How and How Much Twitch Streamers Earn?

Twitch is an online service (purchased by Amazon for $970 million in 2014) for streaming and watching video broadcasts like eSports competitions, music broadcasts, and online gambling streams. It was introduced back in 2011 and became a popular phenomenon ever since. Many players have now turned to streaming as their primary source of income.

Back in 2016, the platform introduced Bits feature which can be used by fans to cheer for their favourite streamer. Some streamers earn money from Partnership deals with hardware partnerships, coupon codes, brand sponsorships, sponsored games, all the way to third-party app promotions, sponsored streams, and more.

Primarily, there are four methods (besides Bits and Partnership deals) by which a Twitch player can make money on the platform. Let us look into every category in details

• Ads
• Subscriptions
• Donations
• Tournaments

The amount of cash that you are pocketing from the platform might depend on how famous you are.  If you are a rookie, don’t expect to get a lot of Moolah to pay for your pockets. But if you are a professional like MOONMOON_OW, then you can easily get $1,726,966 in Twitch revenue per year. Sounds fascinating? Let’s check it out!

Advertisements

If you frequently visit the Twitch streaming platform, you must know by now that an ad plays right after you click on a Twitch live stream? This ad is a compulsory ad that every live stream has. To increase their earnings, the Twitch players can insert ads right into their stream This might depend on how many ads are allowed on the player’s stream.  You will find a number of channels refusing to allow in-stream ads as it disrupts the flow of the stream. Most of the streamers stick to the pre-roll ads.

If you are a decent player, you will be able to earn around $10,000 each month. Some players keep their streams ad-free, except that obligatory initial ad. Other players try to rake in more money by serving a number of ads to the players. This might bring in a lot of cash but may hurt the player’s view in the long run. We suggest keeping the number of ads low. Just offer what the viewers want – a good game streaming session with minimal interruption.

Subscriptions

This is one of the most important aspects of a Streamer’s career. If you have a good subscriber count, your channel can enjoy good natural growth. Without it, the channel might stagnate and you will lose subscribers. You don’t want that, don’t you? Other than that, the subscriber count is important for keeping up the streamer’s popularity besides providing him with a good income.

In Twitch, the paid subscriptions are fixed at $4.99 per month. The platform takes some royalty from these subscriptions but it depends on the status of the streamer. Most of them get around $2.50. Some popular Twitch users get $3.5 per subscription.

Heard about the streamer ‘Ninja’? He earns about $423,000 per month from subs alone. Impressive! With the Twitch Prime System, viewers are able to link their Amazon accounts with the Twitch Platform. This allows them to get a free subscription every month without paying any money. Of course, the streamers get their share of the cake. This offer is exclusive for Amazon Prime members.

Now, you might ask that watching streams on Twitch is free, then why would viewers subscribe to a channel?  To get the extra perks like sub emotes and loyal badges. Some streamers chat in their subscriber-only mode. With a subscription, you would be able to engage in the conversation as well.

Donations

This is exactly what it sounds like! Fans are able to show their appreciation by sending donations directly into the streamer’s PayPal account. This is a very common type of earning process by Twitch streamers but some of them pursue this aggressively by offering additional contents and discounts. A decent Twitch streamer earns around £2,500 per month in donations. Note that as the donations are not going to Twitch, streamers can avail the entire donation amount without having to pay any royalty tax. You might have to deal with some bank fees which is normally minimal.

Some people think that donation is equal to begging. It is not entirely true! Chances are you are already using a subscription service from Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu. Why won’t you be able to show the same appreciation for your favorite player through the donation feature? It takes a lot of effort to stream – time, money, costly setups, good internet connection and more. If you can show some gratitude through donations, then there is nothing wrong with it.

Tournaments

Tournaments allow Twitch streamers to grab in some extra cash and increase their popularity among the viewers.  Recently, in the Apex Legends Challenge, around $8,000 was given to the player in the first place every day of the tournament. The player in the last 8th position got around $3,000 which is not bad at all, considering that you have to fight along thousands of players to reach the TOP 8 position. Over $200,000 was awarded to players in total during the course of the tournament.