Talent Agents- When You Should Hire One to Manage Your Stream

Running a successful stream takes a lot of work.

Contrary to what a lot of outsiders think, streaming is more than just recording yourself playing a game. It entails a lot of work to become a successful streamer.

There are a lot of responsibilities and tasks outside of just playing and recording. To be honest, building a successful streaming channel is 30% playing & recording and 70% backend and business work.

For you to find success as a streamer, it’s important to run your channel like a business. This means managing your operations, marketing, public relations, partnerships, and finance well.

This is why professional streamers who earn a lot from streaming work with assistants, agencies, and managers to help them with the various tasks needed to succeed in this endeavor.

In this article, we’ll help you decide when you should hire a talent agent to manage your stream and we’ll put in bonus tips and resources on how you can succeed on your own while you don’t have the means of hiring a talent agent yet.

Before we tell you when the right time to hire a talent agent is, we would first want to educate you on what a talent agent is and what can they do for you. This would help you make a more informed decision when the time comes.

 

What are talent agents? 

You know how celebrities have managers and athletes have agents? Talent agents are like those, hiring them would be suited for the ‘celebrities’ of the streaming world or the ‘large’ creators.

Their primary responsibility is to help the talent (in this case you) find ways to earn more money by opening up opportunities.

This means connecting you to different brands who want to advertise their product on your channel, use you as an ambassador, or work with you in developing content. A good talent agent would ensure that you’re getting paid well by brands because that means they will get paid well too.

Talent agents have access to work opportunities that you wouldn’t be able to get on your own. That being said, there are work opportunities out there that you can access without the help of a talent agent. So don’t fret if you’re still starting out or you’re still a small or medium-scale creator! A platform dedicated to giving direct access for all levels of creators to brand sponsorships and deals is what you need and GGWP Academy has just launched the Creator Marketplace that will open doors for you. 

 

What can a talent agent do for your stream?

Now that you have a glimpse of what the main responsibility of a talent agent is, let’s now get into how they’ll help you earn more as a streamer.

 

Branding

As discussed above, talent managers are responsible for getting you sponsorship from brands. But before they can successfully do that, they need to know which brands would benefit the most from your services.

How do they do it?

They’ll start by assessing how your audience sees you.

Are you a comedian that fits well with fun brands?

Are you a serious type with a lot of technical knowledge?

Are you a friendly type that everyone can trust easily?

Or are you a rebel who makes people excited?

Knowing this would help them figure out which brands would have the most value to you. Therefore, would pay you the most.

If you don’t have a defined personal brand yet, some talent agents also have the capabilities to help you build one, before they start bringing you to brands.

On your own, you can start personal branding by assessing your streams and creating your profile. Build your online presence and personality, and protect them. Still unsure what branding means? GGWP Academy can help you set up your personal brand to attract sponsors through various training and resources, learn more here. 

 

Partnerships

Knowing how to sell you to brands is just one part of their role. But their biggest job is to make sure you’re seen by these brands.

To do this, talent agents work non-stop to meet brand executives and pitch their services and the talents they handle (including you, of course).

During these pitches, your talent agent shows executives how you can help their brand reach its target audience and improve their reputation. They do this to convince the brand executives that you can be a valuable asset to them.

On your own, you do the traditional cold-emailing of brands showcasing what you can do and selling yourself to hopefully land a deal from them, or for convenience, you can sign up as a creator on GGWP Academy’s Creator Marketplace. You just have to create your profile for brands to see you, no need for cold emails or pitches, just showcase yourself and your online presence and who knows? You might have brands like Electronic Arts Inc. or Logitech chase you for sponsorships. Create your profile here.

 

Contract Negotiations

Good talent agents are great at getting sponsorships for their clients. But great talent agents are masters in negotiation.

Your talent manager’s job doesn’t end when they’re able to get a brand to say yes. That’s just the first half of their job.

Contract negotiations are probably the most important part of their job.

Why?

Because if they can’t negotiate a good deal for you, you might end up with the short end of the stick. Worse, you might end up making $0 for your hard work.

That’s why working with great talent managers can get you the best deal with brands. This can mean higher talent fees, longer contracts, or better perks for you.

On your own, you can do your own contract negotiations (that is if you trust yourself enough), or if you can’t trust yourself enough, you can always hire lawyers to review your contracts for you before signing them. When you become part of GGWP Academy’s Creator Marketplace, an upcoming feature will include automated contracts in the app, and will be easy to understand. We will also make sure that you get what you deserve since our platform’s goal is towards your growth.

 

Marketing

Some talent agencies and agents go beyond the partnerships side of the business.

Full-service agencies can help you reach a wider audience, so you can increase your value to brands.

But why would they help you do that?

Because the more viewers/subscribers you have, the more brands are willing to pay to have you as a partner. For your agency, this means earning higher commissions from bigger deals.

On your own, you can showcase all your stats and achievements in one portfolio, you can create one yourself without cost using hosting sites offering free domains. You can then link your portfolio to all your channels. GGWP Academy has optimized its Creator Dashboard so you can connect everything from Twitch to TikTok to create your portfolio for brands to see. It will also allow you to automatically pull in results straight from your channels without the fuss and hassle of having to dig around and create reports manually. 

 

What are the advantages of working with one?  

Gives you access to brands who are willing to pay. 

Talent agents are a big help once you’re pursuing monetization since they’re giving you access to brands who are willing to pay you good money.

On top of that, they have the skills to negotiate good deals for you, so you can get the most out of the partnership. This is something that you probably can’t do if a brand approaches you since you’re not a trained negotiator.

 

Helps you build your audience and increase your value.

Building your audience is already a big challenge for most streamers. If you read our article (insert article here), then you’d know how much work it takes to build a massive audience.

That being said, working with a full-service talent agent makes this process easier for you since they have all the resources you’ll need.

Their services would be highly beneficial, because as we mentioned above, the bigger your audience, the higher the price brands are willing to pay you.

 

Gives you more free time on your hands.

By now, you have a good idea of how much work it takes to run a successful stream. You also know how difficult it is to get brands to work with you, even if you have an audience already.

Working with a talent agent would eliminate almost all of the leg work needed to get brands to work with you. And if you’re lucky, the burden of growing your audience as well.

 

Helps you earn more money from your stream.

As we mentioned earlier, the primary role of a talent agent is to make you as much money as possible.

So should we really say more about why this is an advantage for you?

 

What are the disadvantages? 

You’ll have to share your earnings with them.

Of course, your talent agent won’t do all these for free. With the amount of work they’ll do, they deserve to be compensated well too. That’s why for every dollar you earn from brands, they’ll be taking a portion of it.

Sound pretty fair. But be careful, some talent agents can get a bit greedy. So you better look for a trustworthy agent to represent you.

 

You might have to follow what they have to say.

If you’re a rebel and you don’t like taking orders from anyone else, working with a talent agent may become a bit tedious for you. This is because they might need to control your image to make you appealing to brands.

 

When should you hire one to manage your stream? 

Now that you know more about talent agents, you probably have some idea on when you should hire one to manage your stream.

In our opinion, you should hire a talent agent if you tried handling your streaming career and you’re now on a point where it’s too overwhelming but you still want to make a full-time career out of your streams. It really takes a lot of time and effort to turn streaming into a lucrative career, that said, you’ll need all the support you can get.

However, if you’re happy earning a couple of thousands from donations, ad revenue, and small sponsorships, then there’s no need to complicate life. If you’re also just starting out or you don’t have the means to hire a talent manager yet, you’ll be better off working on your own and continuing your side-hustle. After all, as mentioned, there are platforms like GGWP Academy’s Creator Marketplace committed to helping streamers, content creators, and gamers get noticed and partner with the world’s leading brands. 

 

If you want to learn more about how to succeed as a streamer, check out these articles:

Building Your Audience to Sell Your Content

11 Tips on How to Increase Impressions and Engagement

Building Your Community Online With Facebook Groups

Growth Hackers Guide to the Galaxy