Making money from Twitch or blogging is very difficult. I think you’ll enjoy the process of blogging/streaming a lot more if you aren’t doing it with revenue in mind, at least until you reach a reasonable following.
For perspective: Twitch streamers make ~$3.50/month/subscriber. If your job pays, say, $50/hour, you’d need 100 Twitch subscribers (which I’d guess would take months to accomplish even if your stream is polished and highly watchable from the beginning) to pull in revenue equivalent to working seven more hours each month.
(Of course, you may not be able to “add hours” in that fashion, but I still find the comparison helpful—and you may be able to do some freelance consulting or something like that.)
This seems like a classic case of it being okay to have more than one goal. Your hobbies can be hobbies without having to be impactful; your work, if it is your primary source of impact, seems like a better place to focus if you want to boost that impact.
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All that aside, if you do build a strong following on a blog or stream, that can be a good opportunity to advertise effective giving, and it probably won’t hurt donations if you mention that they go toward really good charities.* I’ve considered doing this if I ever open my own Twitch stream up for donations.
*...although, come to think of it, many people probably donate to streamers/bloggers in order to support their work/the cool person behind it. So perhaps the charity angle would hurt more than it helped?
I think you hit the nail on the head about being okay to have more than one goal. It’d definitely be more effective to just increase donations through my day job.
An added layer on this is that I’ve enjoyed gaming since I was young, but have had conflicting feelings about it now that I’m older: Does this give me fulfillment and satisfaction anymore? It’s fun in the moment, yet it’s fleeting.
Hence why I’m exploring Twitch and donating any profit from it. In hopes that I can make an impact through gaming, and feel fulfilled from it. Perhaps I just need to start and see how I feel as I go...
As someone who returned to a game from childhood and then began to stream it, I recommend the strategy of “start and see how you feel”. Feeling obligated to do something regularly can suck the joy out of it if you aren’t careful, and it would be really sad for that to happen with, of all things, video games.
Making money from Twitch or blogging is very difficult. I think you’ll enjoy the process of blogging/streaming a lot more if you aren’t doing it with revenue in mind, at least until you reach a reasonable following.
For perspective: Twitch streamers make ~$3.50/month/subscriber. If your job pays, say, $50/hour, you’d need 100 Twitch subscribers (which I’d guess would take months to accomplish even if your stream is polished and highly watchable from the beginning) to pull in revenue equivalent to working seven more hours each month.
(Of course, you may not be able to “add hours” in that fashion, but I still find the comparison helpful—and you may be able to do some freelance consulting or something like that.)
This seems like a classic case of it being okay to have more than one goal. Your hobbies can be hobbies without having to be impactful; your work, if it is your primary source of impact, seems like a better place to focus if you want to boost that impact.
*****
All that aside, if you do build a strong following on a blog or stream, that can be a good opportunity to advertise effective giving, and it probably won’t hurt donations if you mention that they go toward really good charities.* I’ve considered doing this if I ever open my own Twitch stream up for donations.
*...although, come to think of it, many people probably donate to streamers/bloggers in order to support their work/the cool person behind it. So perhaps the charity angle would hurt more than it helped?
I think you hit the nail on the head about being okay to have more than one goal. It’d definitely be more effective to just increase donations through my day job.
An added layer on this is that I’ve enjoyed gaming since I was young, but have had conflicting feelings about it now that I’m older: Does this give me fulfillment and satisfaction anymore? It’s fun in the moment, yet it’s fleeting.
Hence why I’m exploring Twitch and donating any profit from it. In hopes that I can make an impact through gaming, and feel fulfilled from it. Perhaps I just need to start and see how I feel as I go...
As someone who returned to a game from childhood and then began to stream it, I recommend the strategy of “start and see how you feel”. Feeling obligated to do something regularly can suck the joy out of it if you aren’t careful, and it would be really sad for that to happen with, of all things, video games.