Streaming is too saturated and too competitive these days just last month there were over 8.5 million different channels that went live and if you logged on at any point during a 24-hour period on average there are another 100 000 other channels also live streaming on twitch and get this out of those 8.5 million people they can be split into two different categories.
The first category are the people who are actually trying to grow their channel and the second category are the people who are doing the three things in today's video, which side do you want to be on probably this one right!
Hey, I'm Eljay! and the hardest part about today’s video is the fact that if you do any of these three mistakes you will always struggle to grow your stream, i'd go so far as to say that the three mistakes in this video are what keep small streamers small it's what holds them back especially the final mistake that i'm going to cover at the end of the video.
I know i say this a lot but that one i think is a mindset that causes streamers to never grow and never truly find their audience so stay tuned i will say there are time codes in the description so you can skip ahead to any parts that interest you the most especially that final tip.
Of those 8.5 million streams that go live in a month the majority of them don't put a huge amount of thought into their content they simply pick a game and then just go live actually a large majority of them don't even pick a game they'll play five or six things and whatever strikes their fancy, small streamers often don't think much about the content they’re actually creating because from the outside it’s very easy to say this guy's just sitting in his room playing video games that's real easy i could make money doing that but the reality is that streaming properly is well content creation and content creation is entertainment and entertainment is providing value to viewers.
Anyone can go live and play video games, as i said millions of people monthly do that but very few people can go live and provide entertaining quality content, you watching this and needing to grow have to find a way to set yourself apart from all of the millions of people who are just going live and quietly playing a video game until someone chats.
You need to find a way to stand above all of that noise or else you’ll sink to the bottom of all of that noise, and no one will ever find you, so how do you do this how do you stand out well it's actually really easy, i want you to structure your streams you have a beginning a middle and an end and i want you to think about what you're going to be doing throughout your stream that is going to be interesting enough to keep viewers watching.
And you’re thinking how do i know if it's interesting lj, well it's actually really easy again i want you to try summarizing the interesting part of your stream down to 30 or 40 characters aka your stream title, once you've summarized it ask yourself if someone sees this title are they going to be interested enough to actually click on your stream and if they do happen to click on your stream is the content you're going to be producing engaging enough to keep them actually watching.
This is a rule i have for every single stream and i try and structure them every single time i go live i did this with five viewers and i do this with 150 viewers, i'm not just going to play elden ring no i'm going to play elden ring and i'm going to let chat turn off my controller at any point, my title summarizes this interesting concept you can turn off my controller that is enough to make them click then the interaction that they can keep on turning it off keeps them watching and the entertainment value is a brutally hard game made even harder by twitch chat's obsession with trying to hurt me on an emotional level by turning off my controller.
Every time i'm about to kill the boss sorry and while doing all of this i’m not just commentating i have a stand-up routine essentially i have a whole list of talking points funny things that happen throughout my week stories from my childhood from my uni degree all sorts of things to keep me going to show off my personality and help distract them from my very mediocre gameplay because my value doesn’t come from being a pro gamer my value comes from being mediocre and entertaining.
So here is your actionable tip thinking about what game you’re going to be playing is the most basic level of considering your content i want you to think about your stream as if it was a show, i want you to ask yourself what your entertainment value is and if you’re struggling to figure it out what i want you to do is write down three different streamers who inspire you who make content that you want to make content like and then for each of them i want you to write down why you go back and watch them, what is the unique selling point or what is the entertainment of those three streamers that keeps you coming back what keeps you engaged.
I’m looking for streamers to watch to help inspire me to make better content so once you figure out who inspires you comment them down below i'm keen to check some more people out and while you're there maybe write how you're going to take your content to the next level what are you gonna do to stand out amongst the 8.5 million people who go live.
So the next mistake is actually one of the core reasons why i think small streamers never grow on twitch or youtube, it's an incredibly foreign concept when you start out and it's not your fault to make this but once you learn this you never have to remind yourself of it ever again unlike the final tip in this video which is a constant reminder even i have to remind myself not to do the final mistake in this video every few months.
But before we get to that first why is it that small streamers never grow well the answer is because they go live without any real consideration into how viewers are gonna find their stream and hold on because i can see you starting to write that comment out your instant thought was that’s what categories are for lj they'll go visit the category and they'll click my stream but honestly will they find you like that i want you to think really carefully about how the common twitch viewer actually uses twitch as a platform and then think about where you're appearing on the platform and consider whether or not those people are ever gonna actually see your stream let alone have a chance to click it.
I asked 5 000 different twitch viewers how they use the platform and 62% of them said if they're going to go on twitch they’ll go straight to their followed streamers list on the left-hand side then 20% of them said they’ll go straight to their favorite streamer if they’re online 12% percent said straight to their favorite category and then a tiny four percent said they’ll browse the home page and even smaller two percent said they'd browse the most viewed categories.
That's how people use this platform, essentially this means when people come to twitch as a platform to watch a live stream the vast majority of them go straight to streamers they are already following or already watch and then a small amount of them actually go and browse those categories that you were talking about so the problem is is that if all of your growth is going to come from the category and do you want to play a game where you're one in 15000 other streamers and you're right down the bottom because you're a beginner nobody's ever going to see that or just as difficult.
What if you’re the only streamer in a category and the category is so dead and so quiet that nobody’s going to find it, nobody's going to look for it then you're going to need a different discovery method.
I have a whole video coming soon where i break down five different discovery methods for twitch streamers and how they can build them off platform or on platform as well so subscribe for that but the short of it is that if you’re completely undiscoverable on platform then you need to treat your stream like a recording session to make content on other platforms, you're either going to plan your stream out so you can edit it down into a highly discoverable high-quality video or you're going to plan out clippable moments and use them to create tik toks or youtube shorts.
I completely wrote tiktok off as a platform by the way but recently i started using it and within two to three weeks i managed to get 3.5 million views entirely for free just using twitch clips if you want to learn how to do that i’ll put a link in the description to a video where i break down everything.
You can also use the same video to make youtube shorts if you're scared of tik tok which i know a lot of people are, if you still don't believe me think about it this way if you go live three times a week and each time you go live is about three to four hours which is a nice balance that's about what i recommend for a beginner and in that small window of time you're going live and you're not thinking about how people are actually using the platform how people are actually going to discover you, will they scroll through 13 000 people to find you in the minecraft category, no.
Which means your growth is going to be fairly slow and potentially non-existent especially when there are 20 other hours in the day when you're not live where people could be finding you on other platforms instead so look let me summarize with an actionable tip, if you're not in the incredibly lucky or incredibly strategic position where you're in the top two to three rows of an active category that's not so actively over saturated but not so inactive that it's completely dead which is very tricky to find for your content then you'll need to pick one other platform minimum to start learning how the algorithm works and start producing content on.
I would say the easiest place to start is by creating tik toks and youtube shorts as i said i have a video on it and i know a lot of content creators who take their clips and use those programs to turn them into really engaging shorts and tick tocks and then funnel those people to their streams.
Iona is a fantastic creator who's grown from zero to 200 plus average viewers using TikTok content, i know a lot of people say TikTok and shorts don't convert to long-term twitch viewers which is totally fair to say honestly the conversion rate is lower but if that's the case do what i'm doing and send your TikTok viewers to discord, twitter or youtube.
I get about five to ten new subs a day on a brand new youtube channel, the only place that's being advertised is tik tok and you might be thinking 5 to 10 subs a day isn't much but for a beginning channel that’s a huge amount of new subs.
Let's keep moving, but i will just say one more time if you have no discovery it's so easy to start creating shorts and tick tocks and it will increase your discovery by a wild amount compared to what you have right now, as i said two to three weeks and i got 3.5 million views and i'm a beginner, i’ll link the guide in the top of the description just consider trying it out and seeing what you can do.
So let's talk about the final mindset, this is the mindset that keeps small streamers small and actually if big streamers accidentally fall into it it'll make them lose viewers, so if you truly want to know what separate streamers who are going to grow from streamers who will never grow well it all comes down to a bit of a harsh but very true statement: you probably don't appreciate or really value viewers maybe not you specifically but i think you can learn from this either way whenever i tell small streamers that they need to actually make good content even at zero viewers in order to grow the amount of replies that i get that feel like excuses is incredibly disheartening or i'll tell people to level up their content and i'll give them examples like the elden ring stream i told you guys about or i'll show them poincrow small ant ambiguous amphibian or call me kevin and so many other amazing creators who are doing great work to make high quality content.
But whenever i give these examples i get so many small streamers saying back to me you don't understand lj i don’t have the resources to do what small and point crow do they've got millions of subscribers they pay editors, and they have thousands of viewers in chat they can bounce off to make good content and my reply to that is kind of simple and a little bit harsh stop making excuses.
No seriously you need to hear this, if you're a small streamer and you want to grow let me give you two examples that i think really nails this home, two years ago poincare did a stream where he was going to try and beat the great plateau in breath of the wild using only directions from his chatters, he couldn’t see the game he could only hear it and then see people talk so that means chat messages and sound that's a pretty easy challenge to do right he's got thousands of chatters who are able to give him directions actually no poinco did that stream when he only had 24 average viewers he edited it down and released a youtube video and when it first released it didn't really do much on his channel, let's get forward two years and a lot of other videos just like that being released consistently and well that video he made now has over half a million views on it november 22 2018.
Small aunt releases a video of him being the third person ever to beat mario odyssey with minimum captures as a speedrun at this point smallhead only has 25 paid twitch subs and around 30 to 40 average viewers but we cut forward and that video he released has over 600 000 views on it so here is the actionable tip, if you learn one thing from this entire video it is this and i want you to share this video to any small streamer who you talk to that starts making excuses.
It doesn't matter how many viewers you have, you have to make good engaging unique and high quality content if you want to be discovered and grow as a twitch streamer and you don't just do it once no you then have to do it again and again and again and again and again and again and the success will come if you keep consistently doing it and creating high quality content, your viewers will increase but that won't change the fact that you’re making good quality content it just means that more people are watching you make it because in two years’ time you might look back and go wow this video has over half a million views i can’t believe i did this.
And before you say audrey i don’t know how to edit well go watch those two videos that i referenced because no offense to point chrome smallhead because i have huge respect to them but those videos aren't fancy the editing isn’t aggressively polished they don't have subtitles funny graphics or all sorts of retention rate boosting things that all those youtube guides say you need to do in order to be successful, no, they're just good quality content cut down into something that is digestible and discoverable, that’s it.
I'm trying not to be too harsh and i hope this doesn't come across as harsh i'm just incredibly passionate about what i do here and the reason is because i've been in your streams some of you are hilarious some of you are wholesome engaging edgy whatever it is but you’re so unique and interesting but you’re just not discoverable and a lot of you just need a little push to get out there and start creating content to get out there and start being discoverable because it's scary to do that because if you do that well you might fail so i want you to take this take my words right now as your push get out there and start creating more content because it's so much better to try and fail than to never risk failing at all and then to still fail and if you want to hear more from me and you want to learn more than youtube thinks this video here is a good option for you so why not give it a click and see if it helps you guys out thank you so much for watching i hope this wasn't too harsh i'll see you next week!
