How to Diversify Your Twitch Income (Before It's Too Late)

Morning. Quick question. What happens when Twitch changes its partner program requirements overnight or when your ad revenue drops by, let's say, 40% because of an algorithm shift you had zero control over? If you're relying on a single platform for your streaming income, you're one Terms of Service update away from a financial crisis.

I'm Josh Bailey, and today on the Maker's Table, we're talking about how to diversify your Twitch income so that you are never at the mercy of one company's decision. Stick around because by the end of this post, you'll have at least a good idea of a roadmap to three additional revenue streams you can start building this week. So let's dive in.

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The Platform Dependency Problem

Most streamers when they're live streaming on Twitch are putting all their eggs in that same Twitch basket. We're talking subs, bits, and ad revenue, just on Twitch alone. That's all they're thinking about. The illusion of security is currently that, hey, I am an affiliate or I'm a partner now. I'm pretty much set. I'm going to make millions. That is not always the case. I want to say, I'm going to pull this number out of my butt, 80% of the time.

Platform policy changes do happen without warning. Sometimes they don't have to tell you our terms of service are changing tomorrow. And guess what? If you don't follow it, you're banned, or you're off the platform, or you're not getting the ad revenue that you thought you were getting last month. That's not going to happen. So as the creator's dilemma, you build the audience, but you don't own that relationship between you as a content creator, live streamer and your audience. Everything is built within Twitch and a lot of people don't put two and two together and think that just because I stream on Twitch, I get all my money from Twitch. Everything is set and I don't have to worry about anything for the rest of my life because this is my full time job. That's not the issue anymore, unfortunately.

The Three-Legged Stool Approach

What should your income be like? Maybe, for example, we'll do a three-legged stool because it's stable and it's diversified. What I mean by that is on one leg is platform revenue. That's the Twitch subs, bits, and ads. Another leg is direct supporter revenue. We'll talk a little bit about that. And the other leg is a product service revenue stream. We'll get to that towards the end, later part of this post.

Let's think about if one of those legs breaks, you're still standing, maybe a little bit rocky, but you're not falling on your butt. You're getting three sources of income and you're stable. You can add a fourth, fifth, sixth, as many as you want, no problem.

The Income Reality Check

I myself, on one of my other channels, I am a Twitch affiliate. Some people claim that anywhere from $50 to $200 a month. I'll say $50 a month sounds good in theory, but a great majority of the affiliates are not making $50 in a year.

That is the threshold that Twitch requires for you to get your money out from your account. You have to make at least $50 before you'd be able to pull that money out of your Twitch account. For myself, it took two years and it was quite surprising. All of a sudden, oh, I got $50 in the bank account. Okay, where'd that come from? Oh, it came from Twitch. Oh, okay. So a lot of people have this correlation being a Twitch affiliate or even a Twitch partner of all of a sudden I can make lots of money with this. In the majority of cases, it's not going to happen.

Now with partners, partners vary widely, but mid-tier, roughly, I'm just pulling these numbers out of the air, about $500 to $3,000 a month. That sounds reasonably true. There are some partners that are probably getting $500 a month from sub splits and ad revenue and bits and maybe a sponsorship deal from a small company. So that number is very believable. So that's $500 to $3,000 a month. That's like a mid-tier. I'm not really sure exactly what you would count as a mid-tier partner.

Now, the problem is that that income is 100% controlled by Twitch. Twitch is acting as your intermediary, as your go-between, as your third party, so to speak. It's like your viewers are giving us money and we're going to take half of it and give some to you because you did good. But that's the problem. Twitch is in full control of your finances if you're focusing solely on just the Twitch aspect and not other revenue sources.

What that could affect is your emotional toll. Let's say all of a sudden you take a break, you go to school and that's a couple of months. All of a sudden your revenue tanks because you're not streaming as much or as often as you were. The problem is that no one is watching you. No one is subbing. No one is really giving any bits. And of course, your ad revenue tanks because no one's watching your stream. That's just the basic fact. Whenever you're live on Twitch, you have the access of getting money. But as soon as your live stream ends on Twitch, your channel is pretty much dead. Nothing is happening.

Now, I do say that on a rare occasion, somebody might sub or give bits, but that is like 0.001% of what could happen on a live stream or non-live channel.

You've Already Done the Hard Part

What can we do about this? Well, you already have the hardest part done. You've built an audience. You've gotten to the point where you got affiliate or partner. Congratulations, you got people watching. At least maybe 10 people, 20 people, 30, 100. That's awesome. That is your core community. So what we're going to do is leverage the audience across multiple income streams. What I mean by that is not just relying solely on Twitch, but other things we're going to talk about right now.

Strategy 1: Building Direct Relationships with Your Supporters

The first diversification strategy is creating direct relationships with your supporters, your audience that don't depend on Twitch's infrastructure. What do I mean by that? Well, one of them is a direct connection between you and your viewers.

When someone subscribes to you on Twitch, Twitch owns that relationship. You don't have any information about them except for the username and that's pretty much it. Twitch controls the payment, the data, and can revoke access at any time. Direct support means you own the email, the communication, and the relationship with that viewer. This is your audience, not Twitch's.

Membership Platforms

Patreon

Patreon is the go-to for most creators. You've probably heard of Patreon in some way, shape or form throughout listening to podcasts, other YouTubers, other live streamers. Patreon has built its revenue model on connecting the creator with their audience. It doesn't matter if you're a live streamer, artist, maker, musician or anybody like that. It's basically built to connect you as the artist with your audience.

What can you do with Patreon? Well, you can offer exclusive content. What I mean by that is behind the scenes access, posts like if I have a Patreon post up, behind the scenes of about to go live. That can be set up for your paid tier memberships or even free tier memberships. You can do early access. Let's say you have a video that you've worked hard on and you want to get it out there to your audience, actual audience members, not just people that might randomly come across it on YouTube. You post it up on Patreon for, say, a week or two. You have exclusive access to that video with a pay tier, let's say like $1 Patreon or $5 Patreon tier and you get access to that video for the first two weeks. Or you have exclusive Discord roles inside your Discord server that are like a supporter level or anything like that. It's completely up to you.

Now, what you could do is think about the different tiers and the different perks you could think about for your supporter tier. Just don't copy or duplicate Twitch's perks. Create something unique that they're not going to find on Twitch. This is something that they'll only be able to see on your Patreon.

Ko-fi

Next up is Ko-fi. This is very similar to Patreon, but it's set up to be one-time tips and/or donations and it also has monthly subscriptions or memberships. This is not as robust as you would think Patreon's model is. It has lower fees than Patreon. Patreon is 8 to 12%, depending on the tier that you are in. It's complicated. Well, it's not really complicated, but it is. It's something more complicated than it needs to be. Ko-fi has like a 5% fee. They used to do Ko-fi Gold, where you as a creator pay like $6 a month and the fee would be taken care of. You don't have to worry about that because you're paying for the service and paying the fee. You're paying it forward for your memberships really.

So who's Ko-fi great for? It's good for makers and creators who also sell digital products because you can set up products. You can have your memberships or members or people who just want to come in and look at your store and see what you have. So like crafters or podcasters, video creators, cosplayers, you name it. The world is your oyster, really.

Buy Me a Coffee

The next one is very similar to Ko-fi. It is Buy Me a Coffee. This is similar to Ko-fi, but it's very beginner friendly. You don't really need to do much of anything except create an account and get started. You have memberships, just like Ko-fi and Patreon, and you have one-time tips or donations. So that's all set and ready to go. There's no long, arduous account setup process or anything like that. You're pretty much ready to go.

Your Own Membership Site

Another thing you can think about is creating your own membership site. What I mean by that is something similar to MemberSpace, Ghost or even a WordPress blog. MemberSpace is something that takes care of setting up memberships for people that you're directing from your Twitch live stream or your Twitch channel page to say, hey, come support me through MemberSpace and you get all these cool features and become a member of your community.

I myself have a Ghost site that I use. It's basically set up more for a blog newsletter type of audience or process, but it does provide a way to go about setting up memberships. People can sign up as a free member or as a paid member. It's all depending on how you have set up your site. If you go to joshbaileycreates.com, that's a Ghost site.

Another thing is if you have a WordPress site, you can integrate in any of the multiple plugins that are available for memberships and tie directly into your WordPress site. So there are a lot of options available to you for getting started, for getting a direct connection between you and your audience, your viewers, and potentially up and coming members.

The Power of Email Lists

Another thing that you can set up is an email list. Start collecting emails now. I know much of the newer, younger generation really don't think of emails as something that is viable anymore. There is this stigma with emails that they're old-fashioned. You don't need to have an email anymore. You don't need it. It has no purpose. It's just spam. But the thing is, email is awesome for getting in touch with your audience.

You can use certain services like Kit, MailChimp, or ButtonDown. Kit is a newsletter service that is great. It has been around for quite some time, so there's really not any feelings that this is just going to go away in a couple of months or next year. They have been around for quite some time. They know what they're doing. Their main focus is on creating an email service provider for you so you can keep in touch with your audience and you can have either weekly or monthly updates or just post up newsletters about podcasts. I'll be having an email newsletter for our podcast episodes every week as well. If you want to do that, joshbaileycreates.com. Sign up. It's free.

What you can send is a weekly stream schedule. You can do exclusive updates. Say, hey, on Thursday, I'm going to be collabing with so-and-so for three hours while we look at this new great game that is releasing this week. You can also do special offers. You can set up, hey, for the first week of January, we're doing a special deal with widget company A for 30% off discount just by using the discount code in the newsletter or the email that you got this week. There's a lot of things that you can think about that will keep you in line with keeping your members, your audience up to date on what's going on.

Now, your email list is the only audience you truly own. I've said many times in this episode that Twitch owns the accounts of the people that are watching your content. They really don't have any say in what happens. If something happens where their account gets banned or gets hacked and they lose their account, you lose access to that person. With email and collecting these emails, you have that personal connection between your audience and yourself.

One thing is, what happens if Twitch disappears tomorrow? I mean, yes, many people say, well, Amazon's not going to sell Twitch or close it down because it makes money. But Amazon has done some weird stuff. If they say, hey, this Twitch experiment, yeah, we're done with it and we're going to close it down in 30 days, what's going to happen to all those people? Or let's say your account gets hacked or banned. You can still get in contact with the people that have sent you their email and you have that information, that direct line to your viewers, your audience. Say, hey, I don't know what happened, but you can still watch me on YouTube or Kick or wherever. At least they still have that connection between your audience and yourself.

Direct Donations and Tips

What you can also do is do direct donations and tips, not just through Twitch. You can set up Streamlabs. StreamElements has this as well. You don't need Twitch to take care of everything. You can set up third-party services to take care of this for you as well. And you don't have to worry about Twitch getting their grubby little hands inside your money.

But all of this is based on the fact of directing your audience off of Twitch to a third party. Is that going to be easy? No, it's not going to be easy because people who watch your content on Twitch are so ingrained within the Twitch community that even thinking about going off Twitch is something that they're not going to think of.

That's something that you have to keep in your mind. How do you provide a better option, better tiers, better perks for your viewers, these people to say, hey, I actually like this creator. I want to help support them. I'm going to get a better experience off Twitch. I am going to go through and click on the little button on your channel page and go off-site and provide funding or give you money this way. That completely bypasses Twitch's cut entirely. You get more of the pie if you go a third-party route than solely relying on Twitch itself.

Like I said, trying to get Twitch viewers to go to a third party is really hard, but you have to promote it during your live streams. Start saying, hey, if you want to support directly, links in description or type exclamation point support in chat and they'll send you a link to my direct support page. You can frame it as something that supports the channel, supports you as a content creator to help make the content that your viewers are liking and enjoying and for you to create more of it.

Don't say, hey, I need to pay rent this month or I'm going to get kicked out. Don't set it up in a desperation type of framing because no one really wants to hear so-and-so is going to get kicked out of their apartment if I don't give him 50 bucks. That's the wrong way of how to ask for support and donations or anything like that.

Implementation Tips

One thing you can do is start with one platform. Figure out which platform you're more comfortable with. Let's say you want to do just a Patreon because everyone has a Patreon, right? So don't overwhelm yourself. Don't say support me on my Patreon, support me on my Ko-fi, buy me a coffee. Also, there's a direct tip through my StreamElements link. Also, I got my Streamlabs direct donation page and a PayPal.me. That gives way too many options and it makes you sound like you're just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Stay consistent with one platform. Also be consistent in your promotion of it. Mention it naturally every stream, like halfway through as you're going through or you're waiting for getting into the next match. Say, hey, while we're waiting, be sure to subscribe or sign up for the upgraded tier or something along those lines. Just think about what you want to produce or what you would like to hear as a viewer. Put those boots on as a viewer and say, oh, this is what I would like to hear or I feel comfortable if it's said this way.

You can also create a landing page with all of your support links by using something like Linktree, Beacons or Carrd. They have free options available that you can set these links to and you can give one link on your stream chat or on your page. I say just be consistent with the number and don't over-promote it. Don't do it every five minutes because then it sounds like you're trying to sell them. Say, hey, sign up now. It's just going to put people off and you're going to be pushing people away.

Figure out what works. At the beginning for, let's say, six months, you do a Patreon and see if it grabs traction. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, try something else, try something new. You're probably at a point where experimentation is not going to hurt your channel at all. It'd be a great time for you to actually go through these experiments and figure out what works for you. Not just because some person on the internet said you need to do it this way or you're going to fail. See what works for you.

Strategy 2: Turning Your Skills Into Products and Services

Direct support is fantastic, but this is where it's going to get really interesting. Turning your skills, your actual skills and expertise into products and services that generate income even when you're not streaming. What I mean by that is that your stream proves that you have expertise and personality in whatever you're doing. Let's say you're an Overwatch 2 streamer and people come to your streams to watch your professional gameplay as it were, and they want to learn more, learn how to be better players in Overwatch 2. This is one avenue that you can give to them with coaching or anything like that.

People already value what you're providing them. You can get this into a package that you can easily give to your viewers in a monetizable way. Income that doesn't require you to be live. You can earn offline income and you don't have to be streaming as much. You don't have to be 12 hours of streaming constantly. People know what you are, what you provide and they will come to you or ask for your services or products that you have.

Digital Products for Gamers and Creators

For gamers, you can do custom game guides and strategies. You can do PDFs of strategy guides, Baldur's Gate strategy, stuff like that, tutorial videos on the best ways to be a Brigitte healer or main tank Winston or anything like that, something that you know you're good at that you can provide as a service to your viewers.

You can also do custom overlays, alert packages, or even emote sets. If you have an artistic bone in your body, which I really don't, I draw a great stick man, but that's about it. If you're an emote artist and you do live streams and say, hey, that's something that you can provide, you can commission me for work. Do five emotes for $50 or anything like that.

For the makers and creators, you have templates like graphic packs, project plans, spreadsheets, or you can do courses and workshops. It can be both in a video format or written format. You can do stock assets like music, sound effects, graphics, something that you're good at and that you are providing on your live stream. Make some money off it when you're not live. You can make money when you're sleeping pretty much.

Where to Sell Your Digital Products

Where can you sell this stuff? Well, there are some places like Gumroad. A lot of people use Gumroad for digital products. There's a whole bunch of Notion templates, graphic overlay assets, emotes, stuff like that. It is the easiest and lowest barrier that you can use for providing a link to your storefront on Gumroad. You can also do your own store, your own shop with Shopify or using WooCommerce. Magento is an e-commerce platform that you can have hosted or anything like that.

Etsy is a great alternative if you do physical products. If you do custom art, I'm looking around, I'm totally not finding anything on the desk here. I should have been more prepared. But anyways, if you do physical products and you want to sell to your viewers, say, hey, for the next month, I'm making these pin holders and watch my live stream for the first two weeks and I'll show you how I'm making them and then you can buy one yourself. It's something that you can provide to your audience that is available 24/7. You don't need to be live. Like I said, you can make money while you sleep.

Start slow with your pricing model so you can build social proof, then increase the pricing over time. Don't do like once a month, it goes up $10. Price it at what you think is available or that you should price for the product or service that you want.

Services and Consulting

Another thing, services and consulting. I mentioned this earlier. When you're an expert in, let's say, streaming setups, or content creation, or even your niche, whatever it is, you can offer one-on-one coaching or consulting. Let's say a stream setup audit, $100 for 30 minutes. I want to provide a service where I'll go through your stream setup and see how we can make it better or which ways we can try to improve what you already have. It's going to be $100 for a 30-minute session or a channel growth strategy session is $200 for an hour session. We'll set up a Zoom call and go back and forth. Say, hey, I look at your stream. This looks great, but there might be more improvement if you try this or use this tool.

You can also do done-for-you services like custom graphics packages. I touched base on this with the emote artist where you can also do channel branding. Live streamers are always looking out for low-cost or free overlay packages that they can use quick and easy. Set it up. Don't have to worry about it. It's done within 10 minutes. You're off and running. So you can set that up if you are good with getting things together as a graphics package or anything like that. Stream setup assistance. Hey, contact me for $50. I'll help you set up your stream and get you up and running.

How to Promote Your Services

How can you promote all of this stuff? Again, use your live stream. Mentioning it casually on stream is perfect advertisement because you have a captive audience. The people are there watching you. They're there for you. Another way you can do it is create a dedicated page that lists what services or products that you offer and of course the pricing as well. That's helpful.

If you're doing one-on-one coaching or anything like that where you're talking with other streamers or other people, you can use a service called Calendly to automate bookings. You can set up, I am available on these dates between these certain hours and people, you provide them the link to your page. They can set themselves up for booking at like Tuesday at 4 o'clock p.m. and it automatically blocks that time out. So you're not overbooking yourself and running around like I got four calls just in this one hour. What the hell happened?

You can start with two to three spots per month and just scale up or down as the demand grows or shrinks. It's something that is viable for a lot of streamers. Many people don't really think about the business side of things like that.

Strategy 3: Affiliate Marketing and Sponsorships

Another option, and I know I sound like a certain person when I say and another, is affiliate links. A lot of streamers love to use affiliate linking on their live stream or their channel page or anything like that. There's Amazon Associates, that program. A lot of people have sworn by it that it is a great moneymaker, but your mileage may vary. Manufacturer programs, there are affiliates for, let's say, like Beacon. No, they don't have affiliate marketing. They do partnerships with certain creators, but they don't have affiliate.

There is Ecamm and Riverside. Right now I'm using Riverside. So there is an affiliate program for that. I'll have a link for Riverside. If you're interested in Riverside.fm for doing this and creating your own content, check it out.

You can actually share what gear you use with honest recommendations. Like I've been using the Beacon stuff. I have the mic, I have the MixCreate. I just got the studio about a month ago. I actually love Beacon and their software is really, really great too. I've been using their stuff for years now since they came out on the market a couple of years ago.

The Trust Factor

One thing I would suggest to a lot of people is disclose properly. Many people don't do that. Creators don't do that. They don't use the ad or they don't use promoted or sponsored by. Basically, it's just there for maintaining trust between you as a creator and your audience. If you say widget A, I love this so much, use my affiliate code and get 10% off, but in actuality, you never use the product or the service and you're just there to get money, your audience will know if you're being genuine or not. So keep that in mind. Build that trust. Keep that trust. That is something that is very hard to get and easy to destroy.

Direct Sponsorships

Direct sponsorships. Again, this is a lot of things that you'll see on live streamers' channels, like Red Bull, Gamersupps, all the energy drinks galore. The energy drink companies are constantly saying, we'll sponsor your stream. Just put this discount code and our image on your stream and we'll give you hundreds of dollars. Sometimes it's real, sometimes it's not. But anyways, that's a whole other topic.

Even small creators can land anywhere from between, this random number, $100 to $500 deals, depending on your audience size and the company that you're sponsoring with. I would say be careful who you're sponsoring with to make sure you go over the contract and just protect yourself.

You can also create a one-page media kit with your stats that would help get better sponsors down the road. It's just something that you have to work at in trying to figure out and get it all taken care of. You can present your media kit to a sponsor and they'll know exactly what kind of audience is available for them to help advertise their product, their services to your audience.

I do this myself, only promote what you actually use and believe in. I touched on it with the widget example. The person doesn't even use the product, they just want that code and the potential for getting money.

The Bottom Line: Work Smarter, Not Harder

Now, you don't need all of these diversification revenue streams or anything like that. Just pick two or three that fit what you're comfortable doing or you think would be perfect for you that you're comfortable with. Build gradually. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about working smarter. You don't need to set up 16 different sponsorships or affiliate codes or Streamlabs and all this sort of stuff out there.

The goal is to multiply smaller income streams that add up to stability. You're not just focusing solely on Twitch income coming in. You're working on two to three different income streams that will eventually build up. Then you can add more and more to that.

All right, so you now have a workable framework for diversifying beyond Twitch.

How You Can Help

Before we wrap up, I need a quick favor from you guys. If you found value in today's post, here's how you can help us out. First, I want you to hit that subscribe button wherever you're listening or reading. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, whatever service or player, your podcast of choice, just hit the subscribe button. It'd be great. It helps other makers find this show, other creators as well find the show.

Second, if you have two minutes, leave a quick review. Those actually do help. Tell us what topic you want me to cover next. I do read, I will read every one. I'm going to try and use your feedback to plan future episodes. If you have ideas and topics that you think about, it would be a great thing to talk about, let me know in the comments down below or in the reviews.

Third, I want you also to go over to MakersTableShow.com. That's where you'll find full show notes for this episode and the future ones, links to all the tools and platforms I've mentioned. Plus, it's a great way to get into our community. I have a link there for IndieCreator.Community. MakersTableShow.com, everything you need is right there.

What's Next

So with that, that's going to be a wrap on today's episode. I'm Josh Bailey and thank you so much for hanging out with me at the Maker's Table. Now remember, you've already done the hard work of building an audience, going through this slog of getting all the people there to watch you, your live streams and everything like that. Now it's time to build on that infrastructure and get it so that you'll never be dependent on one company's whims.

Next week, we're going to be switching gears a little bit. We're talking about how to get started with Owncast without really breaking a sweat. If you've been curious about self-hosting streaming or running your own platform outside of Twitch and YouTube, this episode is going to be a game changer. I know that is like a trope and I just wanted to put it in there because I want to say game changer.

I'm going to be walking you through the entire setup, technical stuff made simple, why it's probably important for creators like myself and you to start exploring this option.

Until then, keep creating, keep building, keep diversifying. I'll see you at the table next week. Later, taters.