every single video i get asked "Eljay, how do i get my first few viewers?"
and i've answered that by making videos about how to get your first five to even 25 average viewers
but that's just my opinion about how i think you should be doing it and how i did it so today i
asked six full-time streamers how they grew their first few viewers but more importantly
how they then took those first few viewers and grew them into a sustainable community that
would grow further on twitch let's go hey i'm Eljay with streamscheme.com i'm also a variety
streamer over at twitch.tv/eljayem_ there is a link in the description to that as i said today
i have six full-time twitch streamers we're going to be talking about how they grew their first few
viewers and then how they took that and turned it into an audience and a community that watched
their streams now you've probably heard some of the advice in today's video before but there is
something incredibly different about today's video they're not just gonna say hey go play a
small category or go do just chatting segments no they're actually going to give you the specifics
about how they did it exactly what category they played exactly how they made it watchable
and hopefully it'll inspire you guys to get out there and do it yourself when you watch them one
by one there are some fantastic lessons to learn but when you look at them as a whole there is one
really powerful thing that you can take away from all of it so i'm going to cover that at the end of
the video but because i know i've been saving the best tips for the end of the video a lot lately
i'm also going to make it worth your while by throwing in a couple of owned tv 50 vouchers
so if you want to win those vouchers and get your twitch stream looking scpick and span then
just stay tuned i'll cover how to enter that draw very soon now there are links in the description
to every single person in today's video so if you have any follow-up questions feel free to
go check them out while they're live first up we have reaps who is an amazing australian streamer
with some production quality that i think even the largest streamers on the platform wish they had
and he's gonna be talking about how he managed to grow entirely on twitch which is something you
guys ask me about all the time you don't want to do external platforms you just want to go
on twitch so reef's gonna cover that take it away hi guys my name is reaps and it is an absolute
pleasure to come back and talk to you about some advice on how to get those first few viewers when
you've done nothing at all inside the twitch atmosphere the first time that i ever came on
twitch i had no background on twitter on youtube or anything i was starting fresh this was my first
foray into social media and what i noticed very quickly was that the big time streamers
were playing variety games so back in the day sodapopham was playing this game called 60 seconds
and i was like i've got that game i should stream that game i'm gonna stream it right now so i was
streaming this game that nobody really played along with sodapoppin and as soon as soda pop
and got offline people like you know what i want to see more of this game so they came over to me
and there i was not on the first you know fortnight or league of legends or anything like
that i was playing a niche game and that's where people find you because if you play those big time
games you're not going to be found people don't go scrolling down to people with zero viewers just
to be a good sole unless they want that youtube revenue for saying i donated x amount to small
times dreamer but the chance of that happening are very very very slim if you do variety straight off
the bat chances are people come and follow you during one game but if you don't play at the next
stream they may be like oh i thought i thought you wanted to play this game and i was really into
that you can grow obviously but just give it some time of sticking to one game for about a month or
so and then slowly initiate another game into it and i must say my biggest piece of advice if you
want your five to ten followers to come back set a schedule and stick to it no matter what sometimes
people don't get those notifications sometimes people aren't following you on the discord or
on twitter so i just say stick to it go with the schedule when people come in say thank you so much
let them know when you stream and get on with the game that was how i got my first five to ten
viewers and from there it's gone up astronomically with a schedule i hope that sorted some of you
out and um leads you down a good path you're gonna do amazing i'll see you next time guys
summarize reaps if you didn't quite understand you need to take a step back and before you
start streaming do some planning and research what categories can you appear in who's watching what
what niche are you gonna fill it doesn't matter if the potential audience is only 20 to 30 when
you're starting out because you're starting at zero and 20 and 30 people is a huge amount of
viewers when you're just starting once you're in that niche category you pick a schedule you lock
it in and you work to bond with your audience this keeps those people coming back and it allows you
to boost your numbers and eventually transition to variety streaming next up we've got only
trails he's going to be talking about how he used not only a niche game but also a unique way of
streaming that game to create a huge following and a massive audience take it away trails yo what up
guys it's trails or only trails and how did i get from five to like 10 or 50 viewers well i focused
on very small communities at first i started focusing on a game that has a small community but
a lot of people watch for me that was old school runescape but that was not enough i looked into a
niche within that game i found another way to play the game so people are more interested in watching
my streams than other people's streams because i was doing something different i started making
youtube videos around this concept and i shared it on small reddit communities that were about
playing the game old school runescape differently i know it gets a little bit tricky but if you can
find an original way to play a game that already exists within a small community and that is your
game plan at least it was for me i bundled up these videos into highlight videos on youtube
and if people wanted to see the whole grinds that were behind those videos they could check out my
stream now the problem with this is that it gets really difficult to venture into variety games
because a lot of people are there to see that specific thing of you but i found a little fix
for that now after a while you'll start building relationships with your viewers and you'll gain
like a core audience that will follow you no matter what take this core audience and just
stream another game once a week or something like that even if you go from 100 viewers to like 20
that core audience will follow you and you'll have a viewer base for that other game now when you're
playing this other game try and host someone that is also playing that game that you don't know
and start interacting with their community so you become friends with people from other communities
this way this streamer might return to favor give you a host or a raid and initially raids and hosts
don't do that much but if one person sticks around they might bring their friends along
and stuff like that so as a conclusion try and build your niche within a small community and then
try and build that core audience bring them to a variety game and then start making friends within
that other games community that's it i absolutely love this advice by trails because he went into
streaming with a plan not only was he gonna play a niche game but he was also going to play it in
a way that allowed him to stand out and be unique i often talk about small ant and how he created a
niche inside a niche in a similar way by playing games blindfolded or with his feet this is exactly
what trails has done as well he's taken his niche game and he's played it in a way that adds stakes
it adds a unique engaging factor when you take all those things you put them into a highlight video
and you drop them on youtube but you don't just sit there and hope that's gonna work you then take
those highlight videos and you share them out to communities and subreddits who are interested in
those games and playing those games in a unique way this is so much more discoverable than if he
just played runescape and just did his best and maybe chucked out a crappy let's play and just
hoped there's a strategy here there's a way to be discovered and there's a way to make it engaging
and clearly it's worked next up we have metal fair who you guys gave so much positive feedback to
you said that his advice about networking was the best tip of our last video this time around he's
going to talk about how some careful research into a category and the right time to stream allowed
him to go from zero viewers to 75 with a little help of some engaging stories being told over and
over again take it away medal hey everyone what i did to get my first few viewers was i found a game
that had a large following but did not have a lot of people actively viewing it at the time that i
streamed that game was pokemon sword and shield at the moment it has 1.4 million followers but only
between 1 thousand to two and a half thousand people that were viewing it when i streamed and
that meant that when i was live i wasn't too far down the list for people to scroll through
now once i got a couple of viewers trickling in what i had to do was i had to engage them now
to do that i told stories really fun interactive and engaging stories that kept people's attention
these could be stories about real life my job as a full-time teacher or about the game that
i'm playing all right boys and girls come on round come on around grandpa's going to tell your story
one of the best things about being a small stream is then you can repeat those stories if you're
telling a story for only a couple of viewers between zero and three people and then you'd tell
that same story again the next day or a couple of days later those same people might not be in the
stream again and if they are that means they're enjoying your content and they probably don't mind
hearing that same story again and again even now after growing my stream i still get people that
ask me to tell the same stories again and again and i'm sure there's people that have heard a
story ten plus times but still enjoy it and each time you tell it it's a little bit different you
might be able to embellish a little small detail you might want to add a little bit more that you
didn't add last time and people always love the stories i hope you found those helpful guys have
a great time streaming hopefully you're starting to see a trend here with these first three clips
no one went into this and just hoped for the best everyone went in with a careful game plan a way
to stand out in a way to be discovered now we have three more streamers left who are going to
talk about external platform growth as well as how to grow as a community but of course we've still
got my lesson that i took away from these six streamers as well as the owned voucher giveaway
so stay tuned for those i just want to throw it out there though if this video helps you out
consider checking out our other content we've got videos about all sorts of things streaming related
whether it's an affiliate guide whether it's an emote guide it doesn't matter check it out and
if those help you maybe consider subscribing and finally i've managed to finish up our glitch pack
that's right you guys have been asking for this for ages it'll be released later in this week
in our discord next up we have the legend himself mr cobble wobbles and he's gonna be talking about
how he took a very small youtube audience and converted them into a twitch following
in order to grow straight off the bat take it away com if i remember correctly my first five viewers
actually came from youtube because when i started twitch i had done youtube for a few years i
basically had like a core audience like around 50 people-ish that watched almost every video
that i put out i announced that i was quitting youtube because i was really sick of it and i
wanted to still make content so i moved over to twitch with live streaming right out of the gate
i would have like an average of five viewers so that's a tip that i can give you if you start
your twitch channel and you've probably heard this like a million times before but also start doing
something on different platforms to bring those people over to your twitch because that actually
works a different thing that i then did to like enhance those viewers from like 5 to 10 15 20
is committing to a niche and you've probably heard this before as well and the reason why
you've heard it before as well is because well it works i started playing exclusively nintendo games
if you commit to a niche you can really speak to a specific audience after committing to that
niche you can branch out to different games that are kind of similar to the things that
you're playing but also innovate in a new way and then you can slowly branch out even more
until you eventually might become like a variety streamer or something that's basically how i did
it alfred here completely endorses it alfred here is the mastermind behind all this i'm i'm
i'm just the puppet he's the he's the real he's the real content creator
you might be thinking straight off the bat well he had an audience somewhere else so that's
not helpful advice but if that is your first thought then i think you're missing the point
if your goal is to be a streamer but you can't find your niche to stand out on twitch
with zero viewers the same way reaps did the same way metal did or the same way trails did
then don't stream yet go and create content on another platform discoverable content and build
a small audience i know a lot of you guys think that in order for a youtuber a tick tock audience
to help boost your stream it needs to have 100 to 500 viewers every video when in reality all it
needs is 20 to 50 because those will convert to 5 maybe 10 viewers over on twitch and that's enough
to get you at the top of a category speaking of having a prior following i think a lot of people
don't understand that that prior following in order to boost your stream doesn't have to be an
influencer following t with mandy is a fantastic streamer and she's gonna be talking today about
how she used her prior following from twitter to launch her twitch stream and go from there hey
my name is mandy i am a partnered streamer over on twitch and i've been streaming for about three
years or so so i'm here to answer the question how did i get my first five to ten viewers
uh so for me they pretty much all came from the same place and that was twitter i used twitter
quite frequently before i started to stream and i had quite a few relationships on there
especially the people who were gamers as well yeah when i did my first stream i announced
it on twitter and then i had about 10 people who showed up to my very first stream which is
that's amazing it was incredible it was very exciting it was comfy for me it was it was
super nice it was awesome i i feel like it kind of helped me skip that very first like difficult step
of uh getting you know getting those very first few viewers so yeah you can use any kind of social
media uh you can even use irl just get to know people make friends um and just be authentic be
genuine don't uh use people because they can see that you can you can feel if you're being
you know used just so somebody has a viewer but yeah just genuinely try to form relationships
build friendships and eventually you know if you do that you'll meet people who will want to
either consume your content they're excited about what you're doing or they like you and they just
want to support you or or maybe both which would be awesome so anyway thanks for listening there
is no huge marketing plan here and it also covers a question you guys ask me all the time which is
why i really value this advice constantly you guys say i don't have any friends who can come
watch my stream by spending some of your time to become well known in communities that you
actively do enjoy anyway such as reddit tick tock twitter maybe it's a discord instagram you name
it if you spend your time there and create genuine connections and then turn around and say to people
hey i'm actually going to try to become a twitch streamer it really helped me out if you could just
check me out or maybe lurk or even just give me some feedback obviously as long as not breaking
any self-promotion rules i'm sure those people would love to check you out if you built a real
genuine connection i've saved the final and one of the most important tips for last today
and it's from crezentine we're gonna hear from her and then i'm gonna talk about the lesson i learned
by watching all six of these clips and i'm gonna be giving away that own 3d voucher so stay tuned
hey guys what's up it's me chris from twitch.tv slash crescent early on you'll probably hit the
plateau of three to five viewers potentially five to ten viewers and then you'll realize
that no matter how long you stream your stream never grows and these new viewers just seem to
change and always find other streamers or content to watch the way to grow past these plateaus is
really to focus on building a community when new viewers come into your stream welcome them warmly
and then invite them to a discord server on your discord server you can even host game nights or
movie nights to interact with them offline and the goal here is really to create a community
by having these people not only be friends with you the streamer but also be friends
with each other and that's really how a community starts to build i see a big issue in some streams
where the viewers are only there for the streamer which means that if the streamer stops interacting
and starts focusing on what they're doing chat instantly dies and this is something that you want
to avoid so it's really best to create a community and start introducing people to each other
focusing on offline interaction as well as online interaction you guys know i think this advice is
crucial every single growth video i do i talk about how it doesn't matter how many followers
you have it doesn't matter how many viewers you have it's about a community it's about having
people who engage with each other engage with you are active in your chat and your discord that is
how you become a sustainable twitch streamer there really isn't much else to say about chris's advice
so let's give away that voucher and let's cover the final tip that i learned from watching this
video if you listen to every single streamer today and when they talk about growing their
average viewers they thought about two things the first how they were going to be discovered
and the second is how they would make their content engaging or stand out that people
would come back no streamer in this video said you needed to buy a six thousand dollar throat
guzzler 5000 microphone no one said you need to have the fanciest overlay in fact no one
even talked about panels branding no one talked about your offline screen so why is it that so
many small streamers even the ones in the stream scheme discord spend so much time on their panels
they're offline screen changing their branding spending hours getting a logo for their stream
then they go live and there's no discovery there they're just still playing a game like everyone
else there's no unique way to stand out maybe they haven't even put time into their title and
there's certainly no time put into the thumbnail so really there's no reason for someone to click
you you guys know that i put so much emphasis on my title you guys know i put so much emphasis
when i started on making my thumbnail look good i green screened myself into a milk aisle so people
thought what the heck and had to click me you need to find a way to make your content stand
out that should be your number one step not an offline screen it doesn't matter no one's
coming to you when you're offline work on making your content unique and engaging
so in order to allow you to keep focusing on your content i'm gonna give away these owned vouchers
it's not a sponsored video i just have some vouchers for you all you have to do is go down
to the comments and type hashtag own3d your twitch username so i can get in contact and which person
today's advice you liked the best i'll see you guys next week and remember content comes first