A few weeks ago I was discussing with FacelessJim his Twitch account, and he casually mentioned that he had received some money from subscribers and gifting. This brought to mind a conversation I’d had with a student who was attending the local university and was in the seminar I was leading on building branding both personally and in business. Every week, there was a homework exercise where the students had to answer 5 questions about what they actually do, and their goals and aspirations. One of the questions asked was “what is getting in the way of achieving your goals?” This particular student answered something along the lines of “I have a huge following on Twitch, and I’m losing income because I have to come to classes to get my degree.”
This was pretty much my first introduction to Twitch, so after class I asked him about it, and how he made money at it. I knew YouTubers and bloggers could make lots of money, but wasn’t aware of Twitch. I got his user name, and went home, made a Twitch account, and watched his livestream. At this point I have no idea what the game was that he was playing, but I was really impressed by the number of subscribers and viewers that he had. Personally, I didn’t see the attraction of watching someone gaming instead of doing it yourself, but apparently it was a thing.
Anyway, after the conversation with Faceless, I read a few articles about Twitch, how to monetize it, and I started watching some of the live streams. What became apparent was the connection that they had with their followers, and the pleasure that Faceless and mastervara77 were getting interacting with each other and their followers. I had been quite concerned about them, as they had a really hard time during covid, and hadn’t recovered well from it afterwards. This was the happiest I’d heard them in a long time. I realized that if they could get more followers and subscribers they could actually supplement their income and eventually make a decent income from this. Faceless’ brother derives all of his income from being a YouTube influencer and podcaster. I don’t know how much he makes, but I know last year he paid more in income tax with 4 dependents than my wife and I paid together. Hopefully FacelessJim and mastervara77 would be able to achieve that level of success also.
Some of the articles I read mentioned to have a “hook,” or a unique focus to gain followers. I was watching them game one evening and asking some questions about the game, but also the sounds and effects that their followers were doing, and someone gifted me a subscription to the channel. It occurred to me that perhaps the hook could be me – teaching an old dog, er, geezer, new tricks, as I would be starting from basically no knowledge of gaming and what it involves. I mentioned this to Faceless and Vara, and they were very enthusiastic about it. It will be an interesting exercise for us going forward.
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Old Geezer Twitching 