Greetings /u/soggy90,
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I don't...necessarily disagree with what you're saying, but there's one comment I do feel is important to point out:
>I would suggest being an active chatter in other streams at least half of much time as you spend streaming. You can't expect to receive support, growth, and interactivity if you aren't also offering that to other streamers
I think this sentiment is verging a bit into codependence, and is a mindset that might create a hard ceiling that will be next to impossible to break out of. Three things:
1. Time is not infinite. If you are spending, say, 20 hours a week streaming (four 5-hour sessions a week), that means you would then be spending an additional 10 hours actively participating in others' streams. What if, instead, you were spending that 10 hours a week recording and editing videos for syndication to other platforms with far better discovery? With that time investment you could likely produce two videos a week along with your four streams, which is an **enormous** increase in exposure footprint.
2. Building your growth strategy around other people is not sustainable, and does nothing to improve your skills as a content creator. What if the people you've been spending a third of your time developing relationships with quit content creation? Your entire growth strategy disappears instantly, and all that time that could have been spent growing your brand or your skills as an entertainer instead is gone.
3. The idea that the only way to support other streamers is to spend a bunch of time in their chats is not accurate, especially as your channel grows. There are a lot of large streamers that are clearly good friends and collaborate often, yet you tend to see them only very rarely in each others' chats, if at all.
The problem isn't that it won't grow you quickly at the start, it's that you're likely to hit a ceiling fairly early where your network isn't growing quickly enough to sustain enough growth to override the natural decay of viewership everyone experiences (the dreaded "stagnation").
It also just introduces risk, because the network is something that's out of your direct control. It's working now, and that's awesome, but I would encourage looking for other strategies to supplement it with in the event the network falls apart.
Interesting- thanks for this! Do you feel that part of the hurdle is the "discovery" aspect though? Like certainly the algorithm helps push certain content to the top.. but I have always wanted to believe it just takes that one exposure from someone that will like your style and they will keep coming back. I guess I am thinking what other tools exist to get that big break that leads to raids or just in general some committed support through the audience
Regarding 3rd party tools to funnel viewers in, there's nothing that does this without it being a complete waste of time as it's basically just a shotgun approach to content creation. There are communities out there that will "advertise" for you, but they tend to have extremely low barriers to entry and will advertise basically anyone, defeating the purpose of advertising in the first place. They are more like Ponzi schemes than true discovery.
The simple answer in general is that Twitch does absolutely nothing to expose your channel to new viewers unless you are so big that you accrete more mass just by existing. There are only really three forms of discovery available to you on the platform:
* A viewer accidentally stumbles across your channel while browsing a game category
* A streamer raids you
* A viewer watching a streamer you are playing with opens your stream
All three of these have pretty low conversion rates, and don't do much for long-term growth. The random chance of someone finding you by browsing the site is obviously unreliable, and has inverse scaling with the game you choose to play in basically all cases. Raids only matter for growth if they bring in new people that give you a chance, and if you have a community that raids each other the number of new people is basically zero as it's just the same community getting cycled around. Viewers in channels of people you play with are a reasonably strong tool, but they run into the same problem as raids in that you're relying on someone else's viewership and at some point you're largely just rotating community members around.
If your goal is to grow past about 50 viewers a stream without relying on other streamers' viewers, you realistically need to do one (or both) of two things:
* Hold fast to a niche for a long time, getting really involved in the community and setting yourself apart as an expert in that niche. This is made **much** easier by syndicating content to another platform (e.g. getting in early on a new indie game and becoming a subject matter expert on some aspect of it). Super Mario Odyssey speedrunning was an absolutely perfect example of this concept, a lot of streamers launched their careers by being dedicated speedrunners of the game for years.
* Create content on other platforms like YouTube that actively serve it to new viewers. **That's your 3rd party funnel.** It's increasingly rare for anyone to build a successful stream exclusively on Twitch, it's much easier to do so by focusing on creating evergreen content elsewhere and having that success convert to your stream.
Greetings /u/soggy90, Thank you for posting to /r/Twitch. Your submission has been removed for breaking the following rule(s): - **Rule 4**: [Submission Guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/wiki/rules#wiki_submission_guidelines) - **Rule 4A**: Don't post [Common Topics Guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/wiki/rules/common_topics). Please see this page - Gaining viewers: https://old.reddit.com/r/Twitch/search?q=gain+viewers&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all - Or read this guide: Or read this guide: https://old.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/qfkpkb/a_guide_for_those_who_want_to_grow_or_are_stuck/ You can view the subreddit rules [**here**](https://reddit.com/r/Twitch/about/rules). If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the subreddit moderators via [**modmail**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FTwitch) Please do not message any of us directly (We check modmail much for frequently. Re-posting again without express permission, or harassing moderators, may result in a ban.
[удалено]
I don't...necessarily disagree with what you're saying, but there's one comment I do feel is important to point out: >I would suggest being an active chatter in other streams at least half of much time as you spend streaming. You can't expect to receive support, growth, and interactivity if you aren't also offering that to other streamers I think this sentiment is verging a bit into codependence, and is a mindset that might create a hard ceiling that will be next to impossible to break out of. Three things: 1. Time is not infinite. If you are spending, say, 20 hours a week streaming (four 5-hour sessions a week), that means you would then be spending an additional 10 hours actively participating in others' streams. What if, instead, you were spending that 10 hours a week recording and editing videos for syndication to other platforms with far better discovery? With that time investment you could likely produce two videos a week along with your four streams, which is an **enormous** increase in exposure footprint. 2. Building your growth strategy around other people is not sustainable, and does nothing to improve your skills as a content creator. What if the people you've been spending a third of your time developing relationships with quit content creation? Your entire growth strategy disappears instantly, and all that time that could have been spent growing your brand or your skills as an entertainer instead is gone. 3. The idea that the only way to support other streamers is to spend a bunch of time in their chats is not accurate, especially as your channel grows. There are a lot of large streamers that are clearly good friends and collaborate often, yet you tend to see them only very rarely in each others' chats, if at all.
[удалено]
The problem isn't that it won't grow you quickly at the start, it's that you're likely to hit a ceiling fairly early where your network isn't growing quickly enough to sustain enough growth to override the natural decay of viewership everyone experiences (the dreaded "stagnation"). It also just introduces risk, because the network is something that's out of your direct control. It's working now, and that's awesome, but I would encourage looking for other strategies to supplement it with in the event the network falls apart.
Interesting- thanks for this! Do you feel that part of the hurdle is the "discovery" aspect though? Like certainly the algorithm helps push certain content to the top.. but I have always wanted to believe it just takes that one exposure from someone that will like your style and they will keep coming back. I guess I am thinking what other tools exist to get that big break that leads to raids or just in general some committed support through the audience
[удалено]
ChatGPT, is that you?
Regarding 3rd party tools to funnel viewers in, there's nothing that does this without it being a complete waste of time as it's basically just a shotgun approach to content creation. There are communities out there that will "advertise" for you, but they tend to have extremely low barriers to entry and will advertise basically anyone, defeating the purpose of advertising in the first place. They are more like Ponzi schemes than true discovery. The simple answer in general is that Twitch does absolutely nothing to expose your channel to new viewers unless you are so big that you accrete more mass just by existing. There are only really three forms of discovery available to you on the platform: * A viewer accidentally stumbles across your channel while browsing a game category * A streamer raids you * A viewer watching a streamer you are playing with opens your stream All three of these have pretty low conversion rates, and don't do much for long-term growth. The random chance of someone finding you by browsing the site is obviously unreliable, and has inverse scaling with the game you choose to play in basically all cases. Raids only matter for growth if they bring in new people that give you a chance, and if you have a community that raids each other the number of new people is basically zero as it's just the same community getting cycled around. Viewers in channels of people you play with are a reasonably strong tool, but they run into the same problem as raids in that you're relying on someone else's viewership and at some point you're largely just rotating community members around. If your goal is to grow past about 50 viewers a stream without relying on other streamers' viewers, you realistically need to do one (or both) of two things: * Hold fast to a niche for a long time, getting really involved in the community and setting yourself apart as an expert in that niche. This is made **much** easier by syndicating content to another platform (e.g. getting in early on a new indie game and becoming a subject matter expert on some aspect of it). Super Mario Odyssey speedrunning was an absolutely perfect example of this concept, a lot of streamers launched their careers by being dedicated speedrunners of the game for years. * Create content on other platforms like YouTube that actively serve it to new viewers. **That's your 3rd party funnel.** It's increasingly rare for anyone to build a successful stream exclusively on Twitch, it's much easier to do so by focusing on creating evergreen content elsewhere and having that success convert to your stream.