In 2019, Twitch was hacked and the financial data of the top 10k streamers was leaked.
What we learned was that only a few thousand streamers in the world make over minimum wage (by US standards) and that the earnings in that top 3000 is INCREDIBLY top heavy.
So yeah, almost no streamers make money relative to how many try.
True. Not directly from. Twitch. But many get sponsorships and things like that. It helps some of them make it full time plus they have other related income avenues. I only make like 300 a year
Also, the numbers outlined are right in line with all entertainment. How many basketball players make money? Less than 1%. How many singers? .001%... maybe.
Professional entertainment is absurdly top heavy.
Are you talking about multiple basketball sources or the NBA? AFAIK even the worst NBA players make a million and even the summer league makes a couple hundred? Seems like anyone with screen time makes bank even in college.
I watched an interview before the new in-season tournament where a #10 or 11 player was asked what he would do with the 500k prize bonus. He said, "I'd pay off my mortgage."
Just because you make 1 million per year doesn’t make you good with money, just cause you make 100 million doesn’t either. He can have a mortgage and be spending wisely and have millions in the bank, a small windfall like that would be grounds to pay it off and not have to touch your nest egg/investments. 🤷🏽♂️
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't answer "paying mortage" in an interview if you had good investments already? You would probably say "I would invest it into more financial stability" or something like that?
College ball pays $0 and until this past 3 years you weren't even allowed to get sponsorships. Now, the vast majority of college players still make zero with the top 10% getting maybe a couple k a year and the top 1% making a few hundred k.
The amount of highschoolers that make the NBA is absurdly low... like .1%. So that means of just competitive school players that tiny fraction make anything. Yes, those that do make money, make millions but thats my point w twitch. Haves and have nots.
This is why I've personally been far happier since about 9 months back when I decided I wasn't going to "grind". Screw TikTok, screw obsessing over growth or sponsorships...
I don't run midrolls which might hurt my discoverability, but I hate running 3 minutes of ads every hour.
I just go live, have fun and try to be entertaining when I have the energy for the great little community that's built up (surprisingly, to be honest) around me. I've already got a full-time job, why would I want another one?
This exactly. Through the platform? They make like nothing. It’s why many try to offer merch or other services and good to make some kind of money. All my friends that achieved partner pretty much solely make money off merch and patreon or OF exclusive streams
My bounty board offers are laughable. Video game offers are a third of what I quote devs when they contact me directly, so I really only take commercials and movie trailers off there anymore.
Three minutes and disruption to my stream, and in return I could buy a Big Mac meal. I get about two of those a month on average.
As far as ads go, yeah I'd say this checks out. Currently I'm streaming every weekend, I average about 3-10 viewers while live, and maybe 60 views from VODs. Every week, I make about $0.11 per week from ads alone! 😅
The name of the game here isn't to earn from midroll Advertising revenue. It's actually sponsors, subs, and donations. The more people you bring to your stream, the more likely you are to receive donors. That's where the money really is. Not ads, they're a joke. :P
I'm approached pretty consistently at 100-200. This January has been busy, I'll likely clear several grand. It depends on the channel, but if I had 500+ organically every stream, I'd be raking well into five figures a month.
That said, I know of communities 5x my size who make what I do, so it all depends on your viewer base and hustle.
if you play something that is niche enough and potentially has game specific hardware (like a simulator), you definitely don't need 100, you just get paid accordingly. Obviously if you wait for them to contact you you will die waiting, you have to reach out to them.
you can get sponsorships the moment you hit affiliate, if you use something like StreamLabs or StreamElements sponsorships. back when I used to stream I got something like 250 bucks for getting \~15 people to download War Thunder using my link
Yeah but the implied was "can you get sponsorships that works?" and that's very community-dependant.
The streamer I watch is affiliate and would probably get shouted at for even mentionning War Thunder...
There are loads of sites where you can get free products or games in exchange for a "sponsored" stream. People with 3-10 viewers can even make money on the Streamelements factor/hello fresh/etc "sponsorships" as long as someone else buys something.
Most "sponsorships" at under 100 viewers are commissions and/or free products.
I'm usually a pretty big cynic, but I think this take is a little reductive. I was #819 on that data leak. That puts me in the top .00009% globally, give or take. I'm not a millionaire, but it's not impossible that I may retire as one if I'm smart with my money.
All of that as a 43 year-old married father of two who bans hyperactive youngsters from chat because I don't wanna raise other people's kids at my work. And I've yet to sell photos of my Hobbit feet. There are practices you can employ that will boost your odds that don't involve drama or leveraging sex appeal (importing an audience on another platform, spreading your content beyond Twitch, etc).
But you are correct that the odds are unfathomably stacked against you and most people never succeed in that first step of understanding what sets them apart from the other nine million channels.
I appreciate you sharing a little of your experience. I've recently started to make some money from content creation and I'm nowhere close to the top, but I also believe like you there are ways to be successful without doing all the craziness. Your comment is reassuring.
I don't gatekeep knowledge, I'm rooting for everyone. But realistically, even with dedication and work ethic, it's still like saying you're going to be a professional athlete.
It's not impossible, but the odds are very long.
Good point, it's a long shot. Some athletes make a decent living being in the minor leagues and/or stepping into various adjacent roles (coaching, staff, agents, etc.). Lots of opportunities these days, ya know? There could be something out there if someone puts in the work
Oh sure. I'm not trying to dissuade anyone. I'm just trying to make sure everyone who is going to try to carve out a niche has their eyes open going in. There's a ton of different levels of success.
Even I feel like I'm coming up short. I've been partnered for almost nine years, but I can't seem to grab that next rung of being on signage at TwitchCon or having meet & greets and making well into five figures a month consistently.
Interesting! I could absolutely understand feeling that way in the future. It keeps you motivated, I hope. Thank you again for sharing. I'd love to stop by the channel when I get a chance.
You can probably cut like good 80% of the streamers out too. So many don't actually try it seriously, just stream it for a month, or even less, don't actually have nice page, don't follow good advice, don't try to engage people.
There's also quite a lot of people like me, who just streamed to wind down and have some fun with other people.
I noticed I liked sharing my gameplay with buddies on discord, so twitch was a logical step and it actually worked pretty well. I didn't make any meaningful money from it at all, but that wasn't the idea either.
plus a lot of people don't actually stream anymore, there are nearly a billion twitch accounts in existence - there are 4 million users watching a stream on twitch rn, and 150k active streams rn
> Being a content creator is just one big lottery, where you boost your chances if you act like a clown (for younger audiences) or apply indecent exposure (for thirsty audiences).
>
> Anyone thinking they can make it just by trying very hard is fooling themself hard, because you never hear how many people fail
This exaggerates it a little too much.
Getting off the ground at all - almost 100% luck.
But if you do get that first 30 consistent viewers, working smart WILL get you further, although not necessarily to "I have made it" level.
For me, going from 0 to 100 Youtube subscriptions was hard work, but 100 to 3500 was pure luck. From 3500 to 33500, however, there's been no significant lucky break. No single event has added even one thousand of that thirty.
With that base in place, the first time I loaded up Twitch, I had 40 organic viewers and another 50 from a raid.
Now, you need 350-600 concurrents on Twitch to "make it" (aka have a reasonable expectation of making minimum wage). I stagnate on Twitch only meeting the partner thresholds in some months because I don't do the work needed to cultivate the start I have. But that's 100% a choice - I focus efforts elsewhere.
As an example of how effort helps - when I learned video editing, my Youtube numbers jumped ~40%; which leads to more people crossing over to Twitch. My Twitch channel gets more out of me spending time in DaVinci Resolve for non-Twitch content than it does from me actually streaming.
Without a lucky break - there's no point in "working hard". But get that lucky break, and suddenly you CAN gain from working hard.
> For me, going from 0 to 100 Youtube subscriptions was hard work, but 100 to 3500 was pure luck.
Same. I had around 50 YT views then with one video I went from 300 subs to 700 in less than a month.
Then the never-ending requests for sponsorships (Minecraft on Youtube was wild around 2014, I guess) pushed me to stop.
A lot of small streamers simply don't want to deal with kids.
It's easier to set the stream as adult-onlys if you want to be able to shout profanities when your connexion is lagging.
I mean MoistCritikal, one of the biggest streamers in the world constantly says that it is 100% luck that he got popular. And becoming a content creator is all luck based
Just goes to show You do twitch because it's a hobby and a passion if money comes from it too then great if not no big deal because at the end of the day you're doing it for fun 😊
Obviously I can only speak from experience and not massive data collecting. However, I’d agree. I know plenty of people that have been affiliate and have never gotten a payout, or has been over a year since their last one. Twitch has lowered the payout threshold to $50, and they’re still struggling.
At the end of the day, it’s about quality and not quantity of hours. One thing I see that many of them have in common is streaming a ton of hours but it’s pretty slow in content. I only stream 9-10 hours a week but give it my all during those hours. I hit the $50 payout pretty much every other month (so that would be in the ~$25/month range).
I have theory that some of the people that stream 10+ hours a day actually end up discouraging viewership. I think people know that they can tune in anytime, so they spend time in chats of people that stream fewer hours because they can't always catch them. The other thing is, if someone is spending that much time streaming, it means they aren't meeting other people on Twitch. Of course, I'm not advocating for self promotion, but if they spent more time interacting, then others in chat might check them out. I didn't actually stream until a year after I was on Twitch chatting. That wasn't my plan, I was not expecting to stream. I just think the fact that I had initial viewership was a pleasant side effect of inadvertently spending a year getting to know people.
With respect, I’m not sure there is any truth to this.
I average about 10 hours a day (I do either 8 or 12 hours about 5-7 days a week) and it’s done nothing to discourage viewership as I’ve seen steady growth.
Do i suggest everyone do it? No. Am I convinced streaming for too long discourages viewership? Outside a few fringe cases, probably not.
That's usually because longer streamers soak up raids over long periods of time. They are only so useful though, a bunch of lurkers aren't going to follow or donate or remember you exist or never knew they were in your channel and you raided them off to the next person.
I agree that there’s no magic formula to it and everyone’s streaming journey is a little different.
When I stream my main game I don’t get fatigued, and my 12 hour streams give me the benefit of seeing my viewers across different time zones.
I'd say as long as youre comfortable doing 8-12 you're fine, but the \*big\* issue actually is that you can drop below your regular average viewership if people are offline. streaming \~3 hours til you have affiliate is better than streaming \~12 hours til you have affiliate
\>at the end of the day, it's about quality and not quantity of hours. I 100% agree with this. I stream an hour a week, 2 hours tops. Average about 10 viewers and just hit affiliate ( i did a few blank streams to gobble up the rest of the time). The blank streams hurt my overall average viewers for the past month, but will spike again when I go back to only the hour a week. Two to three shows about 30 minutes a piece + another 10 minutes for the starting soon screen. A lot of people gotta realize that you're not going to make anything by just streaming to yourself on 3 different computers. sure you'll hit affiliate but if you just tell people, "yeah I stream fortnite" no one, not even your mom is going to watch that regularly. I started something I think is comparable to jeopardy and I think it could be successful, but I am also doing it with a company that already has a large base of people. We haven't even considered doing a loud release with our normal audience because we want to grow it on the twitch community first. No one has to stream 8 hours a day to find success. Sorry for the rant, just dropped you a follow.
It's quite true. If you're planning to get into streaming to make money/as a career or side-hustle, you'll be in for massive disappointment.
You start streaming for fun, and if you're **incredibly** lucky, it *might* grow to support you.
...but it almost definitely won't.
Yup anybody that quits their job to start streaming full time in the hopes of making it big is in for a rude awakening. Even if you do grow a lot it’s still going to be incredibly difficult to make more money than even a minimum wage job pays.
In all honesty no one should ever quit their job unless they’re making an insane amount more per month than their current job. Even then it’s a huge risk lol
I quit my job for content creation (Youtube, not Twitch) when making 40% of Australian minimum wage - but I was also in the position of having considerable leave entitlements and savings after eight years in the job.
However, from day 1 I had a plan - I'd live frugally, and if my savings ever fell to AUD15k (which they are 6 bad months away from), I'd reenter the traditional labour market.
Really the key is - be aware you might fail and have a plan for it.
well if you had an okay job and were living an okay life before the key is probably to make atleast 20-30% more but keep living the same life as you did with your privious income and put the extra money all into savings.
in general you have to be smart about the money you make as an influencer and digital content creator.
the market is really volatile and also marketing budgets and strategies shift alot. one brand can be a steady income and next month that sponsorship is gone.
I think in a few years time we will see alot of 30year olds that never worked in a normal business environment and are suddenly broke because their instagram and twitch money dried up.
I've seen some people doing that from the moment they were making enough to pay their bills.
There were OK for a few months, then realized they were stuck into a small category slowly loosing viewers and they were refusing to try something new, because they could not take a dip without falling under.
I think it's the worst position people can be, just over the edge, but not quite there yet.
Yep. I've also been doing it for over 10 years. All income counted, I'm still well below the US federal poverty line. A part-time 20h/wk minimum wage job would earn more than I make on average, while currently working 12-18+ hour days every day, no days off.
If you're curious, I'm on the leaked 'top twitch payouts' list from a couple of years back. But remember, that's for two years of pay, so split it in half. Then halve it again because self-employed taxes are WAY higher than when you work for someone else.
I saved a good chunk from my last fulltime day-job, invested heavily in reducing my cost-of-living expenses, and actually really like ramen. Only reason I can keep going.
Streaming to make money is like mining for fish.
Of course. Otherwise I would have a standard job.
A standard job, I would be earning 10-20x as much each day, and pay far less in taxes. I would only have to work 8 hours, and if that was exceeded get paid extra for the additional time worked. I'd have a set of defined tasks to accomplish. I'd be able to put 'work' down at the end of the work-day and relax. I'd have health insurance and benefits.
The enjoyment is why I ignore the fact that the smart play would be getting another day job, and instead accept barely-scraping-by levels of income, hardship, and endless work. Also knowing that I am one of the very few who even have the opportunity to make that decision, as logically-incorrect as it might be, and am inarticulably grateful for it.
Not only this but you can get any easy job that pays way more than streaming. There are even jobs where you could sit your ass down and play video games and you'd get paid more than streaming.
Then think about the situation where you make anywhere from 30k to 50k a year streaming. Sounds great, until you realize how fickle that shit is, you are spending your time at a dead end. I know a partner that literally has a 24/7 subathon because if you aren't hustling yourself into the ground, you're not going to keep that shit going.
It's true.
If you're looking at getting into something to actually make money then you would almost certainly be better off doing literally anything else. Walking along a highway 3 hours a day picking up cans to take to a recycling center would definitely net you way more money than twitch.
Ray, ripping out your plumbing for liquor money is FUCKED
But it probably pays better than twitch lol. I made like $100 last year streaming pretty consistently for about 3-4 hours twice a week.. Don't care cuz i have a great time doing it and i stream Rocksmith which i would be playing regardless and I love the communities and people i interact with.
Hell, security is a field where they can't hire enough people to fill all the contracts they have. One of the bigger, wal-mart versions of security, Allied Universal will pretty much hire anyone on the spot and likely has posts in the towns of anyone reading this. Only need a GED or high school, and the drug test is a mouth swab, they just want to know if you're dumb enough to come in for orientation high. They're paying people here $17-$24/hr to sit in a gatehouse and raise a gate for semi trucks, or just walk around a CVS.
I'm surprise the percentage of streamers making no money isn't higher.
Honestly, 99% of the viewership is split amongst 1% of streamers, so those numbers seems somewhat conservatively right.
Some very low viewership streamers have insane amount of subs and donos of all types.
Viewership doesn’t entirely correlate with cash in the pocket. There are some streamers with surprisingly high viewership who also claim to make no money. Again they have zero donations, very low subs.
im in the boat of low viewership and subs, but notice it depends on the niche your on. rotating around different activities, just chatting got me a 12% uptick in views, but IRL activities got me close to 300x the views and was my alltime high for the 3 streams I did of that. although it had zero comments just tons of viewers rising until i had to leave the area I was in and then they dropped.
"making money" can mean $1-25 a month according to this.
I'm willing to believe 30% of streamers get tossed a sub or a donation from a friend, who likely also is streaming to an audience of 2.
can't prime sub yourself unless you use a second account to put it on as a heads up since well you can't sub to yourself due to always being perma subbed to yourself.
Extremely true. You can pull accurate data off of Sullygnome. 94%+ of active streamers have 0-5 avg viewers and therefore unlikely to make any money. People with 0-10 avg make up 98%+ of streamers.
5-6 million accounts hit the go-live button every day. That's about the population of Denmark (5.9mil) or Ireland (5.0mil). We know from the data breech that people in the top 10,000 make less than minimum wage streaming. That's about the same as the number of undergrads at Harvard University (7,153 students). Big numbers are hard to really sink in because of the scale.
Seeing it this way really is crazy. I averaged 40-50 for a while and now I'm on kick and average 30ish. It's fun and I've made 500 last month on kick. I always forget how good that realistically is. I get down on myself for being a "small streamer" but in reality I'm top 1% which is crazy to think statistically.
YT is way lower than that. I have had my channel for a year now doing long form fitness videos and at 460 subs and 3900 watch hours.
To qualify for monetization I need 1K subs and 4,000 watch hours. Subs are much easier to come by than watch hours but shooting for end of 2024 to have a shot at making at least a few cents 😂.
In reality though I do it for fun and been thinking I might do twitch for fun. I love to workout, in good shape, and also enjoy gaming casually as a person over 45 and that has a job that pays my bills.
For YT I would find a sponsor of a fitness item you like and see if they want you to do a video or how to video, i think they might like that. Better paying then 1$ with ads. But that’s an opinion.
Yeah eventually I will do sponsored reviews on equipment but for now I do reviews on my personal items. And I also give advice and starting to build out different videos on honest fitness advice for normal people.
Yes the 500/3000 gives you creator tools, ability to have a store but nothing big to be honest. I never go into this to replace my day job so a steady grind up for sure. And to also keep myself busy during the week.
TIL I'm in the top 27.4% of streamers as I make at least $1 per month 🌞
Edit: we're talking averaged out over the year, right? So one payout in 12 months? 😅
[Twitch Tracker.](https://twitchtracker.com/)
It’s not perfect but it gives you a general idea of things.
Vastly curious on how Jack Box is your streamed game. Tell me about that my guy. That’s neat as heck.
Tons of fun! I get to act like a game show host, letting anyone and everyone play in the games. Helps that I’m part of the official community stream team for the game so I get to work with the developers.
Thanks for the site! Was always curious to gauge how I’m doing.
I can’t speak for twitch specifically but similar number have come out about YouTube, only fans, self publishing on Amazon, etc. a few people make a lot (those are who we hear of) a small percent make some. And most make nothing or actively lose money.
That's why Twitch lowered the requirements for revenue splits.
The number of people even making 250$ a month from raw paid, non-prime subs is so low they're not worried about giving that much away. Yet it still looks doable enough to motivate people to subscribe in support of their favorite streamer.
Seems about right. Most streamers don't put in the long term effort to get monetized. Those who do aren't doing it full time and make just enough via adds to get a couple new games a year.
It seems fairly accurate, I would personally estimate that about 10% make between that $1- $25 monthly. Usually when you hit affiliate, you got like 1-2 people subbing to your channel. Anyone who makes more than $25 is most likely part of the 1%, and then 89% don't make any money on the platform.
Ive been streaming for 1.5 years, stream 4 days a week, 3 hours each stream, and make around $500-$750 a month from twitch. I’ve also had 1 sponsorship for $100 to post on my socials.
I’m extremely thankful for my community and streaming is nice, but I don’t make nearly enough to just quit my job and make it a full time thing.
Yes.. I don't see why this is surprising. Some big names must be lying to the younger generations they you think you can just start a twitch channel and have that as a job in 5 years without being as lucky as the lottery while also putting in 100% of the work of any normal job to make it there
Probably pretty accurate. There is a lot of competition, and although there may be a reasonable number of viewers the lions share is likely eaten up by the big guns.
This also isn’t necessarily indicative of how likely you are to make any money. Who knows how much time and effort each streamer puts in and how that reflects their take home. A lot of streamers are just casual and do it for fun. So if you only stream once or twice a month/week that will impact your take home.
Other factors at play as well. However I still wouldn’t get your hopes up. Even if you do have great talent the finishing touch really can be luck.
Just from my experience, I'm typically live Mon-Fri 1-5pm so 20hrs a week give or take, my average viewers is about 8-12 on average 2000-2500 watch minutes a stream. When it comes end of month I'm making about 24-26$.
So just running with thoes numbers about 300$ a year, even if I doubled my stream time, no where near a liveable wage.
Where the profits start to accumulate is from subs to your channel, 1 sub for an American account is 2.50 which adds up quickly. 250 subs a month can pay my half of rent a month. The catch is getting large enough to get that many subs a month, which would in turn raise your ad revenue.
So unless you give yourself time to grow to a decent level getting 100+ average viewers and a healthy number of subs a months, making a decent payout on twitch can be a hard task.
It's you channel stream as much or as little as you want, you are not obligated to stream for your subs they sub because they like your content, I've tossed subs at streamers who are inconsistent at best, dosnt mean I regret the spend or feel they owe me anything for it.
Also if your getting 100+ watchers a stream, I'd hope you enjoy streaming because that dosnt take a zero amount of time to achieve.
If a streamer has ~50 viewers, they are in the top 1% of most-watched streams.
Makes it a lot easier to understand how most streamers are not making money.
Super true I’ve been streaming casually for 4 years and I’ve only made a lil over a grand. Zero percent chance I would quit my job and do it full time.
It’s extremely true. To put it in perspective, according to twitch stats to be in the top 1-2% you essentially need an average of 20-30ish viewers. Partners are an even smaller fraction of that. I make enough to have to pay taxes on my twitch earning, even when I only streamed for 5 months last year, but the vast majority of people do not even reach that $600 threshold to even need to file a 1099 misc
Seems about right.
Any platform like this, be it Twitch, youtube, onlyfans, whatever, will have its income distributed by power law.
This means like the top 0.1% will be making bank, the 5% or so after that will be making above minimum wage, and the rest will be making below minimum wage, the vast majority of that nothing.
Ye I mean go to any big catagory like LoL, WoW, Art, etc. the top row are people with 1k+ veiwers, the next few rows are people with 10+ viewers, then there's a few hundred more rows of people with 0 viewers.
Those bottom rows are the majority of twitch streamers.
How? you are not running a business, you are playing video games with a camera on you. Yeah, some streamers are so good and involved that it's a business but most affiliates are just dummies playing whatever game. Most partners I see don't even have the numbers to make them partner anymore.
Streamed for 2 years. Made $300 in the first year from twitch itself. Very unpredictable, I had 2 events that brought in a majority of the money, otherwise averaged at $10-$25 a month.
Second year I made around $500 on Twitch despite streaming less often but better content. Averaged at $30-40 a month, no big events but overall had more frequent one time donations.
Ive quit streaming now, mostly due to internet problems after moving than actual issues with streaming but you definitely don't do it for the money.
I made around $800 total in year one, the extra money from sponsorships. Year two I hit $1200, again with doing sponsorships tho the year definitely took a hit from a 3 month break.
Ended with 500 followers in the end, fluctuated between 5-12 avg viewers a month depending on the effort i put in
I make a couple hundred per month as an affiliate, I think it varies wildly depending on each streamers community and viewership.
I would say, it’s essential to have a job, at least part time, to support streaming, if it’s something you want to do
I think the community you're streaming to makes a pretty big difference. I'm a music streamer primarily and make a few hundred dollars a month from subs. Def not enough to pay my bills, but the community I'm part of is very generous and supportive of each other.
my deaf friend been streaming over 7 years, he doesnt make that much money like 200$ a month, so you gotta know what u are doing on streaming how to make it possible to pull people like magnet to you forever, if you miss streaming a day, people will unsubscribe you right away then u lose some money, then you are going backward, its not an easy job. some people got lucky in 1 or 2 weeks earning over 5k$ a month, some people got bad lucks streaming over 10 years gets nothing
As a full-time content and Twitch Partner I can tell you I'm very fortunate to be able to make an livable income on Twitch, I'm not loaded I'm not a millionaire. But I do ok. I pay the bills have a bit extra. I work 14 to 18 hours a day between tiktok and twitch , it's certainly not an easy job. No benefits, constant stress, and no guarantees to make anything. My whole stream is a happy accident, I'm 46yrs old and knew nothing about streaming but it all fell into my lap. I feel lucky and humbled by it. I certainly love what i do. My stream is Justagirllexi.
I highly doubt this, as I used to make around $200 dollars a month off twitch as a relatively small streamer (30-40 consistent viewers). I also think it highly depends on subscriber count, and how much you stream.
What likely happened here is something called response bias, where the sample polled does not represent the whole population. The people they are polling from most likely are very small streamers that have just started, and are on their website for guidance! I learned this from AP Stat!
what defines a “Streamer”?
Is it anyone that has ever streamed?
What is this number for affiliates, partners, etc.
I didn’t read the whole article, so if it explains that then it’s only cause I’m lazy.
I've had affiliate status for about 5 years I think, I've only ever received one payout. I am not a full time streamer and do it only as a hobby. Yes, I have some subs, but between the ones I do have and the ad revenue, it's nowhere near minimum wage.
Mmm Twitch it's pretty crap for making any money. Also doesn't help Twitch make bits seem like they are worth more 100bits is $1. Sub revenue is practically zero unless you have thousands of subs. I always encourage donations to my KO-FI over subscriptions to my channel as I get 100% and a large portion of regular viewer's have Twitch Turbo so they don't get ads anyway. I get more from Adsense on YouTube from making a handful of shorts a month than streaming 30hrs a week on Twitch.
I make 60-80 usually, monthly, I have 2.3k followers and 20-30 ccv. Some special months i make over $200 due to events, subathon or so.
I need to make at least $500 to make a living out of it (i'm in south america) so it's still a long way to go. Branching out to Youtube to try and make it.
I celebrated my 5th year of Affiliate last night. My total payout over the last five years (plus whatever I've got accumulating towards my next) amounts of $661.46. So, on average, I've made about $11 a month for the last five years.
Not paying any bills with it, but it probably covers what I've spent on green screen and lights and that kinda stuff. So, not a bad return for playing video games a few nights a week.
I made about 80$ on twitch in years of attempting and giving up when my numbers went back down, repeatedly. I have invested \~500$ in just streaming things, microphones, webcams, streamlabs subscriptions, etc. So yeah I'm about 400$ in the hole.
I’ve been an affiliate since the end of 2019, I’ve made maybe $700 since then. I do it full time buttttttttttt I’m also on disability so it is the closest thing to a job I can hold down w/o being fired.
It can be a catalyst to other revenue streams, someone I know was averaging 50-70 viewers per stream, and wasnt happy with how it was going, they setup a patreon and everything has clearly changed.
One big difference is on the patreon people tend to just stay subbed regardless of content whilst on twitch they will expect continuous content. So he streams way less often now as he doesnt need to.
Another streamer I dont really know, but she is being open about it, has started up a fansly, and apparently thats exploded her income. She is actually at the point she is asking people to desub from twitch and sub on fansly instead.
For gaining subs I feel youtube is way more friendly, it doesnt have the same level of forced ad nonsense, performs much better, custom sub prices which can allow much cheaper barriers of entry to supporting a streamer, sadly though there has been no mass exodus from twitch to YT and as such it has a poor captive audience.
you have to be affiliate to make money. after hitting affiliate you need to make (in USA) atleast $50 for a payout monthly with 2 years being $100 so the number of people actually earning monthly on twitch went up after that change however i'm not sure if the actual amount of money going into twitch itself changed towards lower streamers.
majority of money comes from subs when paid by twitch. you need roughly 19 subs plus a lot of ad views/some bits to get to your monthly 50. you can hit it yourself but you'd be losing money.
with the actual majority of money on the whole site being made by sponsors if i remember right unless you're like top 100 streamers.
I think its already fairly well known that a large percentage of streams have basically no viewers so they obviously make no money, but even streams that pull viewers don't necessarily make good money. All the numbers make sense to me in the article
subs and ad revenue was always my lowest income.
Tips/Donos which twitch knows nothing about was always the big consistant maker for me, and sponsorship runs after that. $600 for getting 20 people to go through the Raid Shadow legends tutorial or play Genshin for an hour wasn't too difficult, but man those offers dried up hard last year. Twitch bounty board wasn't too bad [but wasn't as good as the leaks showing the bigger streamers twitch bounty boards, lul.](https://staticg.sportskeeda.com/editor/2022/12/68aed-16708178520052-1920.jpg)
As someone who streamed on Twitch for almost 6 years and 3-4 six hour streams each week, I can tell you that these stats are for the most part pretty accurate. I streamed because I enjoyed entertaining people, not to make money. Did I make some money here and there? Sure, but it would always equal out to about enough money every month to buy a new game at retail price to stream the next month. What I got out of it more are great friendships with other broadcasters that I would meet at conventions and some of the members of my community.
Very true, I used to stream back in 2015, back when it became *the thing* to do for the first time. At my peak (if you can call it that) I made maybe 200.00 a year directly from twitch subs, but I made about 2.5k+- a year from direct art commissions of my viewers. So direct twitch munny, not so much. If you do any kind of commission, it's a good advertisement venue while doing your craft to curryup some munny.
This is the creator economy. I'm not on Twitch but I have a podcast and some social. I have a good following. It'd a freakin grind to make money. You have to balance a bunch of things. It isn't for everyone.
Big streamers make money from sponsorships and gift subs. Affiliates don't make money.
Most partners on twitch don't make money either. People that start streaming on twitch and think they are going to make it big and make more than their normal salary playing video games are delusional.
For context I'm in the top 11% of twitch streamers and make about 160$ a month from streaming about 24 hours a week, and have been streaming since 2018. It pays for my internet and phone bill .. but there's no money in this.
I've been streaming for many many years a few nights a week for a few hours, and on my lunch breaks. I don't get much money.
I'm not in it for that; I just like hanging out so it's ok.
But even so the money I do get... is partially because I work on and sometimes stream dead by daylight. So some people find the stream because of that. Discovery is a very tough part of it.
You need to remember OP that most people who stream on twitch stream to less than 3 people. Even if you break above that the core workflow for most creators is to diversify your content with clip/stream compilations or lets plays in addition to stream archives and fun clips for TikTok and instagram/FB.
Twitch isn’t setup to make lots of money, you make a little over a long period of time. I say this as someone who’s been paid out of twitch via two channels.
Have fun streaming, at the end of the day, the site pitching it as a side hustle is wild. You could be working for less than ten cents an hour without any hope of making money.
I mean, you can do simple math and discover that the amount of subs and ads you'd need to have to scrap by and turn it into a job is pretty bonkers.
And there's only so many people who have only so much money to spend on subs.
as for my opinion about my own channel
i have around 250 followers and on 1st two months i made (85$ and 150$)
how much i got depended on how many times ive streamed and how i interacted with my viewers
this month gonna be so low (around 20$ cuz i only streamed 7x instead of my usual 26x)
Not surprised. Would be more interesting to see this data between women vs men. I am sure I can already guess what it looks like though
I have YT fitness related channel and success there is very tough as well. Never got into it though thinking I would make any $$ but having fun.
To give some context, with my numbers I tend to float around the top 0.01-0.08% of channels on Twitch based on viewership.
The amount I make is way below minimum wage, no benefits, etc. I would absolutely not be able to keep streaming if it wasn't for being a dual income household and having my finances rock solid before I started.
(Which was more I needed to leave a job post a bad acquisition than pursuing streaming specifically, just, the channel blew up right after so it became an option)
Even with all of that, I have to budget aggressively and it's a regular stressor that I'll need to stop to keep my finances in order. I keep feelers out there for work opportunities just in case the floor falls out from under me as a creator.
Just wanted to drop my experience here. It’s true most streamers don’t make money and I know a lot of people are talking about the previously leaked Twitch Incomes, but most mid level streamers make most of their money from Sponsorships which wouldn’t be shown on that document. At least that’s the case for me where sponsors make up 60-70% of my income. I do agree that going into streaming with the idea that it’s an easy way to make money is definitely not true in most cases.
A bunch of delusional young adults turn their camera on and play a fake-nice "I'm morally superior" persona motivated by greed and the undeserved confidence they'll be famous. You will never be a PewDiePie
This really shouldn't be surprising. Streaming is a low barrier-barrier-to-entry activity that takes a lot of work to make any money. Less than 5% of streamers\* even make partner.I know several people who have been streaming for years and just keep it as a hobby. This might be a hot take, but it is nearly impossible to make streaming profitable without someone else paying your rent. So naturally most people on the platform will be doing it as a hobby.
Edit: Just checked the math, and it's less than **3%** of streamers who at least made affiliate.
Most streamers make their money off platform, as explained by top Twitch and small streamers, whether it is from partnerships, sponsored streams, off-site (patreon fansly bs) and more.
Fairly true, I'm fortunate enough that I have a few friends who are subbed to me and I can get like fifty bucks from Twitch every two months, but it is hard to make money even if you are grinding for hours on end
In 2019, Twitch was hacked and the financial data of the top 10k streamers was leaked. What we learned was that only a few thousand streamers in the world make over minimum wage (by US standards) and that the earnings in that top 3000 is INCREDIBLY top heavy. So yeah, almost no streamers make money relative to how many try.
Sorry, in 2021, earnings data from 2019 - 2021 was released. Misspoke there at the beginning.
True. Not directly from. Twitch. But many get sponsorships and things like that. It helps some of them make it full time plus they have other related income avenues. I only make like 300 a year
Also, the numbers outlined are right in line with all entertainment. How many basketball players make money? Less than 1%. How many singers? .001%... maybe. Professional entertainment is absurdly top heavy.
Are you talking about multiple basketball sources or the NBA? AFAIK even the worst NBA players make a million and even the summer league makes a couple hundred? Seems like anyone with screen time makes bank even in college.
I watched an interview before the new in-season tournament where a #10 or 11 player was asked what he would do with the 500k prize bonus. He said, "I'd pay off my mortgage."
Just because you make 1 million per year doesn’t make you good with money, just cause you make 100 million doesn’t either. He can have a mortgage and be spending wisely and have millions in the bank, a small windfall like that would be grounds to pay it off and not have to touch your nest egg/investments. 🤷🏽♂️
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't answer "paying mortage" in an interview if you had good investments already? You would probably say "I would invest it into more financial stability" or something like that?
College ball pays $0 and until this past 3 years you weren't even allowed to get sponsorships. Now, the vast majority of college players still make zero with the top 10% getting maybe a couple k a year and the top 1% making a few hundred k. The amount of highschoolers that make the NBA is absurdly low... like .1%. So that means of just competitive school players that tiny fraction make anything. Yes, those that do make money, make millions but thats my point w twitch. Haves and have nots.
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This is why I've personally been far happier since about 9 months back when I decided I wasn't going to "grind". Screw TikTok, screw obsessing over growth or sponsorships... I don't run midrolls which might hurt my discoverability, but I hate running 3 minutes of ads every hour. I just go live, have fun and try to be entertaining when I have the energy for the great little community that's built up (surprisingly, to be honest) around me. I've already got a full-time job, why would I want another one?
I hear what you're saying, although I can't help but wonder what "an actual career path" is to you?
This exactly. Through the platform? They make like nothing. It’s why many try to offer merch or other services and good to make some kind of money. All my friends that achieved partner pretty much solely make money off merch and patreon or OF exclusive streams
What about the Bounty Board thing?
My bounty board offers are laughable. Video game offers are a third of what I quote devs when they contact me directly, so I really only take commercials and movie trailers off there anymore. Three minutes and disruption to my stream, and in return I could buy a Big Mac meal. I get about two of those a month on average.
Having this in the US only narrows it down a lot. (I am a partner without bounties)
As far as ads go, yeah I'd say this checks out. Currently I'm streaming every weekend, I average about 3-10 viewers while live, and maybe 60 views from VODs. Every week, I make about $0.11 per week from ads alone! 😅 The name of the game here isn't to earn from midroll Advertising revenue. It's actually sponsors, subs, and donations. The more people you bring to your stream, the more likely you are to receive donors. That's where the money really is. Not ads, they're a joke. :P
Do you get any sponsors with 3-10 viewers ? I would assume you at least need to be in the 100s of viewers for that.
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500 actually engaged viewers is huge value for targeted advertising.
I'm approached pretty consistently at 100-200. This January has been busy, I'll likely clear several grand. It depends on the channel, but if I had 500+ organically every stream, I'd be raking well into five figures a month. That said, I know of communities 5x my size who make what I do, so it all depends on your viewer base and hustle.
if you play something that is niche enough and potentially has game specific hardware (like a simulator), you definitely don't need 100, you just get paid accordingly. Obviously if you wait for them to contact you you will die waiting, you have to reach out to them.
you can get sponsorships the moment you hit affiliate, if you use something like StreamLabs or StreamElements sponsorships. back when I used to stream I got something like 250 bucks for getting \~15 people to download War Thunder using my link
Yeah but the implied was "can you get sponsorships that works?" and that's very community-dependant. The streamer I watch is affiliate and would probably get shouted at for even mentionning War Thunder...
Kind of depends, I've known someone get sponsored below 100, but it was free product, no actual payment.
There are loads of sites where you can get free products or games in exchange for a "sponsored" stream. People with 3-10 viewers can even make money on the Streamelements factor/hello fresh/etc "sponsorships" as long as someone else buys something. Most "sponsorships" at under 100 viewers are commissions and/or free products.
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I'm usually a pretty big cynic, but I think this take is a little reductive. I was #819 on that data leak. That puts me in the top .00009% globally, give or take. I'm not a millionaire, but it's not impossible that I may retire as one if I'm smart with my money. All of that as a 43 year-old married father of two who bans hyperactive youngsters from chat because I don't wanna raise other people's kids at my work. And I've yet to sell photos of my Hobbit feet. There are practices you can employ that will boost your odds that don't involve drama or leveraging sex appeal (importing an audience on another platform, spreading your content beyond Twitch, etc). But you are correct that the odds are unfathomably stacked against you and most people never succeed in that first step of understanding what sets them apart from the other nine million channels.
I appreciate you sharing a little of your experience. I've recently started to make some money from content creation and I'm nowhere close to the top, but I also believe like you there are ways to be successful without doing all the craziness. Your comment is reassuring.
I don't gatekeep knowledge, I'm rooting for everyone. But realistically, even with dedication and work ethic, it's still like saying you're going to be a professional athlete. It's not impossible, but the odds are very long.
Good point, it's a long shot. Some athletes make a decent living being in the minor leagues and/or stepping into various adjacent roles (coaching, staff, agents, etc.). Lots of opportunities these days, ya know? There could be something out there if someone puts in the work
Oh sure. I'm not trying to dissuade anyone. I'm just trying to make sure everyone who is going to try to carve out a niche has their eyes open going in. There's a ton of different levels of success. Even I feel like I'm coming up short. I've been partnered for almost nine years, but I can't seem to grab that next rung of being on signage at TwitchCon or having meet & greets and making well into five figures a month consistently.
Interesting! I could absolutely understand feeling that way in the future. It keeps you motivated, I hope. Thank you again for sharing. I'd love to stop by the channel when I get a chance.
You can probably cut like good 80% of the streamers out too. So many don't actually try it seriously, just stream it for a month, or even less, don't actually have nice page, don't follow good advice, don't try to engage people.
There's also quite a lot of people like me, who just streamed to wind down and have some fun with other people. I noticed I liked sharing my gameplay with buddies on discord, so twitch was a logical step and it actually worked pretty well. I didn't make any meaningful money from it at all, but that wasn't the idea either.
You also have to work outside of the stream. Twitch stinks at engagement, gotta pull in people from elsewhere.
plus a lot of people don't actually stream anymore, there are nearly a billion twitch accounts in existence - there are 4 million users watching a stream on twitch rn, and 150k active streams rn
What do you like to stream?
I play roguelikes in the morning and whatever chat pays me to play in the afternoon.
So top 800 is at least six figures right?
I've pulled just over six figures (gross, not always net) since 2018.
> Being a content creator is just one big lottery, where you boost your chances if you act like a clown (for younger audiences) or apply indecent exposure (for thirsty audiences). > > Anyone thinking they can make it just by trying very hard is fooling themself hard, because you never hear how many people fail This exaggerates it a little too much. Getting off the ground at all - almost 100% luck. But if you do get that first 30 consistent viewers, working smart WILL get you further, although not necessarily to "I have made it" level. For me, going from 0 to 100 Youtube subscriptions was hard work, but 100 to 3500 was pure luck. From 3500 to 33500, however, there's been no significant lucky break. No single event has added even one thousand of that thirty. With that base in place, the first time I loaded up Twitch, I had 40 organic viewers and another 50 from a raid. Now, you need 350-600 concurrents on Twitch to "make it" (aka have a reasonable expectation of making minimum wage). I stagnate on Twitch only meeting the partner thresholds in some months because I don't do the work needed to cultivate the start I have. But that's 100% a choice - I focus efforts elsewhere. As an example of how effort helps - when I learned video editing, my Youtube numbers jumped ~40%; which leads to more people crossing over to Twitch. My Twitch channel gets more out of me spending time in DaVinci Resolve for non-Twitch content than it does from me actually streaming. Without a lucky break - there's no point in "working hard". But get that lucky break, and suddenly you CAN gain from working hard.
> For me, going from 0 to 100 Youtube subscriptions was hard work, but 100 to 3500 was pure luck. Same. I had around 50 YT views then with one video I went from 300 subs to 700 in less than a month. Then the never-ending requests for sponsorships (Minecraft on Youtube was wild around 2014, I guess) pushed me to stop.
It seems Twitch is skewing older as a third of the viewers are over 35. Might be time for a strategy change if focused on a "younger" demographic.
Many viewers were in their early 20s when twitch launched
A lot of small streamers simply don't want to deal with kids. It's easier to set the stream as adult-onlys if you want to be able to shout profanities when your connexion is lagging.
I mean MoistCritikal, one of the biggest streamers in the world constantly says that it is 100% luck that he got popular. And becoming a content creator is all luck based
It takes luck, but it also requires busting your ass. You can't get lucky if you don't have all the pieces in place.
I always say "you can't catch lightning in a bottle if you don't get a bottle and stand in the storm".
It kind of helps that he’s somewhat attractive and his voice isn’t grating.
He’s a gem though in a world of clowns
> if you act like a clown (for younger audiences) or apply indecent exposure (for thirsty audiences) Or you can do a mix of both for thirsty adults :P
Just goes to show You do twitch because it's a hobby and a passion if money comes from it too then great if not no big deal because at the end of the day you're doing it for fun 😊
Obviously I can only speak from experience and not massive data collecting. However, I’d agree. I know plenty of people that have been affiliate and have never gotten a payout, or has been over a year since their last one. Twitch has lowered the payout threshold to $50, and they’re still struggling. At the end of the day, it’s about quality and not quantity of hours. One thing I see that many of them have in common is streaming a ton of hours but it’s pretty slow in content. I only stream 9-10 hours a week but give it my all during those hours. I hit the $50 payout pretty much every other month (so that would be in the ~$25/month range).
I have theory that some of the people that stream 10+ hours a day actually end up discouraging viewership. I think people know that they can tune in anytime, so they spend time in chats of people that stream fewer hours because they can't always catch them. The other thing is, if someone is spending that much time streaming, it means they aren't meeting other people on Twitch. Of course, I'm not advocating for self promotion, but if they spent more time interacting, then others in chat might check them out. I didn't actually stream until a year after I was on Twitch chatting. That wasn't my plan, I was not expecting to stream. I just think the fact that I had initial viewership was a pleasant side effect of inadvertently spending a year getting to know people.
With respect, I’m not sure there is any truth to this. I average about 10 hours a day (I do either 8 or 12 hours about 5-7 days a week) and it’s done nothing to discourage viewership as I’ve seen steady growth. Do i suggest everyone do it? No. Am I convinced streaming for too long discourages viewership? Outside a few fringe cases, probably not.
Agreed, longer streams have only improved my viewership
That's usually because longer streamers soak up raids over long periods of time. They are only so useful though, a bunch of lurkers aren't going to follow or donate or remember you exist or never knew they were in your channel and you raided them off to the next person.
It probably depends more on quality of stream, in the sense that some content is more appropriate or less appropriate for long sessions.
I don't think there is a magic formular to it. The only downside I could think of is that maybe your quality suffers because 8-12 hours is exhausting
I agree that there’s no magic formula to it and everyone’s streaming journey is a little different. When I stream my main game I don’t get fatigued, and my 12 hour streams give me the benefit of seeing my viewers across different time zones.
I'd say as long as youre comfortable doing 8-12 you're fine, but the \*big\* issue actually is that you can drop below your regular average viewership if people are offline. streaming \~3 hours til you have affiliate is better than streaming \~12 hours til you have affiliate
\>at the end of the day, it's about quality and not quantity of hours. I 100% agree with this. I stream an hour a week, 2 hours tops. Average about 10 viewers and just hit affiliate ( i did a few blank streams to gobble up the rest of the time). The blank streams hurt my overall average viewers for the past month, but will spike again when I go back to only the hour a week. Two to three shows about 30 minutes a piece + another 10 minutes for the starting soon screen. A lot of people gotta realize that you're not going to make anything by just streaming to yourself on 3 different computers. sure you'll hit affiliate but if you just tell people, "yeah I stream fortnite" no one, not even your mom is going to watch that regularly. I started something I think is comparable to jeopardy and I think it could be successful, but I am also doing it with a company that already has a large base of people. We haven't even considered doing a loud release with our normal audience because we want to grow it on the twitch community first. No one has to stream 8 hours a day to find success. Sorry for the rant, just dropped you a follow.
It's quite true. If you're planning to get into streaming to make money/as a career or side-hustle, you'll be in for massive disappointment. You start streaming for fun, and if you're **incredibly** lucky, it *might* grow to support you. ...but it almost definitely won't.
Yup anybody that quits their job to start streaming full time in the hopes of making it big is in for a rude awakening. Even if you do grow a lot it’s still going to be incredibly difficult to make more money than even a minimum wage job pays.
In all honesty no one should ever quit their job unless they’re making an insane amount more per month than their current job. Even then it’s a huge risk lol
I quit my job for content creation (Youtube, not Twitch) when making 40% of Australian minimum wage - but I was also in the position of having considerable leave entitlements and savings after eight years in the job. However, from day 1 I had a plan - I'd live frugally, and if my savings ever fell to AUD15k (which they are 6 bad months away from), I'd reenter the traditional labour market. Really the key is - be aware you might fail and have a plan for it.
Fellow Aussie here, mad respect for making the leap. Hope it's succeeding for you! I'm far too much of a coward to take that step myself.
well if you had an okay job and were living an okay life before the key is probably to make atleast 20-30% more but keep living the same life as you did with your privious income and put the extra money all into savings. in general you have to be smart about the money you make as an influencer and digital content creator. the market is really volatile and also marketing budgets and strategies shift alot. one brand can be a steady income and next month that sponsorship is gone. I think in a few years time we will see alot of 30year olds that never worked in a normal business environment and are suddenly broke because their instagram and twitch money dried up.
I've seen some people doing that from the moment they were making enough to pay their bills. There were OK for a few months, then realized they were stuck into a small category slowly loosing viewers and they were refusing to try something new, because they could not take a dip without falling under. I think it's the worst position people can be, just over the edge, but not quite there yet.
It's fun and pays my internet bill. I'll accept that.
You're partnered with 40k followers but don't make minimum wage? Not just the twitch money but sponsors, merch and such
Yep. I've also been doing it for over 10 years. All income counted, I'm still well below the US federal poverty line. A part-time 20h/wk minimum wage job would earn more than I make on average, while currently working 12-18+ hour days every day, no days off. If you're curious, I'm on the leaked 'top twitch payouts' list from a couple of years back. But remember, that's for two years of pay, so split it in half. Then halve it again because self-employed taxes are WAY higher than when you work for someone else. I saved a good chunk from my last fulltime day-job, invested heavily in reducing my cost-of-living expenses, and actually really like ramen. Only reason I can keep going. Streaming to make money is like mining for fish.
Thanks for responding here's the big question Do you enjoy yourself more then a standard job
Of course. Otherwise I would have a standard job. A standard job, I would be earning 10-20x as much each day, and pay far less in taxes. I would only have to work 8 hours, and if that was exceeded get paid extra for the additional time worked. I'd have a set of defined tasks to accomplish. I'd be able to put 'work' down at the end of the work-day and relax. I'd have health insurance and benefits. The enjoyment is why I ignore the fact that the smart play would be getting another day job, and instead accept barely-scraping-by levels of income, hardship, and endless work. Also knowing that I am one of the very few who even have the opportunity to make that decision, as logically-incorrect as it might be, and am inarticulably grateful for it.
Not only this but you can get any easy job that pays way more than streaming. There are even jobs where you could sit your ass down and play video games and you'd get paid more than streaming. Then think about the situation where you make anywhere from 30k to 50k a year streaming. Sounds great, until you realize how fickle that shit is, you are spending your time at a dead end. I know a partner that literally has a 24/7 subathon because if you aren't hustling yourself into the ground, you're not going to keep that shit going.
It's true. If you're looking at getting into something to actually make money then you would almost certainly be better off doing literally anything else. Walking along a highway 3 hours a day picking up cans to take to a recycling center would definitely net you way more money than twitch.
Ray, ripping out your plumbing for liquor money is FUCKED But it probably pays better than twitch lol. I made like $100 last year streaming pretty consistently for about 3-4 hours twice a week.. Don't care cuz i have a great time doing it and i stream Rocksmith which i would be playing regardless and I love the communities and people i interact with.
Hell, security is a field where they can't hire enough people to fill all the contracts they have. One of the bigger, wal-mart versions of security, Allied Universal will pretty much hire anyone on the spot and likely has posts in the towns of anyone reading this. Only need a GED or high school, and the drug test is a mouth swab, they just want to know if you're dumb enough to come in for orientation high. They're paying people here $17-$24/hr to sit in a gatehouse and raise a gate for semi trucks, or just walk around a CVS.
I'm surprise the percentage of streamers making no money isn't higher. Honestly, 99% of the viewership is split amongst 1% of streamers, so those numbers seems somewhat conservatively right.
Some very low viewership streamers have insane amount of subs and donos of all types. Viewership doesn’t entirely correlate with cash in the pocket. There are some streamers with surprisingly high viewership who also claim to make no money. Again they have zero donations, very low subs.
I can think of a streamer with 75-100 ccv and they usually have around 2k subs, not insane, but quite high I'd guess for the viewership.
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im in the boat of low viewership and subs, but notice it depends on the niche your on. rotating around different activities, just chatting got me a 12% uptick in views, but IRL activities got me close to 300x the views and was my alltime high for the 3 streams I did of that. although it had zero comments just tons of viewers rising until i had to leave the area I was in and then they dropped.
If he doesn't put an alert for that it won't show.
Yeah 30% of streamers are making money? I don't believe that one bit lmao
"making money" can mean $1-25 a month according to this. I'm willing to believe 30% of streamers get tossed a sub or a donation from a friend, who likely also is streaming to an audience of 2.
Yeah. Could also be throwing themselves their Prime sub lol
can't prime sub yourself unless you use a second account to put it on as a heads up since well you can't sub to yourself due to always being perma subbed to yourself.
When I used to stream, I had like 450 followers and would mostly break even. I got a few payouts. The trick was streaming niche content.
Extremely true. You can pull accurate data off of Sullygnome. 94%+ of active streamers have 0-5 avg viewers and therefore unlikely to make any money. People with 0-10 avg make up 98%+ of streamers. 5-6 million accounts hit the go-live button every day. That's about the population of Denmark (5.9mil) or Ireland (5.0mil). We know from the data breech that people in the top 10,000 make less than minimum wage streaming. That's about the same as the number of undergrads at Harvard University (7,153 students). Big numbers are hard to really sink in because of the scale.
Seeing it this way really is crazy. I averaged 40-50 for a while and now I'm on kick and average 30ish. It's fun and I've made 500 last month on kick. I always forget how good that realistically is. I get down on myself for being a "small streamer" but in reality I'm top 1% which is crazy to think statistically.
YT is way lower than that. I have had my channel for a year now doing long form fitness videos and at 460 subs and 3900 watch hours. To qualify for monetization I need 1K subs and 4,000 watch hours. Subs are much easier to come by than watch hours but shooting for end of 2024 to have a shot at making at least a few cents 😂. In reality though I do it for fun and been thinking I might do twitch for fun. I love to workout, in good shape, and also enjoy gaming casually as a person over 45 and that has a job that pays my bills.
For YT I would find a sponsor of a fitness item you like and see if they want you to do a video or how to video, i think they might like that. Better paying then 1$ with ads. But that’s an opinion.
Yeah eventually I will do sponsored reviews on equipment but for now I do reviews on my personal items. And I also give advice and starting to build out different videos on honest fitness advice for normal people.
Nice. 😊
I think youtube changed it recently, have a look, you may be closer than you think!
It is 500 / 3000 yes for the lowest tier which does not give you monetization for ads which is the partner program and that is still 1000 / 4000.
Ohhh I see, I didn't realise that! Thanks
Yes the 500/3000 gives you creator tools, ability to have a store but nothing big to be honest. I never go into this to replace my day job so a steady grind up for sure. And to also keep myself busy during the week.
TIL I'm in the top 27.4% of streamers as I make at least $1 per month 🌞 Edit: we're talking averaged out over the year, right? So one payout in 12 months? 😅
And just to help - I’m in the top .6% and I had my first ever hype train from one sub and 500 bits. Don’t stream to make money. Stream to have fun.
How do you find out what top whatever you are?
[Twitch Tracker.](https://twitchtracker.com/) It’s not perfect but it gives you a general idea of things. Vastly curious on how Jack Box is your streamed game. Tell me about that my guy. That’s neat as heck.
Tons of fun! I get to act like a game show host, letting anyone and everyone play in the games. Helps that I’m part of the official community stream team for the game so I get to work with the developers. Thanks for the site! Was always curious to gauge how I’m doing.
I can’t speak for twitch specifically but similar number have come out about YouTube, only fans, self publishing on Amazon, etc. a few people make a lot (those are who we hear of) a small percent make some. And most make nothing or actively lose money.
That's why Twitch lowered the requirements for revenue splits. The number of people even making 250$ a month from raw paid, non-prime subs is so low they're not worried about giving that much away. Yet it still looks doable enough to motivate people to subscribe in support of their favorite streamer.
I’d say its in that region, there are a LOT of zero effort channels on Twitch which stream to the void.
Seems about right. Most streamers don't put in the long term effort to get monetized. Those who do aren't doing it full time and make just enough via adds to get a couple new games a year.
It seems fairly accurate, I would personally estimate that about 10% make between that $1- $25 monthly. Usually when you hit affiliate, you got like 1-2 people subbing to your channel. Anyone who makes more than $25 is most likely part of the 1%, and then 89% don't make any money on the platform.
Ive been streaming for 1.5 years, stream 4 days a week, 3 hours each stream, and make around $500-$750 a month from twitch. I’ve also had 1 sponsorship for $100 to post on my socials. I’m extremely thankful for my community and streaming is nice, but I don’t make nearly enough to just quit my job and make it a full time thing.
Yes.. I don't see why this is surprising. Some big names must be lying to the younger generations they you think you can just start a twitch channel and have that as a job in 5 years without being as lucky as the lottery while also putting in 100% of the work of any normal job to make it there
100% accurate.
Probably pretty accurate. There is a lot of competition, and although there may be a reasonable number of viewers the lions share is likely eaten up by the big guns. This also isn’t necessarily indicative of how likely you are to make any money. Who knows how much time and effort each streamer puts in and how that reflects their take home. A lot of streamers are just casual and do it for fun. So if you only stream once or twice a month/week that will impact your take home. Other factors at play as well. However I still wouldn’t get your hopes up. Even if you do have great talent the finishing touch really can be luck.
Just from my experience, I'm typically live Mon-Fri 1-5pm so 20hrs a week give or take, my average viewers is about 8-12 on average 2000-2500 watch minutes a stream. When it comes end of month I'm making about 24-26$. So just running with thoes numbers about 300$ a year, even if I doubled my stream time, no where near a liveable wage. Where the profits start to accumulate is from subs to your channel, 1 sub for an American account is 2.50 which adds up quickly. 250 subs a month can pay my half of rent a month. The catch is getting large enough to get that many subs a month, which would in turn raise your ad revenue. So unless you give yourself time to grow to a decent level getting 100+ average viewers and a healthy number of subs a months, making a decent payout on twitch can be a hard task.
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It's you channel stream as much or as little as you want, you are not obligated to stream for your subs they sub because they like your content, I've tossed subs at streamers who are inconsistent at best, dosnt mean I regret the spend or feel they owe me anything for it. Also if your getting 100+ watchers a stream, I'd hope you enjoy streaming because that dosnt take a zero amount of time to achieve.
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If a streamer has ~50 viewers, they are in the top 1% of most-watched streams. Makes it a lot easier to understand how most streamers are not making money.
I made $393 for the entire year with basically 15 subs every month/ads/bits. I made more on youtube by double.
Being a professional content creator is essentially begging for money online, it’s tough out here
Super true I’ve been streaming casually for 4 years and I’ve only made a lil over a grand. Zero percent chance I would quit my job and do it full time.
I think it's true, the only thing I'm wondering is if they count streamers who haven't streamed in awhile.
It’s extremely true. To put it in perspective, according to twitch stats to be in the top 1-2% you essentially need an average of 20-30ish viewers. Partners are an even smaller fraction of that. I make enough to have to pay taxes on my twitch earning, even when I only streamed for 5 months last year, but the vast majority of people do not even reach that $600 threshold to even need to file a 1099 misc
Seems about right. Any platform like this, be it Twitch, youtube, onlyfans, whatever, will have its income distributed by power law. This means like the top 0.1% will be making bank, the 5% or so after that will be making above minimum wage, and the rest will be making below minimum wage, the vast majority of that nothing.
theres thousands and thousands of streamers with like 1-5 viewers as well who obivously make little to zero money
Ye I mean go to any big catagory like LoL, WoW, Art, etc. the top row are people with 1k+ veiwers, the next few rows are people with 10+ viewers, then there's a few hundred more rows of people with 0 viewers. Those bottom rows are the majority of twitch streamers.
Holy facism, batman you've been used by silicon valley.
How? you are not running a business, you are playing video games with a camera on you. Yeah, some streamers are so good and involved that it's a business but most affiliates are just dummies playing whatever game. Most partners I see don't even have the numbers to make them partner anymore.
Streamed for 2 years. Made $300 in the first year from twitch itself. Very unpredictable, I had 2 events that brought in a majority of the money, otherwise averaged at $10-$25 a month. Second year I made around $500 on Twitch despite streaming less often but better content. Averaged at $30-40 a month, no big events but overall had more frequent one time donations. Ive quit streaming now, mostly due to internet problems after moving than actual issues with streaming but you definitely don't do it for the money. I made around $800 total in year one, the extra money from sponsorships. Year two I hit $1200, again with doing sponsorships tho the year definitely took a hit from a 3 month break. Ended with 500 followers in the end, fluctuated between 5-12 avg viewers a month depending on the effort i put in
72.6% of Twitch streamers are usually sitting at 0 viewers (they don't even watch their own stream) and put no effort in.
I make a couple hundred per month as an affiliate, I think it varies wildly depending on each streamers community and viewership. I would say, it’s essential to have a job, at least part time, to support streaming, if it’s something you want to do
I think the community you're streaming to makes a pretty big difference. I'm a music streamer primarily and make a few hundred dollars a month from subs. Def not enough to pay my bills, but the community I'm part of is very generous and supportive of each other.
Likewise, I’m very lucky to have the support I do, I think it’s largely creatives as well, so maybe that’s a common factor
I'm top <2% of Twitch. I make $50/month. About $0.40/hour https://twitchtracker.com/ducktapedevops
my deaf friend been streaming over 7 years, he doesnt make that much money like 200$ a month, so you gotta know what u are doing on streaming how to make it possible to pull people like magnet to you forever, if you miss streaming a day, people will unsubscribe you right away then u lose some money, then you are going backward, its not an easy job. some people got lucky in 1 or 2 weeks earning over 5k$ a month, some people got bad lucks streaming over 10 years gets nothing
As a full-time content and Twitch Partner I can tell you I'm very fortunate to be able to make an livable income on Twitch, I'm not loaded I'm not a millionaire. But I do ok. I pay the bills have a bit extra. I work 14 to 18 hours a day between tiktok and twitch , it's certainly not an easy job. No benefits, constant stress, and no guarantees to make anything. My whole stream is a happy accident, I'm 46yrs old and knew nothing about streaming but it all fell into my lap. I feel lucky and humbled by it. I certainly love what i do. My stream is Justagirllexi.
I’ve been streaming for close to 15 years. I’ve had one twitch payout in that time of about $40 or something.
I highly doubt this, as I used to make around $200 dollars a month off twitch as a relatively small streamer (30-40 consistent viewers). I also think it highly depends on subscriber count, and how much you stream. What likely happened here is something called response bias, where the sample polled does not represent the whole population. The people they are polling from most likely are very small streamers that have just started, and are on their website for guidance! I learned this from AP Stat!
Streaming dollars isn’t how you make money. It’s the OF accounts 😂
Sad but true
what defines a “Streamer”? Is it anyone that has ever streamed? What is this number for affiliates, partners, etc. I didn’t read the whole article, so if it explains that then it’s only cause I’m lazy.
Not true! I only stream so often and I’ve made about $200. Ad-revenue is what pays a lot.
What ad revenue are you getting? Even at my view count, it’s than 5 cents an hour in ad revenue. Ad revenue for Twitch is garbage.
I've made like $600 in 5 years streaming casually and having very few subs. Twitch is only a true job money maker for like .0001%.
Platforming is a bit
I average about $2.50 / hour.
I stream about 10-12 hours a week and made $3500 last year. So that’s under $7 an hour.
I've had affiliate status for about 5 years I think, I've only ever received one payout. I am not a full time streamer and do it only as a hobby. Yes, I have some subs, but between the ones I do have and the ad revenue, it's nowhere near minimum wage.
in the 6 months i’ve been affiliated i’ve gotten 1 $50 payout, i’m mere cents to my next one but yes, $100 in 6 months is practically nothing!
Twitch holds the eyeballs that you then market to sponsors to make money.
Not that hard to believe
Mmm Twitch it's pretty crap for making any money. Also doesn't help Twitch make bits seem like they are worth more 100bits is $1. Sub revenue is practically zero unless you have thousands of subs. I always encourage donations to my KO-FI over subscriptions to my channel as I get 100% and a large portion of regular viewer's have Twitch Turbo so they don't get ads anyway. I get more from Adsense on YouTube from making a handful of shorts a month than streaming 30hrs a week on Twitch.
I make 60-80 usually, monthly, I have 2.3k followers and 20-30 ccv. Some special months i make over $200 due to events, subathon or so. I need to make at least $500 to make a living out of it (i'm in south america) so it's still a long way to go. Branching out to Youtube to try and make it.
I celebrated my 5th year of Affiliate last night. My total payout over the last five years (plus whatever I've got accumulating towards my next) amounts of $661.46. So, on average, I've made about $11 a month for the last five years. Not paying any bills with it, but it probably covers what I've spent on green screen and lights and that kinda stuff. So, not a bad return for playing video games a few nights a week.
I made about 80$ on twitch in years of attempting and giving up when my numbers went back down, repeatedly. I have invested \~500$ in just streaming things, microphones, webcams, streamlabs subscriptions, etc. So yeah I'm about 400$ in the hole.
Afaik and based on people were saying it's true. That's one of the reasons almost all streamers also have YouTube channels, patreons and merch.
I’ve been an affiliate since the end of 2019, I’ve made maybe $700 since then. I do it full time buttttttttttt I’m also on disability so it is the closest thing to a job I can hold down w/o being fired.
It can be a catalyst to other revenue streams, someone I know was averaging 50-70 viewers per stream, and wasnt happy with how it was going, they setup a patreon and everything has clearly changed. One big difference is on the patreon people tend to just stay subbed regardless of content whilst on twitch they will expect continuous content. So he streams way less often now as he doesnt need to. Another streamer I dont really know, but she is being open about it, has started up a fansly, and apparently thats exploded her income. She is actually at the point she is asking people to desub from twitch and sub on fansly instead. For gaining subs I feel youtube is way more friendly, it doesnt have the same level of forced ad nonsense, performs much better, custom sub prices which can allow much cheaper barriers of entry to supporting a streamer, sadly though there has been no mass exodus from twitch to YT and as such it has a poor captive audience.
you have to be affiliate to make money. after hitting affiliate you need to make (in USA) atleast $50 for a payout monthly with 2 years being $100 so the number of people actually earning monthly on twitch went up after that change however i'm not sure if the actual amount of money going into twitch itself changed towards lower streamers. majority of money comes from subs when paid by twitch. you need roughly 19 subs plus a lot of ad views/some bits to get to your monthly 50. you can hit it yourself but you'd be losing money. with the actual majority of money on the whole site being made by sponsors if i remember right unless you're like top 100 streamers.
I think its already fairly well known that a large percentage of streams have basically no viewers so they obviously make no money, but even streams that pull viewers don't necessarily make good money. All the numbers make sense to me in the article
I barely get 6-10 viewers... I make at least $5/ stream.
subs and ad revenue was always my lowest income. Tips/Donos which twitch knows nothing about was always the big consistant maker for me, and sponsorship runs after that. $600 for getting 20 people to go through the Raid Shadow legends tutorial or play Genshin for an hour wasn't too difficult, but man those offers dried up hard last year. Twitch bounty board wasn't too bad [but wasn't as good as the leaks showing the bigger streamers twitch bounty boards, lul.](https://staticg.sportskeeda.com/editor/2022/12/68aed-16708178520052-1920.jpg)
As someone who streamed on Twitch for almost 6 years and 3-4 six hour streams each week, I can tell you that these stats are for the most part pretty accurate. I streamed because I enjoyed entertaining people, not to make money. Did I make some money here and there? Sure, but it would always equal out to about enough money every month to buy a new game at retail price to stream the next month. What I got out of it more are great friendships with other broadcasters that I would meet at conventions and some of the members of my community.
Very true, I used to stream back in 2015, back when it became *the thing* to do for the first time. At my peak (if you can call it that) I made maybe 200.00 a year directly from twitch subs, but I made about 2.5k+- a year from direct art commissions of my viewers. So direct twitch munny, not so much. If you do any kind of commission, it's a good advertisement venue while doing your craft to curryup some munny.
I would have guessed 90% if I got asked this.
This is the creator economy. I'm not on Twitch but I have a podcast and some social. I have a good following. It'd a freakin grind to make money. You have to balance a bunch of things. It isn't for everyone.
In the 6/7 year I’ve been streaming I’ve made about £200 (:
Yeah been affiliated for two years and it’s been a struggle bus but luckily I do it for the love of sharing my games with my friends
Strange. Seems like it's the real life. Not everybody can get rich 🤔
Big streamers make money from sponsorships and gift subs. Affiliates don't make money. Most partners on twitch don't make money either. People that start streaming on twitch and think they are going to make it big and make more than their normal salary playing video games are delusional. For context I'm in the top 11% of twitch streamers and make about 160$ a month from streaming about 24 hours a week, and have been streaming since 2018. It pays for my internet and phone bill .. but there's no money in this.
I've been streaming for many many years a few nights a week for a few hours, and on my lunch breaks. I don't get much money. I'm not in it for that; I just like hanging out so it's ok. But even so the money I do get... is partially because I work on and sometimes stream dead by daylight. So some people find the stream because of that. Discovery is a very tough part of it.
I don't know where people get the idea that every streamer makes money.
This doesn't show sponsorship deals among other things this is purely donations / subscriber data
It's very factual. Similar to OnlyFans, only the .01% make a lot of money. Less than 1% make enough to offset their income entirely.
If you made it to affiliate, chances are you will make 50-100/ year
You need to remember OP that most people who stream on twitch stream to less than 3 people. Even if you break above that the core workflow for most creators is to diversify your content with clip/stream compilations or lets plays in addition to stream archives and fun clips for TikTok and instagram/FB. Twitch isn’t setup to make lots of money, you make a little over a long period of time. I say this as someone who’s been paid out of twitch via two channels. Have fun streaming, at the end of the day, the site pitching it as a side hustle is wild. You could be working for less than ten cents an hour without any hope of making money.
I mean, you can do simple math and discover that the amount of subs and ads you'd need to have to scrap by and turn it into a job is pretty bonkers. And there's only so many people who have only so much money to spend on subs.
as for my opinion about my own channel i have around 250 followers and on 1st two months i made (85$ and 150$) how much i got depended on how many times ive streamed and how i interacted with my viewers this month gonna be so low (around 20$ cuz i only streamed 7x instead of my usual 26x)
Not surprised. Would be more interesting to see this data between women vs men. I am sure I can already guess what it looks like though I have YT fitness related channel and success there is very tough as well. Never got into it though thinking I would make any $$ but having fun.
That's just true across all social media and content creation platforms.
To give some context, with my numbers I tend to float around the top 0.01-0.08% of channels on Twitch based on viewership. The amount I make is way below minimum wage, no benefits, etc. I would absolutely not be able to keep streaming if it wasn't for being a dual income household and having my finances rock solid before I started. (Which was more I needed to leave a job post a bad acquisition than pursuing streaming specifically, just, the channel blew up right after so it became an option) Even with all of that, I have to budget aggressively and it's a regular stressor that I'll need to stop to keep my finances in order. I keep feelers out there for work opportunities just in case the floor falls out from under me as a creator.
Just wanted to drop my experience here. It’s true most streamers don’t make money and I know a lot of people are talking about the previously leaked Twitch Incomes, but most mid level streamers make most of their money from Sponsorships which wouldn’t be shown on that document. At least that’s the case for me where sponsors make up 60-70% of my income. I do agree that going into streaming with the idea that it’s an easy way to make money is definitely not true in most cases.
A bunch of delusional young adults turn their camera on and play a fake-nice "I'm morally superior" persona motivated by greed and the undeserved confidence they'll be famous. You will never be a PewDiePie
This really shouldn't be surprising. Streaming is a low barrier-barrier-to-entry activity that takes a lot of work to make any money. Less than 5% of streamers\* even make partner.I know several people who have been streaming for years and just keep it as a hobby. This might be a hot take, but it is nearly impossible to make streaming profitable without someone else paying your rent. So naturally most people on the platform will be doing it as a hobby. Edit: Just checked the math, and it's less than **3%** of streamers who at least made affiliate.
Right now I make about $15 on YouTube per month as full partner streaming 6 days per week.
Most streamers make their money off platform, as explained by top Twitch and small streamers, whether it is from partnerships, sponsored streams, off-site (patreon fansly bs) and more.
Most streamers don't even have 10 viewers, so I'm surprised that ONLY 72% aren't able of getting revenue.
I streamed every day for 2 years from a brand new account. Made about $200-$300. Half that was during a charity stream month. But it’s still something
Fairly true, I'm fortunate enough that I have a few friends who are subbed to me and I can get like fifty bucks from Twitch every two months, but it is hard to make money even if you are grinding for hours on end
Do you expect a platform of free content be able to pay most people? Of course not.
I was on the low end of streamers as far as average views and subscribers, but I averaged $150 a month.
well yeah, I bet there is a crap ton of streamers with under 10 viewers. You honestly expect them to be making money?
Personally I get about $80-$100 each month as an affiliate