OPINION WHY DON’T YOU GET A REAL JOB? INFOGRAPHIC

WHY DON’T YOU GET A REAL JOB? Have you ever been watching a Twitch Live Streamer who only gets paid from Twitch and wondered ‘how are they managing to make a living off of this? Shouldn’t they have a real job?’ Because I know I used too until I became friends with a Twitch Streamer.

In case you don’t know what Twitch or a Twitch Streamer is I’ll explain it real quick. Twitch is a live streaming website that was originally just for gaming live streams but has evolved to also include ‘Just Chatting’, ‘Music’, and ‘Art’, live streams as well. A Twitch Streamer is someone who streams on Twitch, some of them have reached the point where they can get checks from Twitch and some haven’t, but if you stream on Twitch, you’re a Twitch Live Streamer.

Early on in my freshman year, my friend Logan introduced me to the Twitch Streamer TFMJonny who mostly streams himself singing in a game called VRChat. He streams five out of seven days a week for four hours every stream, usually rather late at night. Then, during sophomore year, I took a class called Futures, for the final project you do a job shadow, and I job shadowed Jonny and ended up learning a lot about Twitch Streaming and online content creation in general and I want to share what I learned with the people who think online content creation isn’t a real job.

First off, it’s not just playing video games or doing your makeup for a couple of hours, posting it, and making loads of cash. Content creators often spend almost all their time every day working on their content. Editing videos, marketing themselves, putting together collabs, setting up for streams, writing scripts, getting access to things before the actual release, getting sponsorships. These things can take ages to put together before the actual content is created for public viewing.

While job shadowing Jonny I learned that he spends a lot of time working on marketing himself on other social media sites. Trying to decide what stream name will get people to join, what clips from the streams he should put together into a Youtube video to get people to tune into him live. He also spends time communicating with other VRChat streamers to set up collabs where they both stream on their own and hopefully share their viewers with the other streamer, causing both streamers to get more attention which can lead to more follows, more subscriptions, more donations, and more people to create a bigger community in general.

Another thing that makes content creators choose jobs in online content creation is that it creates a community where people can make new friends and find people who have similar interests with them. Within Jonny’s community, I’ve made more friends than I ever had on any other online media before, I’ve met people who want to read my original stories, people who enjoy my art, and people who also play the same games as I do. When talking to Jonny, I found out that one of his favorite things about streaming was seeing all the people in his chat and how everyone gets along and the community that’s formed from watching him.

When it comes to making money off of Twitch and other forms of online content creation, there’s always a couple of ways to make money. Youtube is the most well known as Youtubers talk about monetization, or the lack therefore of, plenty and how fickle it is to get a video monetized, most Youtubers then turning to sponsorships. On other sites like Twitter or Instagram, it usually has to be sponsorships as those websites don’t have any built-in way to make money.

On Twitch there’s a couple of ways to make money, through subscriptions, running ads, getting donations, getting bits, and like the other sites, sponsorships. You can only make money once you get either Affiliate or Partner on Twitch, Affiliate gets you access to things like people being able to subscribe, send in donations, give bits, and watch ads.

Subscriptions are how most Streamers get their money because while it just takes $5USD for a Tier One subscription, the more people who subscribe and resubscribe every month builds up, even when the Streamer only gets 50% of that five dollars.

For donations, they rely completely on people being generous and when it comes to donations it all goes to the streamer, some streamers will put up specific donations goals to encourage people to send in donations. Sometimes these goals will be direct and say exactly why the streamer is trying to get the money (Ex. Better computer, pay bills, etc.) but sometimes they will make the goal something funnier (Ex. Eat cereal with water, wear a maid costume for a whole stream, etc.), it honestly depends more so on the streamer and their community.

The other two ways, bits, and running ads are a bit simpler compared to subscriptions and donations. One bit is one cent, meaning if you give a streamer 100 bits you give them a dollar, this all goes straight to the streamer as bits are something you purchase in bulk and then give to streamers whenever you want. For running ads, they either can be run every time a non-sub starts watching the stream, or the streamer can choose when they run ads and for how long the ads will go. Streamers get $250USD for every 100 subs each month, but when it comes to basing the amount just off of the views they get on the ads it’s between $0.25 to $1.50 for every 1,000 views.

Unlike what a lot of people believe, doing Twitch or other online content creation can be a real and sustainable job, it just takes a lot of work and actual care to become successful. And content creation isn’t just about the money people can make off of it, it’s also about the amazing people you can meet along the way.