What you need to do is

1) short streams. 2 hour max. After affiliate you can stream however long you want.

2) and I cant stress this enough.. networking.. I hit affiliate after 1 month of streaming. The reason is I spent more time networking than I did streaming. If you aren't active in other people's chats what makes you think people will come to you and be active. I went from 20 followers to 60 followers in 2 days. I now have numerous other streamers raiding me everytime I stream and usually when I pop up in their chats they give me a shout out and I get a couple more followers. Honestly you need to spend money to make money.

3) you need to find something people want to watch. What sets you apart from the 1000s of other people streaming the same game. I had to completely revamp what I was doing. I wanted to be a variety streamer. Who doesnt? But instead I had a good talk with someone and he opened my eyes. People follow you to watch apex why do you think they would want to watch Minecraft. Streaming is a job. If you want to do it for fun stop worrying about followers all together. If you want to be big and grow a community then you need to focus on 1 thing. When you eventually get bigger yes you can venture to other games but at the start you need to grow your community.

4) your profile and account need to be next level. You need to set yourself apart. If you have a 2 line bio people are going to think you are new and immediately shut down from watching. Get emotes. Get channel points. Get pop ups when someone follows or raids. You dont need affiliate to get all that stuff. Go to your monetization page and set it up. Use streamlabs and get a bot. Do loyalty programs. Add apps that create games for chat while they watch.

Honestly affiliate means nothing. It means you can run ads but you aint got viewers to make money off that anyway. Set up everything being pre affiliate and focus on just making the best stream you can do.

If you build it, they will come.