Phishing scam streams

How to avoid getting caught in a phishing scam stream.

So no platform is safe from this type of a scam. A phishing scam is basically fraudulent attempts to obtain sensitive information like username, passwords and in the Twitch world of things it will include video game accounts and virtual goods.

I just recently hear of a Twitch viewer failing for a phishing scam. Here is what happened, they are fans of 'Old School Runescape' and noticed a streamer on Twitch with around 2,000 viewers playing that video game. This Twitch channel had a profile panel with information linking to a phishing website that looked exactly like the runescape forums.

So what happened was the viewer, checked out the Twitch's streamers profile, saw the link to what they thought was the official forums because the streamer wrote in the profile panel section they were quitting the game and giving away their items on the supposed linked forum thread. So the viewer thought oh cool, this streamer is giving away his stuff let me go check it out. So they clicked on the link that was in the profile, which was made to look exactly like the runescape forums. They put in their runescape account information and seconds later found themselves under a DDOS attack.  During that time frame their runescape gold, items were all stolen.

So here is what you need to always remember to prevent this exact sort of thing happening to you.

• Do not click on any random links in chat, whispers or profile sections for channels.
• Note even banners or streamer panels can have links pointing to external websites.
• Preview All URLS by mousing over, if they are short URLs do not trust them at all.
• If you trust the streamer and believe the links are ok, double check to make sure they are going to legitimate sites.  Sometimes hackers do extremely tiny changes to accounts such as changing out a link and just one link on a webpage leading to a phishing site.
• Remember a old saying, if its to good to be true, it probably is, if someone is offering something as a giveaway or promotion that wants username information, emails and other things make sure to verify the legitimacy before supply any personal information.

Majority of phishing scam that occur on the twitch platform are basically private messages text offerings with shortURL links that go to phishing webpages. This was the first time I heard of a stream being used as a way to phish.


Do you know of any phishing attempts happening on the Twitch platform? If so please share them in the comments section below.

Embedding clips on twitter

Guide on how to embed twitch clips onto twitter.

So you want to put a twitch clip on twitter as a embed? Here is a simple way to do it by downloading the clip and reuploading it into twitter.  This method can also apply for facebook pages. So if you want to upload clips onto both twitter and facebook, substitute step 3 with posting on facebook, its very similar.


Step 1.

Go to the clips section on the dashboard and select clips of my channel.

Here is a URL shortcut ( https://dashboard.twitch.tv/u/STREAMNAME/content/clips/channel )  to this section, just make sure to insert your channel name in the STREAMNAME spot.

Step 2.

Click on the download button next to the clip you want to save. Make sure to save the video clip to a location you can easily find such as your desktop.



Step 3.

Now that you have your video clip downloaded, you can use it to upload into twitter, which will create it as a embed. Go to twitter, then to tweet creation window and click on 'Add photos or video' button, select the video clip file and upload it. Write out a tweet description with your hash tags and tweet it out.

Update - Twitch now has the correct twitter card information for clips, so it automatically embeds and links back to your twitch channel. You can use the clips URL and just put that into a tweet and it should work. So you will have to decide either on downloading and re-uploading or just using the share to tweet link.

I recommended to keep downloading your clips and then uploading them into twitter.  Using twitter's video system is better for growing and discovery opportunities on that platform. Social media platforms like facebook and twitter generally rank content better if its on their website, not embeds or links to other sites.

how to get twitch viewers

Guide on how to get twitch viewers for your channel.
One of the hardest aspects of streaming on a large platform like Twitch is acquiring viewers. Here are some tips, guides and other helpful information to tackle that problem.  We will be sharing traditional and non traditional ways for getting viewers on twitch.

Guide List:

• The basics to viewership building - this guide includes the generic methods for getting more viewers.
• Luck Factor -  covers game day launches, friends with benefits, rule breaking and other topics.
• Embedding - one of the most powerful ways to obtain viewers is by embedding and syndication. 
• Crowd Sourcing - getting viewers to contribute 
  
• This guide overs the basics in getting the embed code for your channel.
  • Wordpress - covers how to put your stream on a wordpress website.
  • Blogger - covers how to embed your stream on blogger / blogspot.
  • Advanced Embed Code options - lists more parameters and settings for embedding.
  • Twitter - this guide is how you can embed your stream inside of twitter. Twitter users will see a video player window to which they can press play on and your stream will start showing up inside of twitter.  This is extremely powerful if used correctly with the right hashtags.

Other key information:

• Reddit - one of the biggest forums / discussion websites in the world. This is a huge traffic potential for any streamer. If you primary in one type of game and they have a subreddit, make sure to visit that subreddit and contribute to the discussion. If the subreddit allows videos and stream posts make sure to create one for your channel. Follow the rules do not just randomly post your link as a dump and run.
• Youtube - every streamer needs to be on youtube, make sure to post your highlights and vods to your youtube channel.
  
• Facebook - create a fan page for your channel on facebook, make sure to post video clip highlights, events and other important information for your channel. More detail guide under construction.
• Steam Group - create a group on steam for your channel. More detail guide under construction.
• Discord - get a discord server setup for your channel. A great way to continue the chat and community off of Twitch. More detail guide under construction. 
• Free Game Keys - guide on how to sign up for free game keys via various specialized platforms. 

Discontinued Suggestions and Info:

• Gamepedia - guide about how Twitch is using their wiki network to generate views for channels. Update: 7/26/2019 --  Gamepedia has stopped promoting twitch streams as a autoplaying embed on their wiki platform.  Gamepedia is also not part of Twitch/Amazon anymore since the start of this year.
  • Top Game Influencer - if you are a affiliate or partner, you will want to read that news post since a majority have no idea this is occurring in the background. 
  • Free Channel Traffic / Free Views - detail guide on how you can use gamepedia to grow your channel.

How to make twitch emotes

Guide on how to make twitch emotes for your affiliate or partner channel.

Emotes are tiny images that show up in chat when subscribers use specific commands. Creating very unique emotes is a great way to add value to your channels sub.

Here are some beginner steps on creating custom emotes for your channel on twitch.

Step 1

You need a program like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP to get started. GIMP is free to use and can find it at the following URL: https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

Step 2

After getting a program to create emotes, you need to know some of the rules and guidelines for emotes on the twitch platform. Here is a quick rundown list:

• Image needs to be in a .png format
• Need to create 3 PNG files for each emote in different size formats
  
  • 28px x 28px
  • 56px x 56px
  • 112px x 112px
• File size can not be over 25kb.
• Background needs to be transparent
• Follow Twitch Community Guidelines and TOS
  
  • Do not create images that intend to harass, hate, have extreme political phrases, are vulgar, contain drugs, sex and any sorts of nudity
• Rules / Restrictions
  
  • Animated Gifs are not allowed
  • Single Letters are not allowed unless its part of branding
  • No emotes based on Twitch global emotes, expect for Kappa or VoHiYo derivatives.

Step 3

Open up the program you have to create emotes and start with a canvas size of 112px x 112px or larger. Think of creative elements that encompass your streaming community and start creating a emote based around that idea. Create a color palette that you will use for all your emotes in the future. Palette should be similar to your brand logo image to keep it consistent  and recognizable.

If you are not very creative in this department think about using a 3rd party.

Step 4

Once you have created the emote, saved it in the 3 different required formats with a transparent background, now it's time to submit the emote to twitch. Go to your dashboard, then click on Affiliate / Partner, then Emotes.



Step 5

Upload your emote's 3 resolution sizes, create a unique code and then submit.


That's the basics, the hardest part of emote creation is the creative phase. Thinking about unique emotes that stand out for your brand and community is very challenging. But it doesn't hurt to see what other streamers have done for emotes. Maybe they will inspire similar emotes styles that you can use for your channel.

How to twitch prime sub

Guide on how to use your twitch prime subscription.

Twitch prime allows you to subscribe to a channel for a month. The channel has to be a affiliate or partner level in order to have the sub button option. Here are the steps needed to use your twitch prime sub.

Step 1

Visit a channel that is a partner or a affiliate. For this example I will be using my stream at twitch.tv/daopa.



Step 2

Click on the button labeled subscribe at the top right.



Step 3

Click on the "Subscribe Free" button



Step 4

After pressing and completing the purchasing of the subscription, you have to refresh the web browser in order for the sub to initialize. Press F5 or the refresh button on your browser.

Additional Option available:You will have a share button available that lets you send a text message in chat announcing your subscription.

Note on Twitch Prime subs, they do not auto-renew, you have to do these same steps every 30 days.

Status of current subscriptions can be seen on your subscription page, the URL is http://twitch.tv/settings/subscriptions

For more information on how to acquire a prime sub, check out our previous post on Twitch Prime.

Advance Embed Code options for Twitch

Advance settings for embed code usage for Twitch streams.

Here are some additional options for use when adding embedding code from Twitch. This code includes many options that will be explained below.

<script src="http://player.twitch.tv/js/embed/v1.js"></script>

<div id="player">
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
  var options = {
    width: 300,
    height: 250,
    channel: "daopa",
    parent: ["twitch-tv-tips.blogspot.com"]
    //video: "<video ID>",
    //collection: "<collection ID>",
  };
  var player = new Twitch.Player("player", options);
  player.addEventListener("play", function(){
  console.log("Twitch tv player is ready");
  player.setQuality("360p");
  player.setMuted(true);
  player.setVolume(0.00);
  });
</script>

Options:
Channel: "Enter your Twitch Channel name" - this is self explained.

When you see // this blocks that line from being read. So if you want the embed code to show just a stream to block the other 2 (video / collection).

video: "<video ID>",

If you want to embed a video, put // in front of channel and collection then add in the video ID as this format "{95561021}"

To get your video id, go to your dashboard, then click on Video producer. Find the video, click on it and it will show you the numbers in the video URL section on the left of the pop up screen.


Copy the same steps from video for embedding a collection.

If your stream has transcoders you can change the default auto quality option to a specific value.

  player.setQuality("360p");

Options include 160p, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p

  player.setMuted(true);

How to make your embed player start up muted or not.

  player.setVolume(0.00);

How to change the volume on the player.

How to put your stream on wordpress

Guide on how to put your twitch live stream on wordpress.

A great way to get more viewers to your stream is by embedding.  Here is how to get it onto your wordpress website.

Step 1

Login to your wordpress website and then click on 'My Site".

Step 2

Determine the location of where you want to have your live stream showing. This will vary depending on your layout, widget locations. For this guide we will be placing the stream on the sidebar.



Step 3

Click Appearance, then widgets, add the Custom HTML widget



Step 4

Enter a Title, I generally use My Channel or Advertisement, then below you add in the embed code from Twitch.

<script src="https://player.twitch.tv/js/embed/v1.js"></script>
<div id="daopastream"></div>
<script>
var options = {
width: 400,
height: 300,
channel: "daopa",
muted:true,
parent: ["twitch-tv-tips.blogspot.com"]
//video: "{v130023526}"
};
var player = new Twitch.Player("daopastream", options);
player.setQuality("360p");
player.addEventListener("play", function(){
console.log("Twitch tv player is ready");
player.setMuted(true);
player.setVolume(0.00);
});
</script>

Make sure to switch out daopa with your Twitch channel name and the parent to your website. Other options you may have to change is the width and height.

When you finish, click save and it should show up on your blog.

Advice - Take half the time you spend on reddit

Take half the time you spend on "REDDIT" and create a blog, write about games you play.

Some advice for game streamers since reddit is one of the most popular websites globally and most likely many streamers on Twitch check it out regularly for info. Take half the time you spend on reddit and put it towards creating a blog featuring content and your stream!

Do you have a Gmail / Google account? Perfect, use that to make a free blog on blogger.

Need ideas for content? Write about whatever games you are playing on your stream. Make guides, post up screenshots, post up your video highlights. Build content that people will search for via search engines.

Post your stream on the sidebar of the blog as a embed. If people check the blog, they will see your stream and may switch over to say hello! A good example of this can been seen right here on this blog. I write guides, opinion pieces for streaming and have my channel on the sidebar.


Quick guide steps on blog creation:

1. Make a Google account or use a existing one.
2. Go to blogger.com, click on Sign then, use your google account.
3. May be prompted to create a Profile, this option is up to you, use either google+ or blogger profile
4. Next, press Create a New Blog
5. Enter Title and address, if you are primarily going to be writing about a certain game, you may want to use abbreviation or some keywords from the game title in the address and title.
6. Select Theme then create blog.

That is basically it, very easy to get started with a new blog. Another tip is to make sure the new blog is listed in the webmaster tools for google, bing and other search engines.

Webmaster Tool links:

> Google - https://www.google.com/webmasters/

> Bing - https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Always remember "Content is King," keep building to make a sound foundation.