Published on December 7th, 2021 | by Sunit Nandi

Want to Monetize Your Gaming Stream? Here Are 5 Tips to Help

Streaming is extremely rewarding. Seeing your viewership climb into the hundreds while you create a community of engaged followers can give you a real sense of accomplishment and pride. But there’s another reason many people stream their favorite games: monetization.

Since Twitch and Youtube gaming launched in the 2010s, top streamers have found ways to monetize their stream and have been gaining income from sponsorships, events, and ad revenue ever since. Now, more people than ever are watching streamers play video games — at the time of writing, Twitch’s highest concurrent viewership has topped 6,500,000.

The buzz around gaming and streaming is continuing even as we look to exit the pandemic. That means it’s a great time for you to think about monetizing your stream. Here are five tips you can use to help you successfully monetize your stream.

Image source: Unsplash

Consistency

Streamers live and die by consistency. If you are consistent, viewers will know how and when to find you. That means you’ll create a thriving community of repeat viewers who drive better engagement and will help you land sponsorship deals and event invitations.

The best way to create consistency is to set a schedule and stick to it. This shows prospective sponsors that you offer regular, high-quality content which will convince them to invest in your stream. If you don’t offer consistent content, you’ll find repeat viewers hard to come by and will put off sponsors.

Platforms like Twitch even allow you to schedule your streams so you can advertise your offering and add a little peer pressure to keep you on track.

Branding

Streaming is a business. Like any successful business, you need to build a strong brand image — this creates loyalty within your audience and boosts your profile online. One of the easiest ways to create a strong brand is to invest in simple graphics and create a website of your own.

If you don’t know how to build a website, you can find beginner and intermediate courses online. This is particularly important as your web content should be accessible and your user experience (UX) should be intuitive. If your web presence is clunky or inaccessible, your brand image will tank and the time investment will not result in increased viewership.

Professionalism

Big-name streamers can get away with (almost) anything on stream. However, as a growing streamer, sitting in your underpants in front of a poorly-lit room won’t do you any favors — especially when competition is putting forward a professional, clean image.

You don’t have to break the bank when creating a professional image — just focus on the basics. Ensure that the background you use is conducive to streaming, and consider painting if the walls around you are washing you out. The best colors for streaming are usually dark and neutral, but you should consider the lighting in your room before applying fresh paint.

The key idea is to remove any distractions for the audience. They should either be focused on your face or the game — not the people in the background or the high-frequency hum being emitted from a charging controller.

Engagement

Creating engagement is the most challenging aspect of streaming. As a new streamer, you feel like every interaction makes or breaks your career. Creating natural conversation feels impossible and it seems as though your audience evaporates with every awkward pause.

To get over this, you need to plan ahead and go easy on yourself.

Planning potential conversations ahead can be as simple or complex as you like. If you’re a planner, you might script entire talking points with great nuance. If you prefer spontaneity, taking a few bullet point notes of gaming news will offer you more than enough content to talk about.

You also need to accept that not every story and question you pose to your chat will gain a response — and that’s ok. The key is to refocus on the game you are playing and to keep talking with your audience, even if they are giving your crickets. Eventually, someone will take the bait and you’ll have more engagement than you can even handle.

Build Community

Your favorite streamers probably play together. That’s because they’ve intentionally crafted a community and have invited other, similar streamers to play with them. Actively building community in this way can feel a little awkward, but can be rewarding personally and for your monetization efforts.

When you collaborate with other streamers, you’ll find that your viewership numbers grow together. That’s because you’ll start to share common viewers, and this overlap will help you climb through the ranks of gamers trying to get featured on streaming platforms.

The easiest way to build community is to seek out Discord servers and actively participate in them. There’s no limit on the number of Discord gaming servers you join, but — as a growing streamer — you probably want to shoot for a number between 10 and 20. This will help increase your circle of streamers and will help you join streams that catch a flow of viewership. Visit Increditools to get more information about increasing Discord members.

Round-Up

Successfully monetizing your stream is all about playing the long game. Even streamers who now command audiences in the thousands start with single-digit viewerships and have all had their fair share of awkward silences.

The key is to offer consistent content which impresses sponsors and helps you improve your viewership. To improve your offering, consider switching up your background and make sure you seek out other players looking for partners in the teeming streaming world.

Tags: gaming stream, monetize, tips

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.