I completely restarted my streaming Journey from scratch at the start of 2023. that's right I went
from having 150 average viewers to zero viewers but then for my very first stream on a whole new
account new platform and entirely new audience I had an average of 80 viewers I did this by
following a simple clear actionable series of steps that literally anyone can do today I'm
going to walk you through the six steps I used to start streaming in 2023 but I have to admit that
all of these steps will completely fail if you do one tiny simple and very common thing wrong but I
will cover that in Step six now there are time codes in the description so you can skip ahead
to any part of this video you want but I wouldn't recommend skipping around anything important like
our sponsor own.tv I want to say thank you to our sponsor own.tv they are a fantastic
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PC resources meaning you can let those resources focus on encoding your stream and making your
gameplay buttery buttery smooth I know I say that a lot but it's because I think it's the
only thing that actually matters in this situation we have a link in the description so if you want
you can go click that and check out what they've got you might find your brand new stream overlay
and support us in the process now if you're starting from zero and you have no experience
it's kind of like going on a cross-country road trip you don't just get in the car and drive you
need to plan out where you're going what you're excited to see what music you're going to listen
to and most importantly what snacks you want to bring if you didn't do any of these things you'd
end up bored aimless and probably starved to death which coincidentally is the three main things that
happen to new streamers to avoid this I created a plan specifically a Content map the first stop on
our map is figuring out what we want to see what are we interested in and what do we love making
content about I knew I wanted to make content about gaming but I had to get more specific
after all I'm not going to stream Call of Duty one day and stardew Valley the next a sharp turn
like that will give me and my viewers Whiplash no I wanted to map stops that my viewers were always
Keen to see this meant picking a theme for my road trip or you could call it a niche or topic
that kept appealing to the same audience it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do and
I tried lots of different types of content before I finally decided that rather than overcomplicate
it by coming up with a massive viewer demographic you know age interest Hobbies like I normally do
instead I just make videos for me I'm an audience after all there are lots of people out there like
me which isn't great for the world overall because you guys have to deal with us but hey it's just
how it is so I'll just do what I love and what I'm good at and that's hopefully going to appeal to
people as well so I decided I would play Nintendo games and I was going to start building that
Audience by focusing just on Pokemon because I love Pokemon and I can continue to expand further
from there as I grow because remember we're not picking one topic forever we're picking
a niche that expands as we grow but starting specific so our audience can invest in US easier
now what type of content can I make what am I good at well I wanted to do challenges but most
importantly I had to make it clear that I wasn't going to take these challenges seriously I'm not
a Pro Gamer mine were stupid challenges I wanted to make videos that for all intent and purposes
were pointless like trading 100 Pigs randomly or beating online competitive Pokemon with only
self-destruct and the most important part of these videos I wanted to Showcase just how bad I am at
games but how much fun I have overcoming that issue this step seems stupid but being very aware
of your voice and your unique value is crucial to creating content the actionable tip or step
one of six is when starting out come up with a real plan consider a consistent audience who
will all enjoy a singular topic a topic that you love as well of course and if you're struggling
to think of that then answer these two questions question one if you had to give a presentation
about any Topic in the world and it had to go for 15 minutes but you get zero preparation
what topic are you picking question two what is a authentic to you or what is your unique value
you're bringing to the table are you an expert on the topic maybe you're just really passionate
about it or like me are you so committed to doing dumb [ __ ] that you find funny and hope it will
make a good stream or video I'd love to hear your answers to these so please comment them
down below and your stream name so I can swing by and check a few out and just remember we aren't
just playing games or just streaming we're making content so think about it from an entertainment
point of view okay you know what you're making content around you are excited you're Keen but
you have two major issues one you have absolutely no idea how to reach your viewers they don't know
who you are and frankly they don't care who you are and twitch really doesn't care about helping
you reach them either so you run off and search for guides on how to get viewers for twitch only
to be met by some neckbeard beanie wearing loser who tells you to make YouTube videos every single
week and then you hit your second problem you have absolutely no experience scripting filming editing
and releasing videos how the hell are you meant to do that Weekly while you have a full-time job
or school and you still have to stream at the same time this neckbeard beanie wearing loser
is an idiot and I agree he is is an idiot so we're going to solve having zero experience zero time in
zero Discovery in just one step YouTube shorts and tick tocks but mostly YouTube shots look I
know you want to be a streamer but short format content is where all of your viewers are going to
come from but more importantly where all of the skills to be a successful Creator in the future
are going to begin just last night I was reading a news report if you can call dexterto news these
days about a young streamer who had one single Tick Tock do well and he went from five viewers
to over 100 viewers on his stream you can sit there and say I refuse to make short content
but all you're doing is refusing to grow both as a streamer a Creator and as a person for those of
you who are ready to grow as people and also grow their viewers let's talk about the easiest way to
start making short content personally I think you shouldn't use twitch Clips when just starting out
you can but they're harder to get traction early on harder to edit and you do learn less overall
and learning is the thing I value most in any form of content creation and that's why we're
going to practice all of those skills that you're going to need for bigger videos but in bite-sized
chunks first you're going to come up with an idea I like to ask a question provide a fact or issue
a challenge for example this short has 2 million views I released it when the channel only had 3
000 subscribers on it and now I'm at roughly 40 000 subscribers and content like this is a huge
reason as to why when I went live I had 80 brand new viewers watching me the shot is called Wonder
trading until I get a Pokemon Ash has caught the first five seconds of this short are me
establishing a challenge in the form of a question I say how many trades turn my Pokemon into a and
then a wheel starts spinning it zooms in and lands on the challenge criteria and then the rest of the
short is me trading and making jokes until I get one that meets the criteria and the moment I do
I end the short this took me 10 minutes to film and about 30 minutes to edit with most of that
time being focused on subtitles but the reason it got so many views comes down to three points now I
have a full video on shorts on this channel coming soon so I'd recommend subscribing for that and it
has a lot more detail Thomas but here's the short of shorts number one hook your viewers need to be
hooked at the start this is why I like questions and challenges they understand what's going on
quickly and become invested number two retention rate viewers then need to stick around right to
the end of the short if they leave early YouTube says that's a bad short and stops recommending it
again it's why I like questions and challenges because they stick around to see the payoff and
then you simply end the show at the moment you do and then they can leave but it doesn't matter
because you've already got your full retention rate number three consistency both in topic style
type of content and about how much you release personally I think starting out with three shorts
a week releasing one every second day is a great way to both learn valuable skills but also start
building an audience so actionable tip time and step two of our six steps well it's simple just
start researching watching and creating short format content consistently post them on YouTube
and Tech talk so you double your reach and stop wasting your time start building an audience who
want to see you live by first reaching them when you're not live you could be getting new viewers
when you're asleep but instead you're just waiting to go live and grinding for hours now what is the
next step or step three that I did to get 80 brand new viewers on my first stream back well I had my
shorts chugging along and I was really eager to get viewers so I started doing research and
I found all these videos tick tocks and Twitter threads about how to break the algorithm people
telling me about special little hacks I can do how to boost raid engagements Network properly
how to follow small streamers to get views just hundreds of tiny little things that take up hours
and hours of your day and don't actually do anything except waste your time because the
hard reality the brutal truth is that content is King and always will be don't try to hack the algo
don't try to take what looks like the easy route with follow for follow or opening up a bunch of
small streamers and 12 tabs and saying put you on luck bro and of course no spammy go lives across
a dozen discords you don't own and instead just how about we try and give viewers a good reason
to click and then when they come and watch let's make it a good experience for them that is the
true hack someone enjoying your content is a pretty damn good reason for them to come back
next time content creation is a meritocracy no matter how much people want to say it isn't if
you make good content you will be rewarded that's said shorts and streams have a serious problem and
that is their lifespan you have zero viewers the moment it ends sure a short can stay active for a
while but the engagement is fleeting plus it's harder to leave a real impression on a viewer
the middle ground for this is videos if you're working hard at shorts you'll eventually get more
confident as an editor and a video producer so I want you to consider doing longer videos either
once a week or once a fortnight heck once a month is fine as well if you've got shorts consistently
keeping viewers engaged and again I know you want to be streamers like Point Crow small ant Ludwig
dream myth or so many other people but the reason you know all those names isn't because they were
streamers first it's because their videos did well and that brought viewers into their streams step
three of six and our actionable tip here is to remember there is no shortcut there is no magic
solution to grow you have to learn new skills so start small with shorts move into longer videos
build a catalog of videos that will never expire and will always bring in new viewers to your
content and again again grow an audience offline so you have viewers when you're online now step
four is a weird one but when I started again from scratch I made it clear that Community would be a
big Focus for me in my shorts and videos I tried to make moments that could be Community memes
for example on my streams I always ask everyone at the start how their day is out of 10 and my
viewers always reply 8 out of 10 because that is a community Meme and you can encourage these like
I did in my videos where I said things like hashtag Iona murdered God and I had viewers
comment that hashtag or always talking about how Charmander is overrated as a Pokemon there are
so many examples on the internet like how I call my viewers the Royals call me Kevin starts every
video with hello there friend ambiguous amphibian calling his patreons AAS or Danny Gonzalez calling
his subscribers Greg these all make someone feel a part of something and let me tell you giving
viewers in jokes or just letting them feel a part of something consistent is incredibly
powerful full to keeping them returning another tool I use that many underutilize is community
posts if you're making shorts then you'll want to use these because they get so many interactions
these were posts about Nintendo updates post about videos but mostly they were image polls or quizzes
asking viewers to pick between two options such as who is the better video game protagonist or
hey pick a character to delete forever these get tens of thousands of engagements and are
a fun way to interact with your viewers speaking of engaging with viewers of course another way
is Discord which I don't recommend anymore don't get me wrong Discord is incredibly powerful when
it comes to interacting with your community and if you choose to run one you're not gonna destroy all
your growth no the growth destroying mistake is in Step six remember it's just that Discord is an
intense commitment of time both in moderating it getting more members and just keeping it
active Community discords often need a team of volunteers to keep them running and if you don't
have that then you have to be there doing it and when you're starting out the rule of um is content
is king So you cannot waste your energy on things that aren't content okay step number five it's
time to actually go live and yes I know worth five steps in and I haven't actually mentioned
streaming much and that's because the streaming space has aggressively changed over the past year
we're leaving lockdown people are back at work and it's much harder to make a living or even grow an
audience from just streaming you are incredibly talented but your lack of growth doesn't
necessarily mean that you aren't making good content while live 2023 is the year where we all
need to step back and realize that streaming isn't our main piece of content it is our secondary
piece of content it's a reward for you to have fun after doing shorts and videos for me streaming is
a way to interact with you guys my viewers or my fans and to generally unwind playing a game with
people that's why I started it and after streaming became a job I lost a lot of that enjoyment but
now with videos and shorts as my key Focus to be honest streams have kind of become the thing I
love again so I spend far less time streaming and more time going outside being healthy and
working content creation into my schedule to be balanced this helps me be more creative and
grow more sustainably because streaming isn't creating sustainable content at least not in
my opinion streaming works against the idea that containers came the actionable tip is to stream
just once twice maybe three times a week and to make sure what your streaming is enjoyable for you
that is the most important part when you're going live your personal enjoyment because viewers can
tell if you aren't enjoying it plus if you're following the steps properly you don't need to
stress about this stream getting new follows or new paying subscribers because videos and shorts
will bring in new audiences and make you Revenue passively because again streaming is meant to be
a fun way to interact with viewers who enjoy your content not your entire focus and this leads me to
the biggest reason I could go live to 80 brand new viewers something that most people have
ever considered if I didn't do this step then all my shorts all my videos all my community building
my streaming all of it would have been for nothing when I went live I decided to stream on YouTube I
know I know but hear me out the vast majority of Discovery for a twitch streamer is proven
to come from external sources like YouTube as a twitch partner I have been directly told by twitch
staff that I should be creating content on YouTube and Tick Tock as my focus and then bringing those
viewers to Twitch because twitch doesn't have a discovery method you can say in every single video
hey this was streamed live on Twitch click the link in the description and sure you'll get a few
viewers from that but also people are lazy let's be real moving your arms slightly down to click a
link sucks going from one website to another why would I do that when I can just click on another
highly produced video on the right heck a lot of your viewers might not even have twitch accounts
so instead of telling them to leave the website just tell them to subscribe go subscribe to your
shots and they'll watch your videos and that will get those videos new viewers who will subscribe as
well if it's good and then you'll hit go live on the same YouTube channel and every subscriber will
be notified that you're live they'll check you out because hey you don't have to leave the platform
and anyone who finds you while you're live if they enjoy that And subscribe then they'll probably
check out your shorts and videos and they'll continue to watch those and it is a never-ending
cycle when you make a community post they'll see those and engage with you when you're scrolling
through YouTube they'll watch old videos and streams of yours they enjoyed like how this old
stream got a thousand new offline viewers after I finished and for the rest of my life and scarily
even after I die all of my content will still get views but one thing I didn't cover was coming up
with good ideas and making them clickable but that's why we made this video essay on Ludwig's
approach you absolutely should steal all of the information in this video that I have right here