Which live streaming website offers us the best opportunity to earn from the very first time we go live? After testing Facebook live, YouTube live streaming, Twitch, Twitter with Periscope, Mixer by Microsoft, SmashCast, @dlive on Steem, and Instagram, one of these clearly stands out as the most likely to give the streamer more than zero even on the first stream!
Best Ways to Make Money Live Streaming?
If we want to make money live streaming, we are fairly open in the options we have as to how we can go about it. That said, based on my experience live streaming for years, it can be very difficult to actually turn hours and hours of live streaming into making any money if we just try to throw things up there, and then just try to test the different methods.
Will you join me in seeing what I've found is by far the best way to make actual money live streaming in a transparent way without having to sell to people all the time, struggle for tips or hope for ad revenue, because this is exponentially easier than most of the other methods I've tried to make money in live streaming? I will also present additional ways to make money live streaming after looking at this initial one.
What do you think is the best way to make money live streaming? Do you think it's through ad revenue or tips because these are the main options that live streamers I've seen used to make money and the main things that have worked for me prior to finding this new way to make money live streaming?
Also, there are possibilities to essentially do promoted live streams or to do webinars and sales pitches on live streams. Some of those methods have also worked very well for me to earn money because I already had a following and made hundreds of tutorial videos.
Which is the very best to start from zero? It's Dlive by far!
Live streaming on Dlive
Dlive is a live streaming platform on the Steem blockchain and you can see what I'm doing on the Steem blockchain at steemit.com/@jerrybanfield. The platform Dlive is the same URL except it's dlive.io/@jerrybanfield.
Now, will you join me in looking at these live streams and how much I've earned because these earnings seemed really far away when I was trying to live stream on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter and struggling to make tips, while on Dlive the earnings are somewhat predictable now. The first live stream I did on Dlive I made several hundred dollars on.
Now, the actual amount of money I cashed out was much higher than what these amounts say because of the Steem Dollar prices.
Technically, it's much higher than a dollar. It's like two dollars right now. Therefore, the amount of money I got paid is even higher than what this says.
The next several streams I earned $149, $57 and $174.
This one was at $327, and then I consistently get at least thirty or forty dollars on my live streams.
That's purely earnings on those. This is possible because Dlive has a voting power delegation from Steemit Inc effectively giving @dlive millions of dollars worth of stake to vote with. Now, on Steem when we upvote posts, these get a percentage of the new Steem that's created every day at the rate approximately displayed. This means this post will earn me about $27 worth of Steem and Steem Power.
Technically, it's actually higher because the Steem and Steem Dollar price will vary. For simplicity, we'll just stick with this amount here. These posts I've shared from other people are earning money as well.
You can also do videos on Dlive.
Now, I helped promote some of these other live streams and you can see I used my voting bot to upvote my own stream here earning hundreds of dollars for these live streams.
Now, the baseline was about thirty or forty, but what's amazing about Steem is that we can actually promote our own live streams that help them earn even more, and then all on the same platform we can just do regular blog posts, we can share sound clips, we can do memes.
Steem is the most incredible opportunity I've ever discovered online, which is why I'm talking about it and sharing about it relentlessly.
You can see that the posts I'm sharing and I'm doing are consistently earning good money to do a live stream. Now, one thing it is important to tell you is how all this works. The basic way this works is when we have Steem Power. Steem Power is when we have essentially given our Steem to the blockchain in exchange for stakes or vests, which allow us to vote up posts.
Now, I have about $220,000 worth of Steem as of the day I filmed the video for this. This means that I'm able to upvote myself or anyone else hundreds of dollars’ worth of Steem every single day.
The amazing opportunity with Steem is that we can combine investment with earnings.
By comparison, if you have got a hundred thousand in the bank and you'd like to invest it and get a return and you buy something on the stock market, that does not help you with your Facebook live stream.
On YouTube, you could try. I've spent fifty plus thousand on ads and that often doesn't help get more people to watch live streams. Sometimes it does.
On Steem, when we invest we can actually pay ourselves, our friends and family, and anyone else in the community directly through our upvotes.
The upvotes decide who gets the new Steem that's created. About seven or eight percent of new Steem is created every year and the amount we give to Steem determines the amount we get back.
Now, I've got a lot more videos about Steem. I've explained this in five minutes here to give you the basic idea of how this works. This means buying some Steem, powering it up, and then live streaming, we can literally vote our own live streams up and help ourselves to earn some money live streaming.
Now, the real opportunity is to be a member of the community, and then we can get other people who are interested in voting us up.
For example, I did not vote this last video I made up and I can show you the votes I earned with seven hundred and something people. You can see the Dlive application was kind enough to give me $13 for a live stream.
Let me tell you how hard it would be for me to earn $13 live streaming on any other platform just in ad revenue or trying to sell something.
I'd have to have something to sell in order to earn on a different platform. On Dlive, when we participate in the community we have a very good chance at earning a few dollars on every one of our live streams. Right now at least, the more people I tell about this, the more people that join, the more competition.
Before I went and told everyone about this, I was getting twenty or thirty dollars on most of my live streams, and now there are so many people streaming that it's down to about thirteen dollars.
I'm going to keep telling everyone because this is a way better deal than the other ways to make money. The basic idea of this is that you add value to the Steem blockchain and the Steem blockchain directly rewards you back for adding that value.
This cuts out the need for advertisers to get in the middle and then essentially spam us with things we don't want to see in exchange for providing income.
Now, while Steem is the top opportunity I've seen especially to combine investing and live streaming, blogging and social media, there are other options for earning on live streams.
I have Steem as the very best option. You can see exactly what I'm doing today on Steemit.com/@jerrybanfield or at Dlive.io/@jerrybanfield.
Live streaming on YouTube
The second best option for earning money live streaming is ad revenue on YouTube.
Now, getting started on YouTube is brutal. It is very difficult to actually start from nothing on YouTube and level up.
On YouTube, that said, there's some very good ad revenue available that you can earn indefinitely.
I will show you my earnings on YouTube and you can see for yourself. I will show you all these other statistics here and my lifetime earnings on YouTube based on how many views I've got.
Now, I've earned as we can see $38,000 in ad revenue on YouTube. There's one big problem though from the point of view of starting out and if you notice, I hardly earned anything for the first several years I was on YouTube.
Getting to the point of earning something on YouTube is very difficult. However, once we get to the point where we are earning, then the earnings tend to be indefinite.
I'm earning about $1,000 a month at a low point and a few months ago when it was Christmas season, lots of ad revenue, I earned as much as $3,000 in one month in ad revenue.
I think that's the most I've earned in one month before.
Now, the nice thing on YouTube is I have an indefinite opportunity to just put videos up and continue earning, but the ad revenue is a fraction of what I've earned from selling video courses.
As you can see, putting videos on YouTube, and then selling video courses, that's a pretty high threshold for something to be able to do.
Live streaming on Steem and YouTube
If you want to make the absolute most money, selling video courses based on tutorials on YouTube, then combining that with Steem presents an ideal option.
With Steem you can get started right away. You can invest something in and consistently be rewarded, and your Steem can go up. When you combine that with putting the same videos on YouTube, and then having some video courses, you can maximize earnings that way.
Therefore, the very best formula for earning is combining YouTube and Steem.
These two together are just wild.
I've earned hundreds of thousands of dollars selling video courses where people found the video courses on YouTube, and then went and bought them on my website.
Now with Steem, I'm able to do a blog with a video, earn money just by uploading the video, and then have the chance indefinitely to earn more money from Steem, sell the video courses, have people come over from YouTube, all the while YouTube is very powerful for search and getting discovered.
Combining these two, especially if you can live stream on both Dlive and YouTube is an incredible opportunity to work full time online the way I do. I'm grateful for this opportunity, that's why I focus my energy on showing exactly how I do it.
YouTube is so difficult to get started on from nothing though. The reason is because YouTube ranks videos often based on things like I'm showing you here. I have 21 million views on my YouTube videos and 168 million minutes watched.
When I make a video and you make the same video on a channel that's brand new, my video will likely destroy yours in ranking, and that means it's easier for the YouTubers at the top with established audiences to get people to watch videos.
I can more than likely make a lower quality tutorial than someone else who doesn't have a following and my tutorial will rank higher and get watched more, and that's the unfortunate reality of YouTube.
It's quite unfair when it comes to what is the best content. Now, that said, YouTube does do a good job at surfacing the best content, and live streaming on YouTube gives you the chance to go viral.
I had a live stream I did on "League of Legends," I'd hardly done any "League of Legends" videos and I hired this coach for like $100. He coached me for an hour or so and I did a live stream. He was a former pro player and the live stream went viral all by itself. I didn't promote it, I didn't even pay attention to it. It went viral and got almost a million views all on its own.
YouTube has the best traffic potential. By traffic, I mean the ability to get people to discover and watch, and keep watching and keep coming back, if you are willing to go through this period of absolute zero to get started with.
All the money on YouTube comes in through ad revenue, and then through sending people out. These two methods combined are extremely powerful.
Live streaming on Steem, YouTube and Facebook
Now, if you really want to take things to the top, earn the most and to get the most viewers, combining Steem, YouTube, and Facebook live-streaming provides the absolute ideal combination of reaching the people who already know you on Facebook and getting discovered organically on YouTube over time, and earning some immediate income in joining a community on Steem with Dlive.
Therefore, I think if you want to be able to do live-streaming full time, if you want to be able to have the biggest audience, share your message with the most people, I think it is essential, in terms of your equipment, to be able to live stream on those three at once.
You want to be able to do Steem, YouTube and Facebook all at the same time because this maximizes the opportunities. On Facebook, it's easy to get friends and family, or if you have got a Facebook group or an established Facebook page, it's very easy to appear in the newsfeed with a live stream relative to sharing anything else on Facebook.
If you are starting out gaming, for example, it's very easy to just get people to watch. Now, the big thing that sucks about Facebook is it's almost impossible to turn that into money.
Facebook is the very worst platform for getting a lot of views and earning almost nothing. I've had several videos go viral on Facebook. I have had live streams reach over a million people in the newsfeed on a single live stream and using tips, I've barely probably earned $50 live streaming on Facebook.
Fifty to a hundred million people have seen my live streams in the newsfeed because I was one of the first gamers to live stream on Facebook to a following that was global and I'd run a bunch of ads.
I've had a ridiculous reach for my live streams. I have a bunch of videos with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views. Lots of live streams where hundreds, almost a thousand sometimes, of people watching. Almost no money at all in live streaming on Facebook.
If you just want to get started and get feedback Facebook's really good, but for earning money Facebook's absolutely terrible.
You have got to combine Facebook essentially with something like YouTube or Steem, get people off of Facebook and on to a different live-streaming platform because that allows you the chance to then earn some income out of live streaming.
If you just are able to live stream and don't need to make any money off of it, Facebook's a great place to just build an audience. At some point though, you are likely to want to have a way to earn money from live streaming.
Now, on Facebook, you can put links out to other websites, you can do lots of things to get people to go somewhere else to pay you with live streams on Facebook. However, I've done a lot of that and it doesn't work very well.
YouTube for live streaming does work well for that because if you do a live stream like a webinar on YouTube, then people discover it naturally over time. I did a live webinar selling video courses on YouTube and over the next several weeks a lot of people came in after watching it on YouTube and bought the course.
On Facebook, it doesn't tend to last as long. If people don't watch it in the first 24 hours, it just gets buried on Facebook.
Ideally, you want the ability to live stream on all three platforms to earn the most money and you just want to take people off of Facebook and get them somewhere else.
Help your viewers see that it is better to watch somewhere else for you and for them because they don't have to see ads from Facebook or YouTube. If you watch on Steem or on Dlive, there are no ads for the viewer and it's really nice.
Live streaming on Twitch
If you want to earn money Twitch is not a very good option unless you are willing to just stream and stream, and earn nothing, but build a following.
You probably, realistically, if you want to ever earn money on Twitch, you need to be really good at a video game.
You need to live stream probably three to six hours every single day, interact with your audience and just build a following.
If you are at the top and if you are in a new game right away, Twitch is very good for earning because it has been purchased by Amazon and has now some good built-in options for tips and sponsorships.
Still, though Twitch is very competitive. It's difficult to get those initial people watching and if you can get your friends to come over from Facebook and watch on Twitch, then you can have a lot better chance.
I've had a few friends who have tried streaming on Twitch and it just goes almost nowhere even though the friends are very good at the video games they play, even though the friends have live-streamed a lot on Twitch.
Twitch just doesn't have that good organic discovery that YouTube does and you can also live stream games on YouTube. I compared one live streamer with millions of subscribers and a lot of followers on Twitch. He had ten times as many people watching on YouTube as Twitch.
That said, if you can hit number one in a category on Twitch, you can have huge earnings on Twitch. If you are willing to go for number one in a particular game or in a particular niche on Twitch, then I'd say go for it on Twitch, and then some of these other ones like Mixer.
Live streaming on Twitter / Periscope
I can’t tell you I've ever earned anything with Periscope to Twitter. I'd say it's very difficult to get anything to work on there.
Now, if you've got an established Twitter following and you begin building your following and using Periscope to reach and connect with your Twitter following, then I think you can have a very good opportunity to get people more consistently interacting with each tweet that you post, and you could post tweets that sell courses, that send people to join your email list, that go to your events.
I think if you have got an established community on Twitter, if you already are using Twitter every day, then Periscope is an ideal option to just get more interaction with what you are already doing on Twitter. I'm going to be investing more in live streaming on Periscope and I will be able to discover more about how that works for me as well.
That said, Periscope has some of the same problems of Twitch and some of the same problems of Facebook as there are no good built-in monetization options for Periscope.
Even Twitch has very good built-in monetization options. There's not like a lot of good long-term organic discovery on Periscope that I can see, at least from a glance and from live streaming.
Are people discovering these live streams I did a year ago on Periscope? I doubt it. I've got about the same number of followers I had a while ago. Now, on YouTube people can discover things for years, and people do discover things and subscribe, and you can earn money for years. Twitter, if you have got a great community, go for it.
Live streaming on Instagram
I would put Instagram in the same class as Facebook and it is even more difficult on Instagram, I would say, than it is on Facebook to get people to leave Instagram and go to an external website.
Therefore, I'd say Instagram is one of the worst ways to try to make money from live streaming. That said, you might be able to dominate a niche on Instagram.
It might be worth testing depending on what you do, depending on your Instagram following. I always suggest testing. I've live streamed on Instagram, and even with 17,000 followers, I was not impressed with the amount of people that watched and the engagement.
Once you live stream on Instagram, I think it's often gone right away, and you can only do it on your phone. You can't live stream very easily to Instagram and these other platforms at the same time.
Therefore, if you don't get something that happens immediately off the Instagram live stream, it's likely to be worth nothing. I'd say live streaming on Instagram and turning that into money is extremely difficult.
Live streaming on Smashcast
Finally, Smashcast may be a good niche opportunity. There's just not that many people that seem to be using Smashcast.
Now, what's nice about Smashcast, it allows you to immediately start earning money from the day you join and it's got some good monetization options assuming you can actually get anyone to watch.
You have got good monetization options immediately. Whereas on Twitch you have to level your account up in order to use most of the monetization options, on Smashcast these are available right away.
If you can afford to live stream to Smashcast like I've also been able to, it might be worth testing. That said, I'm not that happy.
I can't prove I've ever earned anything off of Smashcast, even though I've done probably 30 to 40 live streams on it, and had people watching.
Conclusion
Dlive is the very best opportunity for live streaming and actually earning money today, especially when combined with an investment in either and/or time or money in blogging on Steem.
That is the easiest way for me to earn money live streaming today, at least to earn something.
Now, if I want to earn a lot of money YouTube provides me a very good way to earn a lot of money if I'm willing to essentially fail 99% of the time. One of my videos here and there has the potential to earn me a lot of money, like thousands of dollars on one video.
This free hacking courses as you can see, one video I did, earned over $2,000 in ad revenue.
Some of these tutorials have also earned thousands in ad revenue on one video.
YouTube has the most upward potential I'd say, but it's the most difficult to get started with. Combine easy to get started with on Dlive, combine consistent income from upvotes in the ability to upvote yourself, and then also combine that with discovery on YouTube, and I think you have got a very good shot to do live streaming part-time, if not full-time online the way I do, when combined with everything else I do like blogging, video courses, etcetera.
Thank you very much for watching this. I hope this is helpful because I looked for a ton of information like this. I googled and googled, and tried to find out things like:
What is the best option to live stream?
Where can I earn money?
Where can I get viewers?
Where can I reach the people I already know?
I hope I've completely and effectively answered that for you based on my experience live-streaming online for years now on a bunch of different platforms.
I hope it's clear what the best options are to get started and earn something, and to have a chance to earn the most money over the long term if you are willing to stick with it, and to have the chance to just reach friends and family immediately.
I love you. You are awesome. I appreciate you watching/reading this and I hope this was really helpful for you. If you found this post helpful on Steem, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript from @deniskj
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- YouTube channel with 234,900 subscribers.
- Twitter to 101,630 followers.
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