Steaming success requires the right mindset

If you want to make long term success, including financial success, with your stream and content creation, you need to take it seriously and that means approaching it like a small business.

Streaming on Twitch can be considered a business for people who use the platform to generate income through advertising, sponsorships, or donations. These streamers often have a significant following and can monetize their streams through a variety of methods. However, for most people, it's just a hobby or a way to share their passions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

But no matter how you're trying to run your stream, whether it's just something you're doing for fun, whether it's something that's a hobby, whether it's something that you actually want to turn into a viable business and earn money from, you need people to come to your stream. And you're not going to get people to your stream unless they know that you exist. Welcome to Down the Rabbit Hole, a podcast for creators, where we stream live every Wednesday, 8 p.m. on Twitter Spaces. And tonight we're going to be talking about why streaming isn't easy. Before we get into that though, Ty Flo Ran, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01: 0:31

I'm doing great, Morph. I'm really excited for this talk, honestly.

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Yeah, same here. Um, why don't we get right into it? TyFlo, what's your take? What's one of the biggest things you think is troubling streamers as they try to grow?

SPEAKER_01: 0:44

There's probably lots of great creators out there with like the highest quality setup, like great quality content, but no eyes getting to their content.

SPEAKER_00: 0:53

When you're on Twitch, when you're one of uh literally 750 million channels, one of 10 million streamers, you are lost unless you do something to get more attention on you. And that is marketing yourself, putting yourself out there. And the uh best way that we have to do that, we as streamers, is to utilize social media. Because it doesn't really make a lot of sense for me to run a print ad somewhere for my stream, right? Or my podcast. So yeah, social media is is what makes a lot of sense for us. And um, I don't know, I was asking Ty, I'm like, I don't know what it is. Why when we say the words advertiser marketing, people just like, ah, what are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense. It does. What do you think, Ty?

SPEAKER_01: 1:37

So I think this leads into our first question for the viewers. If you use external sites to drive people over to your Twitch, which ones do you primarily use? Like, give us your top one or two uh um sites that you use uh like to drive people over. And I think the generic answer most of us will say is that TikTok is uh what like we all what most of us use. Um, I'm not gonna say that um this applies to every streamer here who's listening right now, but specifically TikTok has been shown to have like that quote unquote discoverability to get uh more eyes on your stream and uh even to drive people over. Now, specifically in my case, sure, videos uh on TikTok have brought people over to my Twitch, but also a marketing tactic that I use um that maybe some some of you can relate to is going live on TikTok, let's say for 30 minutes, maybe even up to an hour or so, and then connecting with people on there, telling them about the um like the higher quality and enticing them to come over to Twitch that way.

SPEAKER_00: 2:52

Um, yeah, absolutely. I think that that makes a lot of sense, and it's when we do that. So maybe ask you if because I know that some of you who are listening also go live on TikTok when you're streaming on Twitch. And what's the reason for that, if not but to advertise your Twitch stream? Not to let people know that you're on Twitch. I don't care how you say it, that's what you're doing. You're trying to get people to come over to Twitch. There's a there was a TikTok sound that was trending a year or so ago. It was I use my TikTok to promote my Twitch or something to that effect, right? I'm not gonna sing it because I I I like you guys and I don't want to make you run away. So but that's that was the sound. And that's literally what it's for, you know. Um there have been numerous uh people that have come out against this on even on TikTok. Uh I not gonna mention names, who say no, no, no, you shouldn't do that. You should use your platform on TikTok stro solely for your audience on TikTok. And it's like, but then how does anybody find me on Twitter? And don't tell me the only way I'm supposed to get discovered on Twitch is by playing games that nobody else is playing, so I can be on the top category, the top row of of the people streaming. That is not the sole answer. That is that is not the best way to do it.

SPEAKER_01: 4:12

Right. And I think to support your points, Morph, cat to cite Kat Liente, um, who again a lot of streamers like they treat her word as law, she's basically one of the Twitch gurus on TikTok. She compared our advertising uh strategies of like using socials to let's say think of your stream as like a pizza parlor. You want people to come in um for your pizza, your content on Twitch, and in order to do so, you need to like spread the word of your your pizza joint and your Twitch channel, so you use like flyers, advert flyers and advertisers. Like you could compare those to Instagram posts or uh um Twitter posts, and um, I guess like the entertainment uh side of things too, with like TikTok and making like trending videos or like silly videos that entertain people and then entice them to come over to your Twitch to see uh uh that to see more of you and uh to hopefully like catch those moments live on stream too. And like and that segues into like this perspective that you and I agree on, where streaming is a business. Um you are you are you yourself are a brisk are are a business, you're a brand that's providing some sort of value to people or to your audience, whatever that might be. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 5:41

The the parallels between what you want to do as a content creator, what you want to do as a streamer, and uh uh running a business. A l so many of the same principles exist. So many of the ways that you want to grow exist. We just don't in this industry, right, we don't use the same terminology a lot, but it's literally the same thing. Um I feel like people would have a much uh easier time if they just accepted that fact and um and then they can start looking at other content. So one uh you know, I mean some people say, Oh, I love your takes on this stuff, you know, this this this you know, your your opinions are spot on for what we're doing. And I don't know if people realize you know where I do a lot of my research on small business sites. On small on people that talk about small business on YouTube, I read small business articles, I take my experience working in the in the corporate environment and I reapply it to streaming. Literally, that's that's what I do because it maps so well. So I just find it hilarious and sad in some cases when people just don't understand it and they say that it's it's off base because it is not. I mean if you have ta take a business class, do do a little bit of research on a small business and you're gonna see the same stuff. Like right now I'm taking a a photography class and um the instructor is having us uh uh read a lot of books about painting. We're like, why are we reading stuff about painting? It's like because they talk about having a certain eye for a certain eye for that design, what you're looking at. Um the the rules, if you will, about what you need to do in order to be a good photographer are the same as the rules on what you need to do to be a good painter. Like don't stop thinking of this as a bubble, like where you're in some space that is completely unique and that nothing else in the real world, no rules in the real world apply because it's just not true.

SPEAKER_01: 7:38

Right. And I think that's the thing too that I wanted to segue into our second question. Would you be willing to use other sites instead of just banking on TikTok itself? Because, like we said before, you want to use as many tools and as many opportunities as you can to get people's eyes on your Twitch. This goes back to the pizza analogy. Pizza joints don't just rely on flyers to get uh people's word out, they use as many sites and like even going so far as to like hire um I I I can't find the the the word for this, like the people who like dance on the streets and like flip the signs over, um like that kind of entertainment, like that's still entertainment uh that uh drives people to their peach to join, and it's comparable to you doing like silly trends or like with bearded Nova's face, like wearing a bikini on TikTok to entertain people and that eventually bring them over to uh his Twitch, right? I I can't get that bikini out of my head right now, thanks, bearded Nova.

SPEAKER_00: 8:44

I have you know, there's crazier things that have happened, and it's all about marketing, it's all about getting yourself there. Why do you think that I say and others say, you know, find a niche so you can target the right demographic? Create a brand so people know what you do and can recognize your your logo or your name, or they'll see uh an excerpt from your screen stream and they'll know who you are, or they'll get an idea of what you do, or remember things about people when they come into your stream, um, network and collab and do all this stuff. All these things that you guys have always heard as streamers and creators, those are literally the same exact things you do to grow any business, same exact things, right?

SPEAKER_01: 9:29

Um, and this also brings up my third question for our audience Would you be taking marketing business business classes like college-level courses to help you grow as a streamer? Because I've had this um talk with both dad the gamer and also Pastor Gains himself. We all three of us agree that business and marketing classes would uh would like definitely help any Twitch streamer out there to become successful on Twitch or like on other platforms themselves too. Sure, film and uh graphic design classes could help too, but primarily business and marketing.

SPEAKER_00: 10:10

When you hear sometimes people talking about Pokemon, you know, and she is very successful, right? Um one common way that I hear people describe her is she's a really smart businesswoman, right? Because she understands how the game of streaming and content creation works, and she has used that knowledge to her advantage. She has become very successful because she knows how to run a business. And even that sometimes gets a little bit lost. Um taking classes to understand this, you know, given the parallel if you believe what I'm saying about the parallels, you will absolutely benefit from taking classes. Um, you know, Taifle, I know that you you obviously have taken you know plenty of classes too. Um, and I'm sure that you have taken classes that you are using bits and pieces of to do what you do. I know that I have.

SPEAKER_01: 11:01

And I think some of the specific classes that um I took. Um at my college, we had like elective classes like um to fulfill like art or like uh um creative requirements. Um, graphic design was probably uh it's not in my opinion, it's not as uh important as business or any kind of marketing class, but having that sort of creative class and then others too, like even a writing class to help fuel your creative mind, and also like with specifically with graphic design, like designing overlays for yourself, or if you wanted to go into um creating your own emotes, which I've done for myself, and then specifically like using the knowledge from those classes and creativity to fuel other businesses too, like Catliente herself uh create commissions emotes for I have no idea how many streamers, but I know uh that she uh like that's another side part of her business, it's not just streaming itself, but also um doing stuff for other streamers and getting paid for it.

SPEAKER_00: 12:11

That's that's part of her business, it's part of her income. And what's the phrase that we always use when people try to get sources of ink different sources of income into what makes up their whole streaming uh salary is diversifying your income, another another term that's a different topic, but again, just drawing the parallels there. Just want to mention everybody out there, I appreciate everybody for hanging out. Um, and I appreciate the comments and questions so far. If you could like this, like the space and share it, that would definitely help us as well.

SPEAKER_01: 12:40

I do remember Insane Troll and yourself, and I believe Chillin with Dev was on the same talk too. I think this was back in September where you all of you spoke about diverse income and not just banking on Twitch subs and bits uh itself to bring uh money into yourself as a streamer and business. Um, and I honestly like having those multiple sources of income makes gives you more of a stable, gives you more stability, um, and takes a lot of stress making sure you have uh like other sources like um that are bringing in uh uh like money for yourself to continue creating that's highly recommended. Question four does tie into question three, like what specific marketing and business skills do you need for to be a successful streamer? Because I know a lot of us were working adults right now, we can't take a full-blown college course of like marketing and business. So if we could narrow things down to a few specific classes and pay for those courses individually, whenever like we have time with like our work and streaming schedules, like what what would all of you or yourself more what would you recommend?

SPEAKER_00: 13:56

Wow, there are so many good classes you could take to help yourself understand how to run your stream, your content creation as a business. I would say that you want to take some sort of intro to business, understand how the system works. I would say you would want to take a marketing class, understand how to create advertisements or how to can entice people to go to your business and and spend their money or spend their time. I would say you don't want to take a finance class. This might be one of the most important ones. And it's not just about you know what expenses does a company have, which is important as well, but it's also important to understand how to properly budget, how to plan for the future, all of those kind of things. I would think those basic kind of classes would serve a lot of people well.

SPEAKER_01: 14:39

Um, and I also wanted to bring up Insai and Troll's comment here. So to catch up, yes, marketing is important, but if your pizza sucks, then it doesn't matter if 100 or 1k people come in, they won't stay and you will go out of business. So I think what he's referencing there, and correct me if I'm wrong, Pete's um uh insane troll, that if your street if the live stream itself has issues, whatever they might may be, like if you're not really commentating or talking to your chat as much, or providing some sort of value, it could be educational, entertainment, but it has their the value has to be there. Um then your marketing tactics of your videos on TikTok going viral, of like your Instagram post getting a lot of likes, that's not going to come to any fruition whatsoever. Um, so you need to make sure that you're on your 100% A game.

SPEAKER_00: 15:37

I love that I love that um comment in Sane Troll, and it I think uh equivalent to that for the streamerverse directly is people that really advertise their YouTube page and like go follow my YouTube, go subscribe to my YouTube, I need to get my followers up, you know, and go watch videos. And you go to their YouTube page and there's two VODs and like three shorts, and that's it, right? So, me as somebody who doesn't know who you are, I found one of the YouTube shorts funny. So I go there and I I go to your page before I hit follow, and there's nothing there. The last thing is updated was eight months ago. Why am I going to bother following you? There's no content there, there's no reason for me to believe that you're going to do more, and it's just a waste of space on my subscribed channels list. Honestly, you don't usually get a second chance. When someone discovers your channel, you need to be on because you never know who's gonna come in. If you think that sounds like a lot of pressure, it is. It is. If you want to be successful, if you want to go far, you have to be on your A game because I guarantee you the people that are on their A game, more often than not, are gonna be the ones who are successful.

SPEAKER_01: 16:47

Right. And also I saw a comment from May here um that ties into question three and four. I'm already trying to go back to college, so it may actually help. It's good to think about this as you were thinking film or general computer knowledge and such would be good. So that's the thing too, is film and also um computer science courses. I also think those are viable classes. Um now, I'm not uh going to say like what you should major and minor in. You could uh you could do either or you could major in business and marketing and then have one of one or two of your minors be in film or computer science, or vice versa. Um but uh my response to that uh was on understanding how to run a business, which is yourself as a brand and a Twitch stream, can have a major huge return on investment for yourself. So, like anger frustrations, like edit your videos, like that. I mean you know, so I think motivation has a lot of um it's subjective. Honestly, I feel motivated when I hear you yell at me and like other people in your menti program like to get to work on your content and stop scrolling on TikTok.

SPEAKER_00: 18:05

Sometimes I say those as a reminder to myself, by the way. Um but hey, I wanted to I wanted to address a comment here from from May. Dolly Ulmay says, I've been in the process of creating a collab group of small streamers to help with commentary, but I feel marketing is still important. We're all super small. I'm hoping being in a group will help, though, especially since it will be more fun. Hey, absolutely, networking and collaborating with people that are of a similar size of community, similar drive, similar passion and levels of consistency will help you immeasurably as you're trying to do this. Because I don't know about you, but like when I'm trying to grow, I have so many ideas, and if like I did in the first year of me doing this, I kept them all to myself and nothing happened because I wasn't sharing, I wasn't bouncing them off anybody, I wasn't getting feedback that no, that's a dumb idea, or hey, why don't you try this? And so now that I've been doing that a lot better in the last year plus, um it's things have worked out more in my favor, and I think you're gonna find the same thing, and I think that's a really a really smart approach, and you say you're hoping, but it it will absolutely. I I can I can I guess I can say guarantee because I have no financial commitment in this. No, I can guarantee you that you will find that it's going to work out um a lot better than you you probably think it will. So, fifth question: what are some other things to think about when you're trying to drive people to your Twitch channel?

SPEAKER_01: 19:32

When you're holding your Twitch stream, you have to think about is this like around like the time my audience will be available? And it is super subjective for a lot of people. Some uh streamers might like the evening time where um they'll have they'll feel relaxed, end of the day, away from work, don't have to worry about that. And then there's other streamers like me who like being live in the afternoon where we still have like our peak of energy, and then uh like near the evening time we kind of want to just unwind and and stream right out and such. Um, and then more specifically with holiday events, if you want to drive people to your Twitch on let's say Christmas or the Super Bowl, days where they might have other priorities, you need to like hold some kind of special event uh to incentivize them more to spend time with you on those specific days.

SPEAKER_00: 20:31

I think truly understanding your your demographic makes a difference. For instance, if your demographic, if people in your community don't really use Instagram, you're probably not going to find people on Instagram who like your content. The parallel might not always be there, but if in general it's true, it's probably best if you spend your time elsewhere. And you can definitely use your personal analytics or even industry-wide analytics to start to figure some of this out, how to best utilize your time and effort spent on how people view channels. So the last question I have here, I I don't know if there's any questions in chat. Um we're gonna go for another just under ten minutes. Um last question I have that was prepped was do you think smart setting smart goals applies to marketing your channel?

SPEAKER_01: 21:28

I I'd like to hear your take on that, Morph, because we from our interactions, I know that you have an extensive knowledge on SMART goals.

SPEAKER_00: 21:38

I think that you can apply the philosophy of SMART goals to just about everything, you know. And if you're not familiar with that acronym, SMART, uh, it's specific, measurable, achievable. Um, I forgot the R, but time bound. Uh realistic. There we go. Um, so what do you want to get out of marketing, right? You so you you would kind of ask yourself that. Uh, you know, I want to get uh X number of people, I want X number of people on my stream. So then you say, is that something that's realistic? I want to get additional 50 people in my community or an additional 10 CCV within six months. Maybe that sounds achievable, but if you've been doing this for two years and you're at five people, maybe getting 10 people in the next six months is not actually achievable or realistic within that time frame, unless you make some significant chances, uh changes. It doesn't mean it can't happen. It just means if you continue as is that it's not going to happen. Right. So think about when you say I want to get this done, make sure that you're putting a time frame on it. Make sure that it is it makes sense. I could tell you right now, I want to earn one million dollars between today and the end of this calendar year. That is probably not a smart goal because it is specific, sure. Is it time bound? Yeah. Is it achievable? Uh no. Is it realistic? No, no, not at all. Um, so that wouldn't be a good goal for me to set. And same, like I said, the same thing applies with your marketing and the results of the marketing that you're because you always need don't just throw an ad out there, throw an ad out there, throw mark market yourself when you know what it is you're trying to actually achieve, what you want to accomplish.

SPEAKER_01: 23:24

I really want to bring up this specific moment in one of Devin Nash's uh um videos with the time frame, you can't necessarily say whether you fell off as a streamer. Like, let's say you have a bad stream that is just a single piece of data within the overall time time frame of yourself as a creator. So you can't really say, like, let's say technical issues or like drop frames, whatever. Um, just because you had one bad stream, overall, you need to look at everything like let okay. So he did say within a three-month time span, that's enough time to like have multiple streams over those three months. Look at uh that trend analysis, um, and that bad stream is merely just an outlier. The rest of your streams, the majority of them, could probably be really good ones too. And also going off of that point, making sure that let's say you have like a really good stream, like you're like you have double the viewership, you have uh like a lot of people subbing uh like a lot more active chatters, um, and then you fall back down to your baseline, whatever that may be, you can't uh say, like, oh, I fell off as a streamer, or like, oh, I'm a failure. Like, Devin Nash called this out on his video because just because you fall back down to your baseline, in no metric is that you failing. It's like it's uh tying it all back together with you being a business. Businesses, whenever they double like their sales, like they're excited, they're ecstatic for like um a month, and then when they drop back down to their baseline, they're just like, Oh, this is just a normal thing. We're still doing good, we're still making income. Yep, you're just like that business, you're still doing good.

SPEAKER_00: 25:13

People seriously, read read some read some small business in some in some business books in general, and I you're gonna see the parallels. I I promise you, you will see the parallels, and it will probably click for you and it will give you a whole new level of insight into how to do your stream. And the when people say things like your stream, you know, you're playing you're playing um Modern Warfare 2 on Twitch is running a business, you will start to understand it. And when you do, you'll start to understand the things about how to market yourself and advertise yourself to get more people to your stream to achieve those other goals that you have. Anyway, um, appreciate everybody for hanging out. Appreciate you once again, Tyflo. Thanks so much for hanging out, everybody. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to like and share the podcast. Don't forget we are here every Wednesday on Twitter Spaces at 8 p.m. If you have a comment or an idea for a future episode, make sure to drop us an email at downtherabbithole at elevated.media. Thanks, have a great day.