How to Grow Your Twitch Channel: The One Rule for Getting Discovered

[00:00] If you want to get discovered, finally grow your Twitch channel, then there is against you. Don't get me wrong, I love Twitch as a platform. It has the best

[00:12] live streaming experience on the market, both for streamers and viewers. But if one thing they need to get rid of, the Kingmaker system. And until they do, you need to know the best ways to get discovered and the most important rule I

[00:27] abide by to grow my channel from zero to Twitch partner. If you're new here, my hundreds of streamers grow their channel through this YouTube channel, our Discord, and direct coaching. And new streamers all run into the same thing.

[00:42] They stream on Twitch day in day out in categories such as Fortnite, League of Legends, or Minecraft, which are completely oversaturated. go into any of page after page and we still haven't gotten to a reasonable number of viewers

[00:59] for small streamers. And that is where the problem comes in. Almost no one is going to scroll this far down to find a new streamer to watch. And that is the most viewers at the top. The higher you are, the more potential viewers see

[01:15] your stream. And the more they see your stream, the more likely you are to get people clicking on your stream. That is the kingmaker system. Rather than fighting for scraps in oversaturated categories, you need to make strategic

[01:27] choices. Move yourself out of that category and start playing games where discovery zone comes into play. It doesn't matter what platform people watch on. When you open a category, you are guaranteed to see the top two rows.

[01:43] So, the hard and fast rule is if you're on the top two rows, then you're in the right place to get discovered. But how do you get into that discovery zone? Well, before we do that, let's get one of the most common misconceptions out of

[01:55] can't play the games that you like. In fact, the first of three simple steps that you have to do to get in the discovery zone is to make a list of the games that you like to play. It doesn't matter what games they are as long as

[02:10] they are games you could see yourself playing every stream for a few weeks or even months. With your list in hand, open up Twitch and start having a look at the categories for the games you have written down. There are two numbers you

[02:22] game has. If someone on Twitch follows a game, then that means they are interested in watching that game and will be recommended more people playing that game in their personalized feeds. There's no magic number, but the higher

[02:38] the number is, the more people you're going to get recommended to. So, finding a place with 250,000 followers is good, but 500,000 followers would be better. The second thing to look at is the number of viewers. If your game has

[02:51] between 500 and 2,500 viewers around the time you would normally stream, then you find a game with a high following and a low viewer number, and that is what we call an underserved category. These games often have a very passionate fan

[03:04] base who absolutely love the game. But because there are so few streamers in the category, it often leads to a lot of fans not getting the content that they want, which means they are more willing to give new streamers a try, which in

[03:17] turn is good for discoverability. The final step is very simple. You need to answer one question and one question only. If I stream right now, would I be in the first two rows? If the answer is yes, then you have a candidate that puts

[03:30] you in the discovery zone. If the answer is no, you just go to the next game on your list. However, if you're completely set on a game, don't worry. There are ways to solve that problem, which I will get back to later. I used this technique

[03:42] to become a Twitch affiliate twice over. Once for my partner channel where I did it with City Skylines, which took me about a month back in the day, and once brilliant game called Noita. If you've never heard of it, I'm not a fan of

[03:56] rogue likes usually, but this one I genuinely really enjoy. Probably because the whole world is interactive. Some other great examples of this are games such as Stardw Valley, Rim World, and Skyrim, and they all have one thing in

[04:09] common. They are games with great storytelling. Not only is there a constantly developing story in the game, you and your viewers get to influence that story, which keeps viewers coming back to your stream. By the way, if this

[04:22] is helping you so far, then please hit that like button. I really appreciate it and it helps us in the algorithm, which helps the channel grow. But now we come to the most challenging part of the video. We understand the factors that

[04:34] make for good games to play on Twitch. But there's also a science and an art to making yourself as discoverable as possible. And for that, we are going to use a very helpful website called Twitch Tracker. For those that don't know,

[04:46] streamer and game on the platform. And I'm going to show you three ways you can use it so you become as discoverable as possible. The first one is actually an advanced tactic that can help you choose the game to play if you have multiple

[05:02] the candidate game at the top and head into the statistics for that game. Here, set the graph to monthly and have a look at the blue and green lines as well as the statistics per month. If you see a lot of red numbers in the statistics

[05:17] month by month, or the green and blue lines seem to be on a constant decline, you might be dealing with a dying game. Dying games can be really bad for your slowly but surely, the viewers will be cycling out. They get bored of the game,

[05:33] want to watch other stuff, or spend less time on Twitch. That is completely normal. The problem is that the viewers that are in the category now will which is going to make it harder for you to attract new viewers to your stream.

[05:48] So, what you want to see is a stable, slightly growing viewer line because had one option, if you are set on the game you wanted to play, but you weren't

[06:00] in the game category you want to stream in, you can now switch the graph to the 7-day graph. On this graph, there are again two lines. The blue line is the number of streamers and the green line is the number of viewers in that

[06:15] category at any given time in the last 7 days. Now, have a look at the distance between the two lines. If the distance is big like here, then that means there are a lot of streamers compared to the number of viewers. This peak for example

[06:28] has 70 streamers but only 640 viewers which means that there are on average 9.14 viewers per streamer. That is called the streamer to viewer ratio and can tell you a lot about your discoverability. Take this for example

[06:43] here there are only 551 viewers but also only 24 channels. That means the viewer to streamer ratio is 22.95 which is almost three times as high as before. So, if you have the luxury of changing your stream time, you can

[06:58] significantly reduce the competition in that category, which can push you into the discovery zone and increase the streamer to viewer ratio, which improves your general discoverability. Now, this last way is how I use Twitch Tracker

[07:10] most because if you master this, it gives you a massive advantage, not just now, but at any level in your streaming career. If we go back to the homepage, you can also search for streamers that are around your size and play the same

[07:22] or similar games as you do. I will use Queso as an example. Then you can look followers and you can see if you can lift along on that trend by playing the

[07:34] good short burst of viewers which can vibe with what you make. And that means they might stick around when you go on to your next game as well. But now for the most important thing, there's something you need to do for me. And no,

[07:49] it's not subscribe. You need to commit. Look, we all know that growth doesn't happen overnight. It takes time. And during that time, you need to stay consistent because consistency is the key to stream growth. That doesn't just

[08:03] mean having a consistent schedule so people know when you go live. It also means being consistent in your game choice. If you play Fortnite one day, Rim World the next, and Stardw Valley the next, then it's really easy to see

[08:16] that the only people that are going to like all three of those games are going games because then you hit this whole wedge, but if you stick to one game, then you're hitting all the people in that single circle. So, are you willing

[08:31] to commit to making content for the game that you chose or at least in the same niche for the next 90 days? If you are, just comment the party popper emote and some channels that I will come and see and I might end up surprising a few of

[08:49] thinks you need to watch next to make you a better streamer. I'll be waiting there. And as always, stream better, stream