How To Make Money As A Full Time Live Streamer On Twitch And YouTube, How Live Streaming Can Be Extremely Profitable For Content Creators, And Why Donation Revenue Is Substantial For Live Streamers

by Harrison Sachs

This essay sheds light on how to make money as a live streamer on Twitch and YouTube and elucidates how live streaming can be extremely profitable for content creators. Additionally, why donation revenue is substantial for live streamers is delineated in this essay. The marketing landscape has radically evolved in past years to become a digital landscape in which content creators have become the most prominent influencers of the 21st century with their extreme fame leverage. Twitch has become the YouTube of live streaming, allowing content creators to earn multiple streams of revenue, donations, and also gain significant exposure without having to overcome any barriers to entry to commence broadcasting their video footage. Popular Twitch streamers are generating substantially above the average household income per month as a result of having the power of clout and global digital distribution that they parlay into a profoundly lucrative career and business model. Moreover, there are a multitude of methods in which Twitch streamers can monetize their channels which encompass earning advertisement revenue, subscription revenue, sponsorship revenue, affiliate marketing revenue, and donations. Additionally, Twitch content creators also generate revenue from selling customized branded merchandise and receiving bit cheers from their viewership. Similar to how Twitch streamers with affiliate or partner status can accept donation revenue from receiving bits, YouTube also allows streamers to accept donation revenue via super chat donations once they have met the criterion to enable super chat on their YouTube channel. Being able to accept donations via Patreon, bit cheers, Super Chat, Muxy, Streamlabs, and PayPal, potentially from the entirety of your viewer base, can substantially add up overtime even if charitable contributions per individual donor are nominal. The primarily reason donation revenue can be so lucrative for streamers, besides the fact that there is no donation cap, is because viewers love being able to influence the streamer’s content with their generous donations. For example, live streamer Ice Poseidon was able to earn over $5000 purely in an 8 hour period through donations by live streaming himself sleeping. Amid this live stream, viewers would keep submitting $100+ donations in an attempt to wake him up by having media sharing donations and text to speech donations play from Streamlabs. Donations are the currency to mold the streamer’s future content, interact with the streamer, or elicit their thoughts about a particular topic. Streamers can even capitalize on live streaming via Restream to multiple platforms simultaneously, such as YouTube, Twitch, and Smashcast.TV, to accelerate brand growth, maximize audience reach, and optimize earnings potential. Ultimately, content creators that tap into the ample opportunities to generate revenue as a full time live streamer and can elicit a lucrative business model and career by passively generating far more revenue than they otherwise would earn by working a run of the mill 9 to 5 job. In conclusion, streamers that create appealing and innovative content, demonstrate consistently by adhering to their streaming schedule, and that capitalize on all the revenue generating opportunities that live streaming has to offer can attain unprecedented wealth. The live streamer’s revenue will further amplify as they foster a more sizeable subscriber base and donor base and as they attain more brand growth, brand recognition, brand loyalty, and extreme fame leverage overtime from their clout. The user generated content market can be so lucrative that it has allow live streamers to become multimillionaires, such as Twitch streamer Ninja (Kim, 2018), who has been earning over $500,000 per month primarily by live streaming gameplay footage of Fortnight. The revenue generating opportunities global distribution platforms provide content creators are unprecedented.

Kindle Edition

Published April 25, 2019