You’d been thinking it over for a long time, doubting it, but eventually decided that in the new year you want to become a streamer. Perhaps you even wrote this item down on your 2023 goal list or made a wish on New Year's Eve. Read this article before you start. We will try to help you have a proper launch and avoid some of the most common mistakes.
For your first broadcast to be successful, you need** to run it**. Literally, just go and start it today, with the tools available at the moment. No need to save money for a whole year for a top PC setup, or look for devices with synchronizable backlight. You don’t have to buy a $1000 DSLR. After all, there is a chance that you won’t like this trade at all. Try streaming for a month or two before making any serious investments in equipment for streaming. Try to listen to what your feelings say regarding whether it is your thing or not. Nowadays you can even broadcast using your just phone. Try to attract people, communicate with them on your broadcasts, and try to keep viewers interested. Remember: your success does not depend on the cost of the equipment. Big expenses may serve you poorly by inflating your own expectations from the first broadcast.
Don't waste months selecting and adjusting the graphics if your audience has NOT yet gathered around you. Newbies often spend weeks setting up donation alerts they never get. Make simple graphics in a few hours or use some ready-made options. There are many services out there that provide cool design for free. Nobody is going to watch a streamer just because of the awesome channel design.
Get ready to amaze. You’ll have to write down your ideas for streaming ahead of time, especially in the early stages. It’s better to spend more time working on the content than spending it on the air performing a boring activity. Your audience isn’t going to grow for the sole reason you are online. But if you go live bringing something unique every time, there is a chance to get into highlight reels or to become the person who will be recommended by others.
Make sure you’re mature enough to engage and lead your audience. You must have interests, clear positions, your own opinion and last but not least charisma. Create your personal brand out of your strengths and weaknesses combined (we talked about it in detail earlier). The viewer should form an opinion about you at first glance, you need to stick in their memory remembered. In order not to become another “oh there’s a guy or a girl playing something over there, how boring, I’d better go to another channel”.
Try to gather base audience before you run first stream. There are three options that can help you do this. The first and easiest one is to invite your friends or teammates to support you. Brothers, sisters, and other distant relatives will do as well. The main thing is that these people do not embarrass you, so invite only those in front of whom you can act freely. Having five spectators is much more fun than streaming for zero people. Moreover, this will also affect the loyalty of random visiting viewers.
The second method requires either more preparation or investment, or both. If you have friends among streamers, ask them **to raid your channel **(we described how to make friends with streamers in the article about networking). If there are no fitting acquaintances, then you will have to pay for raids. The only thing is you have to choose streamers with a similar target audience. For example, if you’re going to stream CS:GO, then you should be also raided by a streamer from the appropriate section.
Finally, the last way is to bring your own audience from other social networks. And this method for now is the best and most effective. Twitch does not perform well as a main platform for brand development. It is much more efficient to make content for YouTube or TikTok, and then then lead those people to your live streams. If such sources of traffic are not at your disposal, then maybe you should start with one of the abovementioned platforms? Try hand in media space by making short videos for TT. Assess how much people like you, as well as your reaction to hate. And only then transfer the audience to Twitch.
And at the very end, let us give you a couple more quick tips. Make sure that your microphone is of good quality and doesn’t have any background noise. Pick the music according to your mood. And then go live in good humor. You may stream to an audience of zero people for years, but you can also become famous in one day. We wish you to join the latter cohort<3
