“No Twitch Streamer Should Get Paid $5 An Hour”

guys i used to love twitter like i i really did i found it fascinating but lately streamer twitter has just it's it's gotten a little crazy and and we need we need to talk about the crazy just a little bit just a little bit before we do i'd like to thank the sponsor of today's video owned.tv for as you all know being the one-stop shop for all your stream aesthetic needs whether it's overlays alerts panels banners anything you need and as many of you know one of my favorite parts about it is that they are all modular so if you and all your friends pick up this alpha gaming design that you're looking at which we helped them make and i think it turned out pretty great none of you guys are gonna have the exact same overlay because you can all pick and choose the different pieces that you like about it so if you'd like to make a smart move like many from the community have done feel free to use the link in the description below to pick up your own overlay which by the way that link does help the channel so thank you and if you'd like 40 ah wait wait wait i think it's 50 yes i believe they they messaged me and they said why are you telling them it's 40 it's 50 i don't know which one it is either 40 or 50 off use code alpha at checkout twitch has gotten to a size now where it's experiencing some growing pains it's getting to a global scale it's reaching more people it's a new audience wants it to do certain things its current audience is upset at some of the changes it makes this is an inevitability this is what happens when a platform gets this large and in the process there are a lot of angry tweets so over the past six months or so i've been making notes on some very interesting takes some of them are very good some of them are very serious complaints about twitch some of them not so much so we're gonna talk about some of those and i'd like to address them from the perspective of business owners because that's what we are we're not twitch employees we're business owners i'm a business owner you are perhaps an aspiring business owner starting to stream on twitch it's important to see it that way let's talk about them that way and let's let's just try to be realistic and if you disagree with anything i say on any of these things that's fair you're allowed to do that comment down below let's keep it civil let's be adults but i'm going to share with you some of these takes that i've been writing down over the past six months that might not be the greatest takes i've seen and i'm not trying to sound condescending it's just 12 30 in the morning okay number one by the way these are all coming from real tweets some of these i tried to google and find later i couldn't but they all got at least enough engagement that they showed up on my timeline usually from people i didn't follow i just haven't been able to find a lot of them so uh these are very real i promise you you're just gonna have to trust me on it number one was a tweet i saw about two to three months ago someone saying that twitch needs to implement an intermediate tier between affiliate and partner that going from affiliate to partner is so difficult and so few people make it that they need to give you a medium stepping stone on the way there i fully understand the frustration that a lot of people have trying to grow their stream especially on a platform that does so little to foster growth we've been saying this for years there is no discoverability on this platform there's no browseability on this platform there is such a massive separation between the successful streamers and the not so successful streamers let's just say streamers who can't make this a career yet right only one percent of streamers actually average more than 15 viewers a stream it is a difficult platform to grow on and getting stuck in affiliate status can be really disenfranchising that being said if you are trying to grow a business which is what you're trying to do these statuses cannot be seen as accomplishments and trophies because that's not what they are these are labels on twitch's end that determine what feature set they can afford to give to you for example they have the affiliate status that all it does is show that you are dedicated to streaming so they can give you affiliate status turn on subs turn on bits the onboarding process of adding your information your tax information into a database that costs money not a lot of money which is why you only need three viewers the bar is set very low but they just need to weed out all the fake accounts that aren't actually doing anything and that's what affiliate status is doing it's saying are you a real streamer who streams semi-regularly and has a couple viewers cool affiliate however the couple extra features like partners get for example the big one being transcoding where your stream gets processed and turned into multiple resolutions and your viewers can decide which resolution to watch it in that costs twitch a lot of money and they need to make sure you are making them enough money to make it worth putting that on your account that kind of stuff that's all it is the the badge the status the email saying you made partnership that's that's all pomp and circumstance none of that is real and none of that changes your success as a streamer there are a bajillion partners with less than 10 viewers the status itself the accomplishment or the badge next to your name in the grand scheme of things means literally nothing what matters is the content you're making the growth that you're having the reach that you have finding new viewers reaching new heights in your creativity and how far you go in the process and none of that has anything to do with what your status is on twitch's end so don't confuse those statuses with your success as a streamer because those two things are completely disconnected they mean nothing and so putting an intermediate tier in between there would would do nothing but appease the streamers who are focused on the wrong things to begin with don't worry about the status keep streaming keep making content keep growing you do you number two is a big one and it's a legal one and it's one that devin nash has talked about eposvox has talked about a lot of streamers talk about and get upset about and because of those videos i get asked this question on twitter and on twitch almost every single stream and it is should you sign the affiliate program or is it predatory is it going to hurt you to be an affiliate by the way super important is it predatory and is it going to hurt you are two very different questions i disagree with a lot of the big names that have spoken about this i disagree with eposvox and i disagree with devin nash not that they don't have good points by the way just some context the affiliate contract that you sign says some weird stuff in it the two biggest things it talks about is that twitch owns your likeness as a brand and that it reserves the right 100 to decide what sponsorships can go on your stream saying you're not allowed to put your own sponsors on your stream right only they can put ads on your stream i want to make it clear right off the bat those are really weird things to be in twitch's affiliate contract like it is a bad contract and it reflects on twitch that they are going to make affiliates sign that now in the real world how is it enacted and what does it mean for you as a streamer is completely different let's talk about brand likeness what does that mean well really all it means is that twitch is allowed to make videos on twitter and youtube or wherever else they make videos and they're allowed to use your content freely without having to contact you and pay you and whatever and if you are a large streamer like uh you know ninja or shroud like both of those first names that came to my head they used to be mixer streamers or pokemane right and you were just to suddenly be in a twitch ad and you weren't notified those kind of streamers would generally be paid in the five to six figures to be put in an advertisement and that would be a really sketchy thing for twitch to do if you're an affiliate with five or fewer viewers your brand hasn't been built yet it might in the future but it doesn't pull any weight and its monetary value is nothing so when twitch puts your content in a tweet which by the way whenever they do they always put your username on it it helps you much more than you help them so realistically that doesn't hurt you in any way it's nothing but a positive until you actually grow your brand as for the advertising thing it's super weird but to me it feels like a preventative matter mostly just because i've never actually seen it used i've seen affiliates right and left having sponsors on their stream and not a single one has ever gotten in trouble for it it feels like twitch is saying well there could be this weird use case scenario where someone puts a sponsor for you know pornhub on their stream and we need to reserve the right to take that down so until twitch starts actually punishing affiliates for having their own sponsors i'm not super concerned about that one either if you're trying to build your stream and start a business sign the affiliate contract the revenue that you're gonna start generating just from being an affiliate being in this program is worth so much more than the little nuances that frankly i've never actually seen hurt anyone before it's different for each person make the call yourself don't let yourself get distracted by this when you should be focusing on making content number three is a big one that went semi-viral recently about twitch's back-end code and how you're now being scored on how brand-friendly you are this one to me felt like a lot of misunderstanding about how these platforms work on the back end and frankly i feel like 2020 has just made us quick to be angry at anything because we have nothing else to do with our time i'm going to enlighten you on something real quick every single entertainment platform or channel whether it be a tv channel whether it be a youtube channel or a twitch channel advertisers need to know which places match with their brand the best otherwise they're not going to sponsor anything this is something that was bound to happen as twitch gets larger because youtube does the exact same thing tv does the exact same thing if i'm a company and i have a super family-friendly brand i need to know what channels i can advertise my content on right if i'm a brand and i want to advertise maybe a family vacation or baby food or something like that and i i give it to twitch and they slap it on some racier content like maybe some political content or body painting or some something that's dropping an f-bomb every five seconds right i'm gonna see that and i'm gonna go oh yes i shouldn't advertise on twitch anymore they don't have any way for me to advertise to relevant audiences this isn't any way of hurting streamers from getting sponsorships that they otherwise would have this is a way of advancing twitch's back-end to be more cohesive with brands so they get more sponsorships now if you're going to complain about something with twitch and ads and sponsors complain about the fact that no streamers make money off of ads and how bad the ad experience is that's something to complain about the fact that my ad revenue on this youtube channel is anywhere from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a month but my ad revenue on twitch is like four hundred dollars is terrifying that's something you can be angry about however this score on the back end that is a very normal thing for large entertainment platforms and frankly all it does is it brings more sponsors to the channel so it's kind of a good thing number four is a question i've been asked since the very beginning of this channel and uh it still pops up almost every day and it's a combination a statement and question of do i really need a camera and then of course the follow-up on twitter or on in the twitch chat of no you don't need a camera this person doesn't have a camera look objectively person to person there is the occasional streamer who makes it without a camera so do you need a camera technically no however my problem with that question is why are you asking that question if the success rate on twitch is so incredibly low it is so difficult to break that 15 viewer ceiling if you are trying to make it in one of the most competitive industries in the world and you're sitting there saying i don't think i want to put a camera on my face which is kind of the bare minimum you might want to rethink why you want to be a content creator in the first place it's like saying i want to start a burger shop but i don't really want to know what burgers taste like it just doesn't matter that much to me sure technically you could hire someone who does know what burgers taste like to do it for you but the guy down the street who loves burgers is probably gonna be more successful than you especially when there's 20 000 people who love burgers and you're competing against them you're gonna have a hard time so again there are gonna be people who make it without cameras especially if you're incredibly creative and you have some other attribute that outweighs that right like for example something like code mika her entire stick requires not a camera being on her i know she still does camera streams but her main content doesn't require a camera because she replaced it with just an insane skill that she spent decades cultivating you can do that but if you say you want to do this and right from the very beginning you're trying to cut massive corners might not be the career for you and number five and this is another heart-to-heart business-to-business conversation here's another tweet that for the life of me i googled could not find but it was someone who had screenshotted an email from a company offering the person five dollars to stream their game for an hour and this person was outraged and offended that this company was offering him five dollars an hour to advertise his game the reason i said from business to business is it's important to understand that you're not an employee of that company if you're an employee of that company you're commissioned hourly to do something they need to pay you at least minimum wage you are a separate company they are contracting to advertise their product and what you deserve to be paid from that company is the amount of value that you bring that company and if you again stream for an average of five viewers and you're playing a game it's very unlikely that any of those people will actually buy the game and therefore your value that you provide to that company even though you played it even though you gave them exposure the value you provided that company is zero and if the value you provide to the company zero you don't deserve to be paid anything yet this is one of the reasons why i don't encourage people to go out and sign a bunch of sponsorship deals when they're small streamers because you don't provide a lot of value to companies yet focus on building that value focus on building your audience focus on building your value that you can provide other companies so that they will want to pay you for your exposure you really are getting into one of the most competitive industries in the world and that industry owes you nothing until you bring something to them first and i'm not saying this to make you feel bad about yourself i'm telling you this because the sooner you accept that the sooner you can start moving on what's important be a business focus on your business focus on your growth the rest will come with time so how many feelings did i hurt with this video i feel like tired harris shouldn't talk about these topics because tired harris has significantly less patience than good night's sleep harris maybe i'll leave videos in the future like this to shoot more in the middle of the day but did you find it helpful do you agree with things i said do you disagree with things i said leave me a comment down below i'd love to hear your feedback we're all adults here we can share opinions we can learn from each other but i do hope you found it interesting and i do hope you found it helpful and as always happy streaming so wait so either so i'm the miss gift waiting room huh you dude do not go up what you went up and showed them you never go up dude it shows it was on the same but you weren't showing nick's percentage oh my god

Channel: Senpai Gaming

Views: 136,074

Keywords: Alpha Gaming, Stream Doctor, OBS, Tips, Streaming, Harris Heller, Alpha, Gaming, Live, Overlay, Design, Stream, Twitch, Doctor, How, To, How To, Help, Mixer, Youtube, Broadcast, Alerts, Streamlabs, youtuber, growth, stream, streamelements, harris, heller, money, monetize, income, full-time, full time, career, beginner, beginners, setup, widget, graphics, audio, review, camera, mic, pc, lights, lighting, webcam, elgato, starting, new, algorithm, learning, start, make, videos, first, gear, lens, affiliate, partner, revenue, brand safety score

Id: nCcxlMmF6uo

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021