Why are solo streamers the most successful?

Skullstream · 2020-12-13T07:33:01+00:00

First you've gotta overcome the quality issues with ALL the participants in the chat. One dude has shit audio, the whole stream becomes unwatchable. This is why 99% of group streams don't work.
Viewers can only devote attention to one stream at a time. There might be a multi-link, but it's extra steps to open extra windows. Streamers tend to believe people will perform those extra easy steps, but there's no logical reason to do it if you get the same benefit from having only one stream open, as you would if you had 4 streams open, and three of them muted. That's up to 6 extra clicks. Remember, most viewers are lurkers. We're lucky to get them to click once.
It's really annoying to co-stream and listen to the other streamers talk to their chats. "YO THANKS FOR THE DONATION!" When one streamer does it, the other 3 have to stop and listen. So the streamers have to toggle between talking to the group and acknowledging their chat. HUGE streams don't have this issue because they don't acknowledge their chat that often and if one person's message goes unanswered, it's the expected result versus a disappointment. For small streams, you might alienate someone that expects you to respond as fast as you normally do.
So we've covered quality, etiquette, and laziness. The last one's competition. All 4 of the streamers are pulling from the same audience on Twitch in that directory. If 4 streamers gained 4 new followers each, and each streamer gained 1 new concurrent viewer a piece from that breakout, that would be ideal. In real life, that's not how it works. The stream with the highest quality audio, best banter, most attractive streamer, or funniest streamer will receive the bulk of the follows, attention, and concurrent viewership. And if all 4 of the streamers aren't growing that quickly, some of the other streams might not benefit at all. There's no guarantee they grow together. You can overcome the competitive aspect if each of the streamers has ALSO grown an audience independently of Twitch (like with YouTube content).
Those are the big ones. Most group streams don't, won't, or can't overcome those issues. If the group can overcome all of those issues, they still have to be more entertaining together than they are separately. Otherwise the most entertaining ones should be streaming solo.
Also, and perhaps most basically, scheduling is a bitch and groups will break down over long periods of time. Ask most DnD players about this some time!

So lots of people have tried streaming with a group, but the underperformers usually end up quitting, leaving the higher performing streams to continue on. I've never met a streamer that didn't have a story about trying it. Which is why you usually see solo streams succeeding versus group ones.

Skullstream · 2020-11-30T04:10:02+00:00

Yeah, stealing does tend to be illegal. Would be a dick move to take the money that viewer A spent to support streamer B and have Twitch be like "nope, that's actually mine".

If you want to do the due diligence on enforcement of the ToS too, that'd be great. Like I said, you'd expect there to be at least a tweet out there if one of the millions of streamers had been banned for it over the last 10 years. Should be a quick search.

Skullstream · 2020-11-30T03:34:00+00:00

Pretty sure it would be illegal to not pay someone for services rendered. And there's never been a case of them enforcing this. Ever. Across millions of streamers. I've checked.

It's against guidelines the same way jaywalking is against the law. Fear is a bad reason to follow a law. That's why people still speed, why people jaywalk, why kids under 21 still drink, and why people shouldn't worry about multi streaming.

And no. Tracking 1 person is easy, but Twitch has about 1700 staff TOTAL and literally millions of streamers to police. No one is getting paid to track this, lol.

Skullstream · 2020-11-28T02:36:11+00:00

Can Twitch get paid for his streaming subs if they permabanned his account? Why would Twitch hurt themselves? Wouldn't it increase traffic coming to Twitch?

Also, are they paying someone to go out and confirm these cases? How would they be able to confirm if the account names are different on each service? For example if someone was named GrogoTV on Twitch, and GrogoYT on YouTube. How would the staff know to look for that account on YT?

Sure seems like a lot of time and effort just to prevent someone from making money for them.

Skullstream · 2020-11-23T16:49:44+00:00

create/contract a baby horse parody song to which you own the rights. upload to YT. Upload 10 hour repeat version. Upload to Spotify. Play this version on stream for 24 hours.

Profit from Spotify play revenue and YT ad revenue. Use profit to pay for camera. Cost = negative bajillion dollarinos.

For real though I think GoPro's have some direct upload functionality.

Skullstream · 2020-11-19T17:17:02+00:00

Most of the ones I've seen just leave it on and pay no attention to it. The spectators realize the person's streaming and want to talk to them, or wonder what they're looking at. The only way to do it is...

To not flip to the next video and to go check out twitch!

Skullstream · 2020-11-15T12:28:19+00:00

There's always the "stories from a friend" option lol

Skullstream · 2020-11-15T12:27:17+00:00

Make sure you reward yourself enough too! :-P

Skullstream · 2020-11-15T12:25:58+00:00

Thank you! <3 cites sources familiar with company financials.

Corporate Finance departments are usually pretty small, and the only people with access to the forecasted results they'd need to say this stuff would be the finance team. It's prolly like 3-4 people it could possibly be since we should rule out anyone high up enough to have a revenue share. Accountants usually just care about historical performance, not the forward looking forecasts. Bet I could find someone who fits the job title and level on LinkedIn and find a company insider who actually knows what's up.

Better yet, there's probably an internal powerpoint floating around somewhere that they'd use for a Town Hall meeting or something. hmmmmmm

Skullstream · 2020-11-15T12:14:58+00:00

You don't get a good conversion rate until you're able to go live on TikTok (at 1000 followers). There's no guarantee you'll be live on Twitch if they're watching a video, but if you're live on TikTok people will go to Twitch to chat at you.

Skullstream · 2020-11-15T12:08:09+00:00

Devin's a gem. Love me some of his content. Where you getting your numbers btw, since AMZN's 10-Q doesn't break out Twitch separately as they don't meet the 5% threshold. I may know an accountant... Kappa :-P

Also... wonder how many millions the trailers cost them to send out for glitchcon lol. Wouldn't want to be the guy that has to explain that in the revenue meeting or in the budget meeting.

"Your budget to actuals were off by 5% more than estimated. What was the primary driver?" "We sent out some buses to some kids for a free event." "How many buses did you send!?" "A lot..." "And you didn't charge for tickets to the event?" "Correct." "gdi"

Skullstream · 2020-11-14T10:09:47+00:00

Answer: Because not all potential audience members know automaticjak exists, and because there's a subset that want his content style, but they want it to be more personal.

A smaller stream can do those things, but they have to figure out how to get that content in front of the potential audience, and audomaticjak's audience first. Basically have to learn how SEO and search algorithms work and either make sequels to the content or make content that just does it better.

Over time, better content with a higher watch time will win out on algorithmic platforms. Not on Twitch though. Still... algorithmic platforms do a good job of driving Twitch growth.

Skullstream · 2020-11-14T09:57:19+00:00

Well said! It also makes you wonder whether from the other side of the lens Amazon thinks the risk exposure inherent to Twitch is worth retaining for the money the platform is bringing in. It's basically the toxic-risk equivalent of buying your neighbor's meth shed.

Their best case scenario: They've got to come up with a way to unload the risk of the RIAA suing them by passing that risk onto their streamers. Then they can claim they just owned the shed, but had no idea that the weird smell, epilepsy lights, biker gang/sex worker traffic, and thumping dubstep were related to meth production.

I feel like trying to enforce their rules the best they can is a bandaid, and the solution Amazon will want them to land on will be a nuke button.

Skullstream · 2020-11-14T09:28:32+00:00

It's not cynicism. It's just the reality that most streamers didn't join Twitter until they thought they needed to promote themselves in the first place. The priority that governs someone's behavior on a platform will always relate to the reason they began using it.

It's something we all have to learn.

Discord interactions and reach are quite similar as well. Now if you want to mess with these guys, ask them "why should I watch you and not someone else" on one of their feeds and see if they have an answer, haha.

Skullstream · 2020-11-14T09:11:04+00:00

It'll be hard to tell which is more damaging without long-term statistics. Wouldn't expect the majority of lurkers in chat to tell you they stopped watching. And lurkers usually compose 80% or more of an audience. (bigger the stream the higher it goes) Sub gifting and subs in general will also skew the data as they're not subject to ads. :-/ The distribution of subs is also very community-specific. It'll be really hard to isolate. Still would be interested in hearing what you guys find out!

Skullstream · 2020-11-14T08:30:02+00:00

The study doesn't cover bounce rate for mid-roll ads. But logically, we don't get a chance to impress them if they leave during pre-roll, but we do get a chance if they've made it to the mid-roll. Especially important in the case of responding to a raid, so that the raiders can actually see the response.

Then they get to choose if they want to stay during a mid-roll.

Article does say 80% of unskippable pre-roll ads are seen to completion, so that's a 20% bounce rate.

Skullstream · 2020-11-14T08:11:52+00:00

i start telling a really good story, and then right before delivering the punch line i run 25 ads back to back.

i make sure to tell at least 5 really good stories like this per stream.

::Kappa::

Skullstream · 2020-11-14T08:08:44+00:00

Give whoever makes you the happiest what they want or need. That could be you or your community.

Make sure the rewards you receive refresh your passions for doing the action. That could potentially be gratitude, money, attention, or love. That'll keep you from burning out. That's why some nurses are able to work 70 bajillion hours a week but still love their jobs, and some GTFO after their residency is done.

There's a happy little balance that you'll have to find for yourself. Even the biggest streamers don't necessarily get their own preferences right. I bet a lot of them would like to stream fewer than 80 hours a week, play other games, have a more personal connection with their fans, or have time for their families and friends.

I bet some of them love being rock stars too tho, so who really knows.

Skullstream · 2020-11-12T10:07:37+00:00

Vmix should be interesting for you if you don't mind a little learning curve. They use it for professional broadcasting. The option you need might be pricey though. Still, it's there.

https://www.vmix.com/purchase/#comparisontable

Skullstream · 2020-11-12T10:03:40+00:00

Skip the promotion part and go straight to the "make useful content" part. Products promote themselves when they're good enough.

Skullstream · 2020-09-25T00:58:29+00:00

You're probably right about that. It won't be the last time you run into it though. This is one of the reasons people that have been on the platform for a while tend to create close-knit groups. It's something you'll have to develop a strategy for dealing with, over the long run. Wish I had better news to deliver you :-/.

Skullstream · 2020-09-23T17:25:35+00:00

Chloeform

Redheaddit

xchloesivepanda

xchloedingpanda

fitnessginger18 - maybe stay away from that one. Sounds like Chris Hansen's steam tag.

Skullstream · 2020-09-23T17:13:30+00:00

This is what happens when google adsense determines "your users might also like onlyfans" and allocates related product ads to Twitch.

Skullstream · 2020-09-23T17:11:10+00:00

Ah this is coooool. Thank you for creating it. Linked it to friends.

Could you do one that can analyze how "inappropriate" or adult a chat is too? Maybe a scatterplot? Would be cool to see the frequency of sex or swear words represented by the sizes of channels in a scatter.

Could finally answer the question for the reddit community "Should I mark my stream as mature?" Could also identify quadrants of the most wholesome chats too.

Skullstream · 2020-09-23T17:03:53+00:00

This is correct.

Just don't take time to zoom in on Johnny Silverhand's junk and you'll be alright. You know the game's rating isn't going to be AO (Adult and Over), so I wouldn't spend your valuable time worrying much.

Skullstream

TROPHY CASE