Gaming | Twitch | Self Improvement

What Does it Take to Be In the Top 1% of Twitch Streamers?

The surprising stats you need to break into the 1% streaming club

Over the past few years, content streaming has quickly risen to be one of the leading forms of entertainment with Twitch being the main platform for streamers of all types.

Streaming now even encompasses more than just video games as some leading streams involve cooking, hot tubs, and even sleeping.

Twitch clocks in multiple billions of hours in total watch time per year. Even more staggering is the platform’s massive user base with 31 million active daily users and roughly 7.7 million active Twitch streamers.

Top Streamer Statistics

It’s no secret that the top streamers on Twitch are doing very well for themselves.

Being a top 10 streamer means you will be raking in at least $2,000,000 per year and will average hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of viewers per stream. Viewership is often the most looked-at statistic for beginning streamers as it directly correlates to audience building and reaches.

But how many viewers does one need in order to break into the top 1%?

As with all industries, the distribution curve is heavily disproportioned from the top to the bottom. This concept is called the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule and entails that 80% of resources in a particular sector are owned 20% of the population.

Pareto’s Principle is most frequently applied to wealth distribution, but it works for almost any area. This can be extrapolated further and it follows that 90% is owned by 10% and 99% is owned by the top 1%.

How Many Viewers do You Need to Be a Top 1% Streamer?

Looking at the impressive numbers the top streamers pull in, how many average viewers do you think one needs to get into the highest 1%?

5,000?

10,000?

100,000?

These are logical guesses, but in reality, you only need 26.

No that wasn’t a typo on my end; the top 1% of Twitch streamers only average 26 viewers per stream.

This may seem shocking, but since the top echelons of any profession are so greatly skewed, we often perceive the top 1% as impossible to reach; however, in reality, it may be much more attainable than we think.

Building a Dedicated Audience

When building an audience for any type of content creation, the main keys many miss are consistency and effort.

I know it sounds simple, but the main divider between a successful and unsuccessful creator is putting the time in. Even some of the largest Twitch streamers spent their first months, or even years, building an audience slowly.

The beginning is the most difficult time as you will be creating into the void without much response. But as you dedicate more time and energy to working on your craft and creating content, people will start to notice and your audience will form.

If you’re in the early stages of your creator career, know even if you aren’t getting much response from your work that you’re on the right path. With consistent and focused effort, you too can be in the top 1% someday.

Thanks for reading, and let me know your thoughts in the comments!