Twitch Helps Streamers Get Paid With New Affiliate Program (Updated)
Update, 4/24/17, 12:15pm PT: Twitch announced that the first invites for the Twitch Affiliate Program are going out now. The company said invitations will be sent over several weeks, and that there's no application process involved; if you qualify for the program, you'll be invited to join it. Invitations will be sent in four ways--via email, with a notification on the Twitch website, and by two announcements in the streamer dashboard .
Original article: 4/21/17, 12:40pm PT:
It's not always clear how to go from "amateur broadcaster" to "professional streamer." Twitch recognized this basic truth with the announcement of a new Twitch Affiliate Program, which will let you earn some money as you continue to expand your audience, even if you haven't reached the popularity required to officially partner up with the service.
Twitch said in its announcement that the new Twitch Affiliate Program "provides a stepping stone to bridge the gap between emerging streamer and Twitch Partner." Right now becoming an Affiliate doesn't offer much--it merely lets people Cheer with Bits, animated emoticons you purchase from the service--but Twitch said it will soon expand to include "basic versions" of its subscriptions, game commerce, and advertising revenue sources.
Partners will have access to more tools than Affiliates. Twitch said that Affiliates will be able to use one subscriber emote, for example, whereas Partners will be able to choose from a set of 50 emotes. Partners will also receive a new Verified Chat Badge (which looks a lot like Twitter's verification badge) to further differentiate themselves from audience members, enthusiast streamers, and Affiliates within stream chats.
The differences between Affiliates and Partners is made even clearer in this comparison:
The addition of Affiliates makes it a little easier to follow the road to Twitch stardom. It's easy for anyone to stream games, sure, but it wasn't quite clear how to turn that passion into a career. Affiliates should make it easier for Twitch to encourage amateurs to improve the quality of their streams, get more people to visit the service, and produce copious amounts of content that it can monetize better than videos shared by amateur streamers.
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Here are the criteria Twitch is using to figure out who can become an Affiliate and who's still an amateur, at least to start. You must have:
- At least 500 total minutes broadcast in the last 30 days
- At least 7 unique broadcast days in the last 30 days
- An average of 3 concurrent viewers or more over the last 30 days
- At least 50 Followers
Twitch said in its blog post that it will start inviting qualified streamers to the Twitch Affiliate Program over the course of "several weeks." The company didn't offer a firm release date for the new program--it merely said that it will launch "very soon!"
Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.
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dstarr3 You see stuff like this, and it really is obvious that Twitch is very interested in benefiting their creators. Contrast that with something like YouTube, and...Reply -
BulkZerker "Twitch is very interested in - proffiting from - their creators. Contrast that with something like YouTube, "Reply
FTFY
YouTube seems dead set on killing what it is and becoming a a TV network. But on the internet. -
dstarr3 Well, of course Twitch is in it for profit, everybody is in everything for profit. But Twitch's approach is by taking care of their content creators, encouraging and stimulating growth. YouTube's approach is taking care of their advertisers rather than their creators, which is extremely detrimental to not only the people that create the content, but even to the people that consume it. Little guys stay little, big guys stay shills. But hey, so long as the big guys shill enough, who needs the little guys to grow, right?Reply -
genz We say "taking care of content creators" and what we really mean is "commoditizing wannabe content creators by giving them a game-like path to success".Reply
Real content creators will look at this and say 'cool', realizing that there will be so many more flooding the bottom of the barrel now and Twitch will need to significantly upgrade it's discovery tools to stop Twitch from becoming an early Apple App Store-like oligarchy which spells eventual doom for the platform.