You are crazy about broadcasting and the prospects of becoming popular and receiving tons of attention. You tried yourself in streaming and you’re now convinced that it is something you want to do for the next several years, maybe even longer. What to do next? How to become a twitch affiliate? How to make your income stable so that it covers your bills? Learn how to build a streaming career and make this hobby your profession.
The good news is you don’t have to provide any credentials or meet your boss’s standards. But this does not mean that there will be nothing to complicate your path. If you lack self-discipline, you’re not ready to learn on your own and take risks, then most likely you won’t be able to succeed. There is no single algorithm for achieving this goal. It is a mixture of your charisma and motivation and of course luck is important here. But still, we will give you some tips, which can help you to firmly establish yourself on your platform of choice and build your dream career.
You have already chosen your niche, you know how to work with audience and you’re familiar with the idea of personal brand. But the number of viewers and your card balance are crawling up too slowly to allow you to quit your previous job. Let's see what you might be missing.
Design
Be sure to use the capabilities of the Affiliate Program. Don't neglect channel Emotes and sub badges for subscriptions. Make sure their style matches your channel’s banner and other graphics on your stream. These are important elements that reflect your personal brand and help you boost awareness about it. Though don't get too worried about it. In a year, this graphic will lose its relevance and you will probably want to redesign it. And even more so, absence of these elements shouldn’t stop you from going live. Work on this alongside your streams or delegate it to professionals.
Plan the content for each broadcast
The most popular Twitch streamers like Ludwig admit that it takes the greater part of their time to get ready for an upcoming stream than the actual number of hours they spent online. If you plan to stream for two hours, then then the preparations will take at least three hours. Going live without a plan and doing the same thing that you did yesterday is a common newbie mistake. Think carefully about what you are going to show, what camera settings will be appropriate in this case, what to wear, have a research about the game, prepare a few stories and jokes on the topic, and you could even create some unique graphics for the event.
Make a schedule
Share your plans with the viewers. Like, seriously. In case you have prepared something special, potentially interested viewers may simply miss it, thinking that today it will be another four hours of tough CS: GO matches. Knowing that some exclusive content is coming, many may even leave work early or cancel their evening cinema visit. Scheduling is very important even if you are a small streamer and you’re are not experimenting with formats that much yet. It's even more important to stick to your schedule. Imagine a situation, it’s 0 views on your channel and then the long-awaited first viewer finally appears and follows your channel. The schedule should be easily accessible so that he knows when to return next time. Sometimes when you’re not in the right mood, thinking, why start if it practically doesn’t pay back and you’ll want to take an unplanned day off. But in case you don’t show up at the promised time, probably your only viewer will forget about your existence or stop trusting the schedule. Don’t do that. If you are not sure that you will be able to start the stream at the promised time, it is better to reduce the number of streaming days and spend this time planning or creating content on other platforms.
Presence on other platforms
Your stream does matter only as long as you are online. But increasing the number of hours hoping that more people will notice you is a road to nowhere. Doesn’t matter if you're online for 3 or 24 hours, it won't make you more popular. New people won't come if they don't know about you. And the best way to make people know you is to create content on platforms where it has a longer shelf life. Ideally, use two platforms. Use one of them for short posts that won't take much time to consume, like Twitter, Instagram or TikTok. To the second one you can upload lengthy content, which in turn will be returned by the search engine for years. YouTube would be a good choice in this case.
Monetization
We’ve approached the main point that will bring you closer to the title of professional streamer. It’s channel monetization. Some streamers give up, even when they’d already gathered several hundred viewers. Their work could barely bring them $50 a month and for such profits few are willing to work for years. But there is another side, it’s small channels, that have no more than a few dozen people online, yet the owner's monthly income exceeds $ 1000. So what is it that the latter do that the former don’t know about? The successful ones do not put all their eggs in one basket, but rather develop several parallel sources of income. This includes: paid channel subscriptions (say hi to cool emotes and sub-badges); donations from viewers, which one needs to know how to properly stimulate; advertising integrations - you can obtain your initial advertising propositions directly from companies, compose them independently, or utilize our platform to discover suitable offers for influencers that are already available with us? By undertaking straightforward promotional tasks, you shall receive remuneration.
By following these tips, you can establish yourself as a content creator and a professional streamer. And you don't even have to be the top-one in this business in order to achieve decent financial rewards.
