Today you can find streams for every taste from programming lessons, to make-up, cooking and many hours of bloggers' conversations βfor lifeβ. Streaming is a full-fledged industry with a multi-million audience, in which advertisers are investing a lot of money. And if promotional offers are available mainly to streamers with a large audience, then even a novice streamer can make money on donations. In this article, I will tell you how streaming turned from a simple entertainment into a multi-million dollar industry, and top streamers into millionaires.
Was there streaming in the USSR?
The history of streams can be counted from the beginning of the 90s, when in Russia not only the Internet, but an ordinary computer was a real luxury. No I am not joking. See for yourself: for example, you are the first lucky owner of a console like Sega or Dendy in the class. All friends and classmates tend to come to your house after school to enjoy the breathtaking spectacle of the fight between Liu Kang and Sub Zero or watch the shooting of pixel ducks. So, you are one of the first streamers here, and your friends and classmates are spectators.
With the development of technology and the advent of universal access to high-speed Internet, the time has come for spectacular games, where the quality of graphics and entertainment approached Hollywood action movies. Video recordings of gaming sessions have become more like movie scenes and flooded YouTube. This is how the movement of βletsplayersβ was born, from which modern streamers have grown. "Father" of the Russian let's play - .
In 2012, it became possible to broadcast a video stream in real time. Streams have become what we are used to seeing them. Today you can stream anything, but the widest audience is traditionally gathered by gaming broadcasts.
How to make money streaming
Each streamer pursues its own goals, whether it is communication with the audience or the desire to show off the skill of the game, but they all have one thing in common - the desire to make money. And you can do this in several ways at once. For example, consider the most popular platform - Twitch.
- Inline ads. Twitch puts ads on streams with a large number of viewers. Everything is simple here: the more your viewers see it, the more you earn.
- Paid access to the stream. Subscribers will not see ads and receive emoticons in the chat, but a significant part of the audience will be lost.
- Direct advertising on stream. Upon reaching a certain audience threshold, the streamer becomes interesting for advertisers. You can talk about the product on the stream itself or put a link to it under the broadcast.
- Partnership programs. It differs from the previous version by the absence of a direct agreement. You yourself register and get the opportunity to attract people through referral links.
- Donuts. Donation from viewer to streamer. To date, this is the most common way to monetize the stream. And there are no restrictions here: as much as the viewer likes, so much he will donate.
Game streams bring the most donations. The audience of LoL, Dota2, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Counter-Strike is estimated at millions of users. Naturally, they love not only to play, but also to watch others play. For them, streaming their favorite game is an opportunity not only to spy on new tricks, but also to chat with like-minded people.
Game streamers earn the biggest royalties. Here are some public statistics:
- Ninja - $5 per year The lion's share ($100) comes from paid subscriptions.
- Shroud - $3 per year.
- TimTheTatman - $2 a year
In Russia, the largest amount of a one-time donation is 200 rubles so far. Several streamers received such βfatβ donations at once: , , , ΠΈ . And the viewer turned out to be the most generous, sending 315 rubles to streamers in a day. Moreover, everyone can earn on streams, regardless of the type of activity or past. For example, one of the most "collecting" streamers - , a former prisoner of the colony. The main thing is to find your audience.
Interestingly, not only video, but also audio content is in demand on streams. For example, without ASMR, many can no longer imagine their evening.
Before the emergence of special services for collecting donations, streamers collected donations directly to a card or electronic wallet. Needless to say, it was inconvenient at once for a number of reasons? Firstly, it distracts both the streamer and the viewer. Secondly, there was no interaction with the streamer: he just logged in once an hour and looked at the receipts in the Internet bank and thanked everyone. Of course, this could not last long and tools began to appear, seeking to make the life of the streamer more comfortable. Now in the West it is Streamlabs/Twitchalerts, Streamelements and Tipeeestream.
The appearance of such a service in Russia was also not long in coming. A few years ago, a self-taught programmer from Omsk named Sergey Trifonov watched foreign streams, and he liked how simple and convenient everything was arranged: a couple of clicks and the streamer had money. There was no localization and support of our payment systems in foreign services. Then Sergey decided to write his own service, adapted for Russia, and he became - by far the most popular tool in Runet.
The service is devoid of all the shortcomings of the "manual" collection of donations and adds several convenient and useful features, while combining a friendly, user-friendly interface and ease of use:
- Time saving and convenience. It is enough for the steamer to simply place a link to the donation under the video, and for the viewer to click. No need to go through a complex authorization system every time. The service supports all possible payment systems.
- Instant deposit of funds and ease of withdrawal. Receipts from all users are collected in one place and automatically displayed once a day.
- Visualization - the most important element of interactive on the stream. All donations are displayed on the stream, causing a violent reaction from the presenter. You can also add voting, viewing media and displaying paid subscribers to the stream.
To register in Donation Alerts, it is enough to log in with your social media account. The service is not an electronic wallet and does not store money for more than a day, so every night all funds are automatically withdrawn and sent to the user through the payment system of their choice.
During the broadcast, you can collect donations for a specific purpose and fix the final amount (for example, buying a new tool or device, upgrading a computer - whatever your heart desires). The progress indicator of the required amount will be visible to all participants. You can set several goals at once, then the viewer himself will decide what to donate to. In the statistics control panel, you can analyze the activity of the audience at one time or another of the stream and configure the work of widgets. This will help make your streams even more effective, as well as assess and eliminate shortcomings.
Instead of a conclusion
From year to year, the streaming segment is growing, and with it, the interest of the audience is also growing. And if a few years ago most streamers were gaming, now most of them began to combine gaming streams with conversational or IRL. This allows viewers to dive deeper into the life of their favorite presenter and feel a certain sense of belonging. In addition, world practice shows that streaming is moving towards maximum interactivity, and therefore the need to create an increasing number of tools for streamers remains unchanged.
Source: habr.com