What Is Twitch Affiliate Marketing? [And How to Get Started!]
What’s up, Keely here with ClickBank! If we haven’t met before, HI! And if we have, thanks for coming back for another content creation-related article where I talk to you about how to make money online through some sort of content creation.
Today, we’re gonna talk about Twitch affiliate marketing, becoming a streaming content creator, and making money through your streams.
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What Is Twitch Affiliate Marketing?
Now, you may be thinking, “What does this girl know about streamers…?”
To which I will tell you that I’ve learned everything I know through hard-earned research – and ALSO being forced to watch Jynxzi clips with my boyfriend for HOURS. I mean, literally HOURS. My gaming skills may be sub-par at best, my hand-eye coordination may be trash, but as far as research on this topic goes, let me tell ya, I’ve basically got a Master’s in understanding streamers and the world of gaming.
Additionally, I’ve been on the internet and in the world of content creation since it really took off like 10 years ago. I am what some might call a “nano-influencer” and have gotten a couple brand deals here and there. With that knowledge, combined with my chronically online-ness, I think we can tackle this topic together.
So, if you’re a gamer, or you just REALLY enjoy a video game session, AND you wanna make money online to combine your passion with an income stream, keep reading!
The idea of being a streamer and making money from gaming is not a new one. In fact, as I’m sure you know if you’re still here reading, streamers have been, well, streaming for probably over 15 years at this point. However, it’s still not too late to get into the world of gaming, streaming, and content creation and earn a bit of money from it! Not only can streaming alone make you money, but Twitch has its own official affiliate program that can help you earn money from streaming as well.
Twitch Affiliate Requirements
Now, if you’re looking to become an affiliate through Twitch specifically, there are a few requirements. If you’re entirely new to streaming on Twitch, there are some things you have to do first. Get your account set-up, including getting your profile created and starting your first stream. From there, it’s time to start doing the fun part – creating streaming content! It may take you a while, but keep streaming as much as you can! If you’re gaming most days anyways, you may as well stream it to help support your page!
After a while, you can join the Twitch Affiliate Program. They do have some requirements that they look at within a 30-day window. First, you have to reach at minimum, 50 followers. From there, you’ve got to have at least 8 streaming hours logged, and stream on at least 7 different days. Finally, you have to have at least 3 viewers consistently on your streams. Once you’ve achieved those goals within a 30-day window, you’re eligible for their affiliate program!
If you’re feeling like this feels impossible, don’t worry! You don’t need to crash out just yet. There’s a ton of great ways to get started making content and bringing people onto your stream. As a social media person myself, I would recommend a lot of cross-posting across social media channels, including, but not limited to, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. I have a video where I talk about how to make video content for social media, which is an s-tier video, in my opinion. You can watch that here and use it as a guide for how to get started to reach those requirements!
Affiliate Programs for Streamers
Once you’ve gotten your Twitch set up, and you’re ready to create content on a number of platforms, there’s quite a few ways you can monetize your content! Think of some of your favorite gamers or streamers. Where are they posting and more importantly, WHAT are they posting? For instance, if you look at a lot of really successful streamers, you’ll be able to take note that they post across platforms as well. A lot of times, they’ll post their full streams on Twitch and YouTube, and then take small cuts from their streams and re-post them on YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok. Once you’ve got a good, steady backlog of content across platforms, that’s when your audience really starts to grow. Once you’ve reached an audience size that feels s-tier at minimum, god-like at maximum, then it’s time to really double down on being able to monetize on your audience!
Like I mentioned before, there’s Twitch’s affiliate program, which is a great place to start for monetizing on your audience. You can read more about their official affiliate program HERE.
Additionally, a great way to monetize your growing audience is going to be to become an affiliate through other affiliate channels. Essentially, you’re gonna start promoting other products through the content you create.
Before we go any further, I think it’s helpful for you to know what an affiliate is and what that means for you as a content creator. If reading isn’t your vibe, you can check out my video on what the heck affiliate marketing is!
With affiliate marketing, there are three key players in the game.
As an affiliate, you promote the brand’s products, and the consumer buys those products. You, the affiliate, receive a percentage of each sale on the product, which is how you earn money, and the business gets more people to keep purchasing their products. The money you earn as an affiliate all comes from the commissions earned when you get a sale through your own special tracking link.
Let’s say Paul owns an energy drink company. Paul’s energy drink company has been doing pretty well on its own, but they’re not seeing the continued growth they were hoping for. Paul’s energy drink company decides they want to budget for an affiliate program to get affiliates to help with their marketing efforts. So, the company reaches out to a few affiliate networks, and they finally find the right one for them. Next, Paul’s chosen affiliate network helps onboard Paul’s supplements onto their marketplace. They work with Paul to decide what kind of commission rate they’d like to offer to affiliates who promote their supplements, and they iron out a few more details.From there, the affiliate marketer – or YOU in this case – comes along, and you decide it’s time for you to jump into the world of affiliate marketing.
As an affiliate, once you’ve chosen your niche, your affiliate program or programs, and the products you’re going to promote, you’re nearly there. In this case, your niche is going to be the gaming industry, and your audience is going to be fellow gamers, and people that are into streaming, getting better at certain games, and learning from fellow gamers. Infinite aura fr fr.
As an affiliate, there’s a lot that goes into the preparation of becoming an online marketer. Understanding what affiliate marketing is and how to get started is the best base for the beginning of your journey.
Okay, there’s one more key player here in the affiliate marketing world: the consumer (aka the customer or buyer). This is the third party who is purchasing the products that you, the affiliate, are promoting! The buyer is a person within your niche that you’re trying to reach, likely through one of your many cross-posting efforts on YouTube, Twitch, IG, TikTok, or somewhere else that I don’t know about.
So you’ve got the brand, like Paul’s energy drink company, who is looking to get their products promoted to new audiences; you have the affiliate, or YOU, who is going to promote Paul’s products; and you have the consumer, or the person in your niche who is going to make a purchase on the product you’re promoting. Once they’ve taken that action, Paul’s business receives money from the sale, and you earn a commission on that sale, and BAM – you’ve earned your first dollars from affiliate marketing!
So, now with a better understanding of affiliate marketing, I’ll give you a few platforms that are great to get started on for a beginner affiliate, like yourself. If you’re looking for the best affiliate programs for streaming, look no further. These are the s-tier ones I’ve found in my time as a content creator, but there may be others, so make sure to continue to do your research!
If you’re looking to promote physical products, Amazon Associates has a pretty good affiliate program. Their commission rates are pretty small to start out, but once you get a few good products and a large enough audience, that can really pay off for you! The main requirement for an Amazon Affiliate is that you must have an active blog, website, app, or YouTube. As a streamer, you’ll likely qualify with having a YouTube and social media presence, so you should be good to go.
Obviously I also have to tell you about ClickBank, since they are the ones that employ me. But trust me when I say I wouldn’t tell you to use the platform if I didn’t genuinely think it would be helpful for your audience monetization. I’m not trying to have those negative aura points. ClickBank is super easy to get started on, and they have a ton of physical and digital products to promote. They’ve been in the affiliate game for a long time and they cover a ton of different niches. Not to mention, the commission rates on the products are some of the highest amongst affiliate programs and there’s no minimum rate for a payout like some other affiliate programs. You can click HERE to get started on ClickBank, if you want!
There’s also TikTok Shop, which is really helpful if you’re posting a lot on TikTok. TikTok Shop is super easy to get set-up and they have a TON of products on their marketplace that you can link to straight from the app itself, and get paid out through the app as well. The sign-up process is super easy and since they have so many products, it’s fairly easy to get a few products to promote in your niche. I can’t speak to the commission rates on there, since it varies based on the products, but I do know that engagement rates on TikTok are sometimes up to 95%, which can make making a sale pretty easy on there.
Affiliate Marketing for Gamers
Gaming is a HUGE niche for live-streamers, no matter the platform you’re on, but particularly on Twitch. Once you’ve got your audience set, it’s really easy to start making money from that. Not only from your streams themselves, but also from product promotions.
Some of the products I’ve seen do really well are energy drinks, supplements, and anything gaming-related. Think mouses, mouse pads, controllers, accessories, that kind of thing. Trust me, the more you expand your mind into different things you could promote to your audience, the more you’ll be able to make off your content! No cap.
Niches Beyond Gaming
If you’re thinking of possibly expanding outside the world of gaming, that’s cool too! Fortunately, Twitch has opened up a HUGE world of content live-streaming outside of just gaming. You can even stream content in the lifestyle, fitness, and cooking niches. Fortunately, if you choose to expand your niche and audience by additionally streaming other forms of content like this, we’ve got you covered at ClickBank with more products to monetize your growing audience. This isn’t just a sales pitch, I’m just letting you know! Between more physical products like health supplements, cooking supplies, and dope lifestyle products, you can monetize as you expand as well!
How Much Money Does a Twitch Affiliate Make?
So, how much money does a Twitch affiliate make? There’s a lot of factors that play into this statistic!
Streamers that average around 50 viewers a month can make anywhere from $500-$750 per month. Streamers with a larger viewer-ship count can average around $5,000 per month. This also depends on hours streamed, however. There’s a lot of conflicting data around how much streamers can earn on the platform, but the gist of it is, that if you stream enough and have a dedicated enough following, you could probably make enough money for your car payment or for some extra cash on the side for whatever you want.
Once you add in the money you could earn as a gaming affiliate, though, that changes in a big way. Let’s say you’re gonna promote something off of ClickBank, just for the ease of things. There’s a supplement product on the marketplace with an average payout of $45. That means that with every consumer who purchases from your affiliate link, you earn $45.
Math-wise, if you can get just three people per day to buy your affiliate product, then you’ve earned $4,050 in a single month. Add that onto the money you earn solely from streaming and you’re golden!
(And that’s just with a single product. Imagine how much you could earn if you promoted two or three affiliate products. The possibilities are endless!)
Becoming an Affiliate Marketer on Twitch
Okay, so the next, natural question is: HOW do I become an affiliate marketer on Twitch?
Let me outline some steps for you and help you find the right niche, audience, and ways to monetize your streaming!
Step 1: Choose a Niche
If you’ve heard this before, but you’re a bit confused on what a “niche” is, don’t crash out, let me explain. I know when I first started in the world of affiliate marketing, I was so confused on what it meant to pick a niche! But it’s actually really simple and it’s probably one of the overall best guidelines to use when it comes to being successful as a streamer and content creator.
Picking a niche simply means deciding on who you want to talk to as an affiliate, and what types of products you want to promote.
So, how do you do this?
For me, the best and easiest way to pick a niche was to sit down and look at the kind of marketing I wanted to do, what kind of audience I wanted to target, and what kind of products I wanted to promote.
For you, if you’re looking into streaming, this will be relatively easy for you. There’s a few common niches people in the streaming industry lean toward. Decide what kind of content you want to stream, and from there, decide what your niche will be. Will you be streaming lifestyle content? If so, your niche will likely be geared toward home/lifestyle/cooking. If you’re gonna be gaming as a streamer, your niche will be geared toward the gaming industry as a whole.
Your niche is essentially what drives you and the products you’re promoting online as an affiliate marketer. For me, the journey to choosing my niche was simple, but it was truly the guiding light for me as I began my affiliate marketing business. I simply dug in and took a look at what my hobbies and lifestyle already were. Use these factors to help drive what your niche will be.
From there, I was able to really double down on monetizing my content. That’s why having a niche is so important! It’s a big help with the research and content creation as an affiliate, and gives you clear guidelines for the audience you’re targeting with your marketing efforts. When you choose a niche, it’s MUCH easier for you to be able to properly target and reach an audience that is actually interested in the products you’re promoting, so your return on investment is that much higher!
Picking a niche is really that simple. Just determine how you want your content to go out, decide on the audience you want to talk to, and choose the types of products that that audience will connect with. Once you’ve narrowed those things down, your niche is there for you and it’s time to start earning money online!
Step 2: Grow Your Audience
The next step in becoming an affiliate marketer on Twitch is to grow your audience. We’ve talked about this a bit already, but I have a few guidelines that will help to expand your audience as a streamer!
First, make sure you’re promoting valuable content to viewers in your niche. If it isn’t valuable, you’ll lose your audience. I always say you should create content for PEOPLE, not for an algorithm. You can try following the AIDA principle:
- Attention
- Interest
- Desire
- Action.
With AIDA as a framework, you’ll produce content that first grabs the audience’s attention, then piques their interest, then makes them desire YOUR solution, and lastly, gives them an action to take, like heading to your affiliate link or sharing your content with others.
Next, make sure the platform you’re using is the best one for YOUR niche and audience. If you use a shotgun technique, posting everywhere hoping to hit your target audience, you’ll miss out. Become an expert on how your audience engages with you on each channel and really format your content to take full advantage of that specific channel!
Next, we’ll talk about monetizing your audience, which will make your content creation valuable for YOU. You’re working on becoming a streamer, yes, but to continue to monetize as an affiliate as well, that’s the challenge.
As an affiliate, your job is NOT to “sell” any product or convince your audience to buy anything. Your only goal is to make people aware of the solution you’re offering and help them make the right decisions for themselves. And if they choose to buy, you’ll get a piece of the sale for bringing the product to their attention!
Step 3: Monetize Your Live Streams
Finally, we get to the money! In order to make any income from your streaming content, you’re going to have to monetize it somehow. And honestly, in my mind, the best way to do this is through affiliate marketing (although there are a few other areas of monetization I’ll touch on as well).
One of the ways to start monetizing your streaming and content is through affiliate marketing. There are thousands upon thousands of companies and brands that are looking for regular people like me and you to help market their brand, and they’ll pay you a good commission for it! This is probably my personal favorite when it comes to monetizing on social media and Twitch. Honestly, it’s easy, it’s free, and it’s low risk. Affiliate marketing is such a great way to get started with monetizing your content. I don’t have a HUGE following, but I have enough of a loyal following within my niche that I earn commissions each month just by sharing affiliate links and products. The commission payout from affiliate marketing is definitely the most sizable compared to other programs too, which is awesome.
Another great way to earn money from your streaming is with ambassadorships. I’ve dabbled in this one a lot too and really enjoy it. The commissions are good, and it’s easy to get people to convert. It’s a great and easy way to monetize your audience. It’s usually pretty easy to promote, too. Usually you’re just promoting a link through your link in bio or in your stream, and when people click your link and make a purchase, you earn commission through that.
The next way to monetize your audience is through sponsored posts and videos. This is when a brand pays you a small fee to talk about their brand or product in a post on your stream or on social media.
While these are all super lucrative for earning money from your streaming audience and through content creation, my truly unbiased favorite is affiliate marketing. It’s great because you never have to sign a contract, you only promote what aligns with you as a creator and with your niche, and the commissions are the most sizable compared to other monetization strategies. There’s a ton of great affiliate programs out there, as I’ve mentioned, but I truly like the commission rates and products from ClickBank, and the user interface makes promoting and earning money literally SO easy. Trust me, ops wanna see you fail, but I wanna see you succeed.
It’s super easy to start earning money with affiliate marketing with $0. You can learn how to in my super chill how-to.
How to Promote Links on Twitch (Without Being Spammy)
Okay, so, you know how when you’re watching a YouTube video and you can’t even get through the video because there’s like a million ads and they start the video with a promo and a sponsor and a million other spammy things that by the time you get to the actual content, you don’t even wanna watch anymore?
We aren’t gonna do that.
There’s a really good way to promote products without coming across as spammy, because, frankly, if you come across as spammy, your product promotions won’t land.
There’s a few different ways that you can promote links on Twitch without coming across as spammy. First, you can add a few links into the description of your stream! Super easy. If you upload streams onto YouTube, you can also add links into the description on YouTube!
Additionally, you can add links into the live chat with a chat-bot or manually if you want! Finally, you can also add a link into the “about” section of your profile! If you have multiple links you want to share, you can create a sort of “link in bio” to add across social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and even Facebook.
Pros and Cons of Twitch Affiliate Marketing
I’ve talked to you a lot about how much of a W it would be to be an affiliate on Twitch. But let’s be fr right now. There’s always cons to anything, so let me lay out for you a few pros and cons of Twitch affiliate marketing.
- Pro: The gaming community on Twitch is STRONG! If you play your cards right, you could have a dedicated audience that helps contribute to your monetary gain as a twitch affiliate.
- Con: There is a time commitment to streaming. Obviously, you have to take the time to create your content, spend time on Twitch, and interact with and build your audience. That can take a lot of time and effort before you see any monetary gain from it.
- Pro: Twitch has a ton of really useful tools made specifically for streamers. As far as creating content goes, they make it really easy!
- Con: There can be a limited reach outside of gaming. While there are other ways to stream, gaming is really the biggest niche on there, so finding success in other niches may be difficult, but not impossible.
- Pro: It’s a great place to drop affiliate links, both in the chat and other areas of your profile; to help earn money as a streamer.
- Con: There are also some technical requirements for streaming. While anyone can do it, really making sure your stream is high-quality may take a bit of work up front.
All in all, Twitch is still obviously an amazing place to earn money as an affiliate and monetize your audience as a content creator. Like I mentioned, the most important thing is to not devote so much time to JUST one platform, when you can post across platforms and increase your potential for monetization and audience growth.
If you’re looking for great ways to make content online, you can check out my video on making content here!
FAQs
How Do I Create Twitch Content?
This is easy! As long as you’ve got a Twitch profile, a stable internet connection, and a video encoder (like your gaming system), you’re good to go! Once you’ve created your Twitch profile, you can simply start your stream on Twitch and start gaming and chatting to your audience!
How Do I Start as a Twitch Affiliate?
To get started, you have to build up your stream, channel, and audience. There are a few requirements as I mentioned above, including a certain number of streaming hours, consistent audience size, and follower count that are required to get started. Start streaming and creating content and you’re halfway there!
What Is the Difference Between a Twitch Affiliate and a Twitch Partner?
A Twitch affiliate is anyone who promotes Twitch and monetizes their audience. The Twitch Partner program is typically more exclusive, with a larger barrier to entry. The overall barrier to entry for affiliate marketing is much lower, meaning people like you and me can make money as a streamer!
What Percentage of Twitch Streamers Are Affiliates?
According to the internet, there are roughly 2-million Twitch streamers that are also affiliates. There are over 7.3 million total streamers monthly on Twitch. You could be one of the 27% that decide to monetize their audience!
How Do I Become An Affiliate Marketer?
Becoming an affiliate is easy! Find your niche, your audience, and what you’re wanting to promote, and then find an affiliate program or programs that align with that!
There are a lot of different affiliate networks out there, so it’s important to do your research to find programs that work for you and your goals. I have a video on how to start affiliate marketing with $0 that really helps to guide you through the steps of becoming an affiliate without having to break the bank!
The Wrap-Up
There’s a super lucrative world out there filled with affiliate marketing for streamers and Twitch affiliate marketing! If you have the time, patience, and dedication to continue to create content as a streamer, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to make money online with streaming.
And if you want to include ClickBank affiliate products in your Twitch affiliate plans, be sure to sign up for a ClickBank account to get started! You’ve got this!
