Today you can find streams for every taste from programming lessons, to make-up, cooking and many hours of bloggers talking “for life”. Streaming is a full-fledged industry with a multi-million dollar audience, in which advertisers invest a lot of money. And if promotional offers are available mainly to streamers with a large audience, then even beginner streamers can make money on donations. In this article I will tell you how, from simple entertainment, streaming has turned into a multi-million dollar industry, and top streamers into millionaires.

Was there streaming in the USSR?

The history of streams can be counted from the beginning of the 90s, when in Russia not only the Internet, but an ordinary computer was a real luxury. No, I'm not joking. See for yourself: for example, you are the first lucky owner of a console like Sega or Dendy in a class. After school, all friends and classmates try to get to your home to enjoy the breathtaking spectacle of a fight between Liu Kang and Sab Ziro or to watch the shooting of pixel ducks. So, here you are one of the first streamers, and friends and classmates are spectators.

With the development of technology and the emergence of universal access to high-speed Internet, it was time for spectacular games, where the quality of graphics and entertainment was approaching Hollywood action movies. Video recordings of gaming sessions became more and more like movie scenes and flooded YouTube. So the movement of “let’s players” was born, from which modern streamers grew. The “father” of the Russian summer play is Ilya Maddison .

In 2012, an opportunity appeared to broadcast a video stream in real time. Streams have become what we are used to seeing them. Today you can stream anything, but game broadcasts traditionally gather the widest audience.

How to make money on streams

Each streamer pursues its own goals, whether it be communication with the audience or the desire to boast of mastery of the game, but there is one thing that unites them all - the desire to earn. And you can do this in several ways at once. For example, consider the most popular platform - Twitch.

• Inline ad . On streams with a large number of viewers, Twitch "hangs" ads. Everything is simple here: the more your viewers see it, the more you will earn.
  
• Paid access to the stream . Subscribers will not see ads and will receive emoticons in the chat, but a significant part of the audience will be lost.
  
• Direct advertising on the stream . Upon reaching a certain threshold of the audience, the streamer becomes interesting for advertisers. You can talk about the product on the stream itself or put a link to it under the broadcast.
  
• Affiliate programs . It differs from the previous version in the absence of direct agreement. You register yourself and get the opportunity to attract people through referral links.
  
• Donuts . Donation from the viewer to the streamer. Today it is the most common way to monetize a stream. And there are no restrictions: as far as the viewer likes - so much he will be overwhelmed.
  

Game streams bring the most donations. The audience of LoL, Dota2, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Counter-Strike is estimated at millions of users. Naturally, they love not only playing, but also watching others play. For them, the stream of their favorite game is an opportunity not only to spy on new tricks, but also to chat with like-minded people.






Game streamers earn the biggest fees. Here are some public statistics:

• Ninja - $ 5,100,000 per year. The lion's share ($ 4,000,000) comes from paid subscriptions.
  
• Shroud - $ 3,100,000 per year.
  
• TimTheTatman - $ 2,700,000 a year.
  

In Russia, the largest amount of a single donation is still 200,000 rubles. Several streamers received such "fat" donates at once: Yuri Khovansky , official_viking , AkTep , MJUTIX and Bullkin_TV . And the most generous was the viewer, who sent streamers 315,000 rubles a day. Moreover, everyone can earn on streams, regardless of the type of activity or the past. For example, one of the most “collecting” streamers is Pug Uncle Dog , a former prisoner of the colony. The main thing is to find your viewer.

Interestingly, not only video, but also audio content is in demand on streams. For example, without ASMR, many can no longer imagine their evening.


Prior to the appearance of special services for collecting donations, streamers collected donations directly to a card or electronic wallet. Needless to say, this was inconvenient immediately for a number of reasons? Firstly, it distracts both the streamer and the viewer. Secondly, there was no interactivity with the streamer: he just went in once an hour and watched receipts in the Internet bank and thanked everyone. Of course, this could not continue for a long time, and tools began to appear that sought to make the streamer life more comfortable. Now in the West these are Streamlabs / Twitchalerts, Streamelements and Tipeeestream.

The appearance of such a service in Russia also did not take long. A few years ago, a self-taught programmer from Omsk by the name of Sergey Trifonov watched foreign streams, and he liked how simple and convenient everything was arranged: a couple of clicks - and the money from the streamer. In foreign services there was no localization and support of our payment systems. Then Sergey decided to write his own service, adapted for Russia, and it became Donation Alerts - today the most popular tool in Runet.



The service is devoid of all the shortcomings of the “manual” donation collection and adds several convenient and useful features, while combining a friendly, convenient interface and ease of use:

• Save time and convenience . It’s enough for the streamer to place a link to the donat under the video, and the viewer to click. You do not need to go through a complex authorization system each time. The service supports all possible payment systems.
  
• Instant crediting of funds and ease of withdrawal . Revenues from all users are collected in one place and automatically displayed once a day.
  
• Visualization is the most important element of interactivity on a stream. All donations are displayed on the stream, causing a violent reaction of the host. You can also add voting to the stream, view media and display paid subscribers.
  

To register in Donation Alerts it is enough to log in with your account on social networks. The service is not an electronic wallet and does not store money for more than a day, so every night all funds are automatically withdrawn and sent to the user through the payment system of his choice.

During the broadcast, you can collect donations for a specific purpose and fix the final amount (for example, buying a new instrument or device, upgrading a computer - which is what the soul wants). The progress indicator of the required amount will be visible to all participants. You can set several goals at once, then the viewer will decide for himself what to donate. In the statistics control panel, you can analyze the activity of the audience at one time or another stream and customize the operation of widgets. This will help make your streams even more effective, as well as evaluate and eliminate shortcomings.

Instead of a conclusion

From year to year, the streaming segment is growing, and with it the interest of the audience is growing. And if several years ago most streamers were game streams, now most of them have begun to combine game streams with conversational streams or IRL. This allows viewers to plunge deeper into the life of their beloved presenter and feel a certain involvement. In addition, world practice suggests that streaming is moving towards maximum interactivity, and therefore the need to create more and more tools for streamers remains unchanged.