Introduction

Twitch Streamers Make More Money Than People With Real Jobs In The Future
Twitch Streamers Make More Money Than People With Real Jobs In The World
Twitch Streamers Make More Money Than People With Real Jobs In The United States
Twitch Streamers Make More Money Than People With Real Jobs

With over 1.2 million concurrent viewers around the world, Twitch ad revenue is at an all-time high. This guide will walk you through the requirements, payout information, and all you need to know in order to maximize your channel ad revenue.

For those dedicated Twitch streamers who put all of their time and effort into their craft, it sometimes becomes evident that they can make more money streaming than they did at their previous occupation. Before making Twitch his full-time job, Michael 'Imaqtpie' Santana was a professional competitive gamer. Jan 18, 2019 The bottom line is: with more time and more focus, you can be a full time streamer and grow on Twitch. You may not make more money immediately, so make sure you have backup income. Going full time allows you to fill it with your passion and people love passionate people, but make sure to take care of yourself.

A Guide On How To Run, Manage, And Optimize Ads On Your Channel

What Are The Requirements To Run Advertisements On Twitch?

In order to be able to run ads on your channel, you’ll need to gain access to said feature. It’s really not that hard, all you need to do is to become a Twitch Affiliate and that’s basically it. This option was first introduced by Twitch in October 2019 and if you are an affiliate the option to run ads on your channel will be automatically available to you.

Type of ads on Twitch

Pre-roll ads – this type of ad are the video ads you see when entering a channel, similar to how other video broadcasting services are doing it.
Regular ad breaks – With regular ad breaks the streamer can decide when to show an ad during his stream. Up to a few months ago choosing to run a video ad during a break caused the streamer to disappear from the screen and the ad to appear on the entire screen, but with Twitch introducing the Picture-By-Picture feature, viewers can now see the streamer in a small window while watching the video ad. This new feature was received with a lot of enthusiasm from the streaming community around the world.

By default, channels on Twitch are opted-into showing pre-roll ads. In order to change this setting, the streamer will need to go to his channel settings and opt-out of pre-roll ads.

In exchange Twitch asks streamers to run an ad break of 60 seconds in order to avoid pre-roll ads, by doing so pre-roll ads will not show on their channel for 20 minutes.

How to Run an Ad on Twitch – Do’s and Don’ts

Twitch Streamers Make More Money Than People With Real Jobs In The Future

Do’s

At the start of the stream keep ad breaks to a minimum to gain momentum
Play ads whenever you go to do something or take a short break.
Run ads at an hourly interval to reduce viewer loss chances
Roll medium length ads, keep ad breaks up to 60 seconds
Let your audience know you will run ads and announce when you are going to have an ad-dependent or ad-free stream.
Set and fix your preferred ad-rolling keys on your stream deck or keep your Twitch dashboard open.
If you have a moderator, make sure they are feeling the right vibe for an ad break in the channel as well.

Don’ts

Don’t run ads when your current viewership is lower than your average.
Don’t use Pre-rolls, let new viewers appreciate the content before they see an ad
Don’t play ads when you are in the middle of content creation or entertainment.
Don’t change the length of your ad break, be consistent with your ad breaks
Don’t ignore your viewer’s wishes, and listen to what they say. If you hear complaints about too many ads think about reducing them.

How Much Do Streamers Make From Twitch Advertisements?

Twitch Streamers Make More Money Than People With Real Jobs In The World

How much do Twitch streamers make per ad? Well, that is based on CPM (cost per mille) and the CPM is determined by the following parameters (sorted by level of importance) :

Amount of con-current viewers
Geolocation of viewers
Viewers age and gender
Type of game you stream
Seasonality (Usually around holidays CPM will rise)

So it is obvious that ad revenue varies, and can move from $2 to $10 dollars per 1,0000 ad view impressions depending on the above parameters. It is also important to state that while a Twitch affiliate keeps 50% of the revenue, for partners it can change depending on how big of a streamer you are, with some partners keeping 70% or even 80% of the revenue.

Let’s look at the following example for a better explanation. You are an affiliate that streams 5 times a week and has an average of 500 CCV (con-current viewers) per stream. You show an ad every 20 minutes during your 5-hour stream and your target audience is mostly mature people that live in the US. With all of that in mind, during peak months (October-December) your daily income should be around $30. See calculation below:

We’ll take a CPM of $8 due to the demographics of the audience
$0.0008 X 250 views per ad = 0.2$ per ad (only 50% viewers because of adblock)
3 ads per hour X 5 hours per stream = 15 ads or $3 per day
20 streams a month X 15 ads per stream = 300 ads or $60 per month
50% of $60 = $30

The minimum Twitch ad revenue per viewer impression is 0.002 cents, and the maximum is 0.01 cents. Twitch ad revenue payments like all other payments from Twitch will be sent to your account 15 days into the current month.

At the same time, Twitch will only send out payments if you have a minimum threshold of $100, so if you didn’t reach the $100 threshold the amount will roll to the next month until you’ll reach the required amount.

A very important aspect of this is the fact that all of the calculations are based on general knowledge about CPM and not direct data from Twitch. Each Twitch partner receives an individual contract that details their personal rates which makes it hard to have an actual figure.

Twtich Streamers Make More Money Than People With Real Jobs

Twitch partners are also placed under NDA and therefore they effectively cannot disclose to anybody how much they actually make from ads.

Who will see ads in your channel

Basically, all of your viewers will see ads apart from viewers who are subscribed to your channel. These viewers will enjoy an ad-free channel so you should also think about what to show and speak of when you run a commercial break. Keep in mind that your most loyal users continue to watch and hear from you.

Ad-Free Streaming

Let’s talk about the option of having an ad-free stream and if it is worth running a channel with no ads.

Ads will generate revenue for you and most viewers are already accepting of the fact that ads run on streams, however, if you think about the big picture you may realize that having an ad-free channel might benefit you even more in the long run.

Twitch Streamers Make More Money Than People With Real Jobs In The United States

Channels with less or no ads at all tend to have more viewers, those viewers will convert into followers and subscribers, which as you may already know if you’ve read our guide on gaining Twitch subscribers, will generate revenue for you on a recurrent monthly basis.

Of course, you’ll need to take into consideration other revenue channels such as donations, sponsorships, bits, and many other monetization solutions when you think about how much ads are worth in your case.

Our recommendation is to not use ads on

Twtich Streamers Make More Money Than People With Real Jobs