Twitch is a great platform where you can make money. The great thing is the feature allows streamers to play online games at least 40-hours weekly. It means you can become a full-time gamer.
Most successful Twitch streamers make their living via a combination of various payment methods such as donations, influencer marketing, paid subscriptions, and Bits. And that’s the reason you see more ads, sponsorship, and affiliate sales on Twitch influencer’s channels.
However, only a few people will insert their video ads into streams – like what you find on YouTube videos. But most will supplement their earnings through professional gaming – which involves sponsorship and prize money.
How you will make money on Twitch
Once you establish yourself on this platform, there are various ways to make money. If you’re having trouble establishing authority, you may want to branch out to other platforms in order to market your Twitch channel. In fact, many live streamers buy YouTube views for content that markets (and links to) their Twitch profile. As for making money, the following are a few methods.
Twitch Affiliates & Partners
It is beneficial to establish yourself in Twitch. Some of the things you can do include buying Twitch followers, likes, and other services. But only from reliable sources.
That said, to make money via affiliates and partners, you have to join two programs that will help with monetization.
- Twitch Affiliates
On the lower side, you can join Twitch Affiliate. However, you have to meet the criteria before getting a chance to join the program. These include:
- You must have streamed a minimum of eight hours in less than 30 days
- Streamed at least seven days within the period of 30 days
- For each stream, you must have received at least three viewers.
- Grow your viewers’ audience to over 50 followers
Once your stream channel meets these criteria, you will automatically become an affiliate.
However, for an Affiliate application, you have to provide Amazon with tax details and how you want to receive money from Twitch – like a PayPal account.
After becoming an affiliate, these are the benefits:
- People will pay you Bits
- You will earn more money via subscriptions
- You can earn selling games and other in-game items
- According to Twitch, it claims that as an Affiliate, you can receive advertising money in the future, which becomes a great way to make money.
- Twitch Partners
The other way you can make money via Twitch is through the Twitch Partner program. However, you must be a top performer to earn through this program. These could be the top video game tournaments, teams, leagues, personalities, and game broadcasters.
Unlike affiliate programs, this program is exclusive. They will invite you without applying to become a partner.
However, Twitch has no published criteria to choose people or partners to join the program. They claim that to evaluate a potential partner for the program, they consider the following:
- Content
As a partner, you are expected to produce the best content for your audience. That can bring more viewers to the channel, retain their viewing, engage them and drive revenue. The company expects to see your audience continue to grow and your skills improve.
- Average Concurrent Viewership
When more people watch you, it means you have garnered an audience and become more popular. The company will look at how you behave and interact with your community.
In addition, Twitch will also look at your following on other social platforms, making a multi-platform influencer find success with Twitch.
- Stream Frequency & Schedule
Twitch will prefer the partners to broadcast more than three times a week. It will focus on these broadcasters having large viewership and have built an active sub-community. Such is referred to as influencers. And in this, they will not consider followers’ numbers.
When accepted into this program, you can reap numerous benefits and be able to:
- Create a customized subscriber-only badge
- Generate additional income through monthly subscriptions
- Lock the chat to subscribers-only
- Create custom subscriber-only to allow your subscribers to use site-wide
- Exclude your subscribers from experiencing Slow Mode
- Restrict access to video quality
- Restrict access to broadcast archives
Twitch Subscriptions
The other way to make money via Twitch is via subscriptions. The good thing about Twitch subscriptions is to provide you with recurring income.
When streamer adds their monthly subscriptions to their channel, the money collected is split 50/50 with Twitch.
However, if you are a powerful influencer, you can negotiate for a better deal. Twitch will allow you to earn more than 50% to keep you on Twitch.
If you are an Affiliate or a Partner, you can change your subscriptions. And the moment you have signed up as an Affiliate or Partner, a subscription button will appear automatically on your channel.
Video Ads
When you are accepted as Twitch Partner, the program allows you to run ads. That’s the advantage of Twitch because it offers you high flexibility.
The best thing is to choose how often you want the ads to run and their length. The revenue you get through such adverts, you will share with Twitch. This means, the more they will receive, the more money you make.
Twitch will pay you a flat-rate CPM which varies on the time of the year. Remember that gaming companies will likely pay more for their ads, particularly during the holiday. Another time they can pay more is when launching a significant product.
However, some streamers will give an incentive to subscribers by offering them ad-free viewing. It will work fine, but you need to receive sufficient subscribers to compensate for the loss.
Donations
The other way to make money is through donations. You can get them directly via Twitch or a third-party website like Patreon.
Besides Bite, Twitch will not directly support donations. You have to set up a specific link via PayPal.
However, to request donations from other sites like Patreon, you’ll create a profile with them. Then you can link the profile to Twitch or other social media accounts.
Affiliate Links
Joining affiliate programs can help you make money. However, it isn’t connected to the Twitch Affiliate program. You can sign up with other affiliate networks and make money through them.
Remember that Twitch is a product of Amazon, which has the best affiliate program across the world. You can now showcase Amazon products via a widget on your page and make money when followers buy those products.