) stickers like Katowice 2014 ones or skins with rare patterns like Blue Gems, a category of one of the most expensive items in the game.

Illiquid skins are more challenging to sell because they can be too expensive or because not everyone is willing to pay the right amount for certain patterns or stickers. Traders have mentioned that illiquid skins can take weeks, months, and even years to sell!

Illiquid skins become risky for traders to flip, and traders can sometimes give up and sell these skins for lower than they bought because they just want to get rid of them. With such a risk, traders buy illiquid skins for 10-15% below the market price to create a safety net.

However, if the right buyer is found, traders can profit 8.5-12.5% from the investment, sometimes even more. Since these skins can range up to tens of thousands of dollars, you’re looking at around $1,000 profit for a $10,000 skin sale.

Still, as mentioned earlier, there are many cases where these skins do not sell at all.