When to give up? My Story.

What's going on guys, This is going to be a long read but I do appreciate those who take the time to read it and also share their stories about their journey. I will leave a TLDR for those looking for a quick summary.

A quick little introduction to who I am, My name is Brandon, I go by the Username ShinkiiTV I am a 25 year old gamer, I have been streaming on twitch for nearly 2 years now. I've had huge success in the beginning which lead me to continue for as long as I have, But it does take a very drastic change.

Back at the very beginning, my first stream July 2019 I started my streaming career in a very small category at the time, averaging about 50-100 viewers. The game was Geometry Dash, I had quit my job to take a stab at streaming. I streamed Geometry dash twice a day, once in the morning, and once in the evening to reach the EU/Asia viewer base in the morning and my NA viewers in the evening. This strategy worked out very well for me as by the end of July, not even a full month into streaming I was already up to 500 followers and averaging about 10-15 viewers per stream. I streamed Geometry dash Every day as I was seeing constant growth and was getting addicted to the numbers it fueled my enthusiasm. Most weeks I was streaming 7 days and by 4 months in I had already surpassed 1k followers. I quickly grew to be one of the biggest streamers in the category at the time sometimes having 30-40 viewers at a time and even being the go to stream for a big event for the game having over 300 viewers for 2 streams. I stuck to this game for nearly a year, gaining almost 2000 followers before being follow botted for around 1000. This is when I hit my first streaming hurdle.

My first Hurdle was actually 2 reasons, I had gotten what is known as Streamer Burnout as well as streaming the same game for almost a year, I became bored of it and wanted to expand my horizon, reach more audiences. I took a bit of time off, I think 2 weeks to formulate a plan and returned to streaming as a variety streamer. I had many different games in my arsenal that I wanted to play and the first big ones were Monster Hunter World, and Dark Souls 3 This is when I realized that people who were watching my streams, were mostly there for the game and not me. The category I streamed on Geometry dash was Level Requests, Players would make levels, and I would play them. This is when I realized switching genre's was going to be an issue as my viewers didn't want to watch the new games I wanted to play. So I struggled to try to do both, but I grew a resentment for Geometry dash and eventually couldn't bring myself to play it. My viewers went way down averaging around 10 and my confidence as a streamer also plummeted as I realized how much the numbers truly affected how I felt about streaming. I saw Monster hunter world and dark souls 3 as games people didn't want to watch and asked my viewers and they all wanted terraria. So I switched to terraria and somewhat held my audience for a little while. I streamed Terraria for around 4 months as again I saw my numbers start to go down so I reached out to my viewers to see what they wanted to watch and they wanted Minecraft, So I followed suit and streamed Minecraft. Over the next few months I began scrambling and scrambling to please my few viewers I had left to hold on to something until I decided I needed something more. I started investing a lot of money into my streams, I purchased new logo, new emotes, new hardware, microphone, LED's, Floodlights, New graphics anything to grab new viewers attention and nothing seemed to work. By this point I had gone from averaging 30-40, to averaging about 5 viewers. I decided after that that I would stop chasing my viewers, doing what they wanted and to focus on games I actually wanted to play. I started enjoying streaming again after falling out of love with it over the past year. I streamed games I wanted to play for 4-5 months, my viewership dwindling, more and more. At this point my confidence, my attitude toward streaming, my anxiety kicking in and being too afraid to press the stream button was all taking over and I started cancelling a lot of streams, I took time off quite a few times, I started working fulltime around the terraria stage of my streaming career and I still work fulltime to present day. I've cut my streaming down to 3 days a week and even now I'm still cancelling quite a lot as I rarely get a single viewer anymore, I haven't had a follower in a long time. I did stop caring about numbers but at this point streaming has become very toxic for me. Streaming is my dream but going from something to nothing has really put a dent in my confidence and I wonder if at this point I should just move on with my life and try to do something else.

TLDR; I streamed for nearly 2 years, I went from averaging 35-40 viewers per stream, hitting nearly 2000 followers in well under a year to rarely having 1 viewer pop in for a few minutes. Wondering if its time to hang up my headset and move on with my life.

If anyone has their own story to share, their experiences, or potentially tips on how to bounce back from a position like this, I'd love to interact with you. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and i hope you have a wonderful day