Building Your Audience to Sell Your Content

I think it’s safe to say that for most streamers, our ambition is to one day quit our boring job and become a full-time streamer who makes boatloads of cash every month. And that’s not a far fetch dream. 

See, the top 5 streamers on Twitch earned an average of $1.5M each in 2020. That means they were making roughly $100,000 every month just by playing video games. 

Now if that’s not every gamer’s dream, then I don’t know what is. 

But to get to that level of revenue, you’ll need to have a big enough audience. 

Why? 

Because that’s how you get paid. You see, brands are willing to pay good money to get their products seen by potential customers. 

And where are these potential customers? Right there, watching you stream. 

So long story short, more people watching your stream means more people to show ads to. And the more people see these ads, the more you get paid! Capische? 

Now if you want to generate boatloads of money from your stream, then here’s a guide on building your audience, so brands would pay you more.  

 

Part 1: The most important checklist in your streaming life

Before you start dreaming about what you’ll do with the millions you’ll earn from streaming, you need to make sure you have these six things in place. Without them, you can say goodbye to your dreams of becoming a professional streamer earning millions. 

 

✅ Multiple streaming and social media accounts. 

Most beginners think that once they’ve set up their streaming account at Twitch or YouTube, they’re good to go. But that’s far from reality. 

If you want to build a massive audience, you’ll have to create an account across the top streaming and social media platforms because these increase your chances of being seen. So you better do your research as to which platforms your audience frequents on and go in those. 

But for starters, having Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and Quora accounts are cool. It wouldn’t hurt to have a TikTok account and memberships on different forums. 

The golden rule here is to ensure that your name across all platforms is consistent, so it’ll be easy for people to find you. 

 

✅ A game to stream. 

People don’t like uncertainty. Usually, when we watch streams, we watch streamers who play our favorite games.

Now, if you’re a streamer who plays random games every day or every week, a lot of people won’t tune in to your channel because out of the 10 games you’re streaming, they’ll only be interested in 1 or 2. So they’d feel like they’ll be better off binge-watching someone else’s streams. 

If you really want to build a massive audience, make sure to choose a game with a big enough following. But be ready for all the other streamers. 

However, if you want to build an audience quickly, go for less popular games with fewer streamers. 

But if you really want to stream multiple games, then go create multiple accounts for each game. 

 

✅ A core audience. 

You’ll never be able to appeal to everyone. Some people would find you interesting, some would think you’re annoying, while others would find you extremely boring. 

Take no offense to that. We all have our own preferences. 

So,  to build a massive audience, make sure you know who you want to watch your stream. Are they hardcore gamers who want to learn the intricacies of the game? Rookies who want to learn the basics and improve their skills? Casuals who just want to get entertained with your playstyle and commentary? 

Pick your audience and focus on delivering quality content to them. 

 

✅ A personality. 

Now that you know what game to play and who you’d want to attract, you’ll need to have an interesting personality that would attract your target viewers. 

Talking to hardcore gamers? Make sure you know all the advanced techniques, jargon, and whatnot so you’ll sound credible. 

Focused on newbies learning the game? Be more lighthearted and use words that are easily understandable. 

Whoever it is that you want as your audience, make sure you’re the most interesting person they’ll ever meet because that’s how you turn a one-time viewer into a regular subscriber who would share your content with their friends. 

 

✅ A consistent streaming schedule. 

As we mentioned earlier, viewers don’t like uncertainty. Viewers want to know what they’ll watch and when they can watch it. That’s why it’s important that you keep a regular streaming schedule.

 

✅ A vision and goals.

Having a clear vision of what you want to accomplish with your streaming career is important because there would be days when you’ll lose motivation. 

This is especially true during the early days of streaming when you’re still building your audience and you haven’t earned anything from streaming. 

To learn how to set good goals, read our guide on How to Set SMART Goals for your Broadcast.

 

Part 2: Basic Strategies

Now that we’ve covered all the mandatories, we’ll show you the basic strategies that would help in building your audience. 

 

✅ Tell everyone you know.

Most rookie streamers find it awkward to tell their friends and family about their new endeavor. They’re afraid to be embarrassed when they fail, that’s why they keep it a secret. 

Now, if you’re having this fear as well, get over it and spread the word around your network. Tell everyone and ask them to share it too. You’ll never know how many potential viewers are connected to your connections. 

 

✅ Join communities and tell them about your stream.  

Remember must-have #1? 

This is where having multiple social media accounts and forum memberships come into play. 

Join different groups and communities (Facebook, Reddit, Game forums, etc.) and tell members when you’ll be having a stream, so they can watch you live. Also share a link after the stream, once it’s uploaded on different platforms. 

This would help you reach people who are already interested in the game you’re streaming. Therefore, these are people who are likely to watch your stream. 

 

✅ Tell your teammates (even opponents) that you’ll be streaming your game. 

Your first objective when building your audience is to make your stream known to as many people as possible. 

So, as embarrassing as it feels to promote yourself, you need to do it.  

Telling your teammates and opponents that you’ll be streaming the game would encourage them to look up your channel. They might also share it with their friends, especially if they played a solid game. 

 

✅ Make your stream interesting.

Making your stream interesting would attract more viewers into it. It’ll also help you turn them into regular viewers. 

Make your stream is interesting by doing the following: 

1. Be entertaining to your viewers. Make funny remarks and witty trash talks that would make them laugh. Try to poke fun not only of your opponents but of yourself as well. 
2. You can also be educational to your viewers. Teach them new tips and awesome tricks they can do when they’re playing. Giving them something of value would keep them coming back to your channel. 
3. Experiment with characters, skills, and items. This would give your viewers something to try the next time they play the game.

 

✅ Engage your audience. 

As a streamer, you need to do a lot of things during the stream. You need to play the game, you need to communicate with your teammates and commentate on the game to make it fun. 

But on top of those, it’s important you engage with your viewers regularly throughout the stream. You should reply to those who are on live chat, and mention those who make donations. 

This would make your viewers feel like a friend. This makes them more supportive and religious when it comes to watching you. Plus, they’ll be more likely to recommend you to their friends. 

 

Part 3: Advanced Settings

✅ Be active in the community. 

If you want to attract more people to your stream, you’ll have to make your presence known in the gaming community. In business, this is called branding. 

Now, make no mistake, we’re not telling you to pester every community with posts about your stream. NO. Don’t do that. That’s so annoying and it can get you banned. 

Instead, add value to the community. Answer questions that are being posted, share memes about the game, interact with other players, and share your opinion on updates. 

If you add a lot of value to the conversation, people would be naturally drawn to you. They’ll check your profile, they’ll visit your stream, and they’ll become loyal subscribers.

This might take a while, but this strategy snowballs once you’ve built your credibility in the community. 

 

✅ Play with other streamers to increase your reach.

Streaming is not a zero-sum game. Meaning, everyone can win and make money out of it. So there’s no real competition amongst streamers. 

This being said, one of the easiest ways to amplify your reach and get more people to see you is by playing with other streamers, especially those with bigger followings. Playing with them shows you to people who have a high chance of watching your stream. 

 

✅ Run contests.

This is one of the most used strategies in building an audience. It’s because there’s a good reason for it. 

GAMERS LOVE FREEBIES. 

So if you can giveaway rare in-game items or whatnot, do it. Run a contest on your stream and let everyone know about it. Encourage everyone to share it. And have some fun doing it. 

Remember: the more exclusive your giveaways are, the more people you’ll attract to your stream. 

 

✅ Become SEO friendly

How do you find most of the information on the web? Let me guess, you search it on Google or YouTube, correct? 

That’s how people find what to watch as well. 

By making your channel optimized for search engines, you’re making it more discoverable to people who are looking for streamers to watch. 

Another benefit for this is when you’re optimized, streaming platforms might even show you on their recommended pages, which would show your channel to more people who are interested in the game you’re streaming. 

 

✅ Work with a talent agency to help you scale your audience. 

If you’re dead serious about becoming a full-time streamer, working with a talent agency to help build your audience is a no-brainer. 

Why? 

Because they have all the resources you’ll need to reach as many people as possible. 

• Prizes for contests? Check!
• Streamers with a big audience? Check!
• A marketing team? Check!
• Expertise in building your audience? Double Check! 

If you’re still unsure if you should hire a talent agency, check out our guide on When You Should Hire One to Manage Your Stream.

 

Bonus Strategy

Just keep on streaming even if no one’s watching. Be consistent and stay on course. It’ll help you become a better streamer in the long run. This game, like all the others you’ve played, takes a lot of patience, consistency, and dedication. So just keep at it until you get good. 

We hope you’ll be able to apply some, if not all, of these strategies in building your audience.