Streaming is giving both cable and movie theaters a run for their money. Are you ready to cash in? Learn how to make money streaming in our latest post!
Boosting your revenue stream is the perfect way to kickstart the new decade.
Thanks to the internet and technology, you don’t even have to leave your home to do so. You’ve probably heard about some people who’ve made a killing from streaming, and naturally, you want to jump in the bandwagon.
Some pro streamers have reported getting an average income of $3,000 to $5,000 a month. This is only the “base salary” without money from sponsorships in forms of banners or ads.
If you’re wondering how to make money streaming, read on as we walk you through it. That way, you can get yourself a piece of the $42.6 billion cake.
What Is Streaming?
The first thing that comes to mind when people hear streaming is playing video games online. You won’t be wide off the mark if this is your line of thought, but there’s much to streaming than just playing games online. Live streaming involves streaming any original video content to an online viewership in real-time.
It’s easy to live-stream playing video games, that’s why so many people do it. However, if you’re a video game noob, this isn’t much of an option. If this describes you, you can consider vlogging, tutorials, and even product reviews.
Twitch, a popular streaming platform, has between 2.2 and 3.3 million monthly broadcasters. For many people, Twitch is a cash cow, and here’s how they make money streaming. But before we get to that, you can open this list of streaming services you should also consider.
How to Make Money Streaming
Right off the bat, we’ll tell you that making a decent wage from streaming won’t be easy, but once you get the hang of things, you’ll be laughing to the bank. Here’s how you do it:
- Viewer Payments From the Platform
Your first income stream will be from your online viewership in the form of regular payments. Yes, your online following can pay you consistently for your content. The larger your online fanbase, the more bucks your rake in after a particular period.
However, before you can get regular payments from your followers, you need to meet certain criteria like be an affiliate or partner of the platform. These criteria vary from platform to platform, but there’s one thing that’s similar across the board. You need a considerable and loyal following before you can qualify for direct viewer payment.
Remember to make the paid content only available to your paying subscribers to make them feel special. Also, upload as much content as you can without compromising the quality.
- Tips and Donations from Fans
If you overwhelm your fans with quality and enticing content, you should expect a few tips from them. Plenty of these streaming platforms have a feature that enables fans to send some donations and tips as an incentive for users to upload more content.
On Twitch, you get a little money for every bit a user uses when they “cheers” your content. On Facebook, it’s a feature called Super Stickers, which enables users to pin a message in your chat window to make it more noticeable. Users have to pay for a super sticker, and you get a cut of the pay.
- Payment From Third-Party Platforms
For some streamers, partnership programs with a single platform are financial suicide and understandably so. There’s always a possibility that the platform might drop you, when you’ve amassed a large following. You may also feel that the partnership terms are unfair, or you believe you’d do better streaming in multiple platforms.
If this describes you, then you can settle for a third-party platform, and there are so many of them nowadays. With these third-party platforms, you can stream on multiple platforms to attract an even larger online audience. Streamlabs, for instance, is an incredible platform, which integrates Mixer, Facebook, Twitch, and other streaming platforms.
These platforms will handle all your payments and donations, and take a small portion of it. You can choose which content is free and what needs paid subscriptions. However, don’t make your fans pay for all the good stuff, at least give them a taste of your good content for free.
- Revenue From In-Stream Ads
You can make a good amount of money from running ads while streaming your content. Unfortunately, not all streaming services allow ad-integration.
If you want to make money from ads, you should consider joining YouTube, Twitch, or Facebook Live. There’s a lot of money with in-stream ads, but also a lot of controversy and hurdles.
You need to be careful about what ads you run. Some users may have enabled ad blockers, which stops the ads from running, which hurts your income from ads.
You also shouldn’t have too many in-stream ads, or it could get annoying. Your users will be quick to point out how you’re drowning them with ads, and it’s never a good look.
- Brand Deals and Sponsorships
If you can land yourself a brand deal or a sponsorship, you’ll have hit the jackpot. If you’ve amassed a huge following from these platforms, major brands will seek you out for a sponsorship deal that will benefit both of you.
However, in some cases, it’s you that has to do the reaching out, and not the brand itself. Whatever the case, you first have to have a considerable number of fans before you can strike a deal with a major brand. That’s because your audience is what the brand in question perceives as potential customers.
Sometimes, your entire content centers on the brand or product, as with the case of video game sponsorship and product reviews. Other times, you’ll only display banners or just hint at a particular brand or product. In most cases, it’s the brand that sponsors your entire streaming and the content you upload.
Online Streaming Is a Goldmine
Though it might take some time, you can make a lot of money from streaming online. Now that you know how to make money streaming online, it’s up to you to join your platform of choice and rake in the dollars. If you want to join multiple platforms without a partnership, then you should consider a third-party platform.
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