It's one thing to spend Monero to live off, but a completely different thing to earn Monero and make a living off of it.
Can you actually make a living off Monero? Yes. Is it easy? No.
Let me be clear, everything is work, no matter if you are trying to earn Monero, dollars, or stock options.
First of all, you can just charge for what you already do in Monero. But is that really effective? It really depends on what you do, but in most cases, no.
Now, I am not talking about darknet actitivites, I am talking about things you are not ashamed to show your face for doing.
Who is making a living off Monero and what exactly are they doing? I am trying to do this with Monerica and a few other people are as well. The main way this is done is pretty simple, channeling the existing demand for exchanges into ones you are promoting. Now, there are other categories that people spend Monero with, such as web hosting, prepaid cards, eSIMs and VPNs, but exchanges are the biggest of them.
The problem I have seen over and over is people thinking they can invent demand. They think just because something is sold for Monero that it makes people want to buy it with Monero. This is for the most part, wrong. You cannot just manifest demand.
The primary reason people use Monero in the first place is privacy. People want to get Monero, or they want to sell it for something like Bitcoin such that the exchange (usually non-KYC) is the one selling it to them, not a specific entity. This is the river, the force, the lifeblood of Monero. To earn Monero, you need to find a way to channel that energy into the places that make it happen. The primary way to do that is being sponsored by exchanges, or promoting them through a marketing channel you already have.
Despite this fact and reality, people over and over harp on not being able to buy groceries or gasoline with Monero directly. The fact is, that's not where the demand lives. And even in so doing, people fail to realize why Monero merchant adoption is to difficult.
So, it's entirely possible to make a living off Monero but you have to get attention for and about Monero and shift that towards what people are using it for and want from it. That, for the most part, is exchange swaps. Shows, conferences, forums, directories, they are all sponsors by exchanges. So if you want to make a living off Monero, you need to play that game and sell Monero or get people to buy it.