Why should someone follow you on Twitch?
Small Twitch streamers, I'm going to show you exactly how to get more followers using the system that's working for me to bring people from YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook over to Twitch, and then to maximize discoverability on Twitch as well. The first thing you need to think about is why should someone follow you on Twitch? I'm actually live streaming on Twitch right now, and people should follow me on Twitch because of the interaction. I am a full time YouTuber and Twitch streamer, and I'm available to answer questions. I share my experience on my Twitch channel. I help people in crypto make better investments. I help show people new games to play. I help people get sober and answer questions about recovery. I help people learn to build their businesses online and be full time creators. That's why people should follow me on Twitch. It's because of that. It's because of the live interaction. I consistently answer all my questions. That's my why, and I've shared it with you both as an example and to encourage you to follow me on Twitch, which is just Jerry Banfield.
I've helped you see that you need to make a clear why. If you're just trying to get some Twitch followers because you think you should and you have a dream of being a full time gamer, you might want to dig deeper into that. I've noticed that people really stick with me and follow me online, even though they found me in video games, or found me in crypto, or found me on an AA speaker meeting. The people that really stick with me want to have that interaction and match a lot of those why objectives together. You want to try not to be too shallow and to get into a really deep why. On Twitch, my life's purpose is being accomplished while I'm live. I'm an educator. I'm a teacher. That's why I came to Earth in the first place, and Twitch is the best place to build a community. The stronger your why is, the more of a clear idea you'll have of who should follow you on Twitch. And you'll be able to get through all the tough times as a Twitch streamer when nobody's watching and nobody's chatting, and you'll be able to stick with it over the long term.
My biggest struggle as a Twitch streamer has been not being a Twitch streamer, always jumping over to these other platforms. But I've found that while these platforms are great for algorithms and discovery, Twitch is the place to really make a deep, lasting connection with the follower. It's hard to do that on these other platforms because you always have to please the algorithm. I'm going to show you how, in just two or three hours a day of real time live, I actually crank out content for all these platforms while I'm live on Twitch. So even if you've only got two or three hours a day, what I'm going to show you works, and I consistently get new followers every day on Twitch.
Build a community that shows up no matter what
This is my Twitch right now. I have over 5,000 followers. We have an active community that's always here and chatting no matter what I'm doing. When you're on Twitch, you want a community that'll be there for you so that you don't have to get locked into a niche. You don't have to just make music. You don't have to just play video games or just talk crypto. You want a community that's really there no matter what. That's what I love about my community so much. People show up no matter what I do. When you're on Twitch, you want to set an expectation that you're just here and these are all the things I do. If you want to be part of that community with me, come and join the Jerry Banfield Family, where I answer questions and share everything I'm doing.
What I do while I'm live on Twitch is I make content. I make videos for all my other channels and platforms. The best strategy to get discovered right now is to make shorts. I did a video yesterday on this on my Jerry Banfield business channel. I have six different YouTube channels to put the appropriate videos on, and I showed a video a couple of days ago of exactly how I film these videos while I'm live and upload them on Twitch. The best way to get discovered online is to crank out shorts. This works even if you have no followers. You crank out little vertical videos.
How I film shorts while I'm live in OBS
What I do now is I actually film these while I'm live on Twitch. I'm in OBS and I just set up a scene in OBS. I have a video explaining more, but I set up a scene where I put my normal vertical camera, my iPhone camera that's right there, into a short format, and then I use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit that short. I rotate it into a short that I then upload on YouTube, upload on TikTok, upload on Instagram as a reel, upload on my Facebook page, and then I've got a link tree. What you want to do is on all these different platforms, you want to use a link tree. This is at linktr.ee and then you make your username. It should obviously be the same link tree that matches your branding across all the different platforms. What you want to do is then feature your Twitch up top, but also put a second link to follow on Twitch to chat live. This way, I get followers that come over from every different platform: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. That's what you really need to build your Twitch and get that initial following there.
You may need to grind for quite a while. When I was uploading these shorts every day, I was averaging about 10,000 views on all platforms combined. Well, I got tired of making shorts. I got tired of taking extra time to record them off stream, so I stopped making them. The big breakthrough I've had is that I just do all my creative work while I'm live. I make videos that people can watch on YouTube by just recording certain parts of my content. I start to record certain parts of my live stream intentionally, and then upload it. For example, this video is just a video I'm doing while I'm already live on Twitch. I hit record. I made this thumbnail while I was live on Twitch. I start talking, and then I hit upload. If you see one of these videos and you want to come ask questions and follow over on Twitch, then you're a part of the community now.
Why Twitch followers stick around
What I've seen is people who follow on Twitch tend to stick around for years. There's no algorithm once you've followed somebody on Twitch. It shows it has a little bit of an algorithm, but the notifications come through every time. Twitch is the best platform to keep up with someone you follow for a period of years. It's the highest quality platform to have followers on out of all these, but it's hard to actually get discovered on Twitch unless you play a game or are in a category that's in very high demand and your thumbnail image is very clickable. One thing I've done to make my thumbnail on Twitch way more clickable is I have a huge face. I make my camera way bigger than usual because it stands out. For example, if I'm playing a video game, I'll have this image on the side because it stands out massively from what other people are doing, and I get my head as big as possible so that it stands out. That way I get discovered on Twitch in categories where people would normally scroll past me. Having my camera much bigger on Twitch helps me get discovered a lot more often.
That said, what you stream on Twitch is big for your discovery. I just put it on crypto, or just chatting, or whatever I'm doing. I personally don't put much effort now into getting discovered on Twitch. In the past, I got thousands of followers on my Twitch. If you notice the difference from here at 3 to 4K followers in the past versus my screenshot a few months later, most all those followers came over directly from playing one single game called Gods Unchained. If you are a gamer, what you can do is play a bunch of different games on Twitch and see which ones you get followers on.
Follower-only chat and finding a niche game
I also set my chat on Twitch to follower only. You can do that in your dashboard. You click on the little gear icon and you can set your chat in follower mode, where you have to be a follower in order to chat. I set mine to zero minutes so somebody can follow immediately and then start chatting. If you go on your gear icon, click down there, follower mode, zero minutes. That really helps to get followers, because personally, if you're not willing to follow me, I don't want you to chat. I would rather that you just be quiet and watch. If you're going to lurk, just lurk. If you want to chat, you should at least have followed.
Playing all different games on Twitch means you'll eventually run into one that is an in-demand game. You can also use a website called Twitch Strike, or you can go into your dashboard on Twitch. I found those recommendations often don't work. I tried many of the games that were recommended based on the numbers and they didn't work. What worked for me: I found a really niche smaller game called Gods Unchained. It's a crypto game and it has a very vibrant community and it's very small. There's not a lot of streamers, but there's a lot of people that want to watch and learn how to play the game. If you can research games that way, you can have a great chance of finding a game that's niche. However, most of the people who followed me on Gods Unchained don't actually come back and keep watching. Most of the people who really follow me originally found my videos on another platform. For example, if I look through my chat, one person found me on Facebook, and a couple of others found me on YouTube.
My ideal formula: create everything while you're live
This is why, to me, the ideal formula is that when you're live, you record all your videos and do everything you need to do. Make your videos and upload your videos while you're live. I do that by having two different computers. I have a gaming and editing or work PC at the bottom, and I do all my video editing on that. Then I've got my streaming PC. I record the videos, slide them over from one PC to another with Dropbox, and then I'm able to edit and render videos directly while I'm on stream. I go through and upload everything. Make sure you're signed in and you've actually got some kind of a background like this. I have a chatting background for when I need to sign in and keep my information private and not show that on stream. Then when I know I can show it, I go up and record.
The quality myth: it is just a grind
If you are thinking the quality of my videos is not very good, and that I have to edit myself, here is what I have found: it is just a straight-up grind. It is literally a grind. If you look back on my main channel, I recently blushed and was genuinely embarrassed watching a video I made 12 years ago, because my videos back then sucked. They were so bad. But I made them. Because I made bad videos, I even paid a girl to make a bunch of videos, and her videos did way better than mine. Then I got back into it. I even took a year or two off. What I have done is I have just kept cranking out videos over and over again.
If you are thinking you have to edit your videos and try to make them perfect, let that go. If you really want to get followers, I have tested different formulas. I have tried making really high-quality, Mr. Beast-esque videos. I made a video on my crypto channel that is a great example of this. If you are thinking you need to make great-quality videos, my answer is no. On that crypto channel I made a six-hour complete course. I poured weeks of filming into that video. Six hours long. And look: I can make a 20-minute video off the cuff and it gets more views than that complete course. To me, this is a great example that nothing beats grinding out content. You have to put in the work.
The number one reason creators fail: they stop uploading
Viewers appreciate me consistently showing up with videos every day. A big mistake I made, for example, was on TikTok. I got pissed off with TikTok and shorts, so I stopped putting videos up there. My videos previously were consistently averaging thousands of views per video. You ask, what happened? I stopped uploading. That is the main reason most creators fail. You literally stopped uploading.
If you look, I just started uploading again on TikTok. We are off to a bit of a slow start, 40 to 60 views a video. But I guarantee you, if I keep uploading every day on TikTok, my videos will be back to 1,000 views, 2,000 views per video. Literally all I have to do is keep grinding it out. And if you keep grinding out videos every day, you will also get better rapidly. The worse your workflow is, and the slower you go, the more you will be inspired to make it more efficient.
My workflow: five videos a day, all while live
I have got an unbelievably efficient workflow now. If you give me two or three hours of real time every day, I publish five videos a day: one short to five different platforms, and then four long videos a day to YouTube across four different channels, all while I am live on Twitch. I have made this to share a vision with you. If you are in a niche like gaming, you can absolutely do this with gaming. Crank out gaming shorts and gaming tutorials while you are live on Twitch. Get your setup so that you can very efficiently film and do everything while you are live.
Let us be honest: your gaming is not so interesting that people are going to immediately leave if you switch to editing your video. I actually got this idea from watching other streamers. They would be playing Warzone, some amazing highlight would happen, and they would stop. They constantly recorded the gameplay, so right after that highlight they would edit the clip and upload it while they were still live. I thought, my God, that is so efficient. If you really want to get more followers on Twitch, I hope this is some of the best information you have come across, because I watch a lot of those videos too, and this is what I thought other people were not saying.
The snowball effect across six channels
If you want more videos just like this, this came from Jerry Banfield Business, which is all about how I work online and make a full-time living. I am getting close to 100 million views on my videos across all platforms. We are closing in, and I will reach that one day. It might not look like it right on the surface, but I have got six different channels. Some of the videos that went viral happened a little while ago. For the first time, I am actually grinding out on almost every channel, every day, and I am live. The snowball effect is absolutely amazing.
The best part is being able to hang out and answer questions. I consistently answer questions, and I am at a great point where my community is big enough that I am always supported. There are always people hanging out while I am live, which is great. You always have people chatting, and it is still small enough where I am able to answer all the questions. If you want more of this kind of breakdown, I have gathered a lot of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist, where I walk through exactly how I keep this whole machine running.
And if you want the full Jerry Banfield experience, the best way to work with me on all of this today is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where I hang out, answer questions, and share everything I am doing behind the scenes. I hope to see you there, or on another video, or live on Twitch soon.