No one becomes a famous streamer by coincidence. With our guide to streaming you will get everything you need to become the next star amongst the streamers.
Introduction
Welcome to Nordichardware’s guide to streaming! The goal with this guide, made up of several parts, is to give you all of the tools you need to jump into the world of streaming or to take your channel to the next level. Remember that we only provide you with the tools you need and that it is up to you to keep the viewers on your channel.
Wether you’re completely new to streaming or if you already have created a channel on YouTube or Twitch, and regardless if you’re aiming for livestreams or recorded videos, this guide will help you on your way to the stars.
This guide has 15 planned parts so far and this introduction is the first one. After today we will publish a new part every Saturday and we will talk about everything from what you need, and don’t need but might find useful, to getting your own channel up and running. Remember that YOU are the main attraction on the channel and the returning viewers mostly come to see you and your channel as entertainment. It is what you do, that makes the viewers stay.
What is streaming?
Streaming is more or less like a live show where you are the main entertainer. Maybe you’re playing a game or creating something original that the viewers can watch and you can also interact with your viewers by responding to their chat messages and maybe even invite them to play with you at times. Feel free to visit Twitch to look at some streamers. Twich is a webpage dedicated to streaming. Another alternativ could be to record your gaming session and then uploading it to Youtube after some editing. Youtube also supports live-streaming and you can even live-stream directly to Facebook after some tweaking. Facebook is fairly new to this so there are some limitations that we will talk about later in the series.
Attitude
YouTube and Twitch are two of the existing platforms for entertainment and your new job is to entertain your viewers. It’s not all about playing the latest games but more about giving your viewers a unique experience. You need to stand out from all the other streamers.
The most important thing you can do before you start your journey is to write some guidelines about how often and how long you are going to be active in your stream. These guidelines are good to have with you in both ups and downs. They will be really useful in the downs because then it is crucial that you chin up and don’t start to stream less than usual because that could cause even the most loyal viewers to leave.
A good standing point is to always start your life as a streamer without any major goals to begin with. If you aim too high when you start out, you might have so high demands on yourself that you will have a hard time keeping your enthusiasm intact. There will be ups and downs and that goes for all streamers in the world. After 6-12 months you can start setting up goals and milestones on the way to the goal.
Here is a list with some pointers to summarize what mistakes new streamers usually make.
- You will not become famous or rich without effort. All big streamers have worked their way to the top. Almost everyone started where you are now.
- Nothing is free. If you want to get freebies you need to show the manufacturers that you deserve them. No one will send you free stuff without getting enough exposure.
- Be yourself and be honest. Your viewers will see right through you.
- Do this because it’s fun. That will help you in the long run.
Language and viewership
Another very important thing to have in mind is to keep talking and speak your mind about what you do and why you do it. This will make the viewers feel like a part of your gameplay. There are exceptions to this, of course, but remember that you will need to entertain your viewers one way or another. Try to answer the questions posted by your viewers in the chat. This is especially important when you have a small amount of viewers and will make them feel that you actually care about your viewers.
By using English you widen the amount of viewers you can reach out to and you don’t need to speak it fluently as long as they can understand you. Your accent can be what makes you unique. You are of course free to use any language but that narrows the target audience.
Inspiration
The first thing you should do after writing your guidelines is to watch other streamers for inspiration. What is it that they do to attract viewers? What can you improve on? Can you find a unique way of your own? Below is a link to the top 100 streamers on Twitch and a link to the YouTube channels with the most subscribers.
Next Week
Now that we have completed the introduction we have officially started this guide to help you become the next big streamer or YouTuber. We will continue this guide with in-depth articles and next week we will talk about hardware and software requirements. We will also show you how to check your computers limitations when it comes to streaming. We will look at different solutions when it comes to streaming and how they will affect your computer.
NordicHardware’s Streaming School is presented together with MSI.
All puplished parts of our School of Streaming
- NHWs School of Streaming Part 3: Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) & XSplit Broadcaster (8/14/2016)
- NHWs School of Streaming Part 2: Technical Requirements (8/7/2016)
- NHWs School of Streaming Part 1: Become a streaming professional (7/29/2016)
