How Much Money Do Twitch Streamers Make?

If you are considering twitch streaming as a potential career path, you may be wondering how much money you could make. Would you have to have a full-time or part-time job alongside it, or could you forgo that and live off streaming alone? We’ll consider this and more as we examine how much Twitch streamers earn.

READ MORE: Start streaming on Twitch from your PC

How do streamers make money on Twitch?

we have explored this topic a bit beforebut you can only make money on Twitch if you have a Twitch Partner or partner† For more information on becoming a Twitch Partner or Affiliate, check out our introductory articlewhere we explain the requirements and parameters for the two programs.

If you’ve already qualified as a Twitch Partner or Affiliate, there are three ways you can earn money through Twitch itself: bits† subscriptionsand ads†

Twitch Bits

As a Twitch streamer, you earn $0.01 for every Twitch bit donated during your stream cheer† A “Cheer” allows a viewer to send a message in chat that (a) appears on-screen during your stream and (b) is spoken by a text-to-speech agent.

You can intentionally mute the Cheer feature during your stream, which means that even if someone sends a Cheer message, it won’t appear or be spoken in your stream. You’ll only want to do this if you’re focused on a game or activity, as it essentially causes people to waste their Bits.

Viewers can also use Twitch Bits on extensions, which you as a streamer must already have set manually. When viewers activate an extension with their Bits, you only get 80% of that $0.01 per Bit, while 20% goes to the extension’s developer. Extensions give viewers more options and can encourage them to stick around.

For the uninitiated, Bits are a virtual currency that can be purchased through Twitch that, according to Twitch“Give you the power to encourage and support streamers, gain attention in chat with animated emoticons, vote in polls, gain recognition through badges, leaderboards and streamer recognition, with even more possibilities in extensions.”

To check your current Twitch Bits balance, click the Get Bits button at the top of the website. Your Twitch Bits balance will appear under the “Buy Bits” heading.

Subscriptions

When people subscribe to your Twitch channel, you share the revenue with Twitch fifty-fifty. This means that the more people who subscribe to your channel per month, the more you can earn.

Subscriptions are a big part of the income you earn with Twitch. Getting people to subscribe to your channel when you’re just starting out isn’t easy, though. You need to curate exceptional content and stream it regularly.

First make sure people Follow your channel. After they’ve followed you for a while, you can try to get them on that star-shaped click Subscribe knob.

Ads

Ads are a reliable, consistent way to monetize your streams. However, we don’t necessarily recommend adding too many ads to your streams.

If viewers are subscribed to Twitch Turbo, it doesn’t really matter because they won’t see any of the ads you post during your streams. However, if not (and most viewers don’t subscribe to Twitch Turbo), they’ll have to watch a potentially lengthy ad during your stream.

Ads are one of the main reasons people stop watching streams. So while you’re building your audience and trying to get people to subscribe to you, we recommend that you don’t add ads during your streams.

Other ways to make money as a Twitch streamer

Bits, subscriptions and ads are the main ways to make money only through Twitch. Those aren’t your only options, though. There are other ways to make money as a Twitch streamer that are not necessarily related to Twitch itself.

Some things you can do include: add a Donate button below your stream† extend your brand to platforms like YouTube† take advantage of sponsorships and partnershipsand sell merchandise†

Donate Button (Third Party Donation Services)

While this is an easy way to generate some extra income, don’t expect to make a huge amount of money from donations alone. Very few click the donate button unless there are additional benefits such as an exclusive chat button or a flagged message.

Crossing over to other platforms

Another great way to make money as a Twitch streamer is to go to other platforms. That means creating a community for yourself on Discord, an official account on Twitter and Instagram, and of course starting a YouTube channel.

As we mentioned before, YouTube is primarily seen as the go-to place for permanent videos. Since Twitch streams happen in real time, YouTube is a great place to upload clips and highlights of your streams for those who missed them.

Sponsorship, Partnerships and Affiliate Marketing

This brings us to sponsorship† partnershipsand affiliate marketing† These are all different ways to partner with more prominent brands that can use you and your platform to promote their product. In return, you get a certain amount of income from them.

It takes time for those larger organizations to see you as a platform to market their products. You must have reached the point where your followers are significant and you are already making money as a streamer.

A good example of contemporary sponsorship is xQc’s collaboration with GFUEL. In 2021, GFUEL released a flavor inspired by him called ‘The Juice’.

merchandise

Another thing you can do to make money — and this goes even for those who don’t stream Twitch — is to start selling your brand through merchandise. Merchandise allows your viewers to own something associated with you.

Ask your viewers for their opinion before proceeding to create merchandise that may or may not sell. At the end of the day, you want to offer them merch options that they would actually buy.

How much do (popular) Twitch streamers make?

Between August 2019 and October 2021, Critical Role earned $9.6 million, xQc $8.4 million and Summit1g $5.8 million. These were the three most popular Twitch streamers during that period.

Making that kind of money is very difficult as a Twitch streamer. You have to keep growing and streaming regularly, always keeping an eye on what you want and what your viewers want. Small streamers who are Twitch Affiliates can typically earn between $50 and $1500 per month if they work very hard and gain regular viewers, followers, and subscribers.