Hi everyone! I wrote a follow-up about how I started streaming on Twitch again after doing webcam. This is my personal experience, and I hope you’ll find it interesting. I tried to make this one a bit shorter. Enjoy reading!
1. How I First Discovered Twitch. My First Streams
As I mentioned in my previous article, I discovered Twitch long before I started doing webcam. At the time, I had just moved to another city and hadn’t found a job yet. Someone suggested that I try streaming and told me about a website where I could play games, people would watch, and I could receive donations.
So we bought a computer with pretty decent specs for the time (it was second-hand). That was pretty much where the equipment purchases ended, though. I think I even streamed without a microphone, using regular wired headphones (or maybe wireless ones). I didn’t have any lighting equipment either.
My games were Fortnite and Red Dead Redemption 2 (the latter had such a huge open world that it amazed me how you could sometimes just ride around on horseback for half a day). I had anywhere from 3 to 20 viewers at most, and there were absolutely no donations. On the bright side, I met an interesting guy through Fortnite, a streamer named Kolyan from Moscow (FakeFoxLive, if you’re reading this post, big hello to you!). Playing and chatting together on stream was a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, there was no profit to be made, so I got a regular job because I needed to earn money and have something to live on. And so, my first attempt at becoming a famous streamer came to an end.
2. Attempt №2
My return to Twitch happened at a time when webcam work had become routine for me, and I really wanted to try something different. I was introduced to Twitch as an alternative, with the explanation that you don’t have to stream games—you can simply chat with your audience. The only difference was that I wouldn’t have to get naked. Plus, I already had softboxes, some fun outfits, and I bought a microphone.
For my first streams, I decided to talk about my experience on Bonga in the IRL category. To my great surprise, viewers started coming in, chatting, and asking me questions. I was also much more active with the chat by then (my experience interacting with members definitely helped), and having a microphone and softboxes improved the quality of the stream. On top of that, talking with viewers about webcam work and other adult topics made my streams more interesting in terms of content. My viewership peaked at around a hundred people, and I received my first donations.
Of course, I also tried streaming games—Fortnite, as always, as well as The Witcher 3 and Skyrim—but far fewer people showed up for those streams. I can confidently say that becoming a popular gaming streamer is much harder than becoming a popular IRL streamer.
3. About the Software and Streaming Goodies
Besides the equipment, I spent quite a long time figuring out which software was best for streaming. At first, I used the classic OBS (I still had it from Bongacams), but at the time it seemed way too complicated for Twitch. You had to add all the plugins manually, tinker with everything, and so on. After Googling and watching other streams, I decided to go with Streamlabs OBS. A lot of features (like on-screen emotes) were already built into the program, which was very convenient for me. Later, I still figured out how to add web sources, so I eventually had channel point sound alerts and all sorts of alerts from DonationAlerts.
I really liked Twitch for this, by the way. Its customization options, especially the current ones, are great. First of all, you can customize your profile however you like—you’re really limited only by your imagination. Secondly, there are all kinds of fun features for your audience. I used channel points for sounds and various tasks. I also heard there were mini-games, but I never got around to trying those.
Overall, it was really fun to explore and experiment with all of this. A little later, I added my own homemade emotes. They were a bit wonky, but I made them myself.
4. About the Viewers
The Twitch audience is very diverse. There are some genuinely nice people who motivate you to keep streaming and support you both emotionally and financially. But there are also some hardcore toxic viewers and trolls, ranging from people who simply show up to make fun of you to those who decide to post copypasta containing prohibited content (that really deserves a separate mention). I never encountered anything this crazy even on Bonga. Maybe it’s because the audience there is generally older, or perhaps because most people’s primary goal is simply to enjoy themselves.
It was actually on Twitch that I learned what gachimuchi was, why a shit cleaner should be tough and broad-shouldered, and how Kappa differs from SmOrc and PogChamp. I learned that viewers enjoy weird karaoke songs performed by me and short skirts. And I learned that people don’t realize that Twitch isn’t a webcam site, and that if they want to ask to see someone’s feet, they should go to other websites (although I was a little wrong about that, especially after I discovered the Pools category).
In the next article, I’ll talk about money, platform moderation, the pros and cons, and my eventual transition to adult content.
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