I'm going to tell you why streaming to one viewer is better than streaming to a thousand viewers. Now, many of you who want to be streamers on Twitch, YouTube, wherever you want to stream, your mind is immediately disagreeing with me. Like, no, it's not. Having one viewer sucks. Having a thousand viewers is awesome. If you've actually done it before, then you understand. I've had thousands of live viewers a bunch of times, and I can tell you that having one viewer is, most of the time, in most ways, much better than having a thousand. If you are frustrated with having one viewer, if you are desperate to grow, if you're really annoyed with your viewership, this is going to help you a lot. If you think bigger is better, in most cases, you're wrong. So let me share my experience.
If you're wondering what I know, I've had thousands of viewers simultaneously on Facebook a whole bunch of times over many years, and I've recently moved over exclusively to Twitch for some of the reasons I'm going to share here. So I've had my thousand viewers a whole bunch of times. And here's why a thousand viewers sucks most of the time and one viewer is awesome.
With one viewer, you have freedom
With one viewer, you don't have pressure or stress. With one viewer, you can truly enjoy what you're doing. And lots of times, the one viewer is going to be you in your streaming software. Or it's going to be somebody you know really well who really loves and cares about your stream.
What sucks, and what will surprise you about having a thousand viewers, is that the first time you hit a thousand viewers, it can be really cool. It can be kind of a euphoric high, as it was for me. Like, oh my God, I'm so popular now. But what you don't realize about having a thousand viewers is the pressure, the stress, and the over-emphasis of negativity in your own mind.
Your brain is wired to magnify the negativity
These minds are generally programmed to prioritize negativity over positivity, fear over peace, because it goes back to the reptilian brain, the survival brain. You could be living out in a beautiful jungle, full of all kinds of lovely bushes and beautiful animals and nice, kind people. And it's all good. But if you don't notice that cheetah that's there with its eyes through the bush, ready to come grab your kid and run off, then you may suffer quite a bit. And therefore, your brain is generally programmed to be overly sensitive to fear and to negative stimuli. This means a little bit of negative stimuli will often seem like it overpowers a whole bunch of positive stimuli.
Now, if you're streaming to one viewer and you're fantasizing about a thousand, what you're generally thinking is that when I have a thousand viewers, I'm going to have a bunch of money. And I'm going to have a big reputation, a big ego. And I'm going to feel really great about myself. And you overestimate how much money you're going to get. I've had streams of a thousand viewers where I barely got any money out of it. You also overestimate how good that money is going to make you feel.
Money does almost nothing once you're comfortable
I've made as much as a quarter-million dollars — that's $250,000 in profit in a single year. I've had a bunch of years making over $100,000 in profit in a year. And I can tell you, making a lot of money, once you are comfortable, once you've got a place to live and your basic needs met and a car that drives — it doesn't have to be a nice one, but you've got a house, it doesn't have to be a big one, just a comfortable one, and you've got somebody to share it with, and a car to take you places, and a little bit of money in the bank — more money after that not only doesn't add anything, in my experience it can actually make you less happy.
From what I've seen in the happiness research, once you get over being comfortable — and the comfortable area is somewhere around $70,000 a year for a couple, I think — once you get over that, you're actually less likely to be happy. And if you were to volunteer, and give your time freely, and serve and think about others, you can be just as happy as a millionaire while making like $30,000 a year. Money does almost nothing, and in many cases it will actually make you less happy.
I can say this definitively. With thousands of viewers, making hundreds of dollars, sometimes close to $1,000 in a single stream, I often came off those streams feeling stressed.
A thousand viewers means a thousand mouths in the chat
Remember what I said about negativity? When you've got thousands of people watching, somebody's going to open their mouth constantly about every single little thing they don't like about you, every little fault that can be found, every little way somebody could judge you. With a thousand viewers, especially on Facebook, you're going to get shredded in the chat.
I used to play Call of Duty: Warzone when I'd have thousands of viewers live. And yes, I'll admit, it did feel great to triumph, to camp the whole game and get one or two kills and go off at the very end with thousands of people watching me win. That did feel good. That was a bit of a high. But you know what happens when you get yourself a little too high? You often get yourself a little depressed as a thank-you for getting too high.
If you're a viewer, you're definitely going to have a better experience on a one-viewer stream versus a thousand-viewer stream. Being there on those thousand-viewer streams as a viewer was a pain. It was difficult to get what you wanted to say even noticed by me. So sometimes having a thousand viewers is awesome, but most of the time it sucks — unless they're all people who absolutely just love you. And that's not very common, because the bigger you get, the more you keep attracting people who are just there to get negative attention. And even if their comment gets moderated or banned right away, if you're actually reading the chat, you're going to see it lots of times.
While I enjoyed the maybe 10 to 20 percent of Warzone solo games I'd win — and that's a really high percentage to drop wins on, out of 150 people — the other 80 to 90 percent, some days every single game in a stream, I would lose. And you know what sucks for three or four hours? Every single time you lose, somebody comes in: you're trash, you suck, I'm glad you lost, you deserved that, and every other nasty thing you could possibly imagine. I did Warzone solo streams where I lost games for three hours straight, and every single game somebody's got to open their mouth with some nasty little one-word jab — you little rat, trash. I'd start banning words like "trash" and "rat" to make the trolls be more creative. And they would get more creative. And I'd come off stream sometimes having made hundreds of dollars on a live stream, and I'd feel like crap. Just stressed, gross, spent. Ugh. And then I'd show up and do it again the next day.
Once you've been up high, it's a long way back down
I'd want to play different games. I'd be like, man, I want to play something else, but I can't. Because if I play something else, my numbers drop, and this is what's going to happen. You see, if you have one viewer, all you have is up to go from there. But once you've had thousands of people watching, it's a long, long way back down.
When you've had thousands of people watching one day, and the next day it's back to a hundred — while back when you were at one viewer and you went up to a hundred, that seemed really good. But once you crack a thousand and then drop down to a hundred, it seems like you've lost so much. All of a sudden, playing Warzone for 150 people watching feels like everything's going wrong. And there are still nasty negative trolls constantly in the chat, and you're constantly banning and moderating people, and you see some nasty comment, you ban the person, and then you feel bad for banning them.
It's in so many ways better to have one viewer than a thousand. And I say this is exactly why the majority of Twitch streamers have one viewer — because it's actually a better experience. Most people, if they actually get up and have more viewers at some point, it's likely to make them want to quit doing their stream. Because these minds are predictably irrational, and our minds will go to great lengths to avoid a little bit of discomfort. This is a lot of what I get into in my YouTube Coaching playlist, and it's the same lesson behind why I now focus on my true fans instead of views, money, or minutes watched.
You can't get enough of what you don't need
If you actually do your stream and you have one viewer for a while, you are free to play any game you want to. When you get up to a thousand, you are likely to get obsessed with keeping a thousand, because once you have a thousand, you don't want to drop to 200 and feel like a loser. And you're likely to go around chasing more and more views.
There's a saying: you can't get enough of what you don't need. You don't need viewers, and therefore you can't get enough. No amount of viewers is enough. I've had as much as 2,400 people watching me simultaneously. I've had almost a million views on several different live streams. And it is only ever enough the first time you reach a new milestone. When I played GoldenEye on Facebook one day and it got 800-some-thousand views and went out to millions of people within a few days — that was enough. And then every other stream didn't feel like enough anymore, because while I got 800,000 views on this one, why did I only get 10,000 on that one?
Almost everybody out there is trying to tell you how to grow — but I've grown. And I much prefer having one, two, three people in the chat that I know well, and maybe one new person comes in. Because having one viewer that you know really well — it's your mom, your brother, your best friend — you know exactly who you're talking to. And it's nice. You can laugh with them. If your whole goal is just one real viewer a day, that's a goal worth having; it's the same reason I believe you only need one view a day to go full-time on YouTube.
One viewer lets you play any game you want
You can play any game you want to with one viewer, and I can't emphasize how important that is. Because you can see it: a lot of the streamers who have a whole bunch of people watching have turned themselves into just a servant. An indentured servant. You come to work and it's, whatever you want, guys. Whatever you want. I want nothing. I don't care. Just give me the money. I'll do whatever you want. I'll wear a bikini. I'll wear a tube top. I'll get a hot tub. I'll play Warzone every day, or Rust, or Fortnite, whatever it is. I'll do whatever you want. Just watch. Just give me the money and just watch. It's much easier to be pathetic with a whole bunch of viewers, to just show up — alright, I'll do whatever you want, give me some money, oh look, I'm having fun — and to be fake and put on a show.
With one viewer, you can be really real and authentic. Because who is that one viewer anyway? That's your best friend. Maybe that's your streaming software. You can really let it out with one viewer. You can say about anything to one viewer. But when you've got a thousand viewers, you'd better watch your mouth.
A thousand viewers can be turned against you
You say something that pisses people off — even though it's legal, even though it's not against any policies — and people will just make something up about what you said. They can get you. They'll file fake reports at you and get stuff taken down. Somebody showed me a streamer the other day where people just decided to troll them, made stuff up, and got all their videos taken down by filing all these fake reports.
You think having a thousand viewers is fun? For most of you, the stress, the mental pain of it, the nasty comments, the pressure — almost all of you, if you haven't had the thousand viewers, if you haven't had that huge stream experience, would beg to go back to the one-viewer experience. Because a thousand viewers often ruins playing video games. I was so stuck on Facebook for a while, because if I played Warzone I'd get a bunch of viewers, and if I played another game I'd get less. I often loved playing different games, and I hated playing Warzone. But my ego really loved having the viewers and the money. And then playing a game I wanted to for no money and hardly any viewers felt stupid. So it felt logical and reasonable to just grind out Warzone every day.
And then you ask yourself, so what if you like it? Why don't I get a freaking job? I could actually get some health insurance and a more regular paycheck. Not that I even like health insurance — I disagree with having health insurance. I've asked my wife not to have health insurance for the family, but she thinks it's worth paying for it anyway. I digress.
I'd rather stream for the one person I actually know
It comes back to who's watching. I would much rather just do a stream for someone like Nick, who has been following for six years, than chase a crowd. You know what sucks when you have a thousand viewers? If there's one viewer you actually want to talk to — a small number of viewers you really want to talk to — you can't even hardly see them in the flood of the chat.
I went against the grain and put supporter-only chat on Facebook for several months, because I got so sick of the nasty trolls and not being able to see the chat from the people I really cared about. And of course, people would do whatever they could — they'd literally send a dollar on Facebook just to say how greedy I was for having supporter-only chat.
The hardest lesson I've learned in ten years online
I am so grateful I finally learned this lesson. I've been a full-time creator online for ten years. I've not had a regular job in ten years. I've relied on the money I've made as a creator, and on my wife whenever I fell a bit short. This has been the hardest lesson for me to learn, because even though so many times I got big views, it took me so much self-reflection and discussing and asking others for help. It took me so much pain and stress and challenge to see that, for me, this is much better. Streaming to one real person is a much better experience for me, and I should only create like this.
Now, if y'all just decide that I do whatever I want every day and a thousand people show up, then that's fine. But if I'm trying to do whatever it takes — and that's what the last ten years online were, doing whatever it took within a few boundaries — that's the trap. I've been unwilling to cheat at video games, for example, whereas for plenty of streamers that's not an issue. I've been unwilling to use fake bots and accounts to get my viewers, which some streamers do, and that's lame. Just stream to one person. Don't try to act like it's bigger than it is, and don't pay for bots or views. I've paid for a lot of ads to get more viewers, and I'm so grateful now that I'd rather do what I love and get nothing and be really happy and really connected with one person than be out here like some kind of court jester.
You might ask, what is a court jester? Back in the days of kings and queens — think Game of Thrones or something — the court jester is somebody who's there to entertain and please the king and the king's guests. Somebody who's there to just put on a show and get paid to entertain. It's nice to stop aiming for that, to stop measuring yourself by something that's entirely external. This is exactly the kind of thing I talk through with the people in my Jerry Banfield Family, because it's so much easier to hold onto when you've got people reminding you of it.
I'm so glad we've had this talk. I thought of this idea and I'm like, man, this is one of the toughest lessons I've learned: that streaming to one viewer is better than streaming to a thousand. Now, I'm not saying a thousand viewers is horrible all the time. And in fact, if I end up with a thousand people watching in the future, it's going to happen because I'm just doing whatever I really want to do and giving whatever I want to give. I'm never aiming or trying for it again. If it happens without me doing anything, that's fine. It's not worth trying to be a big streamer. It's not worth doing whatever it takes to get people to watch. It's much better to just do what you love, and if nobody watches, you still have fun. That mindset is the same reason I'm honest about how viewers can actually help me not quit YouTube again — it's never been about the size of the crowd.