Earning money from the comfort of your house (read: bed) is no rocket science anymore. Back in the day, making money meant breaking your back as an employee or struggling through intense pressure being a business owner. Thanks to technological advancements, you can now make money with live streaming.
Research suggests that today’s tech-savvy audience prefers spending 3x more time watching live videos. Interestingly, 47% of people are streaming more live videos today than last year.
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Most importantly, as 2020 saw the online video boom, 2024 is not expected to be an exception. Hence, live stream monetization is a goldmine! Go live and earn money!
There are countless ways you can make money with live streaming. Here are a few:
In-Video Ads
You must have noticed the short ads that keep popping up (and irritating) while you’re watching your favorite show on YouTube. And you’re only able to skip after a wait of 5 seconds.
These short clips are ads that help content creators make money streaming video games or any other content. And it is one of the easiest techniques to monetize streaming platforms.
You can do it in two ways:
- Pre-roll ads – start as soon as the viewer clicks the stream. The viewers have to view the ad before they can actually start watching your content.
- Mid-roll ads – play in the middle of your stream. The ad takes up most of the screen while your stream continues to play in a small window.
Pro-Tip: Play these clips before, during, and after your live stream. The viewers will have no choice but to watch through these to continue watching your stream.
- Banners or companion ads – These appear at the bottom of the stream and excite and encourage your viewers to click. However, they can also be easily removed.
YouTube offers pre-roll and mid-roll ads, Facebook Live offers mid-roll ads if you meet the viewership criteria, and Twitch offers in-stream ads.
Pro-Tip: Viewers can use ad-blocking software to prevent some ads from showing. Hence, using ads as the sole method to monetize your live streaming may not be the best idea.
Donations and Tipping
You can encourage your viewers to donate while you’re live streaming, an effective way to make money with live streaming. This approach works magic for churches and other philanthropic organizations that can collect donations during their live streams.
You can set up an external donation link. Once your audience clicks on it, they will be diverted toward a payment page.
Moreover, many websites and social media usually have integrated services for tipping, donations, and even virtual goods and currencies that viewers can use for their transactions.
- YouTube’s Super Chat option allows the viewers to pin their comments by paying for them or purchasing Super Stickers. The viewers can also use tips to pin messages in the channel’s chat window; such comments are more noticeable.
- Twitch’s “cheer” option uses Bits as the platform’s virtual currency. Twitch affiliates or partners make money streaming video games by receiving approximately $0.01 for each Bit cheered by viewers. Viewers can write messages that appear together with a special emote, Cheemote.
- Facebook’s tipping service, Stars, offers virtual goods to viewers. Viewers can buy and send you $0.01 per Star. However, to avail yourself of this, you need to be a part of Facebook’s Level Up Program.
You can also look into services like CareBuzz, which enables your audience to make cashless donations.
Pro Tip: When you receive a tip, don’t forget to give a shoutout to the person who gave it.
Sponsorship
Sponsorships work best when you have a significant following on your socials, making it a great strategy to make money with live streaming. You can collaborate with brands to endorse their products through your live streams and charge for your services. With numerous advertisers in the market, securing sponsorships should be straightforward, particularly if you use live streaming apps to make money. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement; both the brand and the streamer benefit financially. Thus, you effectively get paid for live streaming.
- Sponsorships – a brand will sponsor your entire live stream.
- Banners – you can display banners or other adverts during your streams or on your profile page or channel, which helps to monetize streaming platforms.
- Sponsored Content – the content owners sponsor you to stream their content. For example, a game developer may ask you to play their game in a live stream, an excellent way to make money streaming video games.
Pro-Tip: Be careful when you select the content to stream. If your [sponsored] content fails to resonate with your target audience, you might even lose the sponsors.
Partners or Affiliate Program
You can also sign up for an affiliate program to earn money every time your follower purchases a product you endorsed on your live stream. Once an approved partner, you will be given a vanity link to share with your followers during your live videos and encourage them to purchase the products based on your personal experience and recommendation. All you have to do is speak highly of the products during your live stream and share your link with your followers to stream. And, make money with live streaming.
Sometimes you don’t even have to post the link. You can use a coupon code and direct your viewers to shop for the product you’re promoting using this code. This coupon code will be given to you when you join the affiliate program. Just another way streamers make money.
Pro-Tip: You can earn a 25% recurring commission through OneStream Live’s Affiliate program. Learn More.
Pay-Per-View
This has emerged as the most promising revenue-making prospect during the coronavirus pandemic. With the calling off of all conferences and meetings, organizers now arrange virtual summits and conferences, charge for admission and make money on a live stream. Viewers enjoy the same value as they used to during face-to-face events when they paid for tickets physically. Several sites will allow you to do this, such as TicketSpice, which can be integrated with Facebook Live and YouTube Live. And with OneStream Live, you can go live on both these platforms at the same time!
- Create content that people are willing to pay to watch.
- create a sense of exclusivity to compel people to pay to watch your content.
Pro-Tip: Sell tickets to live streams and make money.
Live Selling
Although a rather traditional route, live selling is still the most widely practiced way to make money through streaming. You can showcase your products live, interact with your audience to answer their queries and concerns in real-time, conduct product demos, and share how-to tutorials, all through live streams. The ultimate takeaway is a lead converted to a customer.
Pro-Tip: Live sell on Amazon Live using OneStream Live.
Regular Viewer Payments
What’s better than getting paid live streaming from your viewers for your regular streams? These periodic payments might only be a couple of bucks, but if you can get enough of them, you can surely make big. For instance, you can sign up for YouTube’s channel membership program that allows users to join channels with monthly payments. Similarly, Twitch has a paid subscription program. Your viewers can pay for watching your streams through PayPal, Amazon Pay, or credit cards.
Bonus Point: WpStream Video Streaming Plugin for WordPress
If you want complete control over how you stream and make money, the best approach is to choose a professional streaming platform that allows you to host your stream content directly on your own website and monetize it directly without relying on third-party platforms.
One such platform is WpStream, a WordPress plugin that allows you to stream straight to your WordPress website and enables you to make money with live streaming directly from your website.
Let’s explore the features that make WpStream a standout option:
- Support for all of the most popular forms of monetization: WpStream, which was developed specifically for WordPress, interacts with WooCommerce to provide support for a wide variety of monetization models. You can easily sell merchandise directly on your website, in addition to providing pay-per-view streams, a subscription model (through WooCommerce Subscriptions), and the ability to receive donations (with GiveWP).
- Total control over your stream content and appearance: As a white-label platform, WpStream lets you infuse your brand into every aspect of your stream, ensuring you can get paid live streaming without the constraints typical of major platforms. Whether hosting sponsored content or running ads, you control how these elements are integrated, making it easier to stream and make money.
- Compatibility with multistreaming tools:This feature is critical for those looking to make money streaming video games or any content by reaching a broader audience. WpStream supports all major multistreaming platforms and tools that use an RTMP connection, enhancing how streamers make money by enabling broadcasts on multiple platforms simultaneously.
To Wrap it Up
The internet is full of opportunities to do interesting things and make money with live streaming while doing what you do best. Live streaming is currently one of the most exciting frontiers offering promising prospects of making money. The catch is to first create content that can successfully grab viewers’ attention and keep them coming back for more. When it comes to monetizing your live streams, your audience is undeniably your biggest asset.
OneStream Live offers you a cloud-based live streaming platform that allows you to stream and make money by multistreaming to over 45 social networking platforms and the web through custom RTMP settings. Time to go live and make money. After all, who minds a few quick bucks? 😉
OneStream Live is a cloud-based live streaming solution to create, schedule, and multistream professional-looking live streams across 45+ social media platforms and the web simultaneously. For content-related queries and feedback, write to us at [email protected]. You’re also welcome to Write for Us!
