This has been a point of constant contemplation for me since I first got the inclination to stream on Twitch. How do I decide what (and when) to broadcast? There are a lot of games out there, and there are thousands of people with Twitch channels, all clamoring for the same hundred odd thousand people to come watch their shows. Twitch already has its allstar lineup of big-name streamers, and a good-sized roster of less well-known broadcasters as well. Starting from the ground level, the whole thing can seem fucking impossible to break into.
So how to go about doing it?
Everything I've heard from other streamers when they're asked boils down to "just start your stream and be patient." I don't buy that, because that's not how fucking marketing works. You don't just hang a sign on your door that says "open for business" and get customers. Oh, you might get a couple curious people, but by and large? You're not going to become WalMart by sitting on the side of the road with a couple of cheap fucking radios that fell off the back of a truck. You're just not.
From what I've seen, the two major factors in whether or not your viewer count goes up (and you get those all-important follwers) seem to be what you're streaming and when. While streaming a game like World of Warcraft or League of Legends might seem super cool and fit most with how you want to be spending you time, odds are that there are a hundred people on the list ahead of you with more viewers and subs, and since that's how Twitch sorts streams...
Good luck catching clicks, when people have to scroll down through a bajillion other channels to get to you.
Picking a less widely-broadcast game is an option, a good one from what I've seen. When I stream Diablo III, I'll go all night without collecting more than just myself and maybe a friend from Facebook. When I was streaming ArcheAge, though, I would fluctuate from three to twenty viewers at a time, and actually collected a few follows. I saw better progress as a broadcaster in two days of ArcheAge than I saw in two weeks of Diablo. The key to that is that sitting in ArcheAge with three viewers put me well over halfway up the list, and as I got more clicks, I rose even higher. Broadcasting Diablo with the same amount of viewers puts me in the fucking sewer with the motherfucking Ninja Turtles.
I've also noticed that WHEN I stream has a lot to do with how many views I can collect. If I stream Diablo while say... Morikopa or Datmodz are live, I'm pretty much not going to pick up strays. If I go live while there aren't a lot of high-profile streamers around, though... Boom. Clicks. The market doesn't go away when the big names aren't streaming. That's when it opens up the most. Think of it this way: it's 2AM and you're fucking hungry as fuck, but you don't want to cook. Fucking everything's closed, right? Except Taco Bell. They're fuckin' open like... ALL THE DAMN TIME. Ordinarily, you wouldn't eat at the Bell because you don't like horsemeat or whatever, but you're fuckin' hungry, and anything you get at WalMart is gonna require getting out of your car, walking around the damn store...and you'll probably just walk out with some fucking junkfood and a case of NOS, so why the fuck bother? Just go to the Bell, drive through, and get yourself a goddamn box of tacos.
It's like that with Twitch, too. If I make myself available when other options are limited, people have no choice but to come check me out. That's when having that snappy title and awesome channel graphics come into play. If you can pique interests during offpeak times and get those follows, you'll be in a better position to climb up the watchlist come peak times. If some dude gets shitfaced and follows you at three in the morning, when he rolls out of bed hungover and is looking for something to watch and sees you online again/still... he might just check you out instead of whoever else he's subbed to.
Or...you can show boobies. Apparently boobies trump marketing strategy.
Anyway, I don't know if my observations mean that I should change what I'm doing
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