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A guide for those who want to grow or are stuck with very few viewers.
Guide
This guide is about to concepts that are important to understand, Discoverability and Viewer Retention, and some tips to improve them.
Here's the two largest factors for viewership growth:
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Discoverability: Discoverability means how easy it is for new viewers to find you. Twitch has very few tools that make it easier for people to find you other than you being listed for the game you're currently playing. You cannot grow unless new viewers can find you.
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Viewer Retention: Viewer retention is your ability to retain new viewers. When you finally reach new viewers it is important for them to stay on your stream. If you truly want to grow you need to offer something on your stream that other people are not offering on theirs, so play to your strengths. Just remember you're competing with MILLIONS of other streamers so make sure you do all that you can to retain new viewers. It is easy to just engage your regulars, but I believe its more important to make sure that new people feel welcome as well if you want to have a chance at making a new viewer a regular.
Now, let's go over some tips to help with Discoverability and Viewer Retention..
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Read the /r/twitch wiki (Yes, there's a wiki!) Why? It is loaded full of great tips for new streamers and most of the beginner questions are answered in the wiki, like copyright, gaining views, blurry streams, networking, etc.
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Don't play saturated games. Avoid the games at the top of the most streamed list (roughly top 50). Here's a list. Why? Because you'll be one of many hundreds or even thousands streaming the game and very few people will find you in a list of thousands. (This relates to Discoverability)
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Stick to either one game/genre or a small niche, at least at first. Why? If you play too wide of a variety of games it is going to be hard for you to retain viewers. Imagine attending a concert where the songs go from rap to bluegrass to death metal and how there'd be very few people who'd want to stay for performances of all three, playing a wide variety of games is a bit like that. Once you're big enough people will show up just for the show, but when you're starting out don't do wide variety. (This relates to Viewer Retention)
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Have good quality audio and video. Why? There are thousands of streamers out there with good quality audio and video so if your audio or video quality is bad people will just move on. Make sure your stream isn't blurry and your microphone is clear. This doesn't necessarily mean buying new equipment, making sure your bitrate and resolution allows for high quality video and setting up a compressor filter, noise gate and noise suppression for your microphone can go a long way to improving your overall quality. (This relates to Viewer Retention)
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Be entertaining. Engage your chat and continue chatting. Why? You're the entertainer, if you're not entertaining people will not watch. Being entertaining can be difficult at first, but you have to consider streaming a skill that you should be working on, so strive to be better. It can be helpful to watch other streamers who are more successful for tips and inspiration about how to engage and entertain. (This relates to Viewer Retention)
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Use other platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, etc. Why? There's very little you can do on Twitch to help your discoverability other than making sure you don't play saturated games, so if you want to attract new viewers to your streams it is often helpful and sometimes necessary to be posting your content elsewhere to increase the chances that people will find your content and maybe even tune into a stream. Yes, this is a lot of additional work, but trust me when I tell you the effort can pay off. (This relates to Discoverability)
As a moderator of r/twitch I see a lot of posts inquiring 'how to grow' and as a successful streamer of Twitch I have a little insight on how to do that. I think its very important to understand discoverability and viewer retention and the 6 tips posted above highlight why those two factors are so important.
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Serious +1 here! Well done. I would add that another frequently misunderstood topic is still worth mentioning.
Networking... No you are not supposed to follow for follow, nor are you supposed to go into streamers chats and self promote. However, getting into a community with other streamers and collaborating with them is a great way of getting much needed exposure. It is rare that you will instantly become someones favorite streamer from such a collab but being a viable alternative when their favorite streamer is offline is still a great path to growth.
Networking can be very helpful, yes absolutely, but not essential. I left it out because you can definitely grow without doing any networking, but if you don't work on your viewer retention or discoverability you cannot grow. For me the true benefit of networking is just to make the streaming more enjoyable, streaming alone can be isolating and lonely.
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Please understand that this will sound harsh but it is coming from a place of trying to help.
I do not think you understand networking if you believe it is "only valuable for bigger streamers". I have a very clear track record of what networking can do for a channel. 8 months of doing it myself then learning to raid and befriending fellow streamers and steady growth after that. From about 6 average viewers to 60. Same game. Same shtick. Same schedule. The difference is networking and networking alone.
I can appreciate the OP's reason for not listing it but make no mistake for some of us it is the only tip that mattered. Which is why I mentioned it.
Absolutely 100% agree with you. The reason I left off networking from this mini-guide is that some people are good at it, some people aren't and I can't exactly instruct people to have "people skills". Ultimately you work with the set of skills that you personally have, so if you have significant "soft skills", networking will probably be a great way to grow.
And something that nobody on this sub seems to understand is not everybody can grow. It's not like a game where you just level up. You could do all the things on this list and more but still have a decline in viewers.
Not everyone can grow because some people significantly lack the ability to be entertaining, or at least that's what I've anecdotally found after watching hundreds and hundreds of low viewership streamers. Streaming is more about being entertaining than it is about being skilled at the games you play. Nobody wants to go listen to a boring musician or a boring comedian, streaming is exactly the same.
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I wrote this up mostly so that when I remove posts that ask questions like "how do I gain viewers" I can point them here.
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Oh man if you look at my comment history you'll see how much effort it takes to keep self-promo and let-me-google-that-for-you questions off of r/twitch, haha (I've removed about 500 posts in the last 30 days)
i disagree on the saturated game thing (which i know is a popular tip)
playing a big game won’t help but playing a small game won’t help or maybe just a little bit probably not
you need to grow on other platforms to grow and not relay on the game you play
some people grow playing big games
i think devin nash said something on this
You can definitely grow playing big games, but you need to do something about your nearly non-existent discoverability by putting a lot of effort off-platform. Streaming a top 25 game with no effort put to off platform and you're relying on a trickle of new viewers filtering in, so your growth will be extremely slow .. at best.
if your playing games that aren’t popular that means less people want to watch them
you aren’t gonna grow because you play a small games (discoverability by people sorting threw categories is a thing yes) but it’s better to play big games and post on a bunch of diffrent socials because your more likely to find people who like that game and might check you out
Well how are your growth numbers? If you think I am wrong prove it with some math and statistics. Everyone will tell you that discoverability is one of the biggest issues of Twitch and being at the bottom of a list 1000 long isn't helping discoverability.
your points are very good
i just wanted to talk about that one thing which is small games
and you asked what makes a small game which i can’t answer so ima do research on that and i’ll be back
to grow you need to post on other socials
who thinks their just gonna stream (even small games) and blow up
(i mean it has happened but still)
It really depends on what you consider a small game. What amount of average viewers makes it small? 1000 average viewers? 100? Even at 100 average viewers if you can pull in 25% of those viewers, you're still sitting above 99% of Twitch streamers.
that’s a good question lol
but you can kinda guess which ones are small
gimme a second
If you have any questions that you would like answered feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them.
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I just checked your 90 day average on sullygnome.com, New World has not increased your average viewers.
https://sullygnome.com/channel/dessaneoce/90
If you have an average viewer count of 11, when you stream New World that puts you below about 350 other streamers that are bigger than you streaming right now, I just counted. That's pretty buried. I wouldn't consider streaming anything that puts you lower than ... 75 at the most, ideally no more than 40.
Playing a saturated game on average will not increase your discoverability over playing one where you're not at the bottom of a thousand person long list of other streamers. In most cases where someone grows playing a saturated game they was an opportunity cost because you could have grown more playing something that wasn't so saturated. I'm not saying you can't grow playing saturated games, you just won't grow as fast as you could have.
I feel like youre assuming everyone streams in english. Imho its different playing oversatured games and not if you use different language. People might filter on your language and suddenly there might not be too much competetion.
..Or thats just me.
Yes, streaming in a language other than English can definitely help you, but that's exactly why my comment has clarity about what I would consider 'buried'. Streaming anything that puts you below 40-75 other people would limit your discoverability a lot.
But even disregarding the language that you stream in .. your stats do not support your conjecture that you've grown streaming New World, you've gained followers, but your average viewers have stayed stagnant, or even dropped.
Can you escalate on the "succesful streamer" please? No offense intented, but just out of curiosity what is that for you? Full time? Cashing in everynow and then?etc.
Also imo No4. is the most important point, thats the breath and butter. Also imo personally..2 games/genres imo works for best, sticking only with one kind of lock you in place and its really hard to change it later.
I am a full time and gainfully employed content creator that lives in his own home and pays his own bills. I'm definitely not one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, but being able to do it full time as a living definitely puts me into the 'successful' category I think. No offense taken at all, you need to know that my advice is legit and what my credentials are .. I totally understand.
How can I make sure my video is high quality? I've read that I need to stream at 2000 bitrate so folks with slow internet can watch, but it honestly looks like crap even at 720p 30fps.
Whoever told you that mislead you or was mistaken. What is your upload speed bandwidth?
Upload speed isn't great (about 10 mg). I'd been reading around that if you have too high a bitrate then that could possibly affect viewership as there are many people with really crap internet.
If you are streaming mobile games in a country with slow internet that might be a factor, but that's not likely your situation. Raise your bitrate to at least 4500, higher if you play fast paced games like FPS.
Leave it to you to make the most helpful post I’ve seen on Reddit!
I was googling you to find pics of you and Yoda for a drawing I’m working on and this post came up. You’re a good streamer and a good person and I can’t thank you enough for all the awesome things you’ve done for my husband.
My pleasure! I am genuinely just trying to help other people, the friends I make along the way is quite a great benefit!