Rox (@RoxCodes)

The Truth About YouTube A/B Testing

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 18:13:16 GMT

I created the second most popular A/B thumbnail testing tool in the world

Yesterday, YouTube announced their upcoming A/B testing feature

So, I think it's time I told you all the truth about A/B testing

Myself, Tubebuddy, and every other tool like us have been misusing the word "A/B Testing" for years

Until now, it didn't matter

But now you need to know the difference, so you can understand the weight of this announcement

Tubebuddy changes your thumbnail every 12-24 hours

ThumbnailTest changes your thumbnail every 1+ hours

But YouTube's new feature is different

It changes the thumbnail shown on EVERY IMPRESSION

So within the same 1 minute, if 99 people see your video...

33 will see Thumbnail A

33 will see Thumbnail B

33 will see Thumbnail C

I also believe, based on some insider info, that if Thumbnail A begins to look better than B/C, that thumbnail A will slowly be shown more

This is true A/B Testing

This is, 100%, without question, 100x better than every tool that exists

For years we have been scraping partial data from youtube with chrome extensions

fighting dozens of limitations

to try to bring you all a fraction of this functionality

why?

because youtube has been building A/B testing for years

but they have always shut it down before full release

(see these 3 year old videos)

https://youtu.be/AqsIS3qzq5k?t=567
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZoLw141o78&t=118s

but again, insider info, the team working on A/B testing this time is a lot of new people, and they are valiantly pushing to get this out the door

which is a really positive step for the community

when I built ThumbnailTest, I had one goal:

Make a cheaper alternative to Tubebuddy's A/B testing, so that more people could benefit from it

If I had more money, honestly I'd just make it free, but sadly I'm not rich

So what happens to ThumbnailTest now? What happens to TubeBuddy?

We still have a full year before YouTube puts out their A/B testing globally

So for 99.9% of creators, these tools will still be the best bet

I will keep ThumbnailTest running for as long as I can, to continue helping the community be more powerful, until the last moment

But, in the meantime, I have a request

Please, if you know any large creators, people making cool/big moves in this space...

Reach out to me

Connect me with them

I want to build something amazing for this industry, and you've all seen what I can do now

My DMs are open <3

Problem Vs. Product Risk

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 00:39:44 GMT

Helpful thing to understand for startups:

problem vs product risk

problem risk = is it really a problem? ex: do we really need tinder for dogs?

product risk = people obviously want this, but does it actually work? ex: biz pays you to bring in more customers, can you rly do it

this is common in a lot of early entrepreneurs (i also did this)

where you make up some product like "of course every restaurant wants more customers! they will gladly sign up for our rewards program!"

then u get a bunch of signups and celebrate

but then it doesnt do the thing

a bunch of customers signed up, but they aren't satisfied

why?

your product doesn't actually do what you said it does

the hard part wasn't the problem

your problem statement might as well be "do people want more money"

yes, of course

but can you actually provide that?

probably not

it's really hard to just magically give people money

or get people more customers

a lot of ML/AI startups fall under this as well

can you actually predict what you want to, if not whole biz fails

but if you can just "ml to predict the stock market", ur rich now

product risk also changes how you think about validation

you don't need to validate that people want money

obviously people want money

you need to validate if you can actually give money to them profitably

you need to validate if your ML model WORKS

not if the market wantsit

also a lot of courses have this problem

"become a bajillionaire by taking my twitter course"

Exactly How I Got Every Clipbot Customer

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 18:50:18 GMT

My most successful startup is @ClipbotTV

It makes almost $600/month right now

Here's exactly how I got every single customer

Just enough context: Clipbot turns Twitch clips into TikToks and YouTube Shorts and uploads them automatically

Strategy #1:
Reach out to streamer friends individually and beg them to try it😂

@TheAltF4Stream @ThePrimeagen @retrommo @splashleycodes

Results: ~5 users, 2 paid

Strategy #2:

Find streamers live on twitch that had linked TikTok accounts and offer Clipbot for free

this was super scuffed and barely worked but I got a handful of new users and had the first few "word of mouth" recommendations

Results: ~8 free users

Strategy #3:

All their friends were small streamers, so I made Clipbot free for all streamers below 2000 followers

But! I added a watermark so their videos would be advertising for me

Results: ??? this was pretty much impossible to track, which was a mistake. track shit.

Strategy #4: Reddit Launch

Free customers don't get revenue, so I had to add stripe and do an official launch

Launched on /r/twitch on November 23, 2021

Streamed the launch live on Twitch all day begging people for upvotes

Results: 50(!) free trials, 11 still active today :D

Strategy #5: Tweet about price increase

$6/month just wasn't that exciting so I raised the price up to $15 (mostly because @levelsio and @AndreyAzimov yelled at me)

There aren't many twitch streamers on twitter, but there are a few :)

Results: 2 paid customers

Strategy #6: Affiliate program

People said they wanted to refer friends!

Up until literally two weeks ago, this made no money

Even big referral partnerships with streamer tools didn't end up converting

But 6 months later I got some!

Results: 4 paid customers

Strategy #7: SEO

I did some keyword research with some free tools and asked SEO people on Twitter for advice

I wrote 6 blog posts

3 about competitors vs me
2 about how to use the tool
1 just about a random twitch feature bc it had good traffic

Result: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

It took weeks, sometimes months for my blog posts to pick up, but holy shit this was the best thing I did

at this point, I would say more than 80% of my customers come from GOOGLE

that giant bump in mid-january is when I started SEO

Results: 60+ paid users, tons of free users

An important note is that customers from google came and went in a weird pattern

there was churn for sure, but also some months search traffic gave me 0 customers

other times it gave me dozens

🤷‍♂️

Strategy #8: Make a free tool

I made clipthat.live which lets you make twitch clips with your voice

took me 1 day to build it, and again I launched it on /r/twitch on reddit

Got ~400 upvotes, got a lot of traffic, but very little usage, and 0 conversions

Results: 💩

Now, again randomly, Clipbot is blowing up a bit

Getting a new paid user every few days :D

Some from word of mouth, others from google

Who knows!

But I have big new strategies coming up soon

I'm going to at least 5x @ClipbotTV before the end of 2022

watch me.

Code Being Used As A Weapon

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 23:08:40 GMT

An insane story of code being used as a weapon

A huge project just pushed out a new version that wipes your hard drive if your IP is from Belarus/Russia

This project is downloaded 1 Million+ times a week

It's now a NATIONAL security issue ranked 9.8/10 in severity

The story:

This project is what's known as a "package"

This means when nerds like me want to write complicated code, we start by downloading someone else's code to save time

The problem? Most of the time, this is done _automatically_

So overnight, 30k+ downloads happened instantly

This is so dangerous, it's now listed in the National Vulnerability Database: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-23812

The code in question is node-ipc: https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-ipc

Let's just say it's really important code for a lot of software

But let's explain the new, bad code in English:

Step 1: Check your IP

Step 2: Grab all the root folders on your computers (everything on your PC is stored on /)

Step 3: if you're in Russia or Belarus, delete everything.

That's literally it.

It doesn't take complicated code or a genius to do something extremely dangerous like this.

The author of the scary code defended himself here when he was called out by a user of the package (code)

You'll notice you can only see the author's comments, as the author has deleted a lot of what others were saying

This will do more than delete data

https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/node-ipc/issues/233

The danger here is not just to people that have downloaded the scary code, but the message this sends

So much of software in 2022 is built by using other people's code to save you time

If you can't trust other people's code...

We're in trouble

Not just now, but in the future

This isn't the first time we've seen a story like this

Many know the story of left-pad, where a single tiny piece of code was deleted because of copyright which "broke the internet"

What we have here is 10x worse

This is deleting EVERYTHING on your pc

https://qz.com/646467/how-one-programmer-broke-the-internet-by-deleting-a-tiny-piece-of-code/

For a long time, this has been a concern for many.

In fact, even programs that run your code (compilers) have had scary code in them

Imagine if Google Docs saved any passwords you typed into a doc?

That's the kind of danger we're talking about today

https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html

There's not much we can do to fix this problem on a large scale

It's existed for a long time, and will continue to be a danger

We build great code on the shoulders of old great code

But the foundation can always fall, and it might take a lot with it

But for now, do this:

First, if you're using vue-cli, you're at risk

Check your version and version-lock to the newest version that fixes this issue for at least vue users

ESPECIALLY if you made a new project recently

Scroll to "How to mitigate the node-ipc issue" here:

https://snyk.io/blog/peacenotwar-malicious-npm-node-ipc-package-vulnerability/

Beyond that, check your dependencies, across all your projects.

If node-ipc is in there, version-lock to something safe.

Even if you're not in Russia, two changed lines of code in the next version could ruin your servers or worse.

Beyond that...

Just be careful what you npm i

Obviously I'm not in Russia, but a lot of our friends are

Share this thread around, many still don't know and are in danger of bricked computers in a time of warfare

Regardless of what "side" of this you're on, software shouldn't be a weapon

Not like this.

I Started Over In Thailand

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 11:33:44 GMT

206 days ago, I left my startup, my country, and started over in Thailand.

In 36 hours, I go home.

What I've achieved, who I've become, and how I feel:

Income Generated:

- Total income: $38,805

- Average Monthly Income: $5,543

- Average Monthly Income (Without Work/BS): $1,529

- Hours worked/streamed: 1,315

- Hours worked/streamed (excluding quarantine): 1,000

- Average weekly hours live (excluding quarantine): 36

Income Breakdown
- Content
- Twitch - $4,300
- Donations - $855
- Projects
- NFTLists - $1,200
- Clipbot - $700
- Sponsors.dev - $200
- Sponsors - $3,450
- Consulting - $15,000
- Kinda BS
- Random FB Job Referral - $3,100
- NFTs lmao - ~$10k

Content growth:

Twitch
- Start of July 2021:
- 21 avg viewers, 2000 followers
- End of Dec 2021:
- 50 avg viewers, 4200 followers

Twitter
- Start of July 2021:
- 750 followers
- End of Dec 2021:
- 1920 followers

How I feel:

I'm so happy.

I have so much more control over my life.

Every day I wake up and decide what I want to do.

I can change the direction of the day or week at the drop of a hat.

Some days I wake up and I made money. This has never happened before in my life.

I have so many people that want me to do cool things with/for them.

So much opportunity to do so much at every turn.

I've learned so much about building things people actually want, and focusing on how to really make money and build cool things.

I wake up and sleep whenever I want to. I live my life exactly as I want to every day. I never feel guilty staying up or waking up late.

I've started to care about my health

I workout 3x a week now, and eat much better.

I hit my lifting goals!! I've never even had lifting goals!!

I've made so many new cool friends.

They only wish for my success, nothing else.

Even when they're harsh, I know it comes from a place of love, and it makes it so much easier to improve.

And finally, some people think I'm cool. It feels really nice.

I feel like a cool person now, which is something I've really really struggled with for a very long time.

I still don't know where I'll go next.

Or what I'll do next.

But the person I am now is ready for it.

And for a moment in time, i can confidently say:

I'm proud of me.

What To Expect From Live Streaming Your Startup

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 13:23:41 GMT

Live streaming my work has changed my life.

For the better and for the worse.

Here's everything you can expect from streaming your startup.

A Thread:

Opportunity.

You never know who will show up in your chat.

I met @levelsio on Twitch.

Investors DM me on Twitch.

Countless people ask to join my company daily.

I've done consulting based just on my streaming knowledge.

When you put yourself out there, people will find you.

Fun.

Working by yourself with just your laptop can get lonely. Or boring.

Streaming fixes that.

You work,
make a joke,
laugh a bit,
work,
talk about code,
strategize,
keep working.

It's like coworking and hanging with all your friends.

It makes work so much more fun.

Happiness.

When work is fun, it changes your life.

In ways you can't even imagine.

I don't worry about what projects will succeed or fail anymore.

I don't stress about being perfect.

Even with insane goals, I enjoy every single day.

I've never been this happy.

Accountability.

When you stream, you make a schedule.

When you start growing your audience, they'll expect you live at the same times/days, giving you an external reason to get started/get working.

As your audience becomes your friends, they'll push you to achieve your goals.

Productivity.

"But won't I be less productive?"

If you struggle to get work done, just wait until there's 30 people staring at your screen.

You'll code faster than ever :D

To keep the stream interesting, you'll need to talk through everything you do.

It forces you to focus.

Friendship.

If you think Twitter friends are great, wait until you get Twitch friends.

Talking to someone with your voice for hours at a time, several times a week, can create amazing friendships.

People will know YOU. Not just your content.

This is unlike ANY OTHER PLATFORM.

"True Fans"

When you stream long enough, you realize the distance between "friend" and "true fan" is not so far.

When people come to know YOU, they follow YOU.

Whatever your project, they will stick with you and support you.

This is the superpower of small streams.

Help.

I had a viewer redesign my entire frontend. I just hit "merge" and my app is beautiful.

When I hit a bug, 5 different people in chat will all start sending me stack overflow links.

When I need to design something, I've got 30 other engineers to design it with me.

Free Marketing.

When I started out in Startups, I struggled a ton to get ANY visitors to my site.

Streaming can fix this.

Any project I work on, with no marketing other than streaming and twitter, will get ~1000 pageviews a month.

Search "Clipbot" on Google. I did 0 SEO.

ALGORITHM WARRIORS!

This may seem like a stupid name, but secretly, this is one of the MOST SIGNIFICANT BENEFITS.

Want to hit the top of a subreddit that day?

Want a successful product hunt launch?

These are way easier when you get to start with 15-20 votes instead of 0-1.

Revenue.

A lot of people ask me about this.

These days, Twitch makes me anywhere from $300-$1000/mo not including donations and sponsorships.

Twitch income is complicated and EXTREMELY inconsistent.

I'll write a detailed thread on this next week. Follow me here for that.

Small Audience Growth.

Although Twitch is known for being garbage for discoverability, programming/tech streams are different.

It still isn't easy to get views as a tech streamer, but it is MUCH easier than a gaming streamer.

Do it long enough, you will see some small growth.

Encouragement

"It's so cool that you're building a startup!"

"Your project is so cool!"

"I think everyone will use this, it's such a good idea"

"Omg I can't believe this doesn't exist already, this is gonna be huge."

You'll get these a couple times a day.

But, more often...

Criticism.

"I could build this in two days"

"This is dumb"

"Why would anyone use this?"

"Why would you do it this way?"

"Isn't __ already doing this?"

"You should build __ instead"

Feedback is a gift.

Criticism 20x a day is not.

This can and will break you. Be careful.

Bad Opinions.

"Why didn't you build this in rust"

"JS is a garbage language ur dumb for using it"

"Why aren't you using typescript?"

"You're a bad engineer this code is terrible"

A lot of noise. But trust me, hear it enough times and it hurts.

https://xkcd.com/378/

Loss of Privacy.

People know where I live.

People know where my parents live.

I tried to keep my country a secret. People treated it like a puzzle and figured it out within days.

It's extremely easy to accidentally show your address, email, phone, API Keys, etc.

It's...scary

Loss of focus.

Not productivity focus, but life focus.

If you ever start to really care about how big you are on twitch, you WILL lose sight of your startup as a goal.

This is actually really hard to overcome.

Even after a year I still struggle with this.

A Bad Reward System.

Streaming more doesn't result in more viewers.

Stream growth is insanely hard and can make you feel like absolute crap about yourself.

If you measure success in any way based on your twitch viewers, you will be disappointed.

https://twitter.com/roxkstar74/status/1442505634260283398

Trolling.

Sounds like a funny joke, can actually ruin your day/week really easily.

Twitch is anonymous and full of buttheads.

People will come in and just call you a pussy randomly.

People will come in and say a bunch of racist shit randomly.

It's both stressful and hurtful.

There are amazing opportunities in streaming your startup.

It has changed my life.

But I want you to know everything you will face if you decide to do the same.

All in all?

Go for it.

Do something different, be someone amazing.

This thread is the "Why" of streaming your startup.

Next week, I'll tell you the "How".

There's a lot you need to know.

If this thread helped you, RT the original tweet, and follow me @roxkstar74 for the next thread.

I turned down a $150k+ job at 20 years old

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 13:25:34 GMT

I turned down a $150k+ job at 20 years old.

How I did it, and why I said no:

Background:

I studied game dev and comp sci in college.

At the end of my 2nd year, I got really into CS.

But, I wanted to see if I was good enough to get a game dev job.

I also had a free ticket to GDC (Game Developer's Conference) that year through my college (RIT).

The goal: Get a full-time offer in a gameplay programming position

NOT QA/Internal tools

I had been in internal tools at every job so far.

I needed to know I could get a "real game-dev position"

At my current internship, I was offered a full-time job after graduation.

I was aiming to come in at a SWE-II level (Software Engineer II).

At my current internship, that was my full-time offer waiting for graduation.

But for game dev, I wasn't waiting for graduation.

If I was doing this, I was going all in.

I would leave college for this job.

Enter: Networking

The #1 tip I got about GDC was if you want a job, you have to get into a party.

Getting invited to parties is really hard when you're a junior.

But I got lucky.

After networking like hell on Linkedin, I saw a post from a recruiter with an open party invite.

I figured this was probably a garbage party that wouldn't be helpful, but it was my only shot.

So I took it extremely seriously.

I sent her a DM and got my name on the list.

It was time to prepare my plan, my story.

I knew no one would want to hire some intern kid as a full-time engineer.

So I did what anyone would do.

I lied.

I crafted a story carefully around my current status that was just close enough to reality that it made sense.

I hadn't been an "intern" for 6 months, I was a "contractor" and my "contract" was expiring next month.

I "left college" after two years because I knew I was good enough and got my "contracting" job to prove it.

I came to GDC to pursue my real dream of doing game dev (true).

I'll skip over the rest of GDC straight to the party.

I show up, they ask my name, I'm on the list.

They hand me a name tag and send me up the elevator.

At the top, they asked me who I knew at the party.

I mentioned the recruiter from Linkedin.

They found her and intro'd us.

Her: "Oh! I know you....You're uh...."

Me: "Dan I'm Dan we talked on Linkedin"

Her: "Right! Yes! Dan! I think I remember you!"

Her: "What team were you interested in?"

Me: "Game features / core features"

Her: "Ok come meet MANAGER_NAME"

And so, the games began.

If there was one thing I'd learned at college, it was how to pitch myself. And how to sound cooler than I am.

I spent the entire party finding every member of the team (the manager gave me names) and asking them all about their jobs, what they do, etc.

I seemed super interested, and maintained my story and my passion all night.

A lot of people really resonated with my fake story of leaving college.

Engineer: "Yeah you know I always felt that way but never had the guts to leave, that's awesome that you did"

Me: *sweats*

I did this all night until the party closed.

I got everyone's email/phone before I left.

When I got home, I emailed EVERYONE.

"It was so great meeting you... The work seems awesome and interesting... Would be awesome to work with you... Let me know next steps / who to talk to"

After GDC, I get a call from the recruiter.

Her: "Hey Dan, we wanna interview you. You worked on internal tools, do you want to interview for that team?"

No.

I was here to prove something. Gameplay features team or nothing.

Her: "I'll see what we can do"

A few hours later...

Her: "Hey Dan, I talked to the team, we're gonna interview you for core features. Also, because the team loved you so much, we're gonna send you straight to final round and fly you in for the interview."

Game on. I flew to SF a week later.

I get there and meet new recruiter guy

He shows me around:

I'd get 3 free cooked meals a day.

I'd work game company hours (10am-7pm).

This was my first experience around anything like this, honestly I was freaking out.

I just had to get through 5 interviews.

I could do this.

To start, 3 Engineering interviews.

At this point I had practiced enough Data Structures & Algos & Design that I was had an internship offer at Microsoft.

Out of 3 interviews:

1 was DS&A

1 was architecture/design (basic OOP)

1 was distributed systems

Crushed 1&2, failed #3

Interview #4: Director of Engineering

Dude was like employee #5 or something crazy

I exuded more passion than anyone has ever had for anything

Me: "How quickly can I become a manager here? If I work harder, can I get promoted faster? I'll do whatever it takes to do that"

Director guy: "You could be a manager in two years if you work your butt off. Especially if you come in at SWE-2 and pick things up quickly. If not that, at least a lead engineer"

Me: "If I get this job, I will hit those goals no question."

Final interview: Recruiter guy.

He tells me I did really well in every interview except the distributed systems one (lmao true)

He says he's pretty confident I'm getting an offer but he has to confirm with his team

Says he'll call me later that day

Asks if I'd accept an offer

I told him: "It's either I take this job, or I go start my own startup. There is no in-between. If I decide not to pursue the startup, I want this job."

This was true.

I would either take this job, or go back to school and take entrepreneurship classes + a club leadership role.

He calls me later that day.

Offer: $130k/yr salary + $30k/yr stock

BEFORE NEGOTIATION.

I call my whole family

Family: "That's a lot of money...maybe you SHOULD leave college"

What did I want to do with my life?

Who did I want to be?

What was the next level for me?

I had achieved my goal.

I didn't want to just go become some engineer again.

I knew what that was like, I knew it would kill me in the long run like my current job was.

I didn't really want to be a gameplay engineer.

I just had to prove myself that I could.

"I have to prove myself that I can."

This is the sentence that guides most of my life.

I need only to prove to myself that I am good enough to achieve something.

Once I had that job offer, I knew I could get it again one day.

That job was now my backup plan.

So I said No.

And started my first startup.

Here I am, three years later.

If you have the skills, don't let "reality" stop you.

You know what you're capable of. Go shoot your shot.

Don't wait for opportunity, find it.

If you liked this, RT it for me, and follow for more startup stories.

Why Twitch's New Boost Feature Is Bad

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 03:11:14 GMT

The new Twitch feature isn't pay2win, it's pay2lose.

How twitch solved the right problem the wrong way.

THREAD:

"The right problem"

Twitch's biggest problem has always been discoverability.

It's really hard for viewers to find a new Twitch stream. You can't really "go viral" on Twitch.

This is where YT outclasses Twitch, and has led a lot of recent discussion on Twitch vs. YT streaming.

The "Solution"

Today Twitch rolled out an experimental feature to some users:

Pay $1, get 1000 "Recommendations".

Recs are basically when you show up on a viewer's recommended feed along with many other streams.

Think of it like a video showing up on someone's YT homepage.

Why this is the wrong way:

Twitch's discover algorithm is bad. It doesn't give enough visibility to smaller streams.

Instead of trying to improve this algorithm, Twitch took the easy route and said "If you want it just pay for it."

But it gets worse.

Streamers aren't the only ones that can pay for this.

VIEWERS can pay for a streamer to get advertised.

This is a really bad look for Twitch.

It's also going to work really poorly (we expect)

Why?

By doing this, Twitch has asked creators to choose between Growth & Income.

Donations are a large part of Twitch income.

Would you rather give your favorite streamer $10?
Or help them grow their channel?

Here's a better question:
Shouldn't the streamer choose?

Streaming is already extremely tough.

Making money from streaming? Even harder.

To make this choice is already insane when it's in the streamer's hands.

To put it in the hands of the viewers takes away a ton of control from the streamer.

Even if you pay, this will still fail to help you grow.

Why?

Retention.

Streaming is all about first impressions.

This feature will bring viewers in randomly over time.

Bringing those viewers back is near impossible over a long stretch of time.

https://twitter.com/aureylian/status/1443712190196985863

On top of this, we've already established Twitch sucks at discovery.

Paying money won't fix that.

Your money doesn't mean they can recommend you to people that actually want to watch you.

If they could do that, the problem would've already been solved.

You're paying to lose.

As a tech guy, I get where this came from.

Discovery is a REALLY hard problem to solve.

Trying this Boost feature makes sense, since it brings Twitch more money, and puts a bandaid on the problem.

However, just because it's hard isn't an excuse.

Twitch missed the mark today.

This thread inspired by:

This @DevinNash video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5gwYF4QsuA

@LudwigAhgren on stream today

This thread by @Aureylian:
https://twitter.com/aureylian/status/1443711168019931141

This thread by @ZachBussey
https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1443659593503150088/photo/1

This video by @HarrisHeller:
https://twitter.com/HarrisHeller/status/1443686462612926471

What It Takes To Make It As A Streamer

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 15:05:18 GMT

Streaming is fucking hard.

Harder than any other form of content.

Harsh advice you need to hear to make it as a streamer, a thread🧵:

You can give streaming all your time, heart, and energy, and see absolutely nothing for it.

Streaming doesn't reward you for trying.
Streaming doesn't reward you for grinding.
Streaming doesn't reward you for caring.

Here are lessons from top creators

Reason #1: Stream "views" are bullshit.

If you aren't entertaining in the exact 20 seconds someone shows up, they leave.

It is ridiculous to expect every moment to be exciting.

This makes you feel like shit and you ask yourself "Why didn't they follow? Am I not good enough?"

This is why videos are edited.

Everyone sees the same first 30 seconds.

You can be SURE the first impression is strong.

And every moment can be high quality.

You will NEVER get this with streaming.

You will always think you're not good enough if you measure this way.

Reason #2:
"Even if you're live, nobody will find you" - @HarrisHeller

"Promise me you will not do the grinding, hustling, 9-5 putting in my 8 hours streaming because that is all bullshit and a waste of your fucking time. You are literally doing nothing. " - @LudwigAhgren

You never grow on twitch. That's not what twitch is.

Twitch is where your audience goes to hang out with you.

THIS MEANS YOU NEED AN AUDIENCE.

Your goal as a creator should never be to grow the "stream", it should be to grow your Audience.

THEN you can stream.

Reason #3: Twitch Stats Don't Matter

Twitch teaches you to focus on average viewers.

This is a great way to make yourself feel terrible.

People have lives. A few of your viewers going to the dentist that day doesn't make you a bad streamer.

https://twitter.com/InitiallD_ExP/status/1440751990364000261

If you feel like these things apply to you, you aren't a bad streamer. You are still cut out for this. You CAN do this.

But, you have to overcome doing what's easy if you want to achieve something.

You have to learn to be a creator first, and a streamer second.

Here's how:

Step #1: Don't think of yourself as a streamer.

You won't get an audience just on Twitch.

So stop thinking of yourself as a Twitch streamer.

You're a Creator.

Get on Youtube, Tiktok, or Twitter, where people will actually find you.

Make that platform your MAIN FOCUS.

Step #2: Set better goals.

Don't set follower goals, set CONTENT goals.

Put out YT videos or Twitter threads. Aim for one good one every week.

"Get friends to keep you accountable. You don't have to be stuck here. Don't let yourself get trapped here." - @EposVox

Step #3: "Document the journey" -@DevinNash

You don't have to be special to be a creator.

You have to be focused.

I'm just some kid with 30 viewers, my opinions don't matter. But I did the research and wrote this thread with opinions from experts.

Now you're reading this.

You can do this too.

Decide who you want to be. What you want to be known for.

Study how to do that.

Record everything you learn.

Make videos, make TikToks of short lessons, make Twitter threads.

Even though you "know nothing", you made valuable content.

You can do this. But it will take time and dedication.

But, for some final harsh love from @ludwigahgren:
"If you can't dedicate yourself to growing that audience, just quit."

Content creation can kill you. Take care of yourself, make sure this is really what you want.