Comment by twodave
6 years ago
It definitely takes a long view approach. A couple important aspects of building a steaming following are structure and consistency.
If you give people a clear idea of what to expect from your stream and when it will be live, and if you don't make too many drastic or sudden changes to either of those variables, then those who like your content enough to make time for it will do so.
If you keep making changes, show up late or just don't seem dedicated, then people won't feel like they can rely on you. Because of that, people won't factor you into their decisions about how they spend their time.
Glad to see you're giving it an effort! I wish you the best of luck.
In addition, the most well attended streamers also have a significant following and consistent upload schedule on YouTube. Since Twitch lacks any sort of discoverability algorithm, new streamers will always have very few to no viewers. Having content on YouTube that drives viewers to twitch is nigh a requirement to be successful on the platform.
Also +1 for the consistency. I try to stream every work day at the same time and it really helps -- I mean, I'm still a backwater coding stream, but usually at least at some part of my stream I have double digits watching. If I take a few days off, though, people wander away. I'm not actually concerned about viewership (I stream for other reasons), but the other thing I've noticed is that I tend to naturally get pockets of viewers in different time zones. If I were to try to grow the stream, I would actively try to cater to 1 or 2 time zones that were popular. So try streaming at different times occasionally to see where you get the best uptake and then adjust your schedule to make it easy for those people to watch.
This! Become part of people's routine.