Is it better to be a YouTuber or a Twitch Streamer?
YouTube and Twitch are both really big names when it comes to media sharing platforms.
Even though they both work in completely different ways, where YouTube is a video sharing site where you upload videos to a channel, Twitch is almost entirely focused on live, 1-to-1 interaction streams, they are considered solid competitors, and a lot of times, people are confused as to which platform will be better for them.
One rule of thumb would be to check what others are doing, picking the same genre as your content, research around both the platforms and see which one is getting more engagement for your style of content because after all, the one major deciding factor for how much revenue you get off of any of them, is audience engagement.
Do you find it easier to earn revenue on Twitch or YouTube?
Before we begin with a deep dive as to which one is better, we first need to understand how earning revenue works on both Twitch and YouTube.
Starting off with Twitch, twitch is primarily centered around live streams and thus its revenue system is streamlined for live streams.
The first and the most basic way to earn while live streaming is donations.
Donations, whether to highlight a message or do something else are a great way to encourage people to donate. All the donations you receive will be credited to you with a small cut that your donation provider might take as fees.
And then, you can run ads on your stream, which also generates revenue. Lastly, there’s the option to subscribe to a channel that generally has three Tiers-
Tier 1 Subscription: $5
Tier 2 Subscription: $10
Tier 3 Subscription: $25
The streamer can set different perks for different tiers like chat badges, exclusive emotes and more.
A thing to note here is twitch charges 50% on subscriptions, which means for every $5 subscription, you receive $2.5.
Now for YouTube, we have covered how YouTube revenue generation works previously a lot, but we’re going to go over it once more in short.
YouTube has a ton of different ways to earn revenue, starting off with ads, which is as simple as “YouTube runs ads on your video, and you get money for it” which comes to around $3-5 per 1000 video views.
Then, there’s a join button that YouTube recently introduced which is similar to Twitch’s paid subscription where you pay to be subscribed to a channel and you get exclusive perks in return for it.
Not just that, YouTube too supports live streaming and has its own donation system called SuperChat.
But, on both Twitch and YouTube, you can’t just start earning as soon as you create a channel.
YouTube has monetization criteria that need to be met first before the channel can be monetized, that is, 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours in the last 365 days.
On the other hand, Twitch has an affiliate program which you need to be eligible for in order to start earning on twitch, that is,
At least 500 total minutes broadcast in the last 30 days
At least 7 unique broadcast days in the last 30 days
An average of 3 concurrent viewers or more over the last 30 days
At least 50 Followers
Now even though twitch’s criteria isn’t as difficult to meet as YouTube’s, earning on YouTube is a lot easier compared to Twitch.
This is all because of the fact that you can only earn while you are streaming live on twitch, which makes streaming consistently very important if you’re looking to earn well with Twitch.
One more thing is, while you stream, because of timezones, people from different regions can’t be present on your stream.
While on YouTube, and uploaded video continues to earn indefinitely as long as it continues getting views, and even though you need to be consistent with uploads on YouTube too, it’s far easier and more manageable than streaming on Twitch and then, you can always live stream on YouTube too.
But a lot of people fail to meet the criteria to even monetize their channel in the first place. But don’t worry, we got that covered! Buy a monetized YouTube channel or, if you already have a channel, Buy 4000 watch hours and 1000 subscribers.
Do Twitch Streamers earn more than YouTubers?
A lot of people ask us this question, and honestly, there’s no exact answer to this question.
Because both YouTubers and Twitch streamers keep their incomes a secret, it’s hard to put a finger on who earns more.
What we are definitely sure about, is that no matter which platform you choose, at the end of the day, it all comes down to your audience engagement.
The more viewers you get, the more you earn regardless of which platform you are on.
And that’s it for today folks, Stay tuned for more power-packed content.