How the luck factor builds a viewerbase for broadcasters on twitch.tv!
- Game Launch Days - whenever a new AAA game title launches, usually the stream in the top spot gets big viewership boosts from curious gamers who haven't purchased the game. This use to be a great method for building a viewerbase, but unfortunate this is extremely hard for a new streamer to break into due to all the variety streamers who jump from game to game.
- Friends with Benefits - having a established streamer friend who can give you a shoutout or host your stream constantly is a great way to noticed and build a viewer base.
- Exploiting / Rule Breaking - sadly this is something I will include in the luck factor, being able to exploit and break twitch rules with no consequence can build a viewer base depending on how viral it reaches out.
- Exploiting a multiplayer game - this is against Twitch's TOS / Rules but is very rarely acted on.
- Viewbotting - alot of the top streamers have used this to there advantage due to Twitch's stance in not knowing if its a broadcaster doing it or if its a viewer attempting to get broadcaster TOS'ed. Never the less thru out the many years you hear alot of storys of people abusing this and building a viewerbase then being able to discontinue the fake boosting.
- Giveaways / Loyalty systems - hardly any broadcaster on Twitch.tv is running legal giveaways. You need to have certain information and disclaimers for every giveaway you do yet hardly anyone does it. Same with loyalty systems tied in with giveaways, this is one of the biggest unethical business practice exploit on twitch.
- Copyright Music - many broadcasters use music which is not suppose to be rebroadcasted with out a license or with out written permission to use. This is exploited daily on many channels thru out twitch with no signs of any DMCA takedowns.
- Fake PR Stunts - being able to successfuly create a fake pr stunt and getting lucky it goes viral can build a crazy amount of traffic to your channel. If it's too good to be true it probably is applies to twitch.tv.
- Fake Donations - you know how someone received a 50g donation from someone random, then there friend got 20k, and another friend 15k and another friend 10k all from the same guy. Well guess what this is probably one of the biggest fake pr stunts that worked wonders for these broadcasters.
- Fake Swatting - sadly this has happened.
- Fake Crying - there is a growing amount of fake criers on twitch as of late.
- SEO / Google - One of the biggest broadcasters on twitch had huge traffic boosts from google due to savvy seo and links pointing to their .tv website. As more people heard about twitch.tv they went to google and search for "twitch.tv" (keywords), and this casters website was on the first page results / second page results for a very long time. The keyword twitch.tv is searched for over 700k times a month if not more by now. If you see the growth of twitch and compare it to the growth of this casters channel its has a very similar trajectory.
- Not sure how to explain it but there is some sort of loyalty usually happens during first discovery of a channel & twitch.tv. If the caster is remotely interesting, and it is the first time a viewer has gone to twitch, this viewer will most likely keep returning to this caster then others.
This is all that I was able to think of off the bat, I will add more down the line.
*Update on 10/6/2015 - Just saw something that appears to have happen for the Star Wars: Battlefront Beta. Battlefront is posted to be in open beta on Oct 8, yet alot of established streamers on twitch all seem to have received code invites to start streaming earlier on 10/6. As noted above being first or part of the group that gets to stream new AAA titles on twitch is a big viewership boost during the entry periods. This is not new for game companies to hand pick youtubers & media early entry, what seems new is game companies are now providing a batch of codes directly to Twitch and Twitch staff hands them off to selected casters. This is good for the established channels and bad for any new commoner or others who get left out.
