News Posts – Sponsor Hunter

Best Way to Donate to Streamers

Will — Mon, 25 May 2020 07:00:39 +0000

Should I Donate, Give Bits, or Subscribe to Twitch Streamers?

(What do Streamers Prefer? Donations, Bits, or Subscriptions?)

Donating to a streamer is a great way to support their channel, but what type of donation should you give? There are three ways you can donate and show your support to a stream; through bits, by subscribing or gifting subscriptions, or by donating money.

Each donation type have their own sets of pros and cons. This article is going to explain the pros and cons of each donation method.

When you donate money, 100% of the donation is received by the streamer. There is no middle man or cut taken like bits or subscriptions have. The downside, sometimes people jokingly donate and later refund the money back. This makes it hard for streamers to know exactly how much of their donations will actually go through.

With subscriptions, the streamer receives roughly 50-60% of the cost to subscribe. So of the $5 subscription cost, only $2.50 goes to the streamer (see my Twitch Subscription Calculator to see how much streamers make off their subscribers alone). Some streamers would rather you just donate the full $5 to them. Alternatively, some streamers see this as a long term opportunity where the subscriber will continue to subscribe for months to come. Same goes for gifted subscribers where the viewer who receives the gifted subscription may subscribe the following month to keep their subscription active.

The last donation type is through bits. Bits, like pure donations, give money to the streamer. The benefit of bits over the pure money donation is that bits are not refundable. So if a streamers receives 100 bits they have a guaranteed $1 donation (see my Twitch Bits Calculator here to see how much streamers and Twitch make off Bits). The downside of bits is that it costs $1.40 to donate $1. This adds up as if someone wanted to donate $100 in bits it would cost them $140 just to purchase those bits. A streamer may prefer to cut the middle man, in this case Twitch, and take the full $140.

So what's the best way to donate to a streamer? It really depends on what the streamer wants. If they want to build their channel then maybe gifting subscribers is best. Donating Twitch Bits are great too as it guarantees the money without the risk of refunds. However, the best donation anyone can give to a streamer is the pure money donation. 100% of the donation goes to the streamer. Yes, there is a risk of people refunding or donations not going through, but that is very minimal. With subscriptions, up to 50% goes to Twitch. With Bits, 28.57% goes to Twitch. With pure donations, 0% goes to Twitch or any other company.

In the end, the best donation is a pure money donation, but don't be afraid to ask the streamer what they prefer. Some may want to grow their channel with new subscribers.

How to get a free PC while streaming

Will — Sat, 02 May 2020 05:26:41 +0000

Getting a free PC is a lot easier than I thought it would be. While researching this topic I thought most content creators getting a free PC were part of the elite 1%. I was very wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, it still requires work and a following to receive a free PC, but the requirements, at least for the company I found, are not that hard.

Ironside Computers offers sponsorships for Affiliates and Gamers. Becoming part of the Gamer Sponsorship could net you a free computer. The requirements for Ironside’s Gamer sponsorship are 50,000+ YouTube subscribers and 10,000 views per video. For Twitch, it is case by case. From my research, I was able to find multiple streamers and content creators who received a free Ironside PC with their sponsorship. All had at least 100,000 subscribers.

These requirements may seem high but remember, as your channel grows so does the subscriber and view count. It may take your channel a few months to receive 1000 subscribers now, but as it continues to grow, the time to get 1000 new subscribers will take weeks to days.

If you’re working to earn a complimentary computer while creating videos, then check out Ironside Computer’s Gaming Sponsorship. Work to get your channel’s subscriber count to 50,000 and you might just have a chance at getting a top of the line gaming computer at no cost.

Best Gaming Chair Sponsorship for 2020

Will — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 06:18:59 +0000

This is going to be an easy pick. Not because one program is better than others but because out of the eight programs that were available in 2019, only one still stands today. This program is the winner by default but it also would have likely been the winner regardless. In the beginning of 2019 I made a post titled the Best Sponsorship Programs of 2019 and this program made the list at #4. Not to toot my own horn, but I was very confident in this program in 2019. I am again confident that this program will be the best in 2020, even if the other players or new players join in.

Without further ado, the best gaming chair sponsorship for 2020 is OP Seat.

About OP Seat Program

OP Seat gives cash back for every seat sold. Approved applicants will also receive discounts coupons to use on OP Seat merchandise. After selling 10 chairs, you will receive a chair of your own for free!

For their more advanced sponsorship program they require at least 50,000 YouTube subscribers or an average of 50 Twitch viewers a stream. If you meet these requirements you can apply for their affiliate program. If you have even more subscribers and viewers you will receive additional benefits.

Make sure to check out OP Seats SponsorHunter profile where you can find the forms to sign up for their sponsorship programs.

Let’s see if OP Seat remains the best gaming chair sponsor in 2020. If you still want to take a look at the other gaming chair sponsors then make sure to check out this page!

When should I look to get sponsored (when should I look for a sponsorship)

Will — Sun, 28 Jul 2019 22:57:27 +0000

It’s never too early to start looking for a sponsorship. Even if you’re a fresh content creator, you can start looking into sponsorships. The type of sponsorships you should look into and what you might receive will vary depending on how big your channel actually is. For new channels, you’ll want to look into Affiliate Sponsorships. Affiliate Sponsorships are sponsorships where you promote and sell your sponsor’s products. For each product sold you receive a commission or credit back. For medium sized channels, you can expect to the same commissions or better from affiliate sponsorships and sometimes even additional bonuses. You can also look into Gaming Sponsorships. These are similar to affiliate sponsorships in the sense you promote the sponsor’s products but sometimes the companies will send you products to sample or give away.

For large channels, you can look into Professional Sponsorships. These sponsorships are for the elite content creators and you can expect to receive free items, cash incentives, trips to conventions, and even tournament invites. To get a professional sponsorship you’ll need to be one of the better content creators out there with a huge following.

Even though you can start getting sponsored right away does not mean you should. Find the right sponsors for your channel. Do not sign up with every company you can. Starting your career as a content creator and selling multiple products, especially those unrelated to your content, does more harm than good. It also clutters your page and can make you look like a sellout. That is not good when you are working to grow your channel. It is recommended to sign up for companies that fit your personality, your content, and the games you play.

It’s never too early to sign up for sponsorships as long as you sign up for sponsors that fit your personality and the games you play. You do not need to have a huge following to start searching for sponsors.

Best Turbo Controllers for Xbox 360

Will — Sun, 02 Jun 2019 22:24:27 +0000

This article will be taking a look at the top 3 best turbo controllers for the Xbox 360, the Xbox 360 Pad EX 2 with Turbo, the Datel XBox 360 Wired WildFire Controller - Limited Edition Ruby Red, and the Datel Wildfire Wireless Controller.

Xbox 360 Pad EX 2 with Turbo

The Xbox 360 Pad EX 2 with TurboThis controller, also known as the Horipad, is by far my favorite turbo controller. What I love so much about this controller compared to the other two is that it is wired AND you can easily turbo each button. If you want the button to turbo while holding the button or if you want to always have the button being turboed without even pressing it, then this is the controller for you! It honestly does everything I want and need in a turbo controller, and when going for achievements that require repetitive steps, this controller gets the job done! The only issue with this controller compared to the rest is that it has a notorious "ghosting" problem. Ghosting is when the joystick moves forward even when not being pressed. This is fixable but you'll need to tear the controller apart yourself and hope you don't break any other parts in the process. Once the controller starts to ghost it's as good as done for playing purposes. For idle boosting it can still get the job done with some tape and innovation.

Amazon Listing

eBay Listing

Datel XBox 360 Wired WildFire Controller - Limited Edition Ruby Red

I really like this turbo controller and it's my go to for general turbo uses. I've never experienced any issues with the buttons or the controller breaking in any way. What I also love about this controller is that it is wired. So for long gaming sessions I'll never need to run and replace the batteries, unlike it's counterpart which only has a battery lifespan of 16 hours.

Setting up the turbo on this controller is also relatively easy. However, I do have two issues with this controller. The first is that you cannot remap the buttons. This is a convenient perk of this controllers counterpart. Lastly, the controller itself is clunky and hard to handle for long periods of time. I'd much rather play on a normal controller than use this one for more than an hour. For idle boosting purposes, this controller does the job, even without the option to map the buttons. Long play time on this controller is a no go for me.

Amazon Listing

eBay Listing

Datel Wildfire Wireless Controller

This controller is the wireless version of the Datel Wildfire Red Controller. It is the same build and hard to hold for long periods of time. It is also only wireless without any option to use a play and charge kit. When gaming excessively you'll notice that the battery life lasts roughly 16 hours. When idle boosting, this time goes by fast. What makes this controller great is that you can remap the buttons and where they are located. If you want the Right Butter to be the 'B' button then it's possible. Unfortunately, this isn't too easy to do as it requires a program on your computer and a plug in cord. The program is free and the cord does come with the new controller but buying used you may not get the cord too and the program is likely to lose support in the coming years as this controller is no longer manufactured.

Amazon Listing

eBay Listing

Conclusion

The final verdict for the best turbo controllers for the Xbox 360 are as follows, the Horipad, followed by the Wired Red Datel, and lastly the Wireless Datel Controller. If you can get any of these for sub $40 then pick them up. They are becoming harder and harder to come across so pick one up while you still can. I've linked the eBay listings for these as I was unable to find any active listings on Amazon.

What speeds are needed for streaming

Will — Sun, 02 Jun 2019 10:20:06 +0000

Are you looking to start streaming your favorite games? Are you wanting to start a career as a full time streamer? Or maybe you are just looking to stream your games and chat with the community. No matter what reason you have to stream you’ll need to have an internet connection. Having a good connection is needed but you’ll actually be surprised on what the minimum specs needed are to have a quality stream.

When it comes to streaming you’re going to need both download and upload speeds. If you’re playing offline games then download doesn’t really matter much as streaming in itself only requires a good upload speed.

So, what upload speeds do you need for an adequate stream? Surprisingly, not a lot. As long as you have 5-10mbps upload you should be able to stream 1080p quality streams. Do note that your internet provider delivers two speeds, download and upload shown as download/upload. So as long as the upload speed is greater than 5 you should be able to stream. Most providers offer a 5 upload on their basic package or their second basic package, meaning most everyone with an internet connection can stream! So get out there and start your own community!

If you’re unsure what internet plan you have you can always check with your provider. Alternatively, you can do a speed test on SpeedTest and see what your speeds are.

How much does YouTube pay

Will — Thu, 09 May 2019 05:45:04 +0000

It’s really hard to get a solid number on what YouTube pays as there are so many factors that go into paying out their partners; from type of video to viewer demographics, subscribers with ad-block, subscribers with YouTube Red, length of video, ect… but it is possible to get an estimated number. In this article I will provide my best estimate for someone looking to have around 5k subscribers and consistent views (around 400k/month). 400k views a month may sound daunting, but as you gain subscribers you’ll also gain a higher view count per month.

With these numbers we can then calculate a larger revenue for someone with more subscribers and views. Again, this number is purely an estimate and we are going to be using the above snapshot to create our numbers. Just because one person makes X amount does not mean everyone else will too even with the same amount of subscribers and view count.

To start our calculations we are going to want to find out the value per view. In the above image, the user has made $522.23 between February 1 through February 26. During these 26 days, the user had 387,800 views. To find the per view value we need to divide the revenue by the number of views, so in this case, $522.23 divided by 387,800. This equals out to $0.00135/per view. This number is really small, so to make things a little easier let’s take this number and multiply it by 1000 views. This way we can see how much this users make per 1000 views. $0.00135*1000 = $1.35 per every 1000 views. This isn’t such a bad number. If each new video this user puts out receives 200,000 views in the first week that’s $269.33 for just that video in its first week. On top of all that, this user is still receiving views on older videos they created and will continue to receive some views on this video going forward.

As your channel grows so will your view count and subscribers. The more videos you have out the more views you’ll receive overall, however, there is still a rule on quality over quantity. If you have 100 bad videos with 100 views each that’s going to take a hit on your channel and the way YouTube promotes you. It is better to take the time to make quality videos that easily hit 1000 views each. Again, as your channel grows these view numbers will also greatly increase.

Okay, so we know how much this user makes per 1000 views. Now we want to set a daily income goal and want to see how many views we’ll need to receive a day to hit our goal. To do this we need to set the goal, for this example, let’s say $100 a day. To see how many views we need to hit $100 we take $100 and divide it by our revenue per view number we did earlier, which was $0.00135. $100/$0.00135 = 74,258 which is the number of views we’ll need to roughly make $100/day. We can also increase this goal to monthly and yearly, say you want only $100 a month then the total required views would stay the same. But if you’d like to make $3500/month then the math stays the same at $3500/$0.00135 = 2,566,046 views required.

We now know how many views we’ll need to meet our dollar amount, but what about setting a goal based on view count and seeing how much we’ll make when we hit that goal? This calculation is just like the calculation we did earlier when we multiplied our per view measurement by 1000 views. If you set a goal of having 100,000 views a month then to find out the amount of revenue you’ll make all you need to do is multiply the per view value times your goal of 100,000 views. For this case, that would be $0.00135*100,000 = $134.66.

Some of these numbers may sound daunting, but remember, as you grow your channel the views, subscribers, and everything else that comes with it grows too. What once took me a month to make in views I now receive in hours. Just keep working it and your channel will continue to grow. Remember also that the numbers used in this example are not going to be the same for you, but it is still a good base to work off of. There are so many factors that could change these numbers and once you start receiving the monetization yourself then you’ll be able to take your monthly revenue and goals to create your own calculations.

I have created a calculator so you can plug and play without having to do the math yourself. Do note that this calculator will be using different numbers than the ones we used in the above example. The calculator is using numbers off an account that was receiving less than 4,000 views a month. I used this users numbers because they are so low and anyone who gets monetized on the new YouTube monetization system will be receiving more views per month than the calculator so this is will be a really good base and absolute bare minimum for anyone wanting to see what they will be making once they do get monetized. Head to this page to see the YouTube Monetization Calculator.

Issue regarding image sizes has been fixed

Will — Sat, 20 Apr 2019 01:20:22 +0000

An issue where images were too large and cropping out has been fixed as of today, April 19, 2019. Back in September/October of 2018 I had added more images to the site and put a width and length restriction to keep image sizes consistent. Due to an unknown update, the restrictions broke and made the images added in the Fall to become too large. I have since removed these width and length restrictions and the images should now load properly.

If you ever see any issues on this site please make sure to let me know by using the contact form.

How much is a Bit Worth on Twitch

Will — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 03:28:42 +0000

This post will show you the value of bits including the amount the streamer makes, the price to purchase, and how much Twitch earns (after the bits are used). Depending on if Twitch is offering any promotions or discounts will change how much the bits costs and how much Twitch makes, however, the streamer will always take home the same amount of revenue.

For every one bit, the streamer receives $.01, and if the there were no discounts to purchase, the cost of 1 bit would be $0.014 with Twitch earning $0.004. To make things a little easier to understand, it costs $1.40 for 100 bits. The streamer makes $1 and Twitch makes $0.40. Obviously, if someone purchases 100 bits and never Cheers them to a streamer then Twitch keeps the entire $1.40.

To donate bits to a streamer, first you have to purchase some. This can easily be done on Twitch's website. Once you have your bits, all you need to do is type Cheer in the streamer's chat followed by the number of bits you'd like to cheer/give them. If you'd like to donate 100 bits then you'd type "Cheer100". The below bit emote will pop up in the chat and maybe even on screen. If the streamer has customized bit emotes, then their customized emotes will appear. You can Cheer any amount you please, including irregular amounts. The higher the cheer, the bigger the emote.

The more bits you donate by cheering will help you gain the following Cheer Chat Badges. These badges only appear in the chat where you cheered. The badges are earned over time, so you do not need to cheer all at once. If you want the 5,000 cheer badge then you can donate any amount of bits over any period of time until you hit 5,000 cheered bits. Once you earned this badge you have it for life, but only in that specific chat room. Anyone who has the 1,000,000 Bit Badge has donated $10,000 to the streamer in bits.

How much does Twitch pay its Partners?

Will — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 02:44:33 +0000

Becoming a Twitch streamer can bring in a fair amount of money, and with some changes over the last year, it’s now easier to become a Twitch affiliate. There are plenty of streamers out there that are pursuing streaming as their full time career. Depending on how much you’d like to make a year, you also may be able to pursue Twitch streaming as a career.

In order to become a Twitch affiliate, you will need to have the following stats.

At least 500 total minutes broadcast in the last 30 days
At least 7 unique broadcast days in the last 30 days
An average of 3 concurrent viewers or more over the last 30 days
At least 50 Followers

These requirements are actually pretty easy to achieve. Over a month time frame, you only need to commit 8.3 hours to your stream, and stream 7 or more times. A unique stream is pretty much anytime you stream actual content, so no replays or hosting will count. Gaining viewers may be tough at first, but three unique viewers a stream will come naturally after a week or so of streaming, so you can expect to achieve this requirement in the first month as well. Also, 50 followers isn’t much. If you get one or two followers a day just starting off, you’ll hit the threshold in the first month easily. If you are a great streamer then you’ll hit these numbers right away, but even the average or mediocre streamer can get these numbers! It is much easier to get sponsored of Twitch than it is to become a partner on YouTube.

So, how much do Twitch streamers make while being partnered? It’s a pretty easy breakdown. The basic level streamers make a 50/50 cut. For a $4.99 sub, the streamer will take home $2.50. For the $9.99 sub, the streamer takes home $5, and for the $24.99 sub, the streamer takes home $12.50. Also, for the free Amazon Prime sub, the streamer takes home $2.50 as this is the $4.99 tier sub. Bigger named streamers may have a 60/40 cut, so for the $4.99 sub they would take home $3. This isn’t a bad deal if you really think about it. For someone on the 50/50 split with 1,000 subscribers, this means they make $2,500 a month or $30,000 a year off subscribers alone. This isn’t bad for a side gig, or a college hobby. Keep in mind though that this is just income off of subscribers. Streamers also make money off of sponsorships, sales of items they’ve made, commission on items they are promoting, their YouTube channel if they have one, which does provide a nice chunk of money as well, and of course the donations that come naturally while streaming as well as receiving bits.

You can become a full time streamer and make a career out of it, all you need to do is the math on what you want to take home. Consider the donations as a side amount as you cannot depend on these tips. You can easily calculate how much you are going to make a month off of your current subscribers. Ask any streamer now and they will prefer you to subscribe for $4.99 than to donate for $4.99. Why? Because you are likely to continue to subscribe month after month which after just two months covers that donation return for the streamer.

It may not be easy to get those 1000 or 2000 subscribers but it is doable to get a few hundred subscribers and on top of any donations, sales, sponsorships, commission, and YouTube promotions, you may be able to make a little extra money on the side just by playing the games you love. Keep on streaming and maybe one day your hobby can become your career!