Personally I haven’t tried Facebook so I won’t be discussing it in this article. However I have streamed on both Twitch and Youtube consistently for around one month each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article documents the results I was able to achieve in this short period of time on both platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
HINT: On one platform I was able to reach 92 concurrent viewers and almost 10,000 views<\/strong> on one stream all within my first month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m going to break this down into 3 parts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n So lets get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both these platforms are very similar when it comes to setting up your stream<\/a>. I used Streamlabs OBS for streaming to both Youtube & Twitch. I actually occasionally streamed to both Twitch and Youtube at the same time which help me gain viewership on both platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Twitch was super easy to get set up. All I had to do was create an account and login to Streamlabs with my Twitch account. It’s a super simple process and that’s really all there is too it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Youtube has much the same process but there’s a few more things we need to consider. On youtube on of the most important parts of discovery is having an eye catching thumbnail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On Twitch this isn’t possible but on Youtube we can customise it before going live. So before each stream I had to make a custom Thumbnail before going live which took some extra time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Youtube your tags are also important for appearing in search results while live. This is going to help you get more discoverability for your stream on youtube. As you can see this allowed me to add an extra 2400 views during and after this specific stream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So on Youtube there’s a little more setup before getting started but it’s worth it for the increase in viewership on your stream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To wrap up the setup on both platforms there’s a little less work in going live in twitch<\/a> than there is on Youtube. However the extra features and setting on Youtube do help you greatly in gaining more viewers as a new streamer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It took me a long time to earn Twitch affiliate because I was streaming in the completely wrong categories. The month I am discussing below is the month after I achieved Twitch affiliate and switched up my strategy to streaming in smaller game categories. My game of choice was Black Op 3 Zombies. By utilising this strategy I was able to pick up a considerable amount of new followers every single day on Twitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I would average about 8-10 new followers per day using this strategy. The large spike you see is the day the New Call Od Duty was released and I was able to gain a lot of traction by playing the game a few hours earlier than release. I think it’s also important to note here I didn’t do any promotion off stream. I would probably recommend creating highlights of your streams on Tik Tok to gain some exposure there and potentially create separate content on Youtube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Youtube was a completely different story than Youtube. I started off the first few days trying a similar strategy that I had on Twitch but had quite the opposite result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I tried to stream BO3 zombies for a few days but just couldn’t pick up any traction. Youtube’s discovery system is completely different than Twitch. You’re either going to get discovered through search or the recommend videos on the side of other videos\/streams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I was streaming such a small game nobody was searching and not many people are watching BO3 videos in 2021 so that didn’t give me much opportunity to grow. Thats when i knew I had to do something different to stand out and it worked better than expected. As I come from a marketing background I knew I could so some growth hacking to kick start my stream.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTwitch Vs Youtube | Setting Up Your Stream<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Twitch<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Once your account is linked to Streamlabs this allows you to simply click ‘Go live’, plug in a few details like your Title and the Category you’re streaming in and you’re now live to the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYoutube<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
For example when I was streaming on Youtube I knew I could capitalise on the launch of the xbox series s and cyberpunk. Lots of people where searching for the performance on each console for Cyberpunk so I added the console I was playing on and the game name to my tags.
This allowed me to gain a lot of search traffic from youtube on my streams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/getonstream.com\/app\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Screenshot-2021-02-05-at-18.50.12.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nConclusion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Twitch Discovery vs Youtube Discovery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Twitch Discovery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Twitch’s discovery isn’t great. If you’re a 0 viewer streamers, streaming in a category such as Warzone with 100,000 viewers and 1000s of streamers it’s very unlikely anyone is going to discover you.
Lots of people tell you to “Stream popular games” but I think thats a horrible strategy and it didn’t work for me at all. You just end up at the bottom of rankings and get the occasional dude popping in asking for a follow for follow.
So, for this month I decided to stream one specific game (Black Ops 3) where the Category usually averages around 500 – 1000 total viewers.
Usually the Top person in the category has no more than 40-50 viewers and there’s only around 30 people streaming at a time. This gives you a much greater chance of someone clicking on your stream and checking out your content. It also means that you have a much higher chance of hitting the top 2-3 rows giving you even more exposure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/getonstream.com\/app\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Screenshot-2021-02-06-at-15.56.31-1024x578.png\")
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Once that hype died down a bit I continued stream BO3 and continued to pick up 8-10 followers on the days I streamed.
So to sum up Twitch discovery there’s not much of it. If you want to gain more followers and build your audience, first you need great content and second you need people to see it. Streaming in a smaller game is the best way to do this. Once you’ve built a small community you can start to test out bigger games.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYoutube Discovery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Here’s the results from the first few streams. Nothing to write home about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/getonstream.com\/app\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Screenshot-2021-02-08-at-21.42.46-1024x246.png\")
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