The question is: how do I become a streamer? lmao
I know, I know, but the thing is, I’ve been teaching English for about ten years now and I’m frankly getting tired of the grind, waking up early as shit, teaching for six to nine hours each day and all that. I make good money, but I get the feeling that the real big money is in doing online stuff. Selling courses, making content, that kind of stuff.
My idea for a channel or twitch stream or whatever would be me playing games and then commenting on interesting aspects of the stuff characters are saying in the games. Some of the streams would be Q&As, some straight-up lessons on specific topics, maybe some streams dedicated to other stuff like films and TV shows. You get the idea.
The thing is, I don’t even know where to start. I’m familiar with OBS, I have a good camera and mic setup that I already use for my online lessons, but I don’t know where to start in terms of platforms, streamers to use as references and what I should expect from the process of cultivating an audience.
What do you folks think? Where should I begin?
gonna be real here and say: in all likelihood, you don’t
the amount of people making money streaming is so top heavy, you might as well ask “how do I win the lottery?” there are so many people who have been streaming consistently for years and still have like 12 followers, the shit is bleak
i dunno maybe im being pessimistic but i feel like unless you capture lightning in a bottle you might consider a different career
the other answer might also just be viewbotting
I have seen convincing videos from people on how to fairly consistently drive traffic to videos with know-how but even some of them just say that streaming is a lot of luck from what I recall with the notable mouthpiece of this being Ludwig.
Funny coming from Ludwig, I saw him do some challenge once where he either had to admit a truth or do something he didn’t want to. Someone asked him if he was viewbotting when he was getting started and he chose to do the other thing instead of answer the question
Can you rephrase that for me? I’m not sure if I had way too much caffeine but I’m not sure if I’m reading the end of that sentence correctly.
Played truth or dare with chat, admitted to viewbotting without saying it.
Ah, lmao good ol’ Scamwig stays at it. I wouldn’t be surprised though if sometimes it requires both, I’m pretty sure I’ve met people that were likely viewbotting and still didn’t end up with a following.
Honestly the only reason I haven’t taken a stab at it is because I don’t know how to create a botnet
People don’t create bots, they pay for them and it’s just a manual click factory with a bunch of physical phones in Asia somewhere
Keep a consistent schedule, always engage with chat, keep talking even when chat is dead. Can you keep up a stream of interesting observations and stories for an hour, just talking to an empty room? (Record yourself trying, ding yourself if you go 30 seconds without being engaging.)
Honestly, the people who manage to build up a successful variety stream from the ground up by doing that kind of freak me out. The alternative is to win a championship at something or get world record on a speedrun, so those people show up to see you do your thing, then start the consistent and engaging grind, and slowly pivot to variety content. (Maybe it says something about me personally that “simply become the world champion at something” sounds easier than talking to an empty room for hours a day.)
Even that isn’t a guarantee; I follow this streamer, Nitrony1, dude won the Guilty Gear Strive tournament at the most recent EVO and he’s still only getting a 100 and change viewers on his streams. Better than the dredges to be sure, but still on the smaller/niche end.
tell your million twitter followers that you’re going to start streaming
I’d say a good reference streamer would be ZainoTV. He does Balatro streaming, so because of the pacing of the game and the often esoteric ways its system works, there’s a lot of explanation happening while he’s streaming. Also a generally chill guy, LGBT ally.
Definitely be prepared to spend some time having very few viewers. Like anything else entertainment-related, there’s a lot of streamers hanging out in the single digit viewers, a modest amount in the double to triple digit range, and then there’s the small handful of mega streamers like Hasan.
Try to have some sort of niche or gimmick to stand out. Decide if you want to have yourself on camera, not on camera, or an animated avatar.
Cross pollinate your platforms. A lot of streamers will also produce some YouTube content as well, even if it’s just uploading their VODs. Reaction content is super low hanging fruit for this. The point is that the algorithms all behave differently so being on multiple platforms helps to reach audiences on one platform that the algorithm isn’t steering towards you on others. It seems like every streamer has a Discord, I’m not sure how important this is as I don’t use Discord that frequently.
Thanks for the advice, I feel like I still need to become more familiar with streaming in general, I don’t follow anyone closely, I mostly watch clips from streamers, but I don’t really sit down and watch any of them live. Do you happen to follow any? I’ll check ZainoTV out later today
A lot of splatoon streamers. Chase247, ThatSrb2DUDE, and SourBraix are the ones of those I enjoy the most. A couple political ones, namely Hasan and Yugopnik. Some others I like that have good viewer engagement: Wirtual, Rookang1, Jakeblennings, karterfreak, AuroraPeachy.
There’s a subr*ddit called smallstreamers or something that would have shit for your brain to munch on
Thanks! I’ll check it out!
Braver than me, if I was gonna ask a similar question it’d be how do I get the nerd experience to build enough of a resume to join hololive.
But that honestly seems like so much work
Honestly becoming a vtuber may make becoming successful as a streamer easier due to less competition
Honestly good question, I know it’s hard for streamers to break in in general, so I can only imagine it may be even harder since it’s a smaller niche space of people that watch vtubers that’s already really taken up by the big corpo headliners of that market and the smaller already networked independent streamer cooperative.
I had a teaching colleague who started a business selling his own exam prep materials. He did a series of YouTube videos revising questions from past exam paper and used it to sell his own stuff.
Maybe do the same thing to get eyes on your stream. Highly targeted videos that hopefully will rank high and have links to your stream.
Making these videos will also help you get used to talking to nothing - a weird feeling.
The hardest part about any content creation like streaming is consistency. Pick a platform, pick a time, and just try to stream for a couple of hours once a week.
Expect no one to watch for the first 6 months and do things to try get people involved. Use smaller communities like here and discords to find people to play or watch along with you, and things might grow from there.
I’d be using my camera, voice and face, so I don’t think here would be good on account of the self-doxxing rules, but I’ll have to learn more about self-promotion, which is something I’ve never really done.
YouTube live, twitch, TikTok live, Instagram live
Stream on all at once, interact with all chats if few people or just one chat if you’re popular
All the most popular streamers target young teen and preteen boys and mostly just scream a lot and act extremely dramatically. Be slightly homophobic, and do a lot of fuck boy shit on stream like hit on other female streamers, bring in hot women on stream, do tinder live, etc
All the most popular streamers target young teen and preteen boys and mostly just scream a lot and act extremely dramatically. Be slightly homophobic, and do a lot of fuck boy shit on stream like hit on other female streamers, bring in hot women on stream, do tinder live, etc
Well, I intend to teach English, so I’ll be streaming live today on twitch, “is it gay to understand the present perfect?”
In all seriousness, I’m not really aiming to be huge and famous, just enough of an audience to make a bit of money on the side while having fun playing games and talking about them, so I hope I don’t have to compromise my values too much lol
