If you don’t know the context behind “Again”, check below first. I have (once again), risen above the ranks and have been named a Twitch Affiliate. This means that I can monetize even more of my content, which is definitely great after 1) YouTube’s enforcement of COPPA in January 2020, and 2) Google REFUSES to monetize my new domain name…

How NOT To Run a Stream Group (And What You Should Do)

Today I would like to share my (relatively short) journey to get invited to the program, by ways of strategic planning and getting around the system.

How I Got To Affiliate

It all started with my Raspberry Pi, I wanted to see what it was capable of, so I got to tinkering with that, This was in June 2020. My first streams were as follows:

Streaming to Twitch/YouTube on a Raspberry Pi 3? – Yes I Did (Guide)

I streamed for 2 months straight from the RaspPi, and surprisingly, we were able to beat Pokemon Red! In the time being, I gained enough followers to reach the affiliate level, but not enough views:

As expected, I gained a bit of followers, but definitely didn’t break the 3 viewer threshold for Affiliate. That’s when I needed to kick things up a notch.

Establishing The Schedule (and Viewers)

Like I mentioned before, committed streamers are the most successful, and I don’t mean “drop your job for video games” committed, just “committed to being consistent” committed.

Okay, enough with commitment, basically I set it out to stream twice per week for an average of 1.5 – 2 hours per stream.

I got with some old buddies and decided to Live-Commentate NCAA Football 14 games every monday, dubbing it “Twitch’s Monday Night Football”.

Also, I would do an unscheduled stream every week. Although I’d rather schedule these if I could, I don’t always expect to have time to stream, but I did!

Slowly, more people got involved with my stream, giving me the very much-needed viewership boost I needed.

The Finishing Touch

I had the following stats a month after I began my actual streams.

• Average Viewers: 4.1
• Followers: 100
• Days Streamed: 6 / 30 days
• Hours Streamed: 13

To get my invite, I did what did any smart Jerry would do – I streamed from my phone for 30 seconds, enough for me to get credit for the 7th day!

And after all of that work (and a few moments like below), Twitch finally decided to send me the Affilliate invite:

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Roadmap to Affiliate (Summarized)

Yes, the strikethroughs are intentional (Twitch don’t see this plz I’m a good boi).

1. Get the follows first! I don’t care how! Much easier to knock this out first and worry about the other items later
2. Work on the viewership once you have the 50 follows:
   1. Ask your friends to watch your stream and play along with you!
   2. Have them join the stream voice chat (as long as they promise to be appropriate while on a hot mic).
   3. Play your stream while you stream from multiple devices (totally not what I did).
3. Once you have your viewers, plan out how to beat the stream requirements
   1. You should be pretty close to the 7 days / 8 hours needed for Affiliate, if not there already. If viewership is scare and you need a couple streams in, DO A VERY SHORT IRL STREAMS FROM YOUR PHONE, it worked for me.

Thank You!

Thanks to everyone who came by and watched my streams! Hopefully this means success for time to come! Feel free to check out my Twitch channel here: https://www.twitch.tv/jerrytechtv , or

join the discord at https://discord.gg/CT3pbme