In 6 months, vertical gaming streams took me from 0-300 average live viewers. Here's what I learned.

I've always thought it would be fun to be a gaming streamer, and this is how I've grown a decent amount of average viewers, and how you can too, even if you don't game.

I've always enjoyed video games, and I've always enjoyed streaming. Tried many times on Twitch. Tried making shorts to lead people to Twitch Tried making long form content to get people to Twitch. And none of it made much progress. I'll admit, I didn't put in as much effort as I could have. But I kept streaming on Twitch and YouTube simultaneously throughout the year and trying different things.

Around July of this year I came across the most vile of content you could imagine: Vertical Livestreams. Mostly consisting of some text on screen saying something like "Noob = Ban" and some obnoxious person getting fake upset at people typing things in chat. But they have so many viewers and chatters, it is insane. So I started studying it and trying to pull out elements from these that I didn't find disgusting, and this is what I started implementing into my livestreams that helped me go from 0-300 average viewers (pretty much went from 0-5 viewers from January to July, and then went from 5-300 average viewers from July to now, December.)

1) First, I started livestreaming vertically. I will note that until you reach 1,000 subscribers, the amount of viewers on a vertical livestream will be reduced significantly. So I kept making a variety of gaming shorts until I finally hit 1,000. No easy strategy here, just tried a bunch of different things and kept doing what did well. Usually timelapses of playthroughs or interesting challenges.

2) I added text on the screen that was essentially the title of the livestream. I make sure that every livestream has a particular goal, and I make sure that is easy to see on the screen.

3) I also added some things to make my livestream stand out and create intrigue. For example, I play video games with a very unusual setup. It's hard to explain briefly, but that's kind of the point. It makes people stop and go "...Huh? How does this work?". And creating this curiosity naturally makes them hop into chat and ask questions.

4) I don't go live on YouTube or TikTok vertically until I have started working toward my goal of the stream. I try to do as much of the prep work either before I go live, or at least only on Twitch, before I go live on vertical platforms. Vertical viewers are VERY impatient and fickle, and the more people you have stick around at the beginning of the livestream, the more it will grow during the duration of the livestream. Vertical streaming on YouTube or TikTok is all about momentum.

5) I also took a break from this sub since around July. This is sort of a meta topic, but I learned more from actually taking the time to try a bunch of different things rather than just reading what other people have done for their channel. I don't say this to brag, but as an important lesson; the experiments and content I have made on my channel not only led me to a decent live viewership, but also a viral Reddit post and a viral TikTok, and several gaming news outlets found out about my content because of my insistence to spend more time experimenting on my content than spending time on this sub thinking about making content (If you need proof, just search "ShakeMistake Skyrim". You probably won't be able to replicate this exactly for your audience, but you now have some ideas of things to implement. So write down some interesting things you've learned, and don't come back here until you've tried it for awhile ;)

PS: I intentionally did not provide any advice about posting long-form content because I am a bad example for this, and I am still learning.

Let me know if you have any questions!

tl;dr I made a bunch of shorts until I hit 1,000 subs and started streaming vertically with an interesting stream idea and text on the screen that explains the stream, and I don't start streaming vertically until I have started working toward a stream goal because vertical streams success relies on intrigue and momentum.