I just realized that post I was writing before the stream remained in drafts, because I completely forgot to finish and post it due to being stressed out and nervous about my charity stream, so previous week even with 2 day offs got no posts. That’s not very xqcL and I’ll bring that topic up today probably too or maybe will dedicate a separate post.
But for now important thing is that we raised 1111,1$ for charity and that’s amazing, thank you so much everyone who was with me and especially who was donating! This crazy year sure makes me very impressed by people’s generosity more than usual. But still, let’s look at the numbers and some things I need to take in account planning for next charity stream and any “special” out of ordinary kind of stream really, some of that knowledge might be useful for others too…
First of all let’s look at the amount raised – 1111 is a bit more than 1k$ less than what I raised year ago during my very first charity stream, let’s try to just plain straight forward analyze what caused it in comparison with previous stream:
- Obviously very shitty year economics-wise – many people lost jobs or part of their income, got new expenses etc, charity donations in situations like this totally move in priority way lower and that’s understandable.
- DMCA fiesta on Twitch and inability to bring song requests as incentives/rewards for people to motivate them – pretty big chunk of donos last year were song requests after all.
- First year there was element of hype since it was first time for me ever, now this one is not that “special” already.
- Pretty much same concept of the stream, so that lowers “special” appeal score too.
- Higher dono goal and milestones that I assigned with some special rewards unlocking quite late in terms of money.
- Front page didn’t go through/glitched/algorithm just cucked me, so I didn’t get any numbers boost from that compared to last year.
- Maybe more different games replacing each other more regularly would be better to attract people from different games categories and timezones, last time switching games was more frequent.
Now let’s try to look at this and think how to improve it. First two things unfortunately are out of my control and we can only hope corona will pass soon, but even if it will – economical aftermath will be felt for a while and well DMCA stuff is not going anywhere anytime soon too, so probably not possible to change at all. Feeling of special first time charity stream is not something you can return too, so that problem partially will stay no matter what, part 4 is technically capable of improving it though if I’ll be doing something new and wild every year, but here comes another problem that I will talk about later, so that is also not gonna happen, at least not frequently and not wild for sure. In case of 5 it’s actually in part platform’s fault, because my original goal was 1200, which we almost got, but if you put some unlocks past the original goal – it moves the goal with that too, so next times I guess I’ll set goal kinda low and then just put milestones and unlocks in text form separately rather than through platform, so they actually will be extras on top of the goal and not stretching the goal. Yeah, 6 is a weird one, because I was supposed to get front page of Twitch at 9am CET, aka my regular start time, so because of that I started earlier, to already have something going for front page, but 9am comes and nothing happens, literally no effect whatsoever, last year I had 4000 viewers during my front page segment – this year nothing and funny part is that their e-mail says stuff about algorithms, that it works differently for everyone etc, so probably pointless to even try to figure what happened, not to mention I don’t want to look/sound entitled – it’s just a bonus for doing a good thing, so whatever, will leave it at this and can’t do anything about it for next year, it’s out of my control, so let’s just hope it will work next time. In case of 7 next year I’ll probably do things completely differently so that won’t be a problem, but more about that in separate post.
So main summary for what caused such difference between two of my streams – financial problems in the world, dmca removing one of the most effective incentives, losing of that “first time” feel, bad planning for extra unlocks and handling those unlocks by platform could be better, no frontpage boost in viewers this time.
What I’m going to do for next year now? Main thing I’m going to change is not doing these crazy marathons most likely – last year 33 hours, this year 34 hours, because I feel like they are just not worth it, majority just doesn’t really care about you going ham, so you take a hit for your health, stream through night when majority of your viewers sleep, so your viewer count tanks a lot, making it harder to attract new people and raise more + chat might be quite dead at times so considering sleepy low energy state you are in it just makes stream look pretty boring. Best way will be probably to do like full weekend of potentially somewhat longer streams, but without anything crazy, focusing on your prime time with highest viewer count and getting proper rest to have more energy. Might do that next year instead, theoretically will also allow me to apply for more front page segments and maybe some will work then? Goals will be changed to pretty low ones and then everything on top will be as separate written in text extra, so it will actually go over the goal to make it look good with full bar and then there will be more stuff to unlock still, so more hype. Doing even same game when it’s split between multiple streams won’t get boring since there will be decent breaks between sessions and don’t need that much new games to add to rotation then.
Other than that I enjoyed the stream, it was pretty close to my comfortable type of stream, many milestones weren’t unlocked so I was basically just playing games and chilling with some minor fluctuations that weren’t too disturbing to my regular flow, so everything else I’ll keep as it was this year probably. Maybe it won’t be insane amount of money raised, but I will be calm and chill before and during the stream, keeping my general channel vibe and people joining charity stream will see what they will be getting on regular days and not some “special” stuff that they won’t see probably in a year, disappointing them when they tune in next time on my regular chill stream. I’ll talk about special streams and streams that put me out of my “comfort zone” later more in details too, so you can see why that is also pretty important for me, pure philosophical/psychological personal stuff.
Thank you everyone who donated once again and thank you if you read it all the way through, hope some of my thoughts will be useful for others, feel free to provide me some feedback any time too.