Streaming on YouTube vs Twitch

YouTube vs Twitch Streaming

Background to this post

    Over the last few weeks I have been fighting with myself with which platform i should stream on, whether its Twitch or YouTube, or both. Now both have their own positivise and negatives and different user experience. However ultimately I want what's the best for my followers/subscribers.

YouTube:

    The YouTube experience for me as a content creator has its drawbacks for streaming at the current time with no real benefit of "Super Chats" or "Memberships". as these require YouTube monetization and certain levels of views/subscribers for them to become activated. Now monetization is a goal of mine to help me do content creation for a living so not having this as a "current option" is a bit of a negative for me.

    There are also no direct ways for users to really interact with the stream such as twitch's: Sound Alerts in where followers can use their bits to to play certain sounds on stream. All though this would be awesome to implement to YouTube it is currently not an option. (I am working on an alternative).

    I have always been told "You should not do content creation for the money" which is something I fully agree to the money and support will come when you put your time, effort and character across on screen. 

    However since I have streamed on YouTube i have noticed significant user interaction, views and growth on my YouTube channel each and every stream.

    While Live on my most previous streams: Lets build a functioning Working City (Part 1)LIVE! - Cities Skylines - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq2yiofQuXo  I received the following statistics.

Concurrent Live Views: 4

Chat Messages: 73

    As you can see by my statistics above I received on average a concurrent live views of 4 on this specific stream, which is about average for twitch but the chat is constantly active with 73 total messages. This made my experience as a content creator so much easier and friendlier and makes me want to stream more.

Twitch   

    I am an affiliate of twitch.. Lets put that out their so I have the monetization features of twitch including channel subscribers, bits and channel points which is a major plus for the purpose of making this as my full time job. 

    One feature I Love is RAIDING and Hosting, which allows your channel to be discovered by more people and allows for the channel to grow more than ever which is a massive bonus to streaming on twitch.

    The one reason why I don't like streaming on twitch relates to chat and normal interactivity to the stream compared to most streams which my statistics from Twitch for the 1 hour and 34 minute stream on 7th January 2021.

Live Views on Twitch: Average of 3

Live Chat Messages on Twitch: 42

Which just by looking at the stats of both twitch and YouTube my content just doesn't feel like twitch "likes" my streams.

Both Streaming:

     I have been trying streaming on both services for the past week and really noticed the drop in communication from the stream audience on twitch compared to YouTube which made me move at least 2 streams from Twitch to YouTube, 

    For the next week I will be exclusively streaming on YouTube followed by a week of exclusively streaming on Twitch to see what you guys want via the statistics. Tune in for a new blog post at the end of each week to recap the analytics of each stream and my final decision will be made. 

    Comment below what streaming platform you would like me to stream on.