The amount of time Twitch streamers dedicate to their content, streams, and community goes up to become huge.
This extreme level of dedication leaves little room for jobs or other money-making activities.
If you are a Twitch streamer, you might have thought about monetizing your Twitch career.
Donations are one of the most popular ways of doing that, and in this article, we are going to explain simply how to set up donations on Twitch.
Streamers are the modern age mass entertainers of big audiences.
However, there’s still some reluctance for future streamers to opt for this career choice.
The question that bothers people is: how much money can a Twitch streamer actually make?
Take a seat for this piece of info: top 20 Twitch streamers make millions of dollars–per month.
This amount of money matches those of pop stars, sportspeople, and many other “conventional” media entertainers.
How about that as a career choice, huh?
A big portion of this money comes from donations.
Once you gather a substantial number of loyal followers, you might start thinking about establishing a way for them to donate directly to you.
Naturally, it’ll take a while to reach your first million, but every dollar counts when Twitch starts taking over the spot of your primary income-bringer.
How to Set Up Donations on Twitch
On first thought, setting up donations on Twitch may not sound like a big deal, right?
Get the donation button on the screen, verify payment, and voila, you’re done!
The procedure itself is not that simple, though. There are plenty of options: how would you like to receive donations?
Directly to your bank account?
Maybe via PayPal?
Perhaps Bitcoins, or other cryptocurrency?
There’s also the official Twitch donation system–Twitch bits.
However, using Twitch bits is limited to Twitch partners and affiliates, and is thus unavailable to most other Twitch streamers.
Therefore in this guide we’ll stick to options other than Twitch bits.
Donorbox Donations
Donorbox can get your donations up and running in no time.
A couple of simple steps separate your channel from a “Donate Here” button and your bank account with Donorbox as the middleman.
With Donorbox, donations to your Twitch channel can be received through credit cards, PayPal, and directly via bank transfers, in which case they might get through at a nominal transfer fee.
Setting up a button in itself is a piece of cake, if you follow this simple procedure.
The first step is to pick an image that is to be your donation button.
Donorbox has a selection of pre-created images, but you might consider uploading one that is specialized/custom-made for that little bit of personal touch.
Then you link the Donorbox form by going to your channel settings and checking “Edit Panels”.
When this is enabled, click on the giant plus symbol that shows up.
Go to “Add a Text or Image panel” and insert a caption: something like “Donate Here” or “Donation Box” or whatever you come up that is more creative than our off-the-top-of-the-head examples.
Link it to the button icon and this step is done.
The last thing to do is to copy paste your donation page link at the Donorbox dashboard and optionally describe to your potential donors what the donations will be used for.
Oh, and turn off “Edit Panels”. Voila!
All your streams will be accompanied by the donate button, and you can receive the sum after the stream ends. Done!
StreamLabs Donations
StreamLabs does an excellent job in mediating between your Stream and your bank account, however it doesn’t provide the option of a direct payment gateway.
Nevertheless, you can still obtain its services to send the donation money to your PayPal account, among other selected payment methods.
We’ll stick to PayPal as it is the most popular option, but the procedure is similar for whatever suits you most.
First, go to the StreamLabs dashboard.
Click on the PayPal symbol to allow your Twitch viewers to directly donate to your PayPal.
Don’t forget to select your desired currency and the minimum amount that you’ll receive: do that in Donation Settings, then Settings submenu.
Why the minimum amount?
In order to skip the small-amounts spammers; trust us on this one, and save a lot of your precious nerves.
Press “Save” at the end of the page, and you’re almost done.
Copy the link that pops out, then paste it on your Twitch channel page, the donation section.
Now you’re completely done and ready to receive donations.
Bitcoin/Crypto Donations
You might consider receiving your donations via Bitcoin, Tether, Ethereum, Litecoin, XRP, or any other cryptocurrency you prefer.
These transactions are much faster and more reliable, of course.
If you have more use of cryptocurrencies than getting real currencies through several channels with fees, do take tips in those; the procedure is pretty much the same as the above.
Getting People to Donate, How?
Get into their hearts before you get into their pockets!
People donate to those whose content they love. Entertain your audience, keep them engaged, cater to their tastes, and you’ll get donations in no time.
You have to remember that you create your content in order to show it to others.
Consider posting in a scheduled, regular manner so that your audience knows when to expect your streams.
Include the names of the most loyal fans in your games, either by referring to them or by naming your characters by their nicks.
Find your niche and make yourself comfortable there; by ensuring your dominance over that particular little spot of the gaming/esport/music industry, you’ll form a base that you can work from to form a loving community whose interests overlap with yours.
These are the people you’ll get your donations from.
Most of the Twitch streamers fall into the money trap when they start getting affluent amounts of cash via the platform.
Remember, your streams are first priority; think of the finances as a consequence of that dedication.
And never forget your community–the moment they feel your content has dropped in quality, or that you’ve somehow forgotten them, the donations will stop, and you’re back at square one.
