My honest take on Kick.com after streaming since 2013
My friends, we've been talking about Kick.com on my live stream over on Twitch. People keep telling me I should move to Kick.com, so if you're interested in my thoughts on Kick.com after everything I've been through, here they are. I've been live streaming since 2013, and I've streamed on so many different platforms over the years. What I see from a quick review of Kick.com is that, yes, some of the girls have even less clothes on than they do on Twitch. However, I'm married. That's not much of a draw for me. I don't really care about that.
What I see on Kick.com is that if you're doing gambling, or things that are not allowed on Twitch, like pool and hot tub streams with even less clothes on, then maybe Kick.com is for you. What I'm noticing is that the top streams on here only have a few hundred viewers. In my experience, it's unlikely that a platform like this beats out Amazon's streaming platform unless it gets massive funding, and on Kick.com you're just not going to be able to do that.
Why new platforms rarely have an audience
Here's what I've noticed after streaming on so many different platforms. I've streamed on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter with Periscope, Twitch, and some others you've probably never heard of, like DLive. On these new platforms, there's just no audience. There's almost no organic growth that happens. Now, sure, if you're the first one to pop in on something like Warzone or Fortnite and you bring your existing audience, you might be able to become a big fish in a little pond.
I was actually giving somebody advice on Facebook today. They were complaining that Facebook gaming wasn't taking care of them as a streamer, and I said, look, there's a simple formula for live streaming success. Almost everybody does the same thing if they want to be a streamer. One, stream on Twitch. Two, upload videos to YouTube. And if you really want to grind, then you can upload Reels, Shorts, and TikToks to all these other platforms.
If I could go back in time with my streaming, I would only ever stream on Twitch. I would never stream on any other platform, and I would just upload videos on different YouTube channels. I bet that instead of having something like 45 people watching, I'd probably have thousands of people watching on Twitch right now. And I'm very happy to have 45 watching, because that's a lot more than I've had on a lot of my other streams. There are certain use cases where it works differently, though. For example, if you're just doing crypto on YouTube and you're just doing streams, some of those streams did work well for me. That said, it still works better to upload videos on YouTube.
So those are my thoughts on Kick.com. I am not even going to test streaming on Kick.com.
The trouble with multi-streaming
The last thing I'll cover is multi-streaming. A lot of you would say, well Jerry, why don't you just stream on YouTube and Kick.com and Twitch and five other websites at the same time? Well, Twitch's terms and conditions ask you not to multi-stream on other platforms if you're an affiliate, and you need to be an affiliate to make money and get subs. They've made little exceptions, like you could have a TikTok stream up, but they ask you not to do that, and you could potentially lose your monetization on Twitch.
The second problem with multi-streaming is that it splits the audience up. For example, I streamed on YouTube yesterday and I tested a little bit of a multi-stream, and it just splits your audience. I ended the stream quickly, because when you do these multi-streams, viewers tend to gravitate toward the top platform, and then there's no point in having those other platforms. So as a streamer, I intend to only ever stream on one platform at once. It's super obnoxious if you're watching on one website and I'm talking to somebody on another website that you can't even see. Streaming, to me, is about making a community, and it's hard to have a community when you're scattered all over the place.
Where I've landed on Kick
So I don't think Kick.com is going to be a good bet for most streamers. However, if you don't have a following anywhere, it's certainly worth trying. If you can stream Fortnite, Call of Duty, Just Chatting, or slots and casino, you might be able to blow up on there. But I'm going to guess that if you're not doing things on Kick that aren't allowed on Twitch, you're probably not going to blow up that much. With only a couple thousand viewers on the platform, if you're not already on top in some of these categories, it may be hard. Sure, you can give Kick a test. Me, I'm sticking with Twitch. I know Twitch works. I wish I'd have stuck with Twitch back when I first started streaming, and I've learned my lesson. I'm staying on Twitch until Twitch is not number one anymore.
If you enjoyed this and you want to go deeper on building your channel, I've put together a lot more of what's worked for me in my YouTube Coaching playlist, and I'd love for you to come hang out and be part of what we're building. The best way to do that today is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where we talk through all of this together. You can dig into more of my thinking on streaming and channel growth in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
I put this on my YouTube channel as well. I have five different YouTube channels, and this one is going on my business channel, where I talk about everything related to building your business and your channel online, and I'm grateful you're here.