Affiliate Program on the Twitch platform rewards content creators and opens up new opportunities for them. Earlier we wrote about all the benefits of the Partner Program and Affiliate Program, you can learn more about this here.
How to become an Affiliate
Most likely you’ve completed the “Path to Affiliate!” achievement, in case you already stream actively, but even if you are just planning to launch your first stream, then believe me, it's not that difficult. The conditions for obtaining an achievement can be completed within a week.
- You need to broadcast on 7 different days.
- Reach a total of at least 8 hours of broadcasts.
- Gain 50 followers.
- Also you’ll need to have 3 viewers on average. You can ask a couple of friends to support you and spend some time watching your stream.
Now that you’ve become an Affiliate, which makes official ways of monetization available for you, what should be the first step to take? Work on your personal brand. A personal brand is how your community gets to see your image. It should be present in your behavior and your looks, while reflecting your interests and habits. And of course, it should be YOURS and not borrowed from another streamer. Otherwise, you put yourself at the risk of remaining another person’s shadow. Later on, we'll go into more detail on how to build a really powerful personal brand. For now, let's focus on how the Affiliate Program can help creating it. With its help, you can add channel emotes and sub-badges that will solidify your image the viewers' eyes.
Twitch Affiliate unique emotes and badges
At the first stage, you will have access to one emoticon for each of 3 subscription levels. The higher the number of your subs, for every 5th subscription you will get one level 1 Emote. Using channel emotes makes viewers feel like they are a part of the community. As for subscriber badges granted to paid subscribers, you can start with three of them: first, second and third month badges. There’s no point in creating sub-badges for 1 or 2 years in advance. There’s no guarantee you’ll still be streaming. Or maybe some ideas you will lose their relevance or you’ll change your channel’s niche.
How to make Twitch emotes
At this stage some people want to save money, make emotes and icons using pictures from the Internet. In this case they will not work for your personal brand. If your artistic skills leave much to be desired, make a one-time investment and find an artist. One emote and one sub-badge will cost you $20-30 on average.
Finding artists is not difficult. Most likely they will reach out to you first and offer their services. But don't rush. First, make sure you really enjoy the works of this particular artist. Keep in mind that a good artist usually has a tight schedule and no time to look for clients at channels offering his services. You can go over different streams yourself, paying attention to the graphical aspect. And if one of them wins your heart, ask to share the author's contacts. We also do not recommend using freelance services, since people who work on such platforms are often unaware of important nuances. They can, for instance, add too many details that you simply cannot spot on a miniature icon. Or they will not be aware of the features of the popular emotes and how to interpret them for your request.
Try to think out the concept of of subscription badges, because the months will fly by faster than you expect and you’ll eventually find yourself in a need to come up with a cool evolution plan for the badges you grant your loyal subscribers with. Plan the evolution of the sub icons for the year ahead. Viewers should like your graphics so that they actively use it on other channels and increase your visibility.
It even happens that users subscribe to a channel merely for the sake of emotes, while not even being active viewers of the channel, especially now that the platform has introduced regional prices and the cost of a subscription in some regions is cheaper than a cup of coffee. Analyze what emotions Twitch users use most often and make emotes using them, otherwise even the coolest graphics won’t get popular. It's also good if your emotes match the type of games you're streaming. The emotion of fear, for example, would fit horror players just great.
Think ahead of how the emotes and sub badges will resonate with the rest of your channel's elements: your banner, buttons under your stream and the overlay you use. All elements should make up a single composition.
Don’t forget to remind viewers of the opportunity to support the channel with a coin. Let them know about the awards they can receive. Push your emotes yourself. Ask your existing subscribers to greet your new subs with a specific emote. And don't forget to reward subscribers via drops. Well, and most importantly, enjoy the work you do, you're doing great!
