This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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What's up friends, Side Hustle School Community. New month starts right now, episode 2465. Coming up, we've got a question from Jordan. Jordan's a college student in Austin, trying to balance his academic commitments with personal passions. Always a tough challenge, but I admire the dedication and motivation of our listeners, young, old, all the way in between, and obviously whatever you think of as young and old.
I like to say young people of all ages sometimes. Jordan loves gaming. He's got some experience streaming on Twitch, but he has restricted himself to weekends and school breaks due to a demanding study schedule. So a lot of what we like to do here is look at a situation, a scenario, an idea, and point out maybe some pros and cons, advantages, tips, something that they could do to improve. And in Jordan's case, he's wondering if there's a way to turn his sporadic streaming into a profitable hustle without making it a full-time commitment.
A lot of people who are streaming on Twitch, playing video games, whatever else they're doing, could be chess, could be something entirely different. They spend a lot of time on it. Some of them spend eight hours a day, like it really is a job, basically. And so what if you can't do that? If you've got this schedule that requires him to commit a lot of his time to his academics, but he wants to make the most of his hobby.
All right, well, let's get into it. Can you earn money on Twitch without streaming all day? That's today's question. Quick little shout out to our sponsor. I appreciate our sponsors.
I appreciate you, our listeners. Stay tuned. - Hey, Chris, it's Jordan from Austin, Texas. I'm currently in college studying computer science, and I love gaming. I'm active on platforms like Twitch, but only during weekends or school breaks due to my intense academic schedule.
I'm not interested in becoming a full-time streamer, but is there a way to monetize my passion for gaming in my free time? - Jordan, thanks for being out there. I appreciate the question. And it is true that the most successful Twitch streamers tend to put in a lot of hours. There is a little bit of a correlation there between time and return on investment, just 'cause you're always trying to get more followers, and you're trying to maximize the return of money per hour streamed and so on, all these other metrics.
But nevertheless, you can definitely make some money streaming on Twitch without going full-time. You're just gonna need to be strategic about it. And that's probably good because you wanna be strategic anyway. Like you want to work smarter, not harder. And I think since your time is limited, you wanna focus on creating some content that sets you apart.
Like what is it that's going to be different about your streams? Jordan already has a bit of experience, so that's good. And we just wanna go from good to great here. So whether it's a unique game choice, special commentary, engaging community, well, actually that's gonna be important no matter what, but maybe the specific game choice or any kind of additional activities that you do, you wanna give people a reason to tune in during the limited hours you're online. So you might consider setting up a subscription model.
Twitch allows several ways to do that. Lots of monetization options. They have really increased those options in recent years. Special events during weekends or school breaks when you have more time can also be a great way to attract viewers. And then of course, while you're offline, you can repurpose your streaming content into shorter video clips or tutorials posting on YouTube, other social media.
This can help you stay active and engaged even when you're not streaming. I think that could actually be a key part of the strategies. So basically Jordan, you're gonna have to work smarter, not harder, but that's something that's probably gonna be helpful no matter what. So good luck. Let us know how it goes.
Be sure to share your Twitch channel so we can share it with our listeners on social media as well. Listeners, if you have a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions, let me know what your project is, what you're working on, what you're excited about, what's challenging. We'll continue to feature these projects throughout the year, along with updates from listeners as they launch and grow. So excited to make this podcast for you every day. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
