The Best Way to Grow as a Streamer? Stick to One Game

According to statista.com, there were 9.52 million active streamers on Twitch in February. That’s a crazy amount! So for any new streamer, just starting your stream and expecting a bunch of new viewers to come in randomly is not going to happen.

No viewer will scroll through thousands of streams, to the bottom of the list of a game directory and click on a random streamer with just 1 viewer.

That is especially true if you want to be a variety streamer. A lot of viewers follow a streamer for one specific game. That’s even true for big streamers. If you compare their viewer base when streaming their main game, versus some random game, you will see that even those have a lot less viewers. How do you think that would affect a smaller channel with less than 10 viewers?

So a good way to grow your viewer base, grow a community and make a few people stick around even when you are not playing the game they followed you for, is to stick to one game. But of course, just playing your game day in and day out probably won’t get you far. It’s also important to interact with the game’s community. It’s always helpful to check out other streams and making friends with them. Your channel getting raided is possibly the best way to get a bunch of new followers and potentially regular viewers.

Also check out some Discord servers. There are a lot of Discord server that allow you to advertise your stream. Doesn’t really matter if it’s your favorite streamer’s Discord server, a server specifically for the game you want to grow in, or even your own server. Making your own Discord server is always a good way to interact with your stream community. You can make announcements whenever you plan on doing something, you can setup a notification channel for when you stream, so they won’t miss out, or you can simply just talk to them. It’s always more fun if you know your viewers a little bit, maybe make some friends with them, instead of just seeing them as viewers.

Having a schedule is also really helpful. Viewers like to know when to expect your stream. No one is forcing you to stream every day, but if you start your stream on 2pm the one day, and then at 10pm 3 days later, it’s unlikely that you will get the same people watching you, and potentially just less overall.

But of course, just playing one game for months on end is not fun. While you should mainly stick to one game, just to grow your viewer base, switching things up to not get burned out is really important.

A good way to do that is to maybe have a special day, where you do something completely different. Maybe just have a schedule like: Stream your main game 4 times a week, and a different, casual game 1 time a week. While you will still have a lower viewer base than when you stream your main game, I promise you, that some of those new viewers you made from your main game, will stick around watching you play a different game, because they got to know you and just enjoy you as a person.

You could also start your stream off with a different game, and then switch to your main game in the middle of the stream. But of course, then it will be difficult for your viewers to know when you switch your game. Twitch won’t give them a notification when you switch games, and you would just lose out on the viewers, because they will just think that you played the other game the whole stream. That’s where CationCrew is really helpful. Either your viewers can sign up themselves to get notifications when you switch to their game, or you can set it up in your community Discord server.

So what did we learn from this article?

Stick to one main game to grow your viewer base, switch things up every now and then to not get burned out, interact with other streamers and the game’s community, use Discord servers.