How to Make Money on Twitch
With Twitch.TV (an Amazon company), you can join 2 million broadcasters and 15 million daily active users on the site and live-stream anything from your favorite game to a tutorial about how to make a computer table, Ikea-style.
As of April 2018, Twitch is the number one e-sports (video game) live streaming service in the world.
It beats direct competitors Mixer, Hitbox, and YouTube Gaming by a long shot.
And streamers are leveraging to power of the platform to make more money than ever thought possible.
How Much Money Do Twitch Streamers Make?
Making money with Twitch can be impressively lucrative, especially if you’ve got the right mix of personality, skills and luck.
For example, popular Twitch streamer Ninja (real name: Tyler Blevins) revealed earlier this year that he earns around $500,000 per month from Twitch Prime subscriptions, sponsorships, and partnerships, as well as YouTube revenues from his 5 million subscribers.
Note that Ninja has been livestreaming since 2008.
The amount of cash you can make by streaming content will depend on your popularity, number of subscribers, type of content streamed, and the monetization option you choose.
Subscriptions
Users can subscribe to streamers’ channels for $4.99 a month.
The $2.50 will go to Twitch, while the remaining $2.49 goes directly to the Twitch affiliate or partner.
The Twitch Affiliate Program
Twitch sends an invitation e-mail to any streamer who has been working consistently to produce content.
Those with at least 50 followers, an average of 3 (or more) simultaneous viewers in the last 30 days, at least 500 minutes of total broadcast in a month, and at least 7 broadcast days in the last 30 days.
Once you become an affiliate, you can earn by accumulating “Bits” or when people subscribe and support your channel.
You also have the chance of earning from game sales and in-game items that originated from your channel.
The Twitch Partner Program
Any Twitch streamer who aims to make it big in the site dreams to be accepted into this program.
You’d have to send an application for Twitch to check if your channel is qualified, since partners are often exclusive to more sought after personalities (with average concurrent viewership of 500+).
When you do make it as Twitch partner, you’ll reap all the benefits offered to affiliates, plus live chat privileges, unique emoticons, and other exclusive-to-partner perks.
Ad revenues
Similar to how YouTube ads work… Twitch content producers can earn money with shares in the advertisement revenue generated from their streams.
There’s no set income earned this way, but as a streamer’s followers increase, so will his/her ad shares.
Donations
Donations may seem an insignificant monetization option, but imagine having a million followers and all of them decide to donate a dollar each within a span of 30 days.
You’d be a millionaire just from the donations.
Paid livestreams
One way gaming companies advertise, pre-launch or test their products is through Twitch.TV.
Because these companies’ target market is already on Twitch.TV, the technique is to hire a streamer to play the game as thousands of followers watch along.
A great example of this was Ninja streaming a game of Fortnite with rapper Drake.
Sponsorships
You’ve hit it big as a game streamer when you receive big paychecks on a monthly or yearly basis.
It can also be a one-off deal, but sponsorships usually involve life-changing amounts, so it’s not surprising streamers strive to land sponsors.
Twitch.TV gives its streamers plenty of monetization options, but only once you’ve reached a certain threshold.
It’s important to note that streamers like Ninja took a decade of consistent streaming to reach his $500k/month income level, so if you’re starting out and thinking you’d be earning thousands of dollars overnight, now is the time to let reality sink in.
However, if you are serious about a career in livestreaming, Twitch.TV has everything you need to succeed.
12 Ways You Can Make Money on Twitch
Below are 12 ways people are making a living on Twitch.TV to give you some ideas on how you could start and what kind of niches are available on the site…
1. Live video game
Twitch.TV is first and foremost the home of eSports, so expect the competition among gamers are always on an all-time-high.
The best thing about Twitch is that anyone can do it. Take Mackenseize as an example – she’s been diagnosed with a seizure disorder as a teen.
Now, even if the 25-year-old Hearthstone streamer seizes every once in a while during a stream, her 37,000+ followers continue to support her with every game she explores.
2. Speedrun
Speedrunning is the same as livestreaming any game, except that the goal of “speedrunners” is to complete an entire level or a whole game as fast as possible.
TheMexicanRunner, for example, is a hardcore speedrunner for classic games and has made a huge following with his NESMania quest, wherein he tries to finish at record-breaking times every officially-licensed game from original Nintendo Entertainment System.
Twitch.TV also hosts people with a skill in broadcasting.
John of TotalBiscuit gives live commentary of interactive gameplay and has over half a million followers.
Some talk show hosts on Twitch.TV do not focus on the gaming world.
h3h3Productions, for example, is an Israeli-American comedy channel produced by husband and wife team Ethan and Hila Klein.
With about 555,000 followers, H3’s main content is a mix of commentaries, sketches, satires and reaction videos about internet culture, YouTube policies, viral trends, and online personalities.
The duo even interviews YouTubers and celebrities.
4. Play at Casinos
If you’re not a fan of video games, but prefer playing poker and other casino games, there’s a special place for you on Twitch.TV.
The casino category is filled with Russia-based streamers like rublpro and fartazop and only a handful of English channels like CasinoDaddy (although these 3 brothers hail from Sweden), so there’s always space for more people here.
Same goes for the Poker Twitch streamers.
Make sure to check out runitup or PokerStars (yup, the Stars Group-owned online poker cardroom) if you’re interested in poker broadcasting as a career.
5. Radio-style stream
It’s not as famous as gaming, but the Twitch Music category is a goldmine for anyone looking to create content or just chill.
Aside from taking advantage of the Twitch Music Library, which houses pre-cleared music for Twitch broadcasters to use live, you can also discover other streamers like NoCopyrightSounds who are focused on providing non-stop music to the Twitch community.
Of course, if you have the resources, you can always copy the success of legit radio-style streaming channels of Monstercat, Spinning Records, and Relax Beats, among many others.
6. Perform Music
When the Music category was first launched in 2016, Steve Aoki, T-Pain, Deadmau5 and other EDM artists supported Twitch and the users embraced them wholeheartedly.
Today, big-named artists like Kanye continue to use the platform as a way to promote their music, increase followers, or simply chill with the Twitch community.
7. Play Magic: The Gathering
The cool thing about livestreaming is that even physical games like Magic: The Gathering can be broadcasted from your home.
And if you’ve been a master-gamer of Magic since it was launched in the early 90s, you can still bring out your card collections and revive the glory of competing against other Magic fans.
Interested in joining Twitch.TV and earn money from your Magic: The Gathering skills, but don’t know where to start?
Check out the channels of LSV, Caleb Durward (CalebD), Kenji (Numot the Nummy), Bob Ristau, Todd Stevens and see how you can stream your own MTG plays and actually make money.
8. Live IRL
Twitch opened the IRL category to a ton of criticisms, but once the initial shock has passed, many existing Twitch streamers welcomed the idea and use it themselves as downtime, non-game streaming.
With the IRL category, gamers can now eat, sing, and do other activities without being reprimanded for doing so at their respective game-specific category.
IRL streams can be anything under the sun. Here are multiple examples that actually happened on Twitch IRL streams:
KitBoga calls IRS, tax, virus scammers and plays along for hours. He uses a voice changer to get into full characters like old-lady Edna and fools scammers for as long as possible.Someone doing math homeworkA guy assembled an Ikea closetSomeone decorating a Christmas treeArchitect designing a houseFully-clothed Andy Milonakis streaming from inside a running showerSomeone staring at a wall (this kid made $100 for this activity)Guy making balloon animals for over an hourAn American reading books in FrenchBounty hunters who live-stream while workingSomeone who made two Google homes talk to each other for hoursA garbage collector streaming his job on a regular dayJapanese man going to his local barber, eating out, and brining his viewers to interesting parts of his cityAn Arby’s employee who streams his entire shift live
9. Social Eat
Social Eating was one of the “Creative” sub-categories Twitch launched in mid-2016 in its goal of expanding from just the number one gaming streaming site to an all-around streaming site.
Simply put, streamers get to eat live and “share their meals with the community.”
Inspired by South Korea’s “muk-bang” where social eating is super-popular, Twitch welcomes this very specific group of streamers to the site, but with their own set of rules.
Plus, if you’re planning to stream your meal preps and cooking, social eating seems like a natural progression your community can follow.
10. Go to Work
Majority of game streamers on Twitch have some sort of IT-related jobs (or skills).
There’s a huge demand for game development tutorials, so if you’ve got the patience, talent, communication skills and passion to teach programming, coding, web development, photo/video editing, robotics, or any other techy topics, you’re good to go.
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