6 Things EVERY NEW STREAMER NEEDS Before You Start Streaming!!

Get a Camera

Get a camera this is the only piece of equipment on this list because, it is very important there are a million pieces of equipment ,you’ll want to buy as a streamer none of them are vital for you to start except the camera all the other pieces of equipment can wait from a mic to a fancy PC to a elgato stream deck doesn’t matter if you want to start streaming and get a camera your twitch stream is made up of two things your gameplay.

How you want to balance the importance of those things is entirely up to you and what you decide to turn your stream .if you’re not in the stream this is nothing more than gameplay footage that someone’s watching on youtube for five hours and nobody watches gameplay footage for five hours you need to be in your stream so if you can’t pick up a logitech c920 for 50 bucks find another camera you have grab your laptop prop it up use that as your webcam doesn’t matter just get a camera on your stream number two now that you have a camera on.

Set Up Your Room

et up your room no one wants to see a messy bedroom behind you with a mattress on the floor your living space is an opportunity for you to show what you’re about who you are make yourself interesting make yourself someone that people are gonna ask questions about if you have any how often I have people ask me if I play guitar because there are like nine guitars behind me in my room make yourself interesting put posters on the wall set up your hobbies behind you but twinkly liked I don’t care do something to make you seem more like an interesting person and you know what if you’re streaming in a closet and you don’t have that opportunity set up a green screen grab a green sheet from Walmart and tack it up to your wall you can do some really cool stuff with a green screen but setting up your room is more important than getting a fancy overlay I’ve seen lots of partnered streamers with thousands of viewers with either a stock overlay from stream elements or even no overlay at all take a little Lexie for example she has no overlay on her gameplay screen but her room is really interesting looking

Learn OBS

OBS works when I did my first stream just for fun like three years ago I streamed right from the twitch app on the Xbox I used the little Xbox Kinect as my camera it looked like garbage the bar has raised since then familiarize yourself with the software once you learn how the software works you’ll be able to change things to match them to your personality in fact the ninja has a ten minute tutorial on the basics of OBS I’ll link to it down in the description just watch it experiment with the software find out what you can do number four and here’s where it starts getting important to figure out why people are going to watch you did you know that there are over three million individual broadcasters on Twitch you are literally smaller than one in a million you need to figure out what you can bring to viewers that nobody else can and I know that sounds overwhelming but I want you to look back in your life you’ve had at least one friend in your life that friend chose to be your friend instead of anybody else’s friend you have something that can draw people take some time reflect on yourself what are your strengths what are your passions what makes you unique how can you apply those things into your stream let me give you some tips what do you like to play are you good at a specific game and you want to try becoming the best at that game and focusing on your gameplay or do you have a more outgoing personality and you’re not great videogames and you should be a variety stream another advice streamer named Ashley recommended writing down a list of all the things you’re good at and all the things you like and then running down them and saying can I make a stream entirely based off of one of these things now I’m not saying you have to be that particular grab three grab four of those things but you need to figure out

Figure Out Your Brand

What your brand is and build the rest of your stream around that brand number five now that you’ve figured out your brand

Promotion

How are you gonna reach new viewers you guys frankly it doesn’t matter what game you play when you’re starting off new you’re gonna be at the bottom of a list of a thousand people playing the same game you’re playing people are not going to scroll all the way down there it just doesn’t happen when I first decided I was gonna give twitch an honest effort . so don’t think that you can just turn on the stream grind it out and eventually your grow it doesn’t work that way different ideas for growth are all over the place if you are an incredible gamer or maybe you have a really large personality and incredible moments happen on stream clip them download the video from the clip tweet it out I’ve known a lot of streamers that grew extremely fast because they had a cliff go viral I know a streamer who’s used Instagram to grow he started a meme account on Instagram that grew to millions of followers and in that little you know saved story section he had a link to his twitch or maybe you do interesting things in real life or you’re great at video production start a youtube channel my growth on twitch didn’t start happening until. I started making videos on this YouTube channel again a couple months ago sit down make a plan to reach as many people as possible and link back to your stream

Don’t Be Afraid to Pivot

Number six be prepared to take everything you’ve planned so far and throw it in the garbage chance are your first idea to grow isn’t gonna be the jackpot but write up an outline of everything. I’ve said make a plan and go ham for three months and see what happens if nothing changes trash it make a new plan or make some large adjustments this is a big part of that success formula and social media