I want to show you how OneQueenVibes got over 100 followers before she ever went live on Twitch. And then she had 78 views on her very first Twitch stream, which is about as many as I get on lots of my streams even with thousands of followers, and I've been streaming for years. She's actually been hanging out in my chat, and when I said I should make something about this, she said sure. So if you're a Twitch streamer, you're going to want to see this, because it's the opposite of what most people do on Twitch. Most people just go live with no followers, or hardly any, and then feel bad.
OneQueenVibes followed me a few months ago. Almost every single stream, she hangs out in my Twitch chat, chats, asks questions, and gives great feedback. After she'd been hanging out for a while, she let me know, hey, I'm going to do my first live stream tomorrow night. I went to bed right before she went live and I was sad to miss it. She played Apex Legends Mobile. She also mods for several other streamers. So basically, she is a great community member. She mods for a few streamers on Twitch. She is a valuable member of the community. And she's built her followers just through having relationships with other people.
What she actually did
I asked her beforehand to make sure I understood it correctly. I said, I don't imagine you were just asking follow-for-follow and promoting your stream that way. She said, absolutely not. Her words were: I talk, I show love, I support when I can, and I host. She's got my stream hosted right now. So if you want to get your first hundred followers on Twitch, it actually can be really simple.
Before you even try to stream on Twitch, I'd suggest you do something first. I asked OneQueenVibes how long she'd been on Twitch, and she said about six months, which I checked. You can actually see how long somebody's been on Twitch, and that's accurate on her profile. So before you even stream, build a community, watch other people stream, and get an idea of whether this is something you'd really enjoy doing or not. There's no point in going live before you have some people who are interested in watching. And I'd imagine most of the people who saw her stream last night were already following her, and then she got discovered by a few more people who found her in the recommended section.
Don't ask people to follow you
She built her following just by participating, and what I've seen is that she has great, genuine chat. What you don't want to do to build your followers is ask people all the time to follow you. I've never once seen her ask someone to follow her in the chat. In all the hours I've seen her in my chat, I've never seen her say, hey, will you go follow my Twitch? You don't have to ask people. You just interact, and people will often click on your profile and get to know you. People will ask questions about you.
What I find is that if you ask questions about others, it comes back to you. On my stream, I ask, if you're a streamer, please let me know, because if you're a streamer and you watch me, I'd like to go watch you at least once and see what your stream is about so I can get to know you. So the path is clear: all you need to do to build some followers on Twitch is to be a great viewer.
Why Twitch is the best place to do this
This is why Twitch is such a great place to stream, because if you wanted to do this on another platform, it's very difficult. If she had wanted to do this on Facebook Gaming, I've seen lots of people try, and it's much harder. You use your gaming page and try to get people to follow it, and it doesn't work as well. On YouTube, just being a good viewer, you can hardly get that to work at all. On TikTok, they do have some good ways to do that, but getting a few hundred people to follow you wouldn't make much difference because of the algorithm. This is why, in my experience, Twitch is the best place to stream: Twitch has a great community.
So, OneQueenVibes, thank you for showing us a clear path to getting a few hundred viewers. And it doesn't look like it was a struggle or a grind either. You just hung out, you watched live streams, you made connections, and people showed up for your first stream. I imagine you'll have a pretty easy time getting affiliate, too. All you need to do is do some more streams and you'll get there.
The simple steps
So if you want to get affiliate and build a community yourself, step one is to spend a lot of time hanging out in other people's communities. Step two, go live. And step three, repeat. If you want to go deeper on building your channel and community this way, I share a lot more of what has worked for me in my YouTube Coaching playlist, and if you'd like to learn alongside me and other creators doing the same thing, you're welcome to join my community and the Jerry Banfield Family — join the Jerry Banfield Family.
OneQueenVibes, thanks a lot for sharing your story with us. I hope you'll come follow OneQueenVibes on Twitch and see where she goes from here. And maybe you'll come hang out and chat on my stream as well.