Streaming Tips for Everyone from Beginners to Pros

Nowadays, more and more people are interested in starting a streaming career. The main reason is that streaming can be very lucrative, indeed. Aside from that, it can bring you fame and glory with royalties and benefits lasting a lifetime. 

Streaming platforms, such as Twitch, for instance, number more than 100 million monthly active users. Access to such an audience can be a profitable endeavor if you know what you're doing. But how hard can it be, you just play video games and record it, right? 

Quite wrong, actually. Simply recording yourself playing video games will get you nowhere. Not to mention that streaming involves lots of other content aside from video games. 

The key to becoming a successful streamer is in engaging your audience in a meaningful and unique way, aside from producing relevant and high-quality content. With that in mind, here are a few streaming tips for everyone from beginners to pros.      

Choose your niche

Streaming can be quite delicate. It's an entirely different online market with its own unique dynamics. Choosing to stream only the most popular games can turn to be a complete bust. 

As you might imagine, such games already have a plethora of streamers that are well-established in the streaming community who are covering all aspects of the games. If you want a good following, reliable sponsorships and good income, you'll have to find a specific niche where you can truly shine. 

That may not be easy but you can find something if you take the time to do some research. There's always a unique opportunity waiting in line if you're willing to find it. Every type of game has a target audience that is interested in the unique content related to it.   

Choose the right gear and bandwidth

Streaming is demanding hardware-wise. You really need a state-of-the-line, high-end PC to stream content in high resolution. Any audience will expect nothing less from you. After all, streaming is about capturing, encoding and uploading video and audio in real-time. 

Moreover, you might consider overclocking your PC for more performance, which requires better cooling. Therefore, you're looking at an investment ranging from at least $1,200 to around $3000. Also, you need good bandwidth. 

Your audience must see everything you see so an exceptional internet speed, especially upload speed, is of vital importance. Stream anything below 60 fps and people will start losing interest in your content. In other words, there can be no interruptions, downtimes, video glitches, audio interferences or anything similar in your streaming. 

Stream as long as possible

Streaming happens in real-time so there's no recording the video and editing it afterward so that you can upload an ideal product. What you do while streaming is what you get. Therefore, you should strive towards streaming as long as possible. 

That way, you can engage with your audience and encourage them to interact with you. You have to build a relationship with them so that they'll decide to contribute via donations and such. You might also consider equipping yourself with nourishing gamer drinks that will help you keep going. 

Streaming can be exhausting and you need to stay hydrated and focused to produce ideal content. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, engaging with your audience while focusing on gameplay can take its toll. No one wants to see you pass out in the middle of the stream, that's for sure. 

Create a persona or a personal brand

As mentioned before, the key to successful streaming is unique and relevant content but that's not all. It's also about you and how you present yourself to your audience. Therefore, try to create a unique persona or a personal brand so your target audience can relate to you on a more personal level. 

Which persona you'll go for depends on you and your audience but make sure it's something unique and interesting. Once you decide how all that is going to work, make sure you remain consistent with your choice. You'll have to act and behave consistently to make your persona come to life. This will help you attract a broader audience and even get sponsors interested in supporting you as well. 

Building a persona should also correlate with your interests and goals. Some people engage in streaming to have fun and share their enthusiasm with others, while some want heavy media attention and the benefits that might follow such exposure. 

Streaming can be both a fun and profitable endeavor. It's really no surprise why so many people today decide to try out streaming as a potential career path. However, streaming isn't easy despite how it may seem, so you'll need to put enough effort, time and resources into your channel so that it can become successful over time. Whether a pro or a beginner, it's wise to keep an eye on the basics so you don't make an unnecessary mistake.