Twitch 101

Let’s start with the basics. What is a Streamer?

Anyone who creates content on Twitch is considered a streamer and plays a part in making the greater Twitch community complete. Streamers like you have the chance to grow your own communities, connect with an audience, and even earn money sharing what you love with the world.

As you grow as a streamer, Twitch provides new features, rewards, and ways to monetize your channel. Once you reach a level it’s up to you what unlocked features are right for you. Below you can see how you’ll progress from Hobby Streamer to Affiliate to Partner.

What are the levels of streaming on Twitch?
 

Hobby Streamer

Anyone can stream, but if you’re under the age of eighteen, make sure you have the supervision of a parent or guardian before you go live. From the second you start streaming you’ll have access to lots of great features on Twitch like Chat, the ability for viewers to follow your channel, and analytics on your Dashboard. After streaming for awhile you can also start working towards Affiliate status. The Achievements in your Creator Dashboard let you track your progress and once you reach the requirements, you’ll see a link on your dashboard inviting you to Affiliate onboarding.

Affiliate

Once you reach the Affiliate level you’ll have even more great tools at your disposal, including but not limited to a subscription button for your community to support you and a couple custom emotes. For many streamers, becoming an Affiliate is what they strive for. For others, it’s one more step on the way to Partner status. If Partner is what you’re working toward, the Achievements in your dashboard will once again help you keep track of your progress and let you apply to the Partner Program when you’ve reached certain requirements.

Partner

You’ve put in the time and met all the requirements for Partnership. At this point in your Creator Dashboard lies an invitation to apply to become a Twitch Partner. It isn’t easy to achieve, but there are many additional benefits that come with Partnership including even more revenue opportunities, emote slots, access to partner specific educational sessions and three free lifetime subscriptions to your channel.

*Meeting the requirements for Partner does not guarantee Partner status. Once you become eligible, you can submit a Partner application form through your dashboard but there is a possibility you are denied.

Unlocked Features

Not quite sure what all these features are? No worries! We’ll cover them in more detail later, but below are some quick descriptions to get you up to speed:

Follows

Viewers who discover your channel can ‘Follow’ your account. Followers can be alerted to when you go online, depending on their notification settings.

Chat

A chat room comes standard on every Twitch channel (you can hide yours from your view if you’d like). Chat gives viewers an easy way to communicate with you in real-time, meme it up, use emotes and cheer.

Subscriptions

Once you reach Affiliate, viewers can ‘subscribe’ to your channel for a set price per month for additional perks defined by you. We’ll cover what those are a little later.

Emotes

In addition to the vast library of global emotes usable on Twitch, Affiliates and Partners can create custom emotes for their community to unlock and use.

Ad Revenue

Partners and Affiliates can also receive revenue from running ads on their channel.

Custom Cheermotes

Cheermotes are animated emotes viewers can use in chat to Cheer with Bits (more on those later).

Extensions

Extensions add a level of interactivity to your Twitch stream. They allow your community a way to directly interact with you as a streamer. Extensions can show information about your current game and even help you earn bits. For example, the CTRL+ extension is a customizable toolkit to foster interactivity with your community: This toolkit includes info cards to share upcoming stream information, a polling suite where you can launch trivia or predictions, and a channel list builder to help your viewers discover other creators.

Subscriber Badges

Subscribers to your channel can use a customized chat badge to rep their fandom.

Partner/Twith Ambassador Badge

Similar to the verified check on Twitter, this allows anyone to quickly confirm that you are, in fact, who you say you are. These are only for Partners and Twitch Ambassadors. 

How do I stream on Twitch?

No matter what platform you feel most comfortable on, it’s easy to stream to Twitch. Whether you prefer to stream from a PC, Mac, Xbox, Playstation, or your mobile phone, you’re just a few steps away from broadcasting. Here are some hardware and software recommendations you may need to get started.

If you wanted to start streaming today this is a very simple checklist of what you’d need:

	Necessary?	Reccomendation
Internet	Yes	Good or Stable Internet
Streaming Device	Yes	PC, Console, Laptop, or Mobile Phone
Streaming Software	Yes	Twitch Studio, OBS Studio, or LightStream
Mic/Webcam	No	Laptop cam, mobile phone camera,
Lighting	No
Green Screen	No
Headphones	No
Audio Mixer	No

Sounds good, what should I stream?

Twitch is the home for a variety of streaming content, from Gaming to Creative categories like Music, Art, and Food & Drink to Outdoors and Just Chatting. What’s most important is streaming something you’re passionate about or something you can’t resist sharing with the world.

If you were to check out the most popular content on Twitch right now, you’d probably find creators playing games, making art, playing music, cooking, developing new games & software, taking their viewers with them on IRL adventures, and much more. Whatever you’re thinking about streaming, make sure to read the Community Guidelines to make sure it’s allowed.

Twitch-Tip: To make sure viewers can find your stream, always make sure to set your category, tags, and stream title through the live page on your dashboard. You can also help drive more engagement with a custom go-live notification!

Hopefully from this intro, you have a better understanding about Streaming on Twitch, but, this is just the beginning of your journey! Be sure​​ to continue check out more paths on the Creator Camp to learn more in depth information about many of the topics mentioned above.