As you build your online follower count and engage in live streams, you will find streaming a lot of fun. Plus, streaming can be an opportunity to make quick and instant sales.
There are several ways to monetize live videos and earn revenue. With that said, many streamers aren’t successful at making a living strictly from their videos. It’s all about building an audience and converting the audience into income. Some can, and others can’t.
Here are a few strategies on how to make money streaming.
1. Donations & Tips
Someone can donate a tip during a live stream. Most live streaming platforms allow that, integrating these services into their software. YouTube uses Super Chats, where a viewer can tip in favour of having their messages pinned in the live chat window.
Twitch uses Bits, where a viewer can write a message that gets featured in the form of a Twitch Cheemote. Facebook Live Streaming uses Stars, allowing viewers to gift and send tips like other sites.
2. Live Shopping
Live shopping lets a streamer dive into influencer marketing and sells products through a live stream. In live shopping, you showcase a product and generate real-time sales for it.
A streamer can choose to live shop their products or do a live stream where they put on showcase another brand’s products. This is another way to create live event-driven content, creating real-time income through direct sales.
3. Ad Revenues
A streamer can incorporate ads into their live streaming in several ways. Pre-roll ads play when viewers click on the stream before the broadcast begins. Mid-roll ads play in the middle of your live stream, usually with the stream continuing to play in a smaller window.
There are also display and overlay ads that come up as banners on top of the stream. These generate small amounts of revenue a little bit at a time. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch all offer ad revenue in various formats.
4. Brand Sponsorships
As a streamer with a built-in audience, brands can sponsor you and pay you in favour of you promoting their product. They may ask you to state their brand repeatedly throughout a stream and offer a discount code, sponsoring the whole stream.
These brands may want other types of advertisements you can display physically or virtually during a stream. They might also sponsor content, such as a game developer paying you to play their game.
5. Affiliate Programs
Many streamers starting or who don’t yet have a significant audience might choose to engage in affiliate programs. This is when a company provides you with a discount code that a streamer provides to their followers.
Every time the discount code is used, the streamer receives some commission. It’s an income generator that only works if the discount code is used and you are referenced in the product’s sale.
6. Create Merchandise
This blends in with live shopping, but we’re giving it its category because it doesn’t necessarily need to be sold through a live stream. Streamers can create merchandise, launch an online store, and sell their goods to boost their income.
A streamer can sell mugs, plush toys, T-shirts, socks, and digital products like a wrong song or an e-book they’ve written. There are lots of ways to customize merchandise and merch selling.
7. Paid Subscription
A portion of streamers’ free viewers will convert into paid subscribers. These offer regular payments that provide a sustainable income you can plan around. YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook Gaming have subscription programs, although there is a criterion of minimums to meet before an account can be allowed to collect subscriptions.
To keep and grow your subscriber list, it’s important for a streamer to make subscriber-exclusive content and to give them a reason to stay subscribed.
8. Patreon Subscription
Patreon is independent of your streaming platform. It provides a separate revenue stream under the promise that subscribers receive exclusive content. What that exclusive content is is what will determine how successful your Patreon is.
You can have different membership stages, providing all sorts of exclusives that build upon the audience you are developing while streaming. Like your platform subscriber base, with Patreon, one must give much thought to free content, and what a streamer keeps behind their paywall.
9. Create A Pay-Per-View
Pay-per-view is live content that you sell tickets for. This can be for a special occasion once a month or quarterly as you see fit. A PPV is free to anyone who wants to buy a ticket, regardless of Patreon status or anything like that.
This is great for live events such as a gaming competition, a special all-day stream event, a concert, or a seminar. This is yet another way to monetize your audience and make money streaming.
