How to Make Money With Live Streaming: Proven Strategies and Production Techniques
Can streamers actually make money from broadcasting themselves playing games or showcasing a hobby? You bet! It just takes a little strategy. You’ve put in the time and effort to build a community on Twitch, YouTube Live, Kick or another live streaming platform. Now, you’re wondering how you can monetize your hard work. You don’t need millions of subscribers to start making money with live streaming — you can monetize your streams even if you have a small community.
9 Proven Strategies to Monetize Your Live Streams
In this guide, we explore nine ways to make money as a live streamer and start turning your live streams into a source of income.
1. Live shopping
Live shopping, also known as live stream shopping or shoppable live streaming, combines the best of e-commerce, social media and live video. Live shopping videos are live streams that promote and sell products or services to viewers. They’re just like regular streams, but with added features that allow viewers to purchase the products or services they see in-stream. You can make shoppable live streams whether you’re a brand with products to sell or a content creator who curates products from multiple brands.
You have three options for streaming live shopping videos:
- Social media apps with live shopping features: YouTube and TikTok both rolled out live shopping features in 2022. You can easily add your products to your streams.
- Dedicated live shopping platforms: Platforms like TalkShopLive, ShopShops, Amazon Live, Buywith and Popshop offer apps or web-based live streaming with shopping features.
- Your own e-commerce store: If you have an online store, you can instantly connect it to Restream. You have complete control over the products or services you feature on your live stream — you can add any URL as a QR code that appears on-screen during your stream.
2. Donations or tips from fans
Most live streaming platforms and websites allow you to make money by letting viewers send you donations or tips. It feels so gratifying when you realize that someone, somewhere, is appreciating what you do enough to send you a couple of dollars. They usually have integrated services or even their own virtual “goods” or “currencies” viewers can use for the transaction. When you receive a tip, remember to give a shoutout to the person who gave it.
Platform Comparison for Donations and Tips:
- YouTube: The main tipping service is Super Chat. Viewers can use tips to pin messages in your channel’s chat window. YouTube also lets users buy chat animations called Super Stickers, and you get a cut of each purchase.
- Twitch: Allows viewers to “cheer” using Bits, the platform’s virtual currency. If you’re a Twitch affiliate or partner, you get around $0.01 for every Bit viewers use when cheering.
- Facebook: The tipping service revolves around Stars, giving you $0.01 per Star. You have to meet Facebook’s eligibility requirements to enable Stars on your live streams.
- Instagram: Lets live creators make money with Badges. Viewers can purchase Badges in increments of $0.99, $1.99 and $4.99. Instagram doesn’t take a cut from Badges earnings, but Google and Apple deduct 30% of all in-app purchases as fees.
- TikTok: Uses virtual Gifts and Diamonds to let viewers reward live streamers. You collect Diamonds when viewers give you Gifts during TikTok LIVE streams.
Enhancing Engagement with Multi-camera Live Streaming
To grow your audience everywhere and look like a pro, consider upgrading your production. Multi-camera live streaming is when you use more than one camera to capture a single live stream. This way, you can provide a seamless experience with close-ups, wide shots, and interesting transitions. A multi-camera setup makes your video interesting and engaging because it allows your audience to view your video from different angles and perspectives, like:
- Understanding the whole scene with a wide shot.
- Seeing any interactions with a medium shot.
- Focusing their attention on the speaker with a close-up.
You might think you need expensive equipment or a whole crew to help you manage all the cameras, but you can still do it on a budget as a one-person crew. For example, 2 smartphones can be used on tripods, both of which feed to separate screens on the desk to enhance the viewers’ experience with multiple camera angles.
