How to Start Streaming On Twitch: 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW!

So you want to become a streamer on Twitch? well in this video I'm gonna give you the ten things you need to know as an overview of what you need to get started!

So for those of you who don't know my name is Eagle Garrett I've been here on YouTube since 2011 and when I first started out I was just making YouTube content I fell off of YouTube for a little while got busy with some different things College wise and of course met my beautiful wife but as things went along I still would upload a video here and there but then I found out about twitch and a little over two and a half years ago I started on twitch with my very first stream.

Now I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know really what there was to twitch but I had kind of a base knowledge of things that I had figured out and over the next two and a half years I grew from being a you know a beginning streamer all the way up to now where I do this full time and I stream on Twitch full time, now and this video is the start of a series I want to do to help you guys with some of the things that I've learned over the last two and a half years so today as we jump into a top 10 list of the top 10 things you need to know to get started on Twitch, this will hopefully be the start of a bunch of videos that I can help kind of pass along the knowledge and the information that I've gained over these last two and a half years growing into a full time streamer.

Okay so the first thing that I want to talk about is your username, before you ever sign up for a twitch account before you ever do anything like that you need to think through what is your username going to be how easy is it for people to recognize how available is it it's gonna be your brand in the future how is it going - you know translate as a brand because your username if twitch blows up for you is going to be your twitch brand so start thinking that over when you go to sign up for twitch.

It will give you the ability to search usernames you're gonna have to sit there and type in different ideas and different usernames you have until you find something that's not already taken but the one thing I want to stress is to try as much as possible to stay away from symbols and numbers and a whole bunch of stuff that makes your username hard to remember or hard to find.

Again so if your username is something that has you know every is replaced with a three and every o is replaced with a zero that's not what we want we want to have a username that is easy to remember easy to spell and is unique to you let it have a meaning to use something that you can explain to your twitch channel and therefore will be in the minds of

everybody.

Who knows who you are it comes to know your channel and becomes a part of your community.

Okay so the second thing you need to start thinking about once you figure out what you want your username to be is what kind of theme do you want your channel to have you know.

For me the theme of my channel is Eagles, my name is Eagle Garrett the reason why my name is eagle Garrett has a lot to do with the fact that I'm an Eagle Scout but also Eagles have always kind of been a part of different things I've been involved with just knocked over a water bottle Eagles have had a lot to do with things I've been involved with my entire life, with that being said the theme of my stream is is Eagle related stuff my community is called the flock the subscribers on my twitch channel are called the high fliers club and so everything kind of revolves around that theme.

I would strongly recommend coming up with some sort of theme that revolves around you either something about your personality about your life something that has to do with your username maybe something that has to do with where your username comes from because we talked about having a meaning to that username but come up with some sort of theme that you want to start with.

It doesn't mean that your theme can't change over time but what it does mean is you have somewhere to start to create an identity for your channel.

Next we need to figure out what streaming platform we would like to join to use as our kind of our catalyst and our main hub for all of the different things that are gonna go on our stream like alerts, our chatbots and things that make a stream what it is.

So there's two different ones that I recommend, in fact I really recommend one very very strongly but there's two different ones that are the most popular for streaming and that is streamelements and streamlabs.

Now I personally use streamelements, I think they have the the just absolute superior platform right now, there are things about both that I absolutely love, you'll see this is streamlabs right here this is their opening page and this is streamelements opening page but for me streamelements provides everything I need plus a lot of flexibility when it comes to further developing your stream in different ways with custom type commands and things like that so I recommend using streamelements.

If you just go to streamelements comm there'll be a link in the description I recommend using that and when you come here you can actually once you're sign in with your twitch account you can just connect your twitch account to streamelements and it will log you in and you can see I'm logged in right up here already and then I can click this button and go to my dashboard and manage it further out from there.

Also with Streamlabs you can do the same thing, you can go them over here and go log in with twitch or if you're on YouTube log in with YouTube.

Now Streamlabs has a lot of great features as well there are a lot of streamers that use streamlabs but there's also a ton of streamers that use streamelements so it just kind of depends on you know your preference, I would look into both of them but in my opinion streamelements does offer more of the features that I like and really has the most robust feature set but what a streaming platform does is provide you a place where all of your overlays are are set, for instance in streamelements you can actually set overlays and you can see right here that this is where I would I would edit my overlays.

the beautiful thing about this is like I can go in and once I set up an overlay like let's say a follower event when somebody follows me boom there it is I can actually see what that looks like on the screen, if I want to if I want to hear the the volume for that I can do I can unmute this and there it is it's gonna show you exactly what its gonna look like when it pops up on your page so when we come back over here that's the way it looks when I'm on stream and somebody follows.

But that's what a streaming platform can do, it can give you the ability to adjust some of the things like your alert events but also in addition to that we can go we can exit out of this and we can go back over here and you can see my main dashboard I have all of my things set up all of my different overlays set up in-stream elements and then I'm just copying links like when I go in when I go into my alerts I'm copying this link right here pasting it in OBS as a browser source and that's pulling in that alert so every time something happens on my stream it pulls in the alert and shows that in my OBS.

Now OBS is something we haven't talked about which we're gonna talk about here in a minute but what I wanted to show you with this also is that streamelements and streamlabs both have the ability you can come down here and you also have a chat bot so you can come in and make a bunch of different commands and these are things that people can type in your stream in the chat that reply with something, so for instance right now we have we have a a custom code that we use for fortnite gameplay so whenever we're playing fortnite if if people want to play with us they can come in and type in exclamation point code and that will return a command that tells them our custom code is right now equal with the number three the server we play on is the NA East servers.

You can come edit tons of different chat commands and things that can happen in the chat with stream elements and it's very very very detailed including all the way down to variable commands for those of you who know a little bit more about programming and that sort of thing you can come in and use these variable commands to set up really robust complicated but very cool commands that the chat bots can do within your your twitch chat.

Pick out between streamelements and streamlabs which one you prefer, my recommendation is streamelements come and sign up for streamelements and then we can move on to the very next step.

Okay so now that you set up your streaming platform let's say that you went with stream elements and you've signed in through your twitch with streamelements and you can click

that big button that says log in with twitch, once you've done that what's the next thing we need to do next we need to get OBS on our computer.

Now streamelements actually offers a version of OBS, what OBS is is open broadcaster software, now OBS also has their own software you can download directly and you can actually download it for Windows, Mac or Linux and this is the program that sends your stream to twitch, this is the program you have to set up everything in in order for twitch to see what you're doing on your computer but another good option and a really simple option is that you can actually download OBS dot live which is streamelements version of OBS and this is actually something I recommend especially if you're getting started on twitch brand-new.

You download it by clicking this button right here and it's actually going to bring you to a fully featured, fully functioning version of open broadcaster software but with integration into your streamelements platform, streamlabs has a version of this as well, streamlabs OBS I think is what it's called, they both work very similarly my recommendation is this OBS dot live because it pulls in all the information from your stream elements once you get that all set up and you can actually have widgets and things like that on the side panels of your OBS that give you information or allow you to change the title of your stream things like that.

So you can download OBS right from here and get it set on your computer and once you have that set it should look something like this you can see that this is my OBS over here to the side I can make it fullscreen you get that stream inception that's going on here but the reality is that I'm recording my screen that has my OBS setup on it right now that way you can see what I'm doing and right now we're just recording but when you stream of course this will this will stay streaming and as you can see you have your audio levels down here you have your sources and this is what OBS does when you set all of this up it puts everything on the screen.

So this box that you see around me this is pulling from from streamelements, I've made this graphic and then I had a set with my webcam, my webcam is set here and then I have a set up currently on this particular scene so that you can see whatever is on my screen and you can see me at the same time and this is where the magic happens for most streamers is they have themselves on the screen and they have their game play in the background or on the rest of the screen behind their webcam and what that does is that allows you to share with your viewers everything that you're doing, whether you're doing graphic design you're playing video games or anything else you're doing on your computer this will show that.

You can also set it up to where if you wanted to have two webcams one on you and then maybe one that's on your whole room because you're doing art or you're doing music, you can also set that up all through OBS.

So you're gonna want to download OBS live or open broadcaster software from their website directly if you go with streamlabs, download their version of OBS and get this set up because you will need this to be able to stream in order to stream.

Now the other thing I have to mention is obviously to set any of this up you have to have a streaming computer, if you're on ps4 or Xbox and you're trying to stream to twitch you can but you have to use their direct streaming setup which means you don't have this customization so this is all handy if you have a computer, if you don't have a computer to stream off of then this OBS will not apply to you, in fact most of what we're talking about today won't apply so make sure that you have a PC that you can do all of this from.

Okay so now we're on to step number five which is graphics something that you'll need to consider is either whether you yourself can make graphic, you know overlays and sort of that sort of thing for twitch or if you'll need a higher graphic designer, you don't have to go overboard with this in the beginning though to give you an idea of like something I use let me show you what I use for my chatting screen.

When we're just hanging out at the beginning of the stream this is my screen that I use whenever I'm starting the stream and talking with my community you can notice that I've got some different graphics set up, I have the chat right up here the web browser we were just looking at for stream elements it's it's it's on its own little screen down here and then down here you can see I've got everything set up through streamelements to show like who the latest subscriber is right here recent bit dropper or donator who those people were how many people we have subscribe to the channel.

You can see down here in the corner my fingers right there then over here we've got like a list of like all of our legends and things like that on the screen, what this stuff does is provide information to your viewers you know give them a little bit of props or thanks for what they're doing on your stream support they drop things like that but also in addition to that it just provides a more production value.

You don't have to have a bunch of extra graphics if you don't want to you could simply just you know have yourself up on a screen like this if you wanted to most likely what's gonna happen the most the first is followers and so your followers that's where you want those stream notifications to come in and somebody follows it pops up something on your stream and you're good to go and of course you can do all of that through streamelements or streamlabs, they've got templates that you can use that you can set up that make it really easy.

They also have the ability for you to upload your own so start thinking about what kind of graphics you want to have set up on your stream and whether you're gonna make those or have somebody else make them or if you're gonna keep it simple and you know just put a few of the presets or the defaults with which are really awesome.

Actually stream elements has a bunch of cool default overlays that you can use that make it super simple to set up and get things going for your stream.

Now step number six is of course something we've already kind of covered and that is notifications, I want to show you back on my streamelements here I want to show you my notifications that I have set up and kind of what that looks like because when you look at alerts I go into my alerts section here you can see that I can set up things for followers for you know when people redeem things out of my store which through streamelements there's a store option and so we have a point system set up that's a bunch of stuff we'll get into in another video.

But even when later on down the road when you become a twitch affiliate or a partner you can have people subscribe to you and when they subscribe there can be a you know a different for instance notification that pops up and shows who subscribed that sort of thing

you can test them here so you want to set up your alerts but if you don't have an alert that you want to use.

Then stream elements also has very very very good you know default options so you can go

into your alert box and if you go under your follower alert you could click on that and you could also there's already a default alert here or you can go and you can find like a gif or something that you really like an animated you know gif of some sort or a logo or graphic that you like and you can actually upload it and have it animate in any time you know somebody follows a gif can start playing on the screen over and over or something like that.

So you want to start thinking about notifications especially when you're starting out on Twitch, the most important one for you is going to be this follower notification right here and also your host and your raids because a lot of this other stuff won't happen until after you become a twitch affiliate which takes a little time to get to twitch affiliate.

So hosts and raids and followers are the three main things that you want to start focusing on and then as you go along if you want to add things to your item shop or when you have the ability to have subscribers or that sort of thing set those up.

Another one to consider though is also your your tip event or donations is what I call it but they call it tips, you might want to go and set up something for that in the case that somebody decides they want to support your stream you want something to pop up on the screen so make sure you come down here and you set a tip event for me, I've got one that that goes a little something like this it starts playing some music haha and and it shows who donated the money you're getting.

I'm saying it shows who donated to the stream to support the stream and so you want to set something up there as well but these are all things that you want to do to help enhance your stream and say thank you to the people that are coming in and joining your community.

So once you have this set up you're good to go but be thinking about those notifications okay, so now that you've got the notifications you kind of got you know an idea of what that's all about and you can start looking for some gifts or some kind of you know something to pop up on the screen for your notification.

The next thing we need to do which i think is number i think it's number seven guys if i'm counting correctly but step number seven is a webcam, now it's not required to have a webcam when you stream on Twitch you can stream without one but a webcam does enhance the interaction between you and your audience.

So getting started I recommend there's a there's a couple of different webcams and I'll have a list in the description you guys which will include the through the top three webcams that I recommend and they they vary in price so I'll have the cheapest one all the way up to the most expensive.

Webcam that that I would recommend for starting on Twitch but really this right here is a Logitech c920, now this was the first this was basically the first webcam that that I had one of the first webcams that I had and this webcam is a very popular one for twitch this one a lot of twitch streamers used it's nice and simple it has a it has a its own little stand right down here so if like I was to unwrap this you can pull this out and you can actually attach it to you the top of your monitor like that and it can just clip over the side and it points towards you like this and you don't even have to have a tripod for it right.

So a c920 is a great little webcam but I also have used a couple of other ones, there's a c9 22 which is the step up from this one and that's the one I actually recommend because this one is a little buggy but the c920 2 has some of those bugs worked out and it's a little tiny bit better quality so I would look at the c920 - all of this is linked in the description, I'll have an entire you know what you need to get started list on Amazon and links to these products.

And then I the last webcam that I got which was the the newest one I was using until this one and I'll tell you what this one is here in a minute but was this one right here and this is the the Logitech Bree, oh let me pull this one up really quick this is the Logitech Bree oh now I have this as a secondary camera right now but this is a great camera as you can tell it's a

Really good color, really good clarity and I use this one for kind of a top-down view when I'm sitting back and just talking with the chat or when I'm eating dinner or something like that and we're just taking a minute to chill. I use the Logitech Brio.

Now this one is a more expensive webcam compared to the c920 the c920 is gonna run you anywhere from fifty to sixty dollars, this one is upwards of two hundred dollars but depending on what you have to get started you can go straight for the best webcam available or you can get you know a starting you know 50 or $60 c920 and this is gonna be more than sufficient for what you're doing.

So anyway I used the  Brio as another camera I also have I also have a c920 to set up on the other side of my setup and that's a top-down view this way and that just allows me to do like when I have to do push ups on stream that makes me switch to a push up cam so to speak.

The other thing that you can do and this will not be recommended for starting on Twitch at all is have a camera like this and this is a DSLR that's plugged in to a capture card now this is a this is not something you need for starting you definitely don't need to spend the money on

something like this it helps for youtube videos and things like that if you're going up for a really high quality but the real you could make starting content for twitch and YouTube with one of these just fine and it does a great great great job so Logitech makes some great products that I recommend I'll have a link down in the description check them out but you'll need to look at a webcam if you really want to make that user engagement and interaction go to the next level.

Oh yeah guys and as a bonus this is just a bonus I wanted to talk about while I'm thinking about it is also another big thing once you get a webcam for your stream a big thing that you're probably gonna need and will up the quality of your stream a ton is good lighting.

Now there's a lot of really expensive lighting options on Amazon and on you know these different you know video photo store websites things like that you don't have to spend a lot of money though to get good lighting, let me show you what I'm literally using right now for my front lights now granted I do have a backlight that's that's a little bit nicer but even if I was to turn that backlight off and let me do that really quick I can do it I can do it for my phone because it's a Wi-Fi you know I'm saying no but okay so if I'm gonna turn that back light off check this out I still have good lighting on my face so when I stream I normally stream this way right here and it works out perfectly for my stream the lights that you see right here in front of me are these lights right here let me show you what they are they are can lights they're literally like clamp lights you can you can see this right here you can clamp it onto your desk or you know onto the side of your your monitor or something like that literally you grab one of these lights and you put a an LED daylight it's got to be daylight see how it says daylight up there in the corner daylight bulb inside of one of those can lights I suggest getting two of these lights right here and I have two of them that are in front of me that's what's lighting my face those two lights and then I have add a light bulb in each one I have 100 watt bulbs these are 60 watt bulbs but mine are so bright I bounced them off of a wall and my wall is white so I bounced the light off the wall and that's what lights my face.

If you don't have a white wall that you can bounce light off of or you know you want to do it a different way another thing you can do is get these 60 watt bulbs and put them in these can lights right here and then you could put like a a plastic a white plastic bag from Walmart or something you can just put it right over because they're LED lights they don't get super hot just put that right over the front and it diffuses that light and gives you a really nice glow and then you just set those lights up you clamp them in your room it lights you up and that's gonna provide a bunch of extra quality improvement for your webcam, I'm gonna use my Logitech Brio right here, let me get that pulled up here it is this is the Logitech Brio and I'm only using those two lights bouncing off of my wall over there and it looks pretty good right it looks pretty good it's not bad this creates a lot of good lighting here.

I don't have any other light other than a little bit of light bleeding through my curtains but it's very very little. The other light that I have is this blue LED strip back here but again if I was to turn these lights off in front of me you would not see my face very much at all.

With that being said you guys Amazon I'll have the links in the description for this as well but good lighting super cheap and the good thing about these things is I mean look at this these this is this is 889 for one of these things and then this 4-pack is eight dollars twelve cents so at the very minimum you get one can light and this pack right here and you're talking about 1617 bucks for really good lighting, it's what I've been using this whole time and I haven't spent a bunch of extra money on really nice lighting because it works you know the daylight spectrum it looks like you know you're sitting in front of a window almost try it out you guys I just want to add this bonus little feature it's technically 11 steps instead of 10 but hey you know what bonuses are always good.

Now number eight on our list is audio, this is probably the most important when it comes to like webcams and and and things like that this is actually the most important thing and the first thing that you should focus on and if you can't get a webcam at first I would suggest going with a good audio, good quality audio source before you even look at the webcam and I'm gonna show you what I recommend.

This is a blue Yeti microphone, now I recommend this because I used this for over a year when I started on Twitch and guys just to give you an idea you don't have to have a big fancy setup to start on Twitch I had a gaming laptop I had this blue Yeti microphone and I had I had a C 922, these three things are what I had for my my initial setup but even if I didn't have this webcam if I had had this microphone right here which is a USB microphone so it plugs directly into your computer or your laptop I plugged it into a laptop this produces

extremely good audio so these were run about a hundred bucks on Amazon I'll have a link down in the description but a hundred dollars for extremely good almost professional sounding quality is a no-brainer and people will appreciate having a good quality audio on your stream almost more than they will having a webcam so if you need to get the microphone first and save up for the webcam then I would suggest going that direction.

Now let's say you're like man a hundred bucks is way too steep I can't afford a hundred bucks for a microphone, well there's another option this same company blue also makes what they call the blue snowball and again I'll have that in the description but the I don't have one of those on hand with me I prefer the blue Yeti because I think it has a better sound and a few more features but the blue snowball is also a great option it's about half the price of a blue Yeti and it will still produce extremely good crispy audio for you on your stream so focus on your microphone first and then later you can upgrade and add a webcam if you can't do it all at once so the blue Yeti my first recommendation but for a cheaper option the blue snowball is also a great option for starting out a stream on Twitch.

Now point number nine that I want to talk about is a schedule, now this is more of this is more of something that you can do after you get your stream set up and you kind of get everything working and figuring out how it all goes together but a schedule is crucially important for growth on Twitch and I'll tell you why because when people come by and find your channel when you're first starting out being discovered is a difficult thing and so a schedule is going to be a massively important part of people knowing when they can come back to watch your stream and to help you grow.

When people come back and are a part of your stream and join your community and they know you're gonna go live next then they can look forward to coming back and spending some time hanging out with you the next time you’re live but if you don't have a schedule and you just kind of stream whenever you feel like it then a lot of times those people won't know when to come back so they may just have to get lucky that you're on when they can be on and and that they got the notification and they're able to tune in but if you have a schedule even if it's only one or two nights a week that you can stream whatever it is.

Try to set up a schedule that you can keep consistently, don't try to overdo it but if you do have the ability to give yourself a nice you know at least a three hour period of time try to stream for at least three hours per scheduled stream.

Now you can always add in bonus streams and things like that but at least have a set based schedule that you know I will be here every single week at these times and you guys know where to find me and when I'll be live, now I do suggest like I said three hours for for kind of a good streaming amount of time a lot of times an hour is too short and and then you know two hours is it's getting there but three really gives you the ability to start the stream it gives people the the option to come in and if they come in a little bit late it's not like they're gonna miss the majority of your stream, so if you can stream for about three hours a session that's a really good starting place and of course a scheduled time every week or multiple times every week will be a huge benefit to growing on Twitch and for people just like discover who you are you're not saying like they need to know who you are when they come back and they're able to come back then you're gonna start to build a community and meet a lot of friends and a lot of new faces that that pop back in on a regular basis so schedule is crucial number nine guys don't forget it.

Okay and tip number ten and this is a this is a big one that a lot of people don't really think about when they're trying to start a stream they're just focused on a stream but tip number ten you guys is social media, outside of twitch one of the big things and one of the things you'll discover if you spend any time on Twitch is that a lot of twitch streamers also are on

twitter.

Twitter is a great way and it's it's a very very popular platform for twitch streamers but it's also a great way to keep up with your community so when you're trying to you know network or meet other streamers and and play with them or keep up with what they're doing what their schedules are things like that, Twitter is one of the big ones you want to have a Twitter account even if you've never had one before it's worth getting on Twitter and figuring out because one it allows you to communicate with your community your followers outside of the stream when you're not live but two it also gives you the ability to kind of keep up with what's going on in the twitch community because when twitch when people are not live on Twitch a lot of those same people are you know active on their Twitter accounts so Twitter is a big one.

Also Instagram, Facebook, YouTube you name it being active on other social media platforms gives you the ability to be able to communicate with your audience on a more regular basis and keep up with them and also they can see content and get to know who you are more personally through those social media accounts whenever you're not live so you can post you know pictures of you hanging out with your dog or on a trip that you were on or

things like that and it gives it a little glimpse behind the scenes into your life as a twitch streamer.

With that being said guys those are my top 10 overview kind of things you need to know to get started on Twitch, obviously we didn't go into a lot of detail about each and every one of those things but guys hopefully that gives you a well-rounded perspective on you know all

the things that you need in order to start becoming a twitch streamer my name is eagle Garrett I stream every day except for Wednesday and Sunday on Twitch you can find me come follow me on I'm also on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook here on YouTube and of course twitch you can come to check me out on twitch at twitch.tv slash Eagle Garrett.

I really appreciate you guys watching this video hanging out with me let me know in the description what you thought and if this helped and also things that you would like to see me do videos on to go more in depth and things that you're wondering as you get started on your twitch streaming journey guys have a great day of course rock on peace out god bless we'll see you in the next one!