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You have definitely seen at least one live stream even if you are not familiar with the concept. It is what everyone talks about these days. You could go live, talk about your ideas or your favorite movies, and share them with the world. People are now watching more live streams than ever before.
Fortunately, you can also make some money on the side. Of course, streaming itself will not pay you, but there are ways that you can benefit from this activity financially. In this article, we will be reviewing all you need to know before you start your live streaming activities in 2022.
Briefly explained, live streaming means broadcasting content in the form of videos and sharing them with the internet or people. Live streaming is all about you being you. You can live stream with minimum equipment, meaning you can stream from your phone, your tablet, your desktop, your digital camera, and anything that can share your activities with the people on the internet.
You cannot edit your live streams or make a special script for them. The more spontaneous it is, the better it will turn out to be. People are interested in seeing your real-time content, so you can even broadcast while you are shopping at a local supermarket or while walking in the street.
You can go live and talk about your favorite movies, your political or economic opinions. You can play the game you like and people love it even more to watch game streams. You can stream yourself playing an instrument or cooking. You can be yourself as much as you want. There is truly no limit to what you can stream to your audience.
YouTube Live is the all-in-one platform to go for if you want an easy-to-use place that attracts all kinds of audiences, including the type of content you are offering. Everyone knows YouTube and everyone watches it on a daily basis, so why not? You can record your live streams on YouTube and also let your audience search your recordings.
If you are familiar with Facebook and already use it, you have one of the best live streaming platforms ever ready at your service. You can benefit from your active status on Facebook and go live while everyone sees the notification on their news feed.
Everyone is used to watching live streams on Instagram, so if you know your audience, you can easily go live on Instagram. You can share your moments with your followers and beyond for an hour on this platform. Instagram also allows you to post a recording of your live stream as an Instagram Story so everyone who missed it can come back and watch it again.
If you are interested in games and you just want to play games and broadcast them to people, you can be sure that you will always have an audience. People love watching games on Twitch and you can have interactions with your audience using the commentary section. The most trending kinds of games on Twitch are e-sports and online multiplayer games.
If you are an active Twitter user with a specific audience who follow your work, your updates, your news, etc., you can always use Twitter to share information with them in your broadcasts. Twitter is full of people always hungry for more knowledge, so sharing your live streams can be a lot of fun.
Some of the platforms out there for streaming allow you to set a payment program or subscription on a weekly or monthly basis. YouTube, Facebook Gaming, and Twitch are some of the famous platforms where streamers do that. People can subscribe to you by paying a specific amount of money of their choice to help you each week or month. Even though this amount can be small, it is a form of passive income for your live stream channel. You may already know how famous and iconic the YouTube Subscribe Button has become. What thing to keep in mind is that in order to use these services on such platforms, your streaming account needs to meet some conditions first. For example, you might need to reach a certain number of subscribers or followers first in order to be able to set a membership or paid subscription option.
Another way that your viewers can contribute to your channel is by paying weekly or monthly on Patreon. Using this platform, you can give some of your donors extra perks and bonuses. Patreon is generally great when it comes to having your community of supporters.
A lot of YouTubers use this method, for example, the Best Ever Food Review Show on Youtube has different payment programs for its patrons. They will pay him the amount specified on a monthly basis, and in return have access to more content.
You can also earn some extra cash by having this feature enabled throughout your live stream on some platforms. For example, YouTube’s integrated tool, SuperChat, allows your viewers to send you highlighted messages in the comment section by purchasing the service.
On Twitch, as another example, your viewers can buy Bits and then, use them to give your Cheers. These Cheers will in turn give you a cent each. Tips are a great way to earn a small amount of money during your stream. This method usually does not bring you large amounts of money, but you do not need any advertising, and viewers generally do it to help you.
Let’s take DrDisrespect for example. As you can see in his livestream, somebody tipped him $4.99 and their message got highlighted in the chat.
You have definitely run into a bunch of ads during the time you watch YouTube. A lot of services and businesses prefer to have their ads on streams with lots of viewers. So you should have a considerable amount of viewers to benefit from ad revenue.
As a live-streamer, you have the option to set some ads during your show to earn revenue. For starters, it might not be much, but depending on how large your viewer circle is, you can earn more.
One downside to this method is that if you choose to have too many ads on your videos, your viewers might get annoyed and leave the stream. But if you have a large viewer base, having one or two ads should be more than enough to earn you satisfactory passive income.
Another thing that you can do when you are popular is reviewing products. You can contact brands and ask them to review their products. If you are comparatively new to this, getting confirmation from a brand or a business can be hard. But you should not lose hope. You should explain your area of interest and convince them that you can do it.
After you have gained confirmation from the brand or product manufacturer, you can mention them in your streams. You can come to an agreement with the brand on how to mention their product or how to endorse them. Some of the options are showing a banner, a picture, a description, or reviewing the product and telling people how you liked the product or service. You can even include some discount codes and persuade your viewers to buy them.
However, one important thing to keep in mind is that you should be loyal to your feelings. If you do not actually like the brand and you are only doing it for money, you should not even start. Your audience comes to you for a trustworthy review and you cannot risk losing them by blindly endorsing the brand.
An example of sponsorship can be seen in the screenshot below. Digital Foundry is having a live stream reviewing a product with its designer.
One other great way to earn some passive income is to use the affiliate programs of services that offer it. You can get a referral or promo code from the service and promote it in your streams to redirect people to that service. At the same time, the service will pay you some commission in return. This commission can range from 5% to 30%.
It is the exact same way that affiliate marketing works. Except, you can talk about the product or service in your live streams and actually persuade your audience. In this case, once again, it is important to know what you are talking about because all dissatisfaction from users will come back to you.
One of the examples of an affiliate program can be found in Mrwhostheboss’s channel on YouTube.
As you can see, he is talking about a website and encouraging users to use his code and get some discount. This method is fairly common.
A great way of advertising for yourself and making extra cash is to persuade your audience to buy your merchandise or as the public refers to it, your “merch”. Depending on the theme and topic of your live streams, you can design and produce your own merch and sell it on a platform like Amazon, Youtube’s merch shelf, or your own website.
You can also wear your merch during your live streams and achieve some automatic promotion. People will want to have the same thing as you have, and providing them with it, will definitely affect both the size of your viewer base and your monthly income. You can earn more than $2 000 a month by selling your products.
MISFITS, a team of streamers and influencers, have their merch on their own website. You can get as creative as them designing your merch store.
Other than the free content that you post on the above-mentioned platforms, you can give your live stream channel’s audience a sense of exclusivity. There are lots of things that can be watched for free to help you gain more viewers, but for your current viewers or members, you can create extra exclusive content.
For example, if you are creating a handicraft, you can live stream the product or tool that you have created and explain why you created it and how valuable it is. At the same time, you can post exclusive videos explaining how you made the tool, and then, having people purchase the required membership to be able to view the content.
Hacksmith Industries is a good example of such a method. They usually explain a tool that they created and then make some content only for their viewers, by the name of “Members-only videos”.
The first rule to using this option is knowing that people are going to want to watch those paid videos and they are not the same as the content that is already free on the internet. Using these paid videos, you want to transfer the feeling of importance to your viewers, so try to make them as special as you can.
Do you have a skill or profession in which you would be able to teach somebody? If you have any type of academic or software knowledge that you can teach some people, you can easily stream your lessons in return for payment.
It does not always have to be at an expert level, though. If you have learned things related to your own activities or if you have tips that you would like to share with people, you can also use this option. No matter how much of a newbie you consider yourself to be, you definitely have things to say.
If you are already running a live streaming channel, you definitely have tips for people who are just starting out on going live. You can share them with people and they will be more than glad to know them.
Take occultis_mysterium on Instagram as an example. She talks about mythology and her own knowledge of biblical creatures and stories. This is a great example of talking about your passions on your livestreams.
Your success in this way only depends on how well you can transfer your data to viewers, how much they trust your lessons, and how beginner-friendly or how professional your lessons are. It all depends on the theme of your activity.
All of the things mentioned can be achieved through a website of your own, yet even simpler. Only you know exactly what you want from your live streaming career. So, you can always redirect your audience from other platforms to your own website. You can offer paid memberships on your website, have it especially designed for you so you can easily interact with your audience.
You can offer your merchandise and have all the links that you want on your own platform. You can avoid all the terms and conditions of other platforms and manage your content yourself. Generally, having your own platform gives you a sense of independence and creativity.
Conclusion
In this article, we have mentioned 8 proven ways to earn money online by live streaming. They can all work only if you dedicate enough time and energy to your streaming career. You need to keep in mind that they will not make you rich in a week. You need to be genuine and just keep doing what you like, and eventually, people will like watching you too.
