How to Stream on Twitch for Beginners in 2022

Most people want to learn how to stream on twitch because Streaming on Twitch as a beginner can feel like a difficult and scary task. Online gaming should be a fun experience. How can you have fun and grow your Twitch channel? 

Going from a beginner to a successful Twitch streamer is a journey. You will need the correct equipment, a schedule, and interaction with your fans to help your stream grow. 

Below we will look at some tips to help you become a successful Twitch streamer. 

Equipment

It doesn’t take the latest and greatest equipment to become a Twitch streamer. People will tune in and watch if your camera is not the best, but you will need a good microphone. If you are setting up or just starting on your channel, pay attention to the sound quality and choose a microphone that will allow your fans to hear you. 

Personality 

It may be uncomfortable to be in front of a camera when you start out but you should let your personality shine. The more comfortable you are on camera the better your viewers will respond to you. There will always be some negativity. Don’t let it stop you from showing your true personality.

Find your Niche

Finding your place will be important to grow your channel. You don’t need to stream any unusual games to be successful.  You do need to find and stick with something that will help set you apart from the rest of the community. If you are a pro gamer or just a community streamer, find your place to help your channel grow. 

Multistream 

Multistreaming is broadcasting your channel to multiple platforms at the same time. You can live stream on Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube all at the same time. This will help decide on an option before you settle on a single service. You should try all of them to find out which service you enjoy the most before committing to just one. 

Open a YouTube Channel

Open a YouTube to help people discover and grow your Twitch channel. Many successful Twitch streamers have used a YouTube channel to help promote their Twitch stream. 

Scheduling

Setting a reliable schedule will also allow people to return to your channel. If you are always streaming at random times it may be hard for your channel to find a loyal following and continue to grow. You will need to set and stick to a schedule to allow fans to tune in when you are broadcasting. 

Fan Interaction

Get to know the viewers that are on your streams. Interacting with your viewers is a great way to help build a community and fan base on your Twitch streams. 

Perseverance

Most successful Twitch channels aren’t created overnight and will take time to grow. Enjoy your time streaming and interacting with your fans. Don’t become discouraged and quit your channel if you aren’t successful immediately. You can buy Twitch followers or buy Twitch Viewers to boost your growth on Twitch if you’re new.

Introduction to How to Stream on Twitch

If you’re already an established streamer or know what you’re doing, and you’re looking for either how to set up Twitch, or you’re looking for how to grow your twitch note, this article isn’t for you.

This article is more for people who either need more understanding of Twitch or may have been viewers for a long time. They know how Twitch works, but they want to become a streamer now, or it’s someone who has just heard of live streaming and is coming to the twitch platform for the first time. 

These are who this article is aimed at, especially if you need to learn things like obs. It’s for you if you need to know what that means, need to know what bits mean, or need to know what subs mean. If you don’t know what a chatbot is, then you’re in the right place, and we’re going to go through all of that in this article, okay?

An essential step is to get yourself to https://twitch.tv. It’s an effortless step, and some of you are probably laughing, but many people need clarification and realize you can access Twitch from the web browser. They think they have to download the twitch app, which you don’t have to do. You can access it anytime you want to by going to https://twitch.tv. 

Change of Themes on Twitch 

The default setting is on the light theme, which is what most look like. This is probably what your twitch page looks like. It’s precisely the same. You can enable the dark theme because you don’t like to be blinded. To do that, you just come up to the little button over there in the corner and change it to a dark theme.

Introduction to the Homepage

The homepage is engaging if this is the first time you’ve been there. You can typically see a list of recommended channels on the left-hand side. These are just people that Twitch thinking that you might like to see. They tend to be big streamers; once you’ve been on Twitch a little more, they’ll start recommending smaller streamers. There’ll be any game that’s popular right now, so like apex Fortnite or anything like that, you can browse here.

Creation of a Twitch Channel. 

The first essential step when you come onto Twitch is creating a twitch channel. Again that seems like a straightforward step, and if you’ve already done this, then feel free to skip to the next paragraph, but what you want to do is simple. You want to come up to where it says sign up now. That’s the top right-hand side of the screen. So you’re going to hit that button there, and then it will ask you for a username. Now, this is where a lot of people get stuck and struggle. I certainly did when I first came to Twitch, but I didn’t panic. You can change your username anytime you want to. It’s just advised not to when you commit more to the brand. You’ve been streaming for a long time because it can confuse your audience and be a bit messy.

So this doesn’t have to be your forever name, so don’t panic. If you might decide later that you want to change it, there is no problem. This is a temporary thing, but if you want to pick a name that you’re going to stick with, I suggest using an old Xbox gamer tag if you played an Xbox or PlayStation Gamertag on PlayStation. If you’ve just got a name that you go by, if it’s a nickname you know something like kind of familiar to you or something you want to buy online, or even if it’s like a part of a Minecraft server that you belong to, use any name like that.

Generate a Strong Password for Your Twitch Account

Any password you want, uh, twitch, is a little funny, so you must ensure it is secure. If it’s not safe, if you type in something like a generic password, it will say it’s too weak. This means it’s too easy to guess and won’t let you create your account. So you should carefully ensure that your proposed password is unique and that you have a strong password again. It can, surprisingly, be a little painful in the ass. You may need to create a new password that you don’t use anywhere else, so there you go. 

Date of Birth to Create Twitch Account

You have to specify your date of birth. If you don’t know, you must be 13 years old or older to stream on Twitch. So if you’re younger than that, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t advise making an account because I had a few friends that created their account before they were 13. Twitch eventually found out when they wanted to play for partners, and then they got permanently banned. That was the end of that story, so yeah, you need to make sure that you are 13 if you’re doing this.

Email Verification. 

Once done, it will ask you to verify your email address. To do that, you go to your email, copy the code sent, go back to your web browser, and then just paste it in there. It’s super, super straightforward. There we go. The email address is verified now we can log into the account. There you have it. Welcome to Twitch. We did it excellently. 

Getting the User-friendly Interface. 

You’ve now created your account again. It’s just going to ask you what you’re into, so it can give you some recommendations. So once you’re signed in, your account will look very user-friendly. You’ll notice that you can have a lovely profile picture, probably with any color.

Dashboard, Notification, and Profile Settings

You can see your notifications. So if someone gives you a subscription or something happens on Twitch, you’ll get a notice there. This is where you get whispers, and whispers are like DMS., so like how you private message someone on either Instagram or something like that, the same thing but on Twitch. So that’s your just little dashboard up there, and you obviously have your profile picture. 

If you click that profile picture, that will give you a load of options. You can either appear online or offline. So if you have friends you’ve added to your friend list, they’ll be able to see if you’re online or offline. Also, who you’re watching, so that’s what the share my activity is. 

So if you’re watching another streamer, they’ll be able to see it down there where it says recommended channels. Usually, there’s an option that says friends, showcasing what your friends are doing. If you want to go and watch something with them, you can do that.

You have the language section where you can change your language, and that is it. So there is one tiny little bar over there. 

Videos On Demand

Then you’ve got your channel, which will take you to your twitch channel. Move around to see that you have a video producer. So once you’ve been streaming Twitch, like on YouTube, you’ll have videos on demand or VODs, as they’re called on Twitch. That’s broadcasts or streams you have done that get saved to the platform. They will be saved for 15 to 30 days depending on average conditions. 

When you’re an affiliate, it’s just 15 days. If you pay Amazon Prime, you get an extra 30 days or a whole month of that storage. You have to turn that option on in your settings. So if you want to go back and watch it or someone else missed the live stream, and they want to watch it too, like YouTube, they can do that. 

The video producer allows you to control what the thumbnail of that video looks like. You can control what the title is, that kind of thing. Uh, we’ve got our essential creator dashboard. That’s basically where we can see all of our statistics. So you can see how many viewers we had. You can also view how many chatters you have and keep an eye on how much money you’ve earned. 

Affiliate Program on Twitch

it’s also where you can apply for the affiliate program. You get that email once you hit the main requirements. It’s where you can see the criteria that we need to get an affiliate. 

Basically, if you don’t know, Affiliate is how you make money on Twitch. Once you have reached a specific set of requirements, a twitch representative will send you an email, and if you want to accept that, then you can start making money on Twitch. Who doesn’t want to do that as a hobby? That’s cool. You can also do a load of different things, change your name; you can change loads of other bits of information.

Accepting Friend Requests on Twitch

If people send you a friend request, it will appear around the dashboard. It would help if you got a little red notification next to it. You can add people if you want to. No one does that on Twitch. I’ve not used it as a feature, and I only know a few people who use it. But just in case you want to, it is there.

Subscriptions on Twitch

Subscriptions are again another significant one. Subscriptions on Twitch are not the same as YouTube subscriptions. So a YouTube subscription is like what a follow would be on Twitch. So follow is free. It means that you like a channel and will go over here into channels you follow. So, this is where you get recommended channels. It will then give another section that will say you now follow channels. It’s a way to keep up with the people you like if you want to see them when they go live again. A subscription is actually where you pay the monthly money. So most of the subscriptions are 4.99 depending on the country you’re in. if you’re in England, it’s 3.99. 

The Use of Streaming Software with Twitch

So let me inform you how to get this all set up. We’re going to need our streaming software. That will allow us to stream from our computer and customize everything people see on Twitch. If you’re wondering how everybody streams and decorates their stream, this is how we will do it. 

Installation of Required Software

We’re going to download OBS studio. If you’re using windows which I recommend, click the window button, and then it’ll download it in the bottom left corner, and we’re going to run that in just a second. 

The second thing we’ll need is a twitch account because we’ll be streaming live on Twitch. So make sure that you have signed up for a twitch account at https://twitch.tv. Sign up for an account, and then you’re good to go. 

Once you open up the OBS studio, it should look welcoming to explore. This is a nice clean slate. Very quickly, I’m going to tell you what this is about. You should notice a preview screen. This is what the stream is going to be seeing. So this is how we’re going to be able to add things and move items around our game, webcam designs, and all that kind of stuff. 

Usage of Screens

Move to the bottom left corner and notice that little thing that says scenes. These will be the different scenes, like if someone has a just chatting screen, a BRB screen, or just the main gameplay screen. Then there are the things we will be switching between the sources. These are the individual pieces that are going to be popping up on the screen, so your webcam, gameplay, borders, and alerts. Everything like that is going to be one of the sources. 

The audio mixer is straightforward. It’s our microphone and our desktop audio. The desktop audio is going to be your gameplay and the game audio that comes from your game. These will make you understand the very basics of the obs studio layout. 

Twitch Settings Section

Go to the bottom right corner and click settings. We’re going to go to that stream tab. You should click stream and then click Twitch as our service. So make sure that Twitch is selected, and you should connect our account. The next thing to do is click connect account. It will bring up this little pop-up window in which we will log into our twitch account. 

Log in, and anyone should be able to see you on the other side once you’ve logged in. You’re going to click that little authorization button to allow OBS studio to connect to your twitch account, and you’re good to go. So from there, you’ll click apply, and now you can see that you have your twitch chat and your stream information there. You can take these, and you can drag them, and then you can put them where you want. So if you want your stream information on the left, you can click and drag it until it’s blue there. Now that your twitch account is connected to OBS studio enjoy your stream experience. 

Conclusion 

Displaying your personality, finding your spot in the community, and interacting with your fans will help grow your Twitch stream. It just may not happen overnight.