One of the aims for many new streamers is obtaining Twitch Affiliate status as quickly as possible. The benefit to being an affiliate is earning revenue through your online community. You earn via subscriptions and donations on the Twitch platform. The difficulty is Twitch ask you to fulfil certain criterias before they open up the revenue features on your channel. This article will explain our journey to obtaining Twitch Affiliate in less than two weeks.
There is no silver bullet to getting affiliate but by taking note of our tips it may help you to get there. We have broken down the tips into the four categories that make up the Twitch Affiliate criteria. These criterias are based on followers, time spent streaming, different days you have streamed and your average viewers. You need to achieve all four, at the same time, in a 30 day period to qualify.
The first step to achieving affiliate status is having 50 followers of your channel. We found that getting followers is actually fairly simple. By being active members of the Twitch community you naturally start to engage with like minded people. People follow people and by being supportive to others they will more than often show that support back. The best way to be supportive is by watching other streamers and being sociable in their chat.
Before we even turned on our own camera we watched a bunch of other streamers. Our aim was to see for ourselves how streaming worked and to try and make some friends. The internet is not much fun if you don’t have others to interact with so this seemed like a good place to start. It is also a great way to start obtaining the 50 followers needed to fulfil the first criteria. There are several things to keep in mind when chatting and we break these down below.
When you first enter a stream chat introduce yourself. It could be a simple hello or something along the lines of how you enjoy the game being played. However you approach it, just say something positive and more often than not the streamer will call out to say hi back. The benefit of this action makes other viewers in the stream take note that you have joined the party. It is your gateway into this streamers world and their community.
Once you have made your introduction take a moment to get a feel for the atmosphere of the stream. Is it full of witty banter? Are the chatters talking about the latest hardware release? Is there a joke about tacos happening? Gauging what the atmosphere is like is crucial as you want to fit right in and get involved. Make your own witty remark or give your take on the discussion. Making the streamer laugh, so they call you out again, is a great way to get noticed for a second time.
The aim of being active is to make the streamer and their community notice your presence. Lurking in the chat is fine but if nobody knows who you are then it will be hard for them to click the follow button on your own channel. Always participate in a positive way as being negative may turn potential followers away and blow your chances. Read back what you have typed before pressing send. If it could be misread as negative, delete and start again.
The other factor to consider when participating in the chat is not overloading the streamer. Ask too many questions and you might upset them or their community. Be overly friendly and you may come off as fake. Just be yourself and spot appropriate times to engage. Do this for as long as you can before streaming yourself and you should see your own follower count grow. Also, you should welcome new viewers entering the chat as it will show you are approachable.
The next criteria we need to consider is streaming for more than eight hours over 30 days. This, along with stream on seven different days, are the easiest to achieve. You literally just have to be streaming to get them regardless of any other factor. However, if you want to make affiliate you need to plan the time and day you will be streaming. Just streaming randomly will hinder you more than planning out each stream.
We broke our stream time down into two or three hour chunks and planned to stream on two different days each week. We will discuss the details of this further down the article but it is important to understand why having a plan is crucial to getting Twitch Affiliate. The old adage less is more comes into play as streaming for 100’s of hours will make it harder to achieve the last goal. So before you run off to start chatting and turning the camera on keep reading.
So far we have looked at gaining our 50 followers by being chatty, positive and active in the Twitch community. We have discussed how simply streaming for hours on end without a plan causes more harm when trying to get affiliate. The last stage is having an average of three viewers over the time we have been streaming. Before we explain how we achieved this next step it is important to understand the maths behind the plan.
If we start streaming right away without a plan the chances are very few viewers will know you are online. Each hour that ticks by without viewers watching our stream is bringing the average viewer total down. If we streamed for 10 hours with no viewers we would need to stream for another ten hours with six viewers to achieve the three average. The key is to put a plan in place to give us the best chance of having three viewers on our stream. And we tell you how we did that below.
Twitch is full of streamers all battling for viewers. You are up against thousands of other streamers at any one time so it is vital you have planned in advance. We first built up some excitement within our own networks. Imagine your favourite game franchise has a sequel coming out. You would expect to see adverts all over social media and the internet. There would be a buzz and gamers would know when it was out. Apply this to your stream.
Now, we are game journalists so this step was obvious to us. However, so many streamers miss out doing the groundwork. If you want Twitch Affiliate you must advertise your stream to the world. Tell your best friends, tell your family, tell the dog, let everyone know when they need to click your stream link. We started a few days before our first stream explaining that Retro Faith would be premiering on our chosen day and time. We went one step further and put banners up all over our social media networks.
On the day of the stream itself we spent some time messaging folks reminding them of the time and the link they needed to click. We explained that even just popping in for half an hour would really help us. You do not need to beg folks to participate but you need to use everything at your disposal. Post in Facebook groups about your stream, make it clear who you are and what you are playing. Make sure you spread it via Twitter, tagging anyone who will give you a Retweet.
Using all these tools will tell the world that you are streaming and they might enjoy watching. If you just simply log on and expect viewers to jump in you will be disappointed. You need to let potential viewers know when you will be on. After our first stream we had a few messages from viewers telling us how excited they were for the next one. And they already knew when it was because we had told them.
By putting the plan in place we achieved an average of seven viewers with a stream high of 14. We hit the ground running and this gave us some wiggle room for the next streams. When we next log in and start streaming we will have achieved affiliate. This was all done over seven different streams that were pre-planned and folk knew when to catch us. Best of luck in getting Twitch Affiliate and hopefully you have taken something from this article that you can use.
A few more tips to consider:
- Stay positive when you are streaming, try not to come across as angry unless this is your niche.
- Welcome new chatters to your stream and explain what you are doing if appropriate.
- Mix it up a bit and pay attention to your viewers, they are more likely to stick around that way.
- Try to have a few buzz words or a catchphrase that sets you apart from other streamers. Be memorable but not fake.
- Do not over do it. Remember that viewers will only have so much time. Work with your community to schedule appropriately.
- Build an interesting about me section under your channel. Be expressive, let channel visitors know who you are.