I have to admit when I first started this course, I had no idea what Twitch was and I was a little disappointed that I would have to spend an entire semester researching and doing work on the subject. However, I soon realized that Twitch was it’s own niche. Much like how I can watch hours of family vloggers and sermons on YouTube, there are many game obsessed people who can spend hours watching other people play on Twitch. To each their own! And with that, I set out with an open mind.

Monetization on YouTube has always been plain and simple. YouTubers make money through clicks, commercials, and sponsorships (affiliate links, brands, etc.) There are plenty of other ways that YouTubers with thousands and millions of views can make a living too, these include becoming represented by a management company or doing partnerships with larger well-known brands. Overall, you must put in a lot of work in order to have a successful channel to make a high level/quit-your-day-job type of income.

Things are a little bit different on Twitch. Yes, there are commercials and brand sponsorships, but users can make money through other means such as “sponsors” that pay $5 a month for faster content and song requests. This is something that I found to be so strange. As much as I love watching family vloggers and beauty tutorials on YouTube, I couldn’t commit to paying $5 per month consistently. In addition, some of the more popular Twitch users can make money through donations. Many channels have a link that leads to a Paypal or other account that will accept personal donations at any amount. The highest donation that I saw in my research was over $20,000! I am sure there are more donations of that size or even higher.

Overall, it’s important to remember that these YouTubers and gamers on Twitch are targeting a certain niche and there will be people willing to pay money to see their favorites succeed and create more content for them to consume.

In my personal opinion, it is definitely easier to make money off of YouTube and posting videos than it is through live streaming your game on Twitch . It is said that consistency is key to becoming successful at anything, especially when it comes to creating online content and building a large audience. In my opinion, it is much simpler to spend one day a week recording all of your YouTube content and scheduling them to go up throughout the week versus scheduling a few hours every day or every other day to play your game so that you can live stream it to your audience.