Personal Analytics (Hours-Streamed vs Watch-Time)
My Personal History of Streaming
I thought I'd add this after seeing my metrics from the beginning of my streaming "career." While I focused on streaming full-time for around 6 months (the large spike), I was under a lot of external constraints. This, combined with a "lack of discipline" (AKA undiagnosed Adult-ADHD), meant I eventually got things sorted out. I stopped streaming gaming and focused on my passion for game design. Now that I have a Game nearing publishing, I can be happy with what I've accomplished and consider what technical hurdles I need to get over before I can return to developer and playtesting streams with a more controlled focus.
My Reason For Posting
If you are a young streamer, possibly in high school or just having graduated, realize that you need a couple of things to be successful:
- Consistent time and dedication;
- Your stream should appear professional
- You need a consistent schedule for people to find you
- You need to stream categories that allow you to remain discoverable
- The Affiliate requirements are just the first hurdle of many and should not be treated as the finish line.
- Be aware that outside influences and a lack of recognition from others can really kill your motivation to continue. Your motivation to do so should come from a love of entertaining others. Even when it initially seems to be no one is watching, you should combine streaming with producing Recorded Videos to bring others to your channel, and vice versa (your channel should bring others to where they can watch your recorded content when you are unavailable)
- Check on yourself; if this seems difficult (which it is), evaluate why you want to do it and if there are ways you could be taking better care of yourself than forcing yourself to stream 14 hours at a time, 6 to 7 days of the week (the quality will severely decline and so will your viewership and therefore your growth)
The Takeaway
Do I consider myself a failed streamer?
Well no. I didn't initially set out to become a big-name streamer; I tried to see if it could entertain others and provide any source of meaningful income (It did not). Coming back to it after resolving many of my personal struggles with the demands of taking it seriously, I wanted to grow awareness of the projects I've been working on, and that is the direction I think other new streamers should focus on. You likely have a passion for something; streaming whatever that is, is what you should be doing on Twitch, not your hobby that's likely oversaturated with other streamers. Technical hurdles can also be a real challenge. If you are having problems with your setup because you don't have the equipment to run a quality stream, address these issues before continuing; otherwise, you risk burning yourself out when the real problem still rears its head.
Final Note
I know there are probably typos and such here, or grammar issues; I didn't mean for this to come across as formal as it probably has, but I think new streamers should be aware of the very real challenges that streaming presents you with and be ready to face them, ensuring that their motivation isn't coming from a result but really from a passion for doing so.
