Twitch - Otomo May Report 2018

Salutations and welcome to my 5th Twitch report of the year.

I had the absolutely brilliant idea of chronicling my growth on Twitch every month. You can check out what I did in April over here. But before we dive into what happened in May, let's give a short recap of what happened.

A brief history

Near the very end of April I was informed that my giveaways on a certain subreddit were wearing out their welcome. This is due to the fact that I would post a link to my twitch in these threads as a form of marketing. It's all very scandalous and you can read it here.

While the subreddit was fine with this when I started in February, a couple of users considered my near daily game giveaways to be spam. They reported this to the mods and the mods said that advertising of any form were bannable offenses.

This was quite a hit for my stream, I rely on my giveaways to supply 20-30% of my viewers a month and losing that was very unfortunate. And then there was another problem I had to deal with...

I do a daily steam giftcard giveaway on twitch, a $4 giftcard. I've been doing it for the last 2 months and it's worked out nicely. It's been a great way to give back a little to the people who support and watch me daily. 

Unfortunately, I had to stop doing daily giftcards in May. This is due to paying off some university debt. Compounding my lack of marketing with one less fewer reason to visit my stream added up to make May not as great as it could have been.

Still I had other strengths to rely on, like my charm and professional gaming skills. So let's see how much damage those did.

1- Average viewers.

During May I lost about 22% of my viewership compared to April. This is my first time losing viewers since I started documenting my progress. Despite the reduced average viewers, I think May was actually quite solid overall. 

I did only a handful of giveaways in May, so I expected some losses and they were fine. I was still at the same level of viewership as I was 2 months ago, I had a decent average everyday and it was a lot of fun.

All in all, it's hard to see it as much of a loss despite the dip in numbers.

2- Live Views

From the graph you can see that May had almost the same amount of total visitors as April. This was a nice surprise although there are a couple of important factors to remember. The first is that I had a very large (200 people) host, which helped a lot. There's more info on that host later.

The other factor is....

3- Streaming hours

I streamed quite a bit more in May than ever before, I've never streamed this much in a month, Almost 90 hours.

The extra hours of streaming helped make up for my lack of other activities. It also brings to mind how some streamers would stream for 6-8 hours a day, everyday. Those kind of hours are insane but do help a lot.

Still, if I had a choice between streaming for more hours or streaming less but with some marketing, I'd definitely pick marketing. Very long streams are quite tiring and it's far better to work smart than to work hard when possible. 

Games I streamed

There's a silver lining to every cloud, and in May I was able to get more accurate data on the value of some games. By cutting down on marketing, we can see each game's appeal to viewers. I will list the games below and how many followers they each have on Twitch.

It's very clear that even with my very solid regulars, some games are simply much better to stream than others. The picture below shows the fluctuation each game has.

Reminder though that every streamer and every channel is different. If you intend to stream these games don't expect the exact same results.

Battle Brothers (13k): I talked about this game in April and my thoughts on it haven't changed. It's a fantastic game with tons of replay value. I averaged 24 viewers and 42 browsing views during my 4 days of Battle Brothers, this is due to playing it a lot in April, which meant I had a sizable following for that game.

Slay The Spire (165k): I had really high hopes for STS, I would regularly be in the top 5 streamers for that game and yet... It really didn't deliver in terms of viewership. Averaging only 16 viewers and 40 browsing views for 7 days of STS. Neither my current audience nor passers-by considered STS a good game for me to stream.

RimWorld (163k): The biggest surprise of the month came from RimWorld. I hadn't heard much of the game before playing it and had little expectations when it won the poll. But boy did it deliver. Averaging 21 viewers and an insane 63 browsing views in just 3 days, RimWorld is an excellent streaming game.

Sadly I didn't quite enjoy my time with it and have put it on hold to stream in the future.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (3k): Now before you think that I suddenly turned into a good streamer while playing this game, I must clarify something. I had a huge host on that day, around 200 viewers came from Sheepiihd. This skews the numbers heavily and distorts the data I have of the game. Still, despite having an average of 38 viewers and being the #1 streamer for some time while I streamed this game, I only managed 7 browsing views. So it might not be the best game to speedrun if you're aiming to grow a channel. 

Also, major thanks to my friend Terror for this game, it was a fantastic experience.

Axiom Verge (4k): Another game that I received as a gift and enjoyed immensely. Despite being a very good game, Axiom Verge isn't a good game for new streamers to try. It has a tiny community and though I was the only person streaming it for 7 days at a decent average viewers of 21, I only got 13 browsing views.

But it's a very fun platformer and I wanna thank my friend 514 for this game.

Conclusion

May felt like the first month this year that was "different". I had to refocus my efforts into new yet familiar things and approach streaming in a different way. It felt like a more back to roots approach for me, the same way I streamed last year where I didn't try to reach out to new viewers and focused more on streaming for streaming's sake.

It was liberating to just stream and not worry about anything else. I had a lot of awesome streams in May and some streams that I was able to sit back and think "What could I have done better?". I was also pleasantly surprised to know that if I ever stuck to streaming just 1 game, like Rimworld or Battle Brothers, I could probably make it as a streamer.

Still, I have goals I aim to achieve this year, and I won't reach it if I don't try a little harder. So I'm looking to make June my best month for streaming ever.

So stay tuned and check this blog regularly....next month when I have the june update. Till then, thanks for reading and let me know what you thought of this month's recap.

Favorite Clip 

Trying to survive while panicking in Bloodstained was incredibly fun.