My friends, if you are a streamer and you want to create content for a living, there is a very clear success formula. I have been streaming for more than 10 years. I have tried everything, and I want to make it easier for you to succeed. I love this life I have as a full-time creator. I am live on Twitch right now. I just cranked this thumbnail out in like two, three, four minutes, and somebody asked about this while I was playing Gods Unchained. The question originally was: "Jerry, should I restream on Facebook and tag the game?"
Look, I have done restreaming. I have streamed on at least 10 different platforms. I have streamed exclusively on several different platforms. I have stopped streaming and just made videos. There is a clear success formula if you want to be a streamer, and it is super easy. So let me give it to you, and I will repeat it so you cannot miss it.
The Formula: Stream on Twitch, Upload to YouTube
Step one: stream on Twitch. Stream whatever you feel like. Test out and see where you can get some viewers. For me, when I play Gods Unchained, that is the main place I actually get viewers now. I can stream lots of other stuff, but stream whatever you want, and then make videos for YouTube.
Multi-streaming? Do not do that, because what you want is to have your entire community in one place. Having two people watch on Twitch and two people on Facebook and two people on TikTok and two people on Kick is worthless. In my experience, it is much better to have five people watching on just Twitch and not even screw with those other platforms. And the best way to grow your Twitch into getting the algorithm is to make YouTube videos.
So what I do is I go live every day on Twitch, and then I make videos for YouTube. You can make videos on things that have real demand. For example, I make crypto videos, and there is a huge demand for those, so that makes great money. Then I can stream on Twitch just for fun, just for the love of it. I can stream games without worrying about making money. Almost every successful streamer streams on Twitch and uploads videos on YouTube. It is really simple, and yet a lot of us think, especially me, that by being fancier we can outperform the formula.
Why I Stopped Trying to Beat the Formula
Yes, sometimes, like when I streamed on Facebook Gaming in 2020 and 2021, I far outperformed what I would have gotten on just Twitch and YouTube. But it all came crashing down in several different ways. Facebook killed the gaming algorithm, and all the growth I got disappeared almost instantly. It is amazing how reliable Twitch is over the long term. There are people who have followed me six or seven years who come back on Twitch. On Facebook, on TikTok, your followers are basically worthless. You have to go through the hours, and they always cheat you out of your algorithm all the time.
There is no reason to stream, or even test stream, anywhere besides Twitch, because I have streamed a lot on YouTube and there is no reason to stream on YouTube when I can just upload videos. When I upload videos, I have five different YouTube channels, and my YouTube videos consistently perform much better than my livestreams. What is ideal is to just crank out videos on YouTube and tell everybody: if you want to watch livestreams, go follow on Twitch.
Twitch does a really good job with the notifications, and the notifications are what you really need to bring people back. Twitch does a great job with the monetization and the community building. On Twitch, you have Amazon Prime. Anyone who has an Amazon Prime sub can sub for free, which often results in lots of people subbing totally for free. Twitch is a great way, when combined with YouTube, to get enough money as a creator. On YouTube, you can create videos on as many different subjects as you want. Just make different channels, like I do. I record a lot of my videos while I am live, and then I put them on Twitch and put them up on YouTube.
Twitch and YouTube Are the Only Two That Last
If you are a streamer, there is a very clear success formula. I have tried everything, and if I could go back in time, all I would do would be stream on Twitch and put videos on YouTube. It is still the same formula that has been working for as long as Twitch has been around, and it will continue to work going forward. Twitch is the top streaming platform. YouTube is the top video platform. Neither of these is going anywhere. Kick, Facebook, and TikTok are pretty much irrelevant if you want to be a streamer.
If you want to grind your butt off, you should just grind Twitch streams and YouTube videos, because TikTok followers mean nothing. I accumulated tens of thousands of followers on TikTok, go live, and hardly anybody even watches. And on TikTok, the censorship is just stupid. On Facebook, the algorithm is absolute crap. You can blow up and have millions of followers like me, they change the algorithm, and you are gone. It is irrelevant. Twitch and YouTube are very stable for the long term.
So if you want to be a streamer, there is a clear success formula. It works for almost everybody, probably 90-plus percent of people who are streamers: stream on Twitch, upload videos on YouTube. Yes, your mind will focus on the 10 percent. Your mind will try to tell me about the 10 percent. The question is: are you the 10 percent, or are you the 90 percent? More than likely, you are the 90 percent. I made the mistake for so long of thinking I was the 10 percent and that I should do something different. And you know what? Here I am, live on Twitch, uploading videos on YouTube. If you want to go deeper on all of this, I have shared a lot more of what I have learned in my YouTube Coaching playlist, and the best way to work through it together is to join the Jerry Banfield Family and build alongside the rest of us.