Opinion

Make money by livestreaming

Never had it crossed my mind that a person could earn money simply by entertaining others on screen. Turning your passion into a profit is now a popular way to rise into fame. In the past few months, I’ve heard many stories about a platform known as Twitch. The first time I heard of Twitch,…
<a href="https://highschool.latimes.com/author/jeanetteh26/" target="_self">Jeanette Hernandez</a>

Jeanette Hernandez

March 7, 2018

Never had it crossed my mind that a person could earn money simply by entertaining others on screen. Turning your passion into a profit is now a popular way to rise into fame. In the past few months, I’ve heard many stories about a platform known as Twitch. The first time I heard of Twitch, I was perplexed because I knew a person could livestream video gaming or conferences, but I never knew earning money via livestreaming was a possibility. Therefore, I know it’s an important subject to speak about.

Twitch was founded in June 2011 by Justin Kan. The app has over 100 million unique monthly users, and daily, there are approximately 15 million active users, as well as 2.2 million monthly broadcasters. 34 percent of Twitch viewership is mobile and the amount of gaming content that has been live streamed on Twitch totals to 241 billion minutes. These numbers are off the chart and it doesn’t stop there.

There are 25,000 Twitch partner channels, and Amazon recently bought Twitch for $970 million.  So, how much time does a user spend on Twitch daily for it to be worth that much? The statistics show that the average amount of time a user spends on twitch is 106 minutes a day.

Without the dedicated fans who pay a subscription of just $4.99 per month or the donations of the many loyal followers, Twitch wouldn’t exist. On the other hand, if you want to take a shot at joining the Twitch family of posters, you’ll need to be able to catch your viewers’ attention simply with the sound of your voice.

According to statistics, if you have these items as a streamer you will succeed on Twitch: a good computer, streaming software, a microphone and a camera, a decent background on utilizing consoles, and of course, a Twitch account.

In addition, building an audience is very important. You must find your niche, be consistent, make some friends, be interactive and don’t stress about your gear (at first). But lastly, and most importantly, just be patient and have fun!