Money Talks

Gamer’s Merchandise

Posted on by Natasha Vijji

Every Twitch partner who has “made it,” enough to have paying subscribers can sell branded T-shirts. Twitch encourages broadcasters to make merchandise by building Teespring, ( a website that Twitch has partnered with where they can design and sell items) into the dashboard of their personal Twitch page. Let’s use Twitch broadcaster Lirik for example. He has 1.1 million followers. His latest $23 “cat in a helmet” Tee had 6,681 sales. That’s $153,663 in gross sales. We’ve seen a large growth recently in game developers combining both digital and physical products to further create a more immersive gameplay experience, as well as help their players better connect with the stories and characters of the games they play.

Besides this Twitch also hosts TwitchCon, an annual convention for the live streaming video culture of video game streaming. For streamers, it gives them an opportunity to seek improvements for their streams and grow their brand. It also provides fans with a unique chance to meet streamers, play new games, and meet with online communities in real life

Brands on Twitch

Posted on by Natasha Vijji

Twitch reaches a huge audience, yet it is an under-utilized advertising platform. Mainly because advertisers and media buyers don’t know about Twitch or why it’s important, the negative stereotypes of gamers and internet culture scares brands. Moreover, there are no widely accepted practices for advertising on Twitch or identifying Twitch influencers.

The social environment created between streamer and viewers has shown that a person’s social environment can have a significant impact on brand awareness. When your brand is mentioned on a stream, viewers instantly react. With scheduled streams, you should be able to accurately track how being mentioned on Twitch can direct viewers to your brand. The online influence of a Twitch Influencer has grown significantly due to esports, competitive video gaming and the accessibility of the stars by bleeding into other channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Unlike traditional media, most gameplay live streams are user-generated media, and the social context of a stream is influenced greatly by individual streamers. Among the most well-known brands that have already capitalized on the popularity and unique advertising opportunity of Twitch are Tyson, Old Spice, Amazon Fresh, and other CPG-related brands.

Revenue Model

Posted on by Natasha Vijji


Twitch subscriptions are a monthly payment made to Twitch Partners and Affiliates as a way for viewers to support their favorite channels. Subscribers are given a variety of premium perks such as special emoticons (emotes) to use in a stream’s chatroom while the streamer gains a recurring source of income that can help pay their streaming and living expenses. Subscriptions are one of the more popular ways to make money on Twitch. Reaching that level of financial success on Twitch requires a lot of dedication though with most of the more-popular Twitch Partners and Affiliates streaming five to seven days a week to maintain their audience.

The subscription fee collected from the users is distributed between the platform and streamer equally. Viewers can also purchase bits, When a viewer sends the bits in the chat of a  live stream, it means they’re  cheering the streamer for playing a particular move.

Viewer have the additional option of directly donating their contribution to a streamer without subscribing, in this case no revenue is shared with twitch.