Before You Do Anything

Who Are You?

Analyze your strengths and weaknesses, what are you particularly good at that would translate into good content when streaming?

What do you Want to Stream?

What is your goal? Don't say making money... What kind of content do you want to create and how does that align with your strengths?

Some popular streamer types:

• Gaming - Stream Games, try to stream early release or launch day games
• Education - Stream your Podcast
• News - Discuss Current Events or be a Citizen Journalist
• Music - Play an instrument, DJ, sing, etc
• Social - Hang out with fans, tell engaging stories
• Entertainer - Similar to Social, but a strong emphasis on receiving gifts or donations
• Adult - Similar to Entertainer, but an explicit version.

Why should people watch your Stream?

Think about your answers in the previous questions now ask why someone would watch your stream verus others.

When will you Stream?

Consistency is the key to retain an audience; pick days and times you can committ to streaming weekly. If you change your time, you will change your live audience. In the beginning you may want to try different times to find what works best, but ultimately you need to settle into a consistant schedule so people can form habits.

Time Strategies:

• Consistant Time - Retain Audience and Grow
• Random Time - Random Audience, you may meet new people but lose others
• Weekdays - Try to find a time slot after a similar streamer and pay them to raid you after their stream.
• Weekends - Depending on your audience demographics, weekends typically have less viewers.

Where will you Stream?

In general, we think multi-streaming is a great way to reach the most people, but one of those networks should be your main home. Typically that would be based on which network supports your goals and has the most likeminded viewers.

You can view the Network Stats to see which networks fit your content.

• Twitch.tv - Gaming, Social, and Music
• YouTube.com - Gaming and News
• Kick.com - Gaming, Social (Especially IRL), and Music
• Rumble.com - News, Religion, and Gaming
• X.com - News
• trovo.live - Gaming
• TikTok - Social

Some governments ban streaming sites and some streaming sites censor creators, you may need to pick a place to stream based on censorship. Here is a list of them: Creator Censorship.

Market Research

Now that you know more about yourself and the kind of content you want to create, is there anybody else out there already doing it? If so, don't be discouraged, this is actually a good thing because that means there is an audience for the type of content you wish to create! In addition, you can take a look at the type of equipment they are using to see if it would be a good fit for you as well.

If nobody else is doing anything similar to what you want to create, be careful! There could be a massive untapped audience out there, or it could be too niche and not be able to grow to a point that would be self-sustaining. You could try making a pilot episode and get feedback to see how you could branch out to attract a larger audience.

• Gaming - Browse Twitch and find a game you enjoy that has enough viewers to make it popular, but not so many that your stream would be buried below much larger streamers.
• Social - Since the category already has a lot of streamers, you may need to build up your social media and filter followers into your live stream.
• News - Make sure your stream title features breaking news topics that people may be searching for!

Equipment

If you have the budget, you can jump right into the equipment page and start buying gear that fits your needs.

If you don't have the budget, get started with what you have! Your phone is basically an entire production studio! You could also get creative and see if you could get sponsorships before your first show and use that to buy equipment.

Internet

Fast Upload Speed and Low Latency are essential to streaming in high definition. For this reason, Fiber Optic Internet is preferred along with a wired connection to your router (instead of WiFi).

• Fiber Optic Internet: If this is available in your area, get this! You should be able to multi-stream in 4K with a 500/500mbps plan
• 5G Internet: If you are near a 5G tower, this is often a faster option than Cable. Make sure your 5G plan does not have limits.
• Starlink: If you are far from the city, Starlink often provides the fast enough Internet to stream in 720P or even 1080P
• Cable: They usually advertise fast Download speeds but hide the fact that the Upload speed is 10 to 20 mbps which is too slow to multi-stream in 1080P

If you want to improve reliability or improve your speeds when faster options are not available, consider getting a router that can combine two different Internet providers. Personally, I have Fiber Optic Internet and if an outage ever occured my router automatically starts using the 5G backup connection so I am never offline.

Getting Started

Create Accounts

Create a new email address for your new channel and create all of the live streaming and social media profiles for your new name so you can be found everywhere, even if you only intend to focus on one streaming network or social network.

Create your graphics such as Profile Photo and Banner Image and make sure every profile takes advantage of the Bio and Links sections to direct people to all of your social media.

Software

To stream to your channel, you will need software that encodes your video and audio and sends it to the streaming network. You will need to watch videos on how to use the sofware you choose and load it up with your custom graphics to make the stream appear more professional.

• OBS - Free - Widely used Open Source Streaming Software that is Feature Rich.
• Rumble Studio - Free/Cheap - This is cloud based software that offers basic features for many to easily get started.
• EVMUX - Free/Affordable - This is cloud based software that offers many features.
• StreamYard - Free/Expensive - This is cloud based software that offers many features.

Generating Ideas

You need to come up with ideas for your stream in advance. You may not use all of your ideas in a single stream since you will need to go with the flow of your chat, but have a general concept to keep things interesting.

One way you can generate ideas is by using AI tools such as Grok or ChatGPT. Include keywords in your prompts that help it generate content in your niche.