Twitch - February Report.

Hi everyone and welcome to my second post of what will hopefully be a monthly series on Twitch.

In my previous post I wrote about how I felt at the start of the year and how January wasn't a great month for me streaming wise. I'm happy to say that February went far better for me due to a great combination of new experiments and a solid selection of games.

While both previously mentioned factors resulted in a big improvement, I felt that it was thanks to a bunch of things I tried that I grew solidly in February so that is what I will focus on first.

Things I experimented with

1- Giveaways.

There is a huge stigma on Twitch about doing giveaways. Many people will tell you to avoid doing giveaways for various reasons. Giveaways bring in beggars who don't care about you, it's costly and takes focus away from streaming and it's not sustainable long term. Any growth you get from a giveaway will evaporate the moment you stop them. And let's not get into the fact that some people view it as shameless marketing.

Absolutely shameless

But despite the apparently enormous risks of doing giveaways, they went remarkably well for me. To be completely transparent I started February without much success in the first half of the month, continuing what I had done in January. I had discussed the lack of growth on Twitch with my bosses at Logical Increments and they generously gave me a budget and told me to try my hand at marketing.

When it comes to giveaways I've seen many approaches, I've seen people open a giveaway for a very large item (like a good graphics card) for several weeks. Anyone can enter this giveaway but only 1 can win and it will be hyped up for a while to generate buzz.

The above method didn't appeal to me, I thought of a more frequent approach and decided to do a daily giveaway of steam giftcards worth $4. My opinion of it was that this way many people can win over many streams. It gives people a reason to come back (apart from my overwhelmingly charming personality) and it ensures that by the time it ends a lot of people will be happy. I could make 1 person happy with a copy of Xcom 2 worth $100 or I could make 25 people happy with 4 dollar giftcards given out everyday for a month. Which do you think is better? 

However, just posting "Giveaway! Subs get x5 luck and one of my socks!" in my title didn't have a big boost. It turns out that to get significant growth you must pair giveaways with...

2- Marketing

There's a lot of discussion on how best to market yourself on Twitch. Plenty of unspoken rules exist that streamers find out through experience (Don't mention your stream on anyone else's stream, Don't post self-promotion anywhere).

Those are generally good rules but they aren't part of the 10 commandments or the constitution. Believe it or not most forums and subreddits are accepting of self-promotion within reason. From my experience most subreddits are perfectly fine as long as you follow a 10:1 rule (10 posts or comments about the subreddit, 1 post about self-promotion).

The Subreddits I post on are usually r/free, r/steamgiveaways and r/GameIAmPlaying.

If you're unsure about whether it's allowed or not, always consider talking to the mods first to get some feedback.

3- MESL Dota

In september 2017 I applied to be a Dota 2 caster for the biggest tournament in Malaysia. I was pleasantly surprised to be involved in the tournament from the first match till the finals (a process that took about 5 months).

One of the things I did early when I joined was to ask to be an admin for twitch chat. I noticed that chat was quite active (viewers ranged from 500 to 2000) and having my name popup both on screen and in chat gave viewers a real connection. During matches I'd chat with viewers and if some of them mentioned a good point I'd bring it up on camera.

Reaching out to viewers was fun and beneficial, I got around 10 followers during the final day of the tournament. On my next stream 5 of them showed up and complimented me on my performance in the tournament.

The point I am trying to establish is that if you're involved in any twitch event, be as active as possible in chat. Reach out to viewers and make sure they know who they are talking to. It could be anything from being in a tournament to modding a large channel. Be creative.

Here's a short clip of me talking at the tournament.

Let's look at some numbers!

Before I compare the numbers to January I'll provide a few points that I find relevent.

1- I started my giveaways on February 18th, and it generated almost zero buzz or traction, I felt like it was a very lackluster result and tried to improve on it. 

2- February 21st was a big deal for me, I posted on the subreddits mentioned previously and saw a large spike from 11 average viewers to 20. It was very eye opening and a good reminder of how powerful marketing could be.

3- February 26th and 27th I didn't stream but I was very active in the MESL Dota 2 tournament finals I mentioned, when I streamed on Monday I saw another large spike due to a handful of followers from that tournament showing up. 

This is all nice and dandy, so let's compare it to January.

Steady Growth

A- Average Viewers

While the first half of the month I was averaging around 10 viewers, during the last 10 days when I went serious on my experiments, I started averaging 20 viewers and even hit 30 at one point. On a whole February saw a 50% increase in average viewers.

B- Chat messages

Along with having more viewers there is a big increase in chat messages per stream, going from 248 messages in January to 418 in February. Having more people doesn't just mean you get new guys talking, it also means your old viewers will have more things to discuss. 

However this is inflated to a certain degree, some people came to the stream, wrote "giveaway!" and left. While that was a small percentage of viewers it does add up and is worth mentioning to give a clear picture.

C- New followers

16 Followers in January vs 54 in February. By providing people with multiple reasons to return to the stream (Personality + giveaway) more people made an effort to follow and come back for more. Another factor of course is by merely telling the world I existed and posting on subreddits I got people following me because they now know I exist and they liked me.

D-Total Unique Views

 I was somewhat surprised this number wasn't a bit higher but either way there it is. In January I got around 750 unique views and in February that number increased to 1050. That's more than a 33% increase in people.

E- Turning Viewers into regulars

This is a summary of the % of how many of the viewers watching hit that follow button. 5% isn't incredible but remember that the number is low because it includes everyone watching me, from 10 month subscribers to someone who showed up for the first time.

Games I played

While I believe a majority of my growth came to my experiments, it is hard to ignore the games I was playing. After all the game is literally the meat of the stream. So let's take a look at what games were played in February.

I'm going to try to discuss the value of these games as a streamer, so don't expect indepth game reviews. 

1- Evil Within: At $20 and with 20 hours of gameplay, EW has a great amount of value. It benefits from having a camera due to being a horror game and allowing streamers to express themselves when they get spooked or engage with bosses.

Viewer-wise there is good potential for growth with this game, it's got tons of Twitch followers and it's plenty entertaining to stream.

I played Evil Within from February 1st to February 9th.

2- Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice: With a price tag of $30 and 10 hours of gameplay, Hellblade presents a less appealing option to stream. Due to being shorter and having a more convoluted story it may bring in less viewers compared to Evil Within (or so was my experience of it).

I played Hellblade from February 13th to Februry 19th.

3- Resident Evil 4:  The game I got the most value out of, with a $20 price tag and around 20 hours of gameplay, RE4 delived the most bang for my buck in February. Even before I started doing marketing I noticed an uptick of new viewers who loved the game.

RE4 has the same advantages of Evil Within but with the added bonus of a much more dedicated community. 

I played Resident Evil 4 from February 20th till the end of the month.

Conclusion

February was great for me. It involved a lot more work but it definitely paid off. It's clear that a lot of your success on Twitch relies on what you do when you're NOT streaming. It's easy to stream honestly, anyone can do that part, but being able to grow a channel is something else entirely and relies on your creativity to bring people in to watch.

With how great February ended and what I learned from it, I was able to continue this growth into March.

Favorite clip of February

I had two nominees for my favorite moment on stream, both were boss fights I highly enjoyed, one was from Resident Evil and the other was the ending sequence from Evil Within.