How to get more viewers on your twitch.tv channel?
I've seen this question asked over and over on twitch's subreddit with generic responses. Here is my view on how to get more viewers watching your stream using embedding.
Basically it involves syndication with embedding your stream on gaming related blogs that you own and operate, also other 3rd parties. Don't have a blog or website? Why not? Get one started on blogger, wordpress or many other places. Its very easy to get something started. This blog is a recent creation and as you can see sidebar there is a embed player advertising my channel. I have embedded my stream so whenever I am live it will show up.
How do you find your embed code on twitch.tv?
Step 1: Go to your stream url, then click on the share button
and it will show a section called, "Share via"
Then you want to click on the purple button listed as embed.
Step 2: A pop up window will display with 2 various ways to embed the video player to 3rd party websites or blogs.
Here is a screenshot of what that looks like on my screen.
Using Javascript method is what I post on my websites and blogs.
Here is my exact javascript code:
<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>
If your going to use the above code, you have to make sure to change the channel to your channel's name and also the parent parameter to your websites URL.
Using the iframe method is also available, here is the code snippet.
<iframe src="https://player.twitch.tv/?channel=daopa&parent=twitch-tv-tips.blogspot.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" scrolling="no" height="378" width="620"></iframe>
As with the other code, change the channel and the parent name to you own stuff.
Step 3: Take the embed code and post it to your website or blog.
Some additional guides on how to embed to various content management systems.
- Wordpress - guide on how to put your stream on a wordpress website.
- Blogger - tutorial on how to embed your stream on blogger / blogspot.
- Advanced Embed Code options - lists more parameters and settings for embedding.
Other 3rd party sites that you can get your stream embedded on include but not limited to the following.
Anook.com (example), create a account and then link your twitch to your profile, it will show up on your user page and on the frontpage if you have high viewer count.
Raptr.com (example), similar to anook, link your twitch account and it will populate your stream data to your wall.
Goodgame.ru (example), I managed to get help with a viewer who speaks/reads russian in order to get posted here, but again another place to embed your stream even thou its a foreign language it doesn't matter.
Facebook / Twitter, Twitch use to be embeddable on both of these social media sites, but something changed and it doesn't work as it use to but never-less its still a good idea to post your stream on your twitter and facebook social media pages. It will create a link back to your stream and hopefully in the future the embed stream feature will come back again so people can view the stream directly from inside facebook or twitter.
Update 2/3/2018 - You can embed your stream on Twitter now, follow the link for the guide writeup.
Update 5/7/2018 - Selective Gamepedia wiki's automatically embed the top stream on the bottom of their content pages.
There is no way to embed a live stream on Facebook, the only way to get a stream embed on facebook is using their streaming service.
There is also other sites that automatically pull information from Twitch's API for channels.
Just being in a certain game directory for a while will get you listed on these types of sites. Here is a example, this website (site removed no longer active* updated 3/18) pulls streams that have streamed minecraft. As you can see it still has my stream embedded even thou I do not currently stream minecraft. This is one of many aggregators that do exactly this sort of a thing but for other games and niche's. Being listed on these types of sites helps out also even if its a viewer here and there.
See more: 3rd party aggregators list - recently updated on 1/12/2023
Other things to consider are viral bombs, a term I made up recently.
A viral bomb is when you are doing something very unique that gets the attention of many 3rd parties which then others pick up with and syndicate out. Example of a recent viral bomb that happen to my streaming channel was during a eve online streaming session covering a large player created battle involving thousands of players from all over the globe. Polygon picked up on the battle and created this article which before the update included a embed of the stream. Polygon is syndicated on many other sites, so my stream was then also embedded on many other websites. Other sites that ran the story & embed: PCGamer, MMORPG, PCGamesn, Yahoo Games + many others. What did this do for the channel? Hit record number of viewers for that day and continued higher viewer counts for the rest of the week. Even thou this event happened in april, the embeds are still there and this still is providing viewers.
Downside of having a strong embedding strategy.
One downside of having a massive amount of embed viewership is being accused of viewbotting. Many people will mistakenly assume you are viewer botting because of the imbalanced of the chat to view number ratio. Lucky for you these type of people are very simple to ignore.
See more: How legal viewbots thrive is a false narrative
(Update 2/3/2018 - If you want to take a peak at what type of hate may occur if you have a strong embedding strategy - check the following blog posts: With success comes hate, 2 curious partners, Berry Nice)
And do not worry if these random people are going to report your channel, embed viewership is tracked and logged. Both Twitch and broadcasters can view embed stats in the dashboard. Just in case you have no idea how to find that sort of information here is how to see that sort of intel.
Go to your dashboard, click on stats then switch the group to URL check "Views from Outside Twitch (Top 10)", this will then show you the root domains of all the sites that have your channel's embed on.
Thanks for reading, fill free to post comments and questions here or find me at my twitch.tv channel.
