YouTube is considered to be king when it comes to videos and video marketing. However, another popular live video streaming platform is coming after YouTube — the Twitch platform. It rose among gamers when YouTube still didn’t have a live stream option, and quickly became a gaming community’s go-to streaming choice. The incredibly simple interface, ability to choose a game you want to watch being streamed, easy live chat with others who watch the same stream as you and etc. There are plenty of articles on how to monetize your YouTube channel, but what about Twitch? In this article, I will provide you with needed information in one place, as I personally have tried these methods on my channel.

How much money do Twitch streamers make?

That does depend on a lot of factors like the follower and subscriber number, how often does the content creator stream, what are their channel’s main sources of income and so on. Of course, if you mix up a few monetization ways, like subscriptions, sponsorships and etc., your income will be higher. Often, you are going to be paid per one stream, but here are a few examples as to how much can be made per month:

Chilluminati, High Rollers (both under Yogscast channel), nl_Kripp and similar Twitch streamers with a lot of followers can make about $10,000-$15,000 per month from the Twitch platform.

per month from the Twitch platform. FollowGrubby, CriticalRole and smaller but no less known channels can make up to $7,000 per month from Twitch alone.

per month from Twitch alone. Small channels can definitely earn up to $5,000 per month.

Twitch affiliate program

How to become a Twitch affiliate? There are certain rules and guidelines that must be met in order to be able to become a Twitch affiliate, and you can’t really sign up for it once you’ve just registered on the platform. It is reasonable for Twitch to have these criteria, as it makes it more exclusive to become its affiliate, not to mention new accounts that might be used for spam can be easily filtered out. So, what does it take to walk the “Path to Affiliate”?

Stream for 500 minutes in the last 30 days.

Reach 50 followers.

Stream for 7 unique days in the last 30 days.

Reach an average of 3 viewers in the last 30 days.

All these need to be achieved via the same 30-day window, otherwise you won’t be eligible to join the affiliate program.

Twitch partner program

To most, it would look like the partner and affiliate programs should mean the same, but Twitch offers two different programs with some similarities but certain differences as well. Want to be an affiliate and a partner? Sadly, you cannot be both — so either a partner, or an affiliate. The advantages of being a partner are somewhat better and more tools are given, but the criteria is more demanding as well. The “Path to Partner” requirements:

Stream for 25 hours in the last 30 days

Stream for 12 unique days in the last 30 days

Reach 75 average viewers in the last 30 days

You get unlockable sub emotes, Twitch payout fees are covered by the platform whereas Twitch affiliate payout is covered by you.

Making money on Twitch

Twitch streamers can earn revenue from Twitch in a couple of ways plus a few more methods depending on whether they became a partner or affiliate. There are ways that are only applicable only to affiliates or partners but the most basic ones are available to both. Also, you can earn revenue not only via the platform itself, but with the help of companies or your followers too.

Strictly affiliate method:

Game sales

Affiliates can earn money by selling games or in-game items and so on via Twitch. Twitch automatically suggests the game (if it can be purchased) that the streamer is playing to their viewers. Therefore, you get a 5% revenue share of the purchased game.

Strictly partner method:

Ads

Pre-roll and post-roll ads are not controlled by the partner, but the mid-roll ones are. You can decide what kind of restrictions you want to put up, how frequent should these ads be as well as their length. Pre-roll advertisements begin playing when a viewer first joins a broadcast, mid-roll advertisements are controlled by Twitch partners. Partners can determine the length and frequency of mid-roll advertisements.

Available for both affiliates and partners:

Subscriptions

Affiliates can earn revenue when their viewers buy subscriptions. There are 3 tiers of subscriptions, all including certain features like ad-free viewing, supporting the affiliate, emotes, badges and so on.

Bits

Virtual goods that you can buy on Twitch are called Bits. With them you can show your support for streamers, earn badges and so on. Bits can be bought with real money or via watching short ads by the US Twitch viewers and used for Cheers. How do you benefit? Twitch shares the revenue it gets from Bits (1 cent per Bit Cheer) if a viewer Cheers on a streamer’s channel.

Other methods:

Merchandise

You can always make your merchandise and sell it to your viewers. If they’ll want to get your merch and help you out, they’ll gladly buy a T-shirt or some other item to support what you’re doing.

Donations

You can always ask your followers for donations or a tip. Those who are avid followers or fans will probably be able to donate if they want you to keep making content. Most streamers use Streamlabs, a tool that not only helps to set up how you can get donations, but also help improve your Twitch channel.

Sponsorships

It’s not that easy to find a sponsorship, unless you don’t really care and can promote anything. Most Twitch streamers as well as YouTubers try to find either a pretty generic product that anyone can advertise, or one that their channel is line with. I personally have a gaming channel, I try to advertise tech things — software, hardware, video games and similar. This means I can feel comfortable when promoting a certain product.

It’s always better if you promote a product that you actually like or use yourself, as you get to be a brand ambassador, so better to be one for what you like. Another very important thing that is not stretched enough — do your research about the brand and its reputation. If it has a bad one, promoting a product can harm you, your revenue and your reputation as well.

How to get a sponsorship?

Depending on your channel and what are you streaming, you can apply for a sponsorship from numerous brands. The important thing is to provide information about your channel — how many followers you have, what do you stream, what is the average viewer number, how popular is your channel and so on. If they’ll be interested — they’ll definitely contact you. The more info you give about your channel, how well it’s doing and how your follower number is growing will definitely interest companies, you’ll earn bonus points if you give them statistics of your Twitch.

I’ll recommend a few different brands that suited my channel and the ones that have high brand awareness as well as a good reputation. I might be a bit leaning towards more gaming-related brands but these can suit pretty much anyone. Some brands had special contact forms, to some I wrote by email. Don’t be afraid to write an email to a company, I wrote to customer support a lot of times and my email was always forwarded to the person who is responsible for such things.

Try getting sponsorships from these: