by First of all, what’s streaming?
In this space, we are specifically talking about live streaming as a form of entertainment. It can be anything from a person in a duck suit singing to a guy taking song requests and playing the accordion for 24 hours straight to a professional Fortnite player showing the world her building skills. Streaming is ultimately the art of broadcasting the part of you that you want the world to see in real time on the internet. Since I broadcast my video game skills and some-what amazing mustache, that is what we will focus on in this blog.
Five things you need to start streaming (yes, that’s it!)
- Choose what you want to stream
Video games have always been a part of my life and my best memories are playing them with friends and laughing about the outrageous plays. Then I discovered this opportunity to play video games, online, in front of people, AND make new friends? Done and done.
- Pick a device to stream from
Video games can easily be streamed directly from your PlayStation, Xbox, or PC, via an app or a free to download program. The setup of this part is unique to what you are trying to broadcast so let’s not dive-in too deep here.
- Pick a streaming platform
With so many to choose from now, it really depends on your access to the various platforms and which one fits your situation the best. I chose Twitch due to the integration with Xbox, ease of use, and the larger number of users.
- Pick a username with a story behind it
People are going to ask you why you chose the username you chose. It’s a great conversation starter and it allows people to learn something about you right away. Dueceswildbill is a “Before and After” like you would find as a category on Wheel of Fortune, something I grew up watching and even playing on Nintendo 64. Yes, dueces is spelled incorrectly. Yes, I picked this username when I was a kid and no, I couldn’t spell.
- Mic up
A microphone is your gateway to your audience. Your audience will have the ability to send interactions to you in the form of messages, monetary cheers (i.e. bits, sparks), tips, subscriptions, and you need a way to communicate back (and thank Dueceswildbill for being your biggest fan). To start, your microphone can be the same one you use to communicate to with players in your games or even the Target impulse-buy Skullcandy headphones with a built-in mic. You know you bought them, the bright orange in-ear headphones with the white skull on the ear piece – we all did.
Add “Streamer” to your LinkedIn because you are there!
OK, maybe not to your LinkedIn, but once you’ve completed the above five steps, it’s time to take the leap and broadcast your first stream. Remember, this is just the beginning of streaming for you and it’s okay to not be perfect. Over time you will add more hardware, more software, different art work, audio sounds, and more, but you don’t need it yet. Right now, you just need to start.
If you’re already a streamer, leave a comment below with your streamer username and share what you had when you started. If you’re not a streamer but this has inspired you to start, leave a comment with your goal start date!