Smart gamers use the largest streaming platform with massive traffic collaboratively.
Playing computer games is not only for fun, creating cognitive reserves, and brain development but also for making money. Some people make a living just by playing games.
These smart people don't have to do the hard work of designing, programming, and selling but just do the playing. Ironically, some professional game players earn more money than game developers.
Gaming platforms make earning money from playing games more accessible. Streaming is one of the platform functions.
If you are into online computer games, you most likely know about Twitch. It is currently the largest streaming platform globally. And it is growing rapidly.
Twitch is undoubtedly the leader in the market as pointed out by Streamlabs. Two main competitors of Twitch are YouTube and Facebook Gaming Lives. While Twitch has 10.5 million channels, YouTube has 912,880, and Facebook has only 267,845 channels.
Currently, Amazon owns Twitch. It was introduced in June 2011 by Justin TV. Amazon acquired Twitch in a $970 million cash deal in 2014.
Twitch is a live streaming platform focused on video game streaming. Sometimes people confuse Twitch with normal video gaming channels such as YouTube. The key difference is that you can watch videos on those platforms, but you can manage real-time streamed content on Twitch. So, the main difference is lasting content versus streamed content.
There are many tools to help gamers to use the Twitch platform more effectively. The most commonly used tools are Sound Alerts, Twitch Tracker, Tipeeestream, Twitch Emotes, SullyGnome, TeeBoard, Virtual Audio Cable (VAC), Virtual Goods LiveExchange, MooBot, and InfoWriter. You can get Sponsor Banners from Steamlabs as explained in this YouTube video.
Why is Twitch so important to gamers from a financial perspective? Twitch helps aspiring gamers to become professional winners who earn income by playing.
There are several ways you can make money using Twitch. The most common ones are donations, brand sponsorship, merchandising, subscriptions, ad revenues, game sales, and affiliate marketing.
To be able to make good money on Twitch, you need a large number of followers and millions of channel views. You also need to understand the fan management and monetising process.
You can see the top 30 Twitch influencers from the Top Twitch Streamers page of Influencer Marketing Hub.
Professional gamers have a massive number of followers and channels views. For example, one of the professional gamers, Shroud, has 9 million followers and 489 million channel views.
Professional gamers usually use subscription services like Patreon and Substack using their mailing list consisting of their fans. Patreon allows streamers to build communities with tiered support levels. Gamers can make special offers to contributors. In marketing terms, this is called a smart upsell.
Professional gamers can integrate Twitch with Patreon using tools like Integromat. This tool can automate manual processes. It can connect apps, transfer and transform data.
Web traffic is very important for Twitch. According to Statista, the United States receives the highest desktop traffic for Twitch.
You can see Twitch stats from this website https://twitchtracker.com
Twitch is an excellent platform for creators to grow their audience and their popularity. The platform allows the creator to engage with their audience through stream chat directly. Twitch is open to everyone. It's not limited to just professional gamers. Anyone can make an account and start streaming whatever game they want.
Consumers can follow twitch creators (streamers) for free, but they can also subscribe to a creator via a monthly subscription which offers them additional benefits.
Twitch is commonly used to broadcast e-sports events for games such as Call of Duty, Counterstrike, League of Legends, Rocket League, and many more. You can find the most-watched games on Twitch from the Twitch Tracker site.
Some of the benefits are free viewing, access to locked channel emotes, access to chat during the subscriber-only mode, access to exclusive content, and double channel points.
You can acquire channel points by watching, subscribing, following, partaking in a raid of another channel, and betting points. The term raid is important to understand. When a creator is done with their stream, they will select to host another streaming and move all their current viewers over the said streamer.
Another important concept is called Channel Points. According to Twitch help:
Channel Points is a customizable points program that lets streamers reward members of their community with perks, including a taste of benefits typically reserved for subscribers. It's available to all partners and affiliates. Channel Points comes with built-in, automated rewards that streamers can customize. Streamers can also create custom rewards that they fulfil on their own, such as "choose the next channel I host", "set my background music", or "make me dance on stream".
Twitch explains that, for viewers, Channel Points are a way to be recognized for all the ways they're already supporting the community, from watching a channel to being part of a raid. The points they earn are specific to the channel, and the points accumulate automatically when they're logged in and watch. The more support they give, the more they'll earn.
From my experience, Channel Points are great ways to get the community involved. We can use them to unlock emotes, send messages in sub-only mode, modify emotes, send highlighted messages, get signatures on our profile, and experiencing other little things set by the creator.
If you live in Los Angeles and are a game enthusiast, you are not alone. Twitch users created a community in Los Angeles. This group consists of partners, affiliates, fans of streaming, rallying up for gaming events and hangouts.
Gaming is fun, but Twitch makes it more enjoyable. And Twitch communities add more fun. Gamers are more vital as a group. They can link up, share tips, and enjoy the ride together.
In addition to increasing the chance of earning money by playing, you can also hang out and chat with all the members between events by joining Los Angeles Discord Server.
Thank you for reading my perspectives.
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