every single stream i have a checklist of tasks that i will do in order to make sure
that my content is as perfect as it can be and on days where i don't do these things i notice
a drop in my overall viewers my engagements and i just make generally worse content
today we're talking about stream preparation and my go live checklist
so that you can make your best possible content without having to stress let's go
hey i'm Eljay with streamscheme.com i'm also a variety streamer over at twitch.tv/eljayem_
there's a link to that and the streamscheme.com in the description down below but first i want
to throw it out there straight out of the gate if you're watching this within the first day it
was released it means that tomorrow i'm holding a massive charity event over on my twitch channel
we have a lot of fun a lot of games and a lot of challenges in store for me but we've also got over
two thousand dollars worth of prizes in store for you guys so if you want to win any streamer
gear or some owned vouchers then feel free to go over to my twitch stream chuck us to follow
or join the discord so you get pinged when we go live with that charity event it is all linked in
the description i've mentioned in previous videos and i've also mentioned it in the discord that i
have a checklist of things that i do every single stream and every single week before i go live to
make sure that my streams and my content are up to par and you guys have asked me dozens and dozens
and dozens of times to cover all of those things in a video so that you can also have the same
checklist that is why today i'm gonna go through everything that i think you guys should be
preparing for your streams as well as make sure that i give you the most important tip that i'm
pretty sure a lot of you guys don't know about at the end of the video it might even save you guys
from getting caught with your pants down quite literally today i'm also going to tell you the
number one thing i check every single time someone asks me for one-to-one feedback if they are
doing this i'll usually reply to their comment if they're not doing it i just won't bother replying
so if you actually want help one-to-one feedback well you'll find out how to get that in this video
speaking of owned though i want to give a massive thank you not just for the charity event but also
because they're helping out by sponsoring this video if you haven't heard of owned yet they're
your one stop shop for all things streaming related seriously if you want to take the
hassle out of setting up your stream making it look professional getting alerts all those things
then head over to own.tv and you can check out all of their products they're so easy to set up and
it will really take your stream and make it look professional so if you want to support me guys go
and support owned with the link in the description because without them i wouldn't be able to make
videos like this and i really appreciate all the help they give us okay so the first step to any
successful stream is to prepare for the stream we're not just gonna hit go live and stream for
four hours with six different games in those four hours or we're not just going to go live four or
five times a day for 30 minutes at a time just for one fortnight game and then comment down below why
aren't i growing i'm doing everything i can i'm looking at you billy we need to actually prepare
our streams to absolutely nobody's surprise i'm gonna tell you that the first step to preparation
is to look at your entire week and plan out a schedule i want you to figure out exactly what
days you're gonna stream and you're gonna try and make sure that you're streaming the same
time slot every single day rather than moving around if you can this is the first step you
need this consistency and this routine because this is what gets viewers coming back because
they do the same things every day we're creatures of habit this is the core of growing without any
external funnels next up we need to plan out the content and the categories to make sure that it
all matches and it feels good whenever i play a new game whenever i look and help someone try and
find a game to stream i always make sure i look at their average viewers and see if they'll appear in
the top three rows of a category this is very very important if you're looking to be discovered just
on twitch if you don't have any external funnels such as youtube or tick tock then you're going
to struggle to grow in oversaturated categories so planning out your content in your category is
crucial does this content also match what you want to do once you have grown a community or
is it the kind of demographic you want recently i had to help someone who was really struggling
because they wanted a certain demographic but they were only getting kids in their stream
the way to fix this was they honestly just had to shift to a different category so in the future if
you want to be playing warzone or fortnite or any of these categories then starting out by
playing sims or starju isn't going to be a good way to build a community who will convert into
first-person shooters but a part i haven't talked about much is the fact that even if you start out
in these smaller categories you need to find a way to stand out inside them can you add stakes or a
unique selling point to make your stream clickable compared to others for example beating dark souls
but every death is a wasabi p that can help stand out because it's not just a guy playing dark souls
it's a guy taking punishments for when he fails at dark souls i'm really curious what you guys
can come up with for your unique selling points so i want you to comment down below
a stream idea that you have to create a unique selling point for your content so once you have
your content and your schedule locked down we need to prep for individual streams you'll want
to prep some talking points for mid-stream if things get slow maybe you don't have any active
chatters maybe you've mostly got lurkers heck you might just be an anxious person who forgets what
they want to talk about or you're just learning you don't quite add the part where you're able to
be a natural entertainer yet so just write down a few topics a few things that are interesting
and ideas that you can get rolling if someone were to ask you about them if you have any channel
point regimes that are going to be used to engage chatters then i really recommend prepping those
ahead of time for example for me i have to prep a question of the day some aussie slang a pro tip
a fun fact and a loading screen tip before every single stream i'll also prepare about two pages
worth of a notebook for talking points for about a four hour stream which is about a page for every
two hours i get asked a lot how much i prepare for every single stream and it's usually about two to
three hours for a four hour stream and i do four streams a week so i guess i'm doing about 12 to 18
hours pretty much a week preparing for my content obviously this is my full-time job though and a
lot of you guys don't have the time for that but still putting in some time to prepare will
go a long way for making sure that your content feels comfortable to you by the way if you guys
ever ask me hey can i have feedback on my stream or you comment down below asking for feedback or
anything like that i'll usually click your stream and the first thing i check is the schedule
section on your twitch i'm going to tell you guys right now if you do not have a schedule section
updated for your entire week or i look back at your past few weeks and it isn't consistent
i usually won't reply to you and give you feedback because i think that is something you instantly
have to work on so go down into your twitch go to your stream management and update your schedule
get it all set up at the start of the week and then if you ever ask someone for advice that'll
probably be the first thing they look at all right you guys are gonna need a pen and paper for
this next tip because i think a lot of you guys miss this step and i understand why because it's
pretty high level are you ready to write this down before you go live load up obs or streamlabs obs
and make sure the game works on your computer while recording with your overlays your alerts and
everything before live yeah before you go live i'm just teasing obviously but one of the things
that'll really mess up a stream is technical difficulties it'll really rattle you to your core
so if you make sure that you work on all this stuff and test everything before you go live
it'll be a lot easier for you to make a good stream and focus just on the content
one of the worst things as a viewer as well is trying to enjoy a stream and they go to put the
game up or do anything and it is scuffed or it doesn't work and then having to watch for five ten
minutes while they mess around and you can kind of feel their confidence get shaken they don't
know how to play it off yet so really make sure you're all set up before you go live the steps i
follow is before i go live i'll open up the game i'll open up streamlabs obs i'll hit record and
then i'll go through and i'll test my alerts i'll make sure that my overlay looks good with the game
hud so i'm not covering anything important and generally i'll make sure the audio sounds good
compared to my alerts compared to me and while i'm there i'll also go into my game settings i'll turn
on subtitles make sure they're large enough to read and i'll also cap my frame rate at 60 or even
120 frames so that it naturally fits down into a 60fps stream again all of this is done while
recording so i can then watch back my recording and make sure that it's all working before i go
live i have mentioned this next tip countless times before as absolutely crucial if you're
looking to grow on twitch you have to be doing it before every single stream and i know i'm gonna
get some of my og's commenting things like uh lj we're already doing this stop repeating the same
tips except we get thousands of new subs a week we get thousands of new members in our discord every
single week and i lurk in your streams silently judging you jeffrey i know that you're not doing
this you're not updating your go lives and your titles for every single stream to be engaging
and provide a unique hook so many of you guys aren't even using tags i see people complain
about twitch's discoverability but they're not even using all of twitch's discoverability tools
to actually appear for things i don't want to go into it too much here i just want to throw
it out there i have a video linked at the top of the description it is all about titles tags and
go lives and how to set those up to be engaging and before you comment uh lj the fifth biggest
streamer on the platform smashed his face into his keyboard and made that his title and it worked
brilliant that's a great idea follow-up question are you the fifth biggest streamer on the platform
so next up we're going to talk about the audio checks the webcam checks and i'm going to cover
the thing that's going to save you guys life one day but first i want to throw it out there if this
video helps you out at all then maybe consider checking out our other videos or throwing a
like down there or subscribing it's totally free and you can pretty much unsubscribe whenever you
want or if you're looking to make new friends and connect and network with streamers of all sizes
looking to grow then our discord is linked below it's also where you can download our free overlays
which we have more of coming out soon you'll get notified there asap as well as when we're
doing our giveaways and our prizes with that out of the way let's get back into something that i
think is a writer passage for streamers and i see it every single day getting posted on our twitch
and in our discord and in pretty much any stream of discord you're all set up you click go live
you're streaming away you have a pretty good stream so far you're feeling confident and then
you realize your mic's been muted the entire time because you just didn't check it have you ever
done this let me know in the comments i feel like most people have i've done it for about five ten
minutes before my audience called me out on it but they were all just posting keck w the entire time
while i spoke so i was confused as to what was going on before every single stream before you hit
the go live button i want you to click on the cog wheel and i want you to check to make sure that
your mic is set up and is set to output you want to be able to make sure it is going out you want
to do a little recording like we did earlier make sure it sounds good and if you're really worried
and really cautious you can go into your audio settings and make sure that slobs or obs has got
the right microphone selected for your track i see a lot of people always forget to check this one
and they'll do a whole stream and it'll be their webcam microphone so those are the steps make sure
it's the right mic make sure it's putting on the output and make sure this little button right here
is clicked and you can see bars moving okay we're almost at the life-saving tip but first we have
to cover the webcam and the screen share tips to make sure that you guys aren't going to dox
your entire life and completely ruin it by having some troll find out your home phone number please
before you hit go live please before you share any of your desktop or any of your browser windows
make sure that you've cropped out all of your bars make sure that you've cleaned up your background
or removed anything that gives away your identity i recommend hiding your bookmark browser and if
you're going to keep anything on your desktop i actually recommend moving that all into a new
folder and making one photo on your desktop called desktop so that no one can see anything unless you
were to open up those folders make sure you close discord or move discord to a different monitor
because you don't want to be leaking any messages or dms and if you're looking to resize to remove
the bar at the bottom of your screen your taskbar or you want to remove the url the bookmark bar you
can actually hold alt and resize your browser sources to crop those out by default and that
way no one will ever see them and then for your face cam make sure that you've removed anything
that might accidentally docks you maybe you've got some paperwork on your desk or maybe you've just
got some dirty underwear or a bottle of lube off to the side just please make sure you clean up
and remove all that stuff because it can be a little embarrassing and you don't really want
to get caught like that it's kind of a simple one to say to clean up but i wanted to throw it
out there because i have checked a few people out and i think the idea of saying well i'm streaming
to zero people means that they don't really worry too much about it but it's important to put your
best foot forward if you're hoping to grow okay so you've gone live you've added your entire
community on discord told them to come check out your stream you stream for a few hours it all
goes fantastic and now for the most important tip of this entire video which i hope you guys will
share this video out into the masses to make sure that everyone is safe and looked after
because every single streamer needs to know when you raid someone at the end of your stream
your stream does not end what do i mean by that well i see a lot of people raid other creators
and they go in with the raid and they're typing away saying hey whoa it's a raid lj raid but
they forget the fact that they haven't clicked the end stream button but that's okay because
you've raided someone and that means you're hosting someone else on your twitch channel
and they can't see you except that doesn't mean you're not being completely broadcasted and saved
on the twitch servers if you go look at the ends of people's vods they'll continue after a raid
the host isn't even on there it shows the person so if you're going to raid someone you need to
make sure you hit the end stream button inside obs inside slobs and make sure that you've muted your
mic covered your webcam and you're definitely not online anymore i'm a bit of a vodland aka
a vod goblin and i'll tell you what guys when i'm watching a stream back on a vault the next
day and they go and raid someone sometimes they say and do some pretty funny things thinking that
no one's able to see them and let me just throw it out there make sure that everything is off
you've hit end stream before you start believing yourself for the night and with that i'm gonna
click end video and relieve myself right now i'll see you guys next week for another video i hope
i'll see you at the charity stream as well thank you for watching guys i'll see you guys next week