- When you first start out live streaming,
it can feel a little intimidating, especially
if no one is showing up to your live streams.
That's definitely Barbara's experience
and she's going to show you guys how to push
through that so those people start coming in
and hanging out with you.
That's coming up.
Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer and welcome
to video creators.
We are all about helping you grow your YouTube audience
so you can reach people and change their lives
and live streaming is an amazing opportunity
to reach people and change their lives.
Tell us real quick about your channel
and what you do, Barbara.
- Yes, my name is Barbara.
I live stream video games, variety game play,
every single Tuesday at 8pm PST.
We play all sorts of different games and I just
try to keep a high energy, have some fun
cause if you're spending time with me I want
to keep you entertained.
- I have a feeling anyone who hangs out on her
live steams is always smiling.
- That's what we go for, yes!
- I bet that's totally what's happening.
So tell us the story about how you got started
live streaming, what was that like for you?
- Yes, so I started streaming about three years ago
are streaming on a bunch of different platforms
but YouTube is really the one that has taken off
and is the one that I love and so when I was starting out,
I was doing sort of video game streaming and
this was really my first chance or my first try
at being a YouTube creator.
So first you just have to get over the awkwardness
of being in front of a camera and knowing what
to say and trying to make compelling content.
But when I was first starting out, my YouTube channel
had only about 80 subscribers on it
and this was back in 2015 and I had, I kid you not,
it was three or four months of my sitting in my studio,
live streaming a bunch of different games, trying lots
of things out and no body showed up.
And so you're kind of sitting...
- So you're trying to keep the energy up all by yourself?
- Well your kind of sitting there and it's like
should I talk.
Nobody's here.
Should I just wait for somebody to show up and then
do I turn it on?
- Or do I even keep going?
Is this even working?
- Do I try to optimize for the VOD that gets
uploaded afterwards and hope that people find
me through that and subscribe.
And so all of my original videos, they're still up
on my channel, they're super awkward and my subscribers
go back and watch them now and they're like,
Barbara, you were so bad.
But yeah, you're just really struggling and it's also
tough because I wanted to have a live only channel
and so that's what I wanted, to be engaging with
an audience and it's four months worth of, you know
you have one and then they leave
and then it's another 20 minutes and you have
one and then they leave.
And so it is really hard to get started if you're
starting from this brand new channel, a live only focus,
but I would say just push through it.
- What kept you going when like four months is, that
is dedication.
- I just, I love it.
A, I love playing video games so I was going to be
playing those video games anyways
and I had formally had more of an uploady type of app
review thing way back in the day, in the college days.
So I do like doing this type of thing and I saw
the vision of like where it could go and so it was
just push through it.
- And the vision was growing this so that eventually
people will come, I have to just keep persisting
and eventually it will happen.
- So I'm fortunate enough, actually the thing that kind
of was the inflection point for my channel was
I got raided.
You familiar with the raiding?
- I know what raiding is but I'm not sure I know what
it means when you're streaming.
- Okay, so live streaming, so when you finish your
streaming, you have an audience there, a captive
audience there, group of people who still want to keep
hanging out and so what you do is you go find another
channel who is live streaming and you raid them.
Sounds negative but it's actually positive
so you pass on your audience to somebody else
so I was lucky enough to have a gaming channel,
his name is GAMEDOJO, he was my first ever raid.
No way, not Dojo already.
Are you kidding?
This is my first ever raid!
Thanks for coming over everybody.
I appreciate it and
extra special thanks...
And he took my viewers from nothing to about 10
and ever since that first raid then I started getting
ten regularly coming back every week and then
you start trickling up from there.
- Was that just pure chance?
- Pure luck, pure luck that he found my channel
and decided to click that button and send his audience
my way.
- Interesting.
Is there anything that someone could do proactively
to like start engaging in other people's communities
and things?
Does it work like that or not really?
- So you could, so I do spend a lot of time
sort of talking to other creators on Twitter.
Whenever I see them streaming, I'll pop into their streams.
Just kind of touch base with people.
See how things are going cause live is so much
about the community.
It's not just on your community with your audience
but it's also, we're all in this together.
We're all trying to grow together, we're all trying
to figure out YouTube, work with our audiences,
learn new things, and so I love the community building
on the creator side, too.
When I started live streaming three years ago,
live was just in a totally different space.
The world has changed so much.
YouTube has invested so much in live streaming.
You know getting better at chat, getting better
notifications, search and discovery, infrastructure
improvements, you can live stream 4k 360 degrees
in low latency so you get even more of a real time,
audience interaction.
Just so much has changed that these days when people
stream and they're starting out, growing their channels,
it is not going to be the long slog that I experienced
at the beginning.
Yeah.
- So it's about engaging like the one or the two
that you get.
Engage them, talk to them, don't worry about all
the people you don't have.
Make that one person feel like, this person's
talking to me.
Like this is an amazing experience and...
- So my top tip is would you watch your own content?
Like try to, welcome people in, talk to them,
read chat, engage with them, and make the type
of thing you would enjoy cause other people
enjoy that, too.
- If you laugh at your own jokes then you know
you're having a good time.
If you guys want to check out her channel,
the link to it down below, Barbara E Mac.
You can go hang out with her and her live streams.
- Be sure to like and subscribe to this guy also.
He has an awesome channel full of tips and tricks
and I've definitely been watching his videos
to help me grow on YouTube so thank you.
- Yeah, you're welcome and we'll see you guys soon
in the next video.
See you then, bye!