Making money on Twitch in 2023 involves several strategies. Twitch primarily offers revenue opportunities through advertising, subscriptions, donations, and sponsorships.
Twitch, the world’s premier streaming platform, garners an annual viewership of over 100 billion minutes, primarily driven by content featuring creators engaging in video gameplay.
This post will serve as a guide that will help you through some of the proven methods to easily make money on Twitch in 2023.
Understanding Twitch Partner and Twitch Affiliate
Many Twitch users aspire to transform their initial dream of earning a full-time income by streaming their favorite games into a reality as they learn how to monetize their Twitch activities.
Although attaining this objective may pose challenges for the majority of Twitch users, there are several steps you can implement to boost your likelihood of achieving success.
Twitch partners and Twitch affiliates allow its streamers to generate income from the platform through subscriptions, Twitch ads, and bits.
Becoming a Twitch affiliate is comparatively simpler than achieving Twitch partner status, yet Twitch partners enjoy a broader range of benefits. Here is the difference that sets both of them apart:
- Twitch covers payout fees for partners. Affiliates must cover these fees themselves.
- Partners can create as many as 60 unlockable sub-emotes, while Affiliates are limited to just 5.
- Partners have access to custom cheermotes for Twitch bits.
- Twitch retains VODs for affiliates for a maximum of 14 days, whereas partners benefit from extended VOD storage lasting up to 60 days.
- Twitch partners enjoy unrestricted access to transcoding options, while affiliates are provided with transcoding opportunities as availability depends on viewers’ devices and locations during live streams.
- Partners can increase their stream delay by up to 15 minutes.
- Twitch affiliates cannot create stream teams.
What are the requirements to Make Money on Twitch?
The number of followers required to generate income on Twitch varies based on your monetization methods.
To make money on Twitch, you must first become an affiliate. To do this, you must meet the following requirements:
- Certain advertisers need a minimum of 1,000 Twitch followers before they contemplate partnering with your channel.
- Have an average of three concurrent viewers over the past 30 days. Stream for at least 500 minutes in the past 30 days.
- Stream on at least seven different days in the past 30 days.
- Once you are an affiliate, you can earn money through subscriptions, bits, and advertising.
How to Make Money on Twitch
The amount of money you can make on Twitch depends on many factors, including the size of your audience, the type of content you stream, and your engagement level with your viewers.
However, making a decent living as a Twitch streamer is possible. According to a recent survey, the average Twitch streamer earns $300 monthly.
Twitch Subscriptions
Twitch viewers have two options: They can freely follow your channel to receive live notifications or choose to support you by subscribing to your channel.
Subscriptions are one of the most prevalent methods for streamers to generate income on Twitch.
Three subscription tiers are available: Tier 1 for $4.99, Tier 2 for $9.99, and Tier 3 for $24.99.
Since Amazon is Twitch’s parent company, Amazon Prime subscribers are entitled to one complimentary Twitch monthly subscription.
Viewers can achieve savings by opting for extended subscription periods. Subscribing for 3 months offers a 10% discount, while a 6-month subscription comes with a 15% discount on Twitch, where a 50/50 share of subscription revenue and the minimum payout threshold is set at $50.
It implies that you need to accumulate 20 Tier 1 subscriptions to qualify for a payout from the platform.
Subscription Tier For Subscribers
Irrespective of their chosen subscription tier, all subscribers enjoy the following benefits:
- Sub badges. These badges evolve into distinct loyalty badges when subscribers continuously maintain their subscriptions for 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years.
- Ad-free viewing.
- Subscriber-only streams.
- Access to sub-only chat mode.
- Sub-only emotes.
Sub emotes are customized, requiring Twitch creators to craft them independently or enlist the services of graphic designers for their creation.
Viewers can only access sub-emotes from creators they are subscribed to, but they can utilize these sub-emotes in all Twitch livestreams.
Tier 2 and 3 subscriptions feature upgraded sub badges and exclusive sub emotes.
Subscribers at Tier 2 and 3 also have the option to customize emotes by flipping them horizontally or adding sunglasses to them.
Sub goals assist both you and your audience monitor the number of new subscriptions you accumulate. You can showcase the progress in both the chat and on the screen.
Certain creators incorporate specific rewards for each subscriber milestone, like hosting a karaoke stream upon reaching 100 subs, engaging in a social media challenge at 200 reserves, or revealing their face at 500 subs for those who don’t use a camera, and more.
Twitch alerts are on-screen animations that appear when you gain a new follower, receive a subscription, or receive bits, which can be enabled using tools such as Streamlabs.
Earn ad Revenue
Twitch grapples with maintaining profitability with a revenue-sharing approach that changes quite a bit in the face of competition from other streaming platforms.
That includes the amount of money streamers can make from ads.
Here are the current policies regarding earnings from ads on Twitch. To earn revenue from ads, you must be a Twitch affiliate or partner who generates revenue through ads.
You’ll earn 30% of ad revenue for every ad view your content receives.
However, if you access the Ads Manager dashboard and configure your settings to run 3 minutes or more of ads every hour during your stream, you’ll receive a 55% share of the revenue.
Modify the settings until the “Your Ad Density” displays “3 minutes/hour” or greater.
Certain partners have the potential to increase their ad revenue via the Ads Incentive Program.
The exact amount of the offers you receive depends on the size of your Twitch audience, which is influenced by factors such as your recent streams, your geographical location, and the number of hours you’ve streamed recently.
Affiliate Marketing
You can start making money from Twitch affiliate marketing if you have a larger audience than your subscribers. Using your live streams to promote a particular product or service and having a percentage commission as a creator.
Endeavor to participate in affiliate programs that align with your audience and Twitch’s viewership, as this can enhance your potential earnings from affiliate marketing.
Brand Sponsorships
When you explore ways to earn income on Twitch, sponsorships are frequently highlighted, and this is with good reason.
Paid brand sponsorships stand out as one of the most effective means to secure larger payouts from your streaming endeavors.
It works like this: When you negotiate a deal with a brand, they compensate you with a predetermined, one-time lump sum in return for your endorsement or use of their product during your streams.
A prominent illustration of this is Ninja, a Twitch streamer who reportedly received a $1 million payment from Electronic Arts (EA) to stream Apex Legends and promote it through tweets during its initial launch.
Sponsors will also take into account your following on other platforms.
Fortunately, another key factor determining your likelihood of getting sponsored is how well you can sell yourself.
It means you can get sponsored as soon as you can prove your worth to a potential sponsor, a feat even the smallest streamers can accomplish.
Incorporate a PDF media kit in your initial message to a prospective sponsor to bolster your negotiation approach.
This kit should include:
- Include links to all the social media accounts where you are active.
- Analytics for your Twitch channel encompass metrics such as your follower count and the viewership per stream.
- An overview of your streaming schedule.
- Please provide a breakdown of your channel demographics to demonstrate the alignment of your audience with their product.
Remember that a media kit isn’t just a resume. Enhance it with images, graphics, and engaging fonts to make it visually compelling.
Sell Merchandise
One strategy worth mastering in monetizing your Twitch channel is selling branded merchandise, including t-shirts, hoodies, hats, mugs, and more.
This is another strategy anyone can employ, regardless of their number of followers or concurrent views.
For smaller creators, the most straightforward way to sell merchandise is by utilizing a print-on-demand service offering drop shipping.
You upload your designs and select the products you wish to offer for sale. Payment is only required when customers place orders.
Each product is assigned a price, and your profit is generated by charging your customers more than the cost incurred through your selected print-on-demand service.
The service handles all aspects, including order fulfillment and returns processing. Your responsibility is to establish and oversee an online store for selling your products.
Sellfy, Printful, and Printify are great examples of this type of service.
Accept Donations During Stream
You can also establish donation options through a third-party application like Streamlabs or PayPal.me.
After configuring your donation link, you can include a Donate button in the About section of your Twitch page.
Utilizing an application like Streamlabs enables you to configure Twitch alerts, which initiate an on-screen animation whenever someone donates to your stream.
Streamlabs, in particular, provides the option to receive donations via credit card.
It reduces the fees you must pay per donation, just as you do with Twitch’s native donation system, and PayPal takes much larger cuts.
In any case, similar to bits, these on-screen alerts motivate viewers to consider making a donation.
Their name displays and audio of their custom message read by a computer-generated voice plays.
Accept Bits During Live Streams.
Bits serve as Twitch’s proprietary donation system, enabling viewers to contribute to their favorite streamers during live broadcasts.
Bit messages stand out in chat and can also trigger Twitch alerts, which motivates viewers to participate more actively.
Streamers receive $0.01 per bit.
Viewers can acquire bits in various packages, ranging from 100 bits for $1.40 to 25,000 bits for $308.
Upload Clips to Third-party Video Platforms
Even if you’re not prepared to generate exclusive content for social media platforms, you can still upload clips from the previous clips of your streams from Twitch.
You can connect all your social media platforms to your Twitch, making it easy to accomplish this. You can use a tool like StreamLadder to convert clips into downloadable format.
Read here: How Do I Upload Videos to YouTube?
Create or Join a Stream Team.
If your partners have a larger following than you, it will allow you to reach a broader audience, ultimately leading to increased revenue for you.
Stream teams can only be formed by Twitch partners. You must explore the web or consult databases like Sully Gnome to join one. Regrettably, Twitch lacks a “looking for” forum or an official directory of stream teams.
Join an Esports Team
Are you good at any of the competitive games you play? Like really good?
Elevate your Twitch monetization strategy by joining an esports team and participating in tournaments.
Esports refers to competitive gaming with a strong focus on spectatorship. Similar to traditional sports, esports encompasses leagues, organizations, and teams.
By joining this ecosystem or group, you can secure a base salary ranging from $50 to $75,000 and prize many when you win tournaments.
Prize money depends on tournaments, your team, and your game.
Dota 2 is the most lucrative game, with earnings exceeding $310 million from more than 1,700 tournaments.
Recommended for you: Tips for Growing Your Twitch Channel and Increasing Earnings
With this comprehensive guide, you will know the easy ways to make money on Twitch and incorporate every method listed in this article to achieve your desired result.
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