How to become a Twitch Affiliate - Everything you need to know!

1 What is a Twitch Affiliate?

A Twitch Affiliate is a streamer & creator who has managed to build a small audience and has the opportunity to effectively earn money with their work as a creator through this status awarded by Twitch.

Often, Affiliates are up-and-coming channels that are in the process of building something bigger and want to go the route of becoming a Twitch Partner in the long run. Affiliate status, unlike Twitch Partner status, is relatively easy to achieve and is the first hurdle to overcome as an ambitious streamer. To become a Twitch affiliate, you need to complete the Achievement "Path to Affiliate". More about that further down in this guide.

1.1 Twitch Affiliate Advantages

The biggest advantage is obvious: the status of "Twitch Affiliate" allows you to earn money from streaming in different ways. What newbies and standard streamers are deprived of for now, the affiliate program makes possible. Most great streamers started small were not infrequently affiliates for a long time before becoming an official Twitch partner. While there are streamers who were allowed to join the affiliate program right away without going through all the stages, these are usually influencers, creators, or celebrities who are already in the public eye and have a certain fanbase.

In addition to the monetary benefits, the actual status also plays an important role. You can be featured on the Twitch homepage from now on and effectively expand your reach. Moreover, you will always be placed a bit more prominently in the overview, which ensures that you can stand out from other streamers. You may not yet enjoy the prestige of an affiliate, but your channel will look much more professional when the subscription button and bit menu are visible. Viewers will see that you're serious about streaming and working to make a name for yourself.

1.2 Twitch Affiliate Earnings

An essential part of your earnings as an affiliate is taken from so-called subscriptions, i.e. the membership that your viewers sign up for. While fans can also follow your channel, in order to also support you financially and unlock certain benefits, they have the option to send you a fixed monthly contribution. So how much money you ultimately earn from streaming depends entirely on how many viewers have subscribed to your channel. If you have 20 active subs, you can expect to earn around 50€ per month.

So always keep your content up to date, broadcast regularly and try to inspire as many people as possible. Even if you're not an affiliate yet, you can earn a significant amount with your passion, because you see smaller creators all the time who "only" have 200 regular viewers, but have built such a close bond with them that a sworn community is formed. So if 100 of these 200 viewers have an active membership with you, you already earn about 250€ per month!

Bits will also be unlocked for your channel. This virtual currency from Twitch can be used by viewers to cheer you on and thus support you. In the Twitch universe, this is referred to as "cheering" - you've probably heard this before if you're already familiar with Twitch. Viewers can buy bits for real money, and for each bit donation, a portion of the money is credited to your account. While there is no official data from Twitch on what percentage this is, it can be roughly said that Creators receive 1 cent for every 1 bit donated. The more bits purchased in the bundle, the cheaper they are for your viewers.

2 How to become a Twitch Affiliate - Requirements

In order to participate in the affiliate program, you must first meet certain requirements, of course, as with the affiliate program. After all, as an affiliate, you enjoy significantly more advantages over "normal" streamers and can earn money from streaming. The requirements are by far not as demanding and difficult to implement as those of the affiliate program, but they are especially difficult for new streamers. If you are streaming for the first time, you will most likely have only a few viewers on your channel at the beginning. However, it is important to bind them to you in the best possible way! Convince them with your way of streaming and interact with the chat, because only if you make a good impression, word of your channel might get around and more and more viewers will join - viewers you absolutely need to become an affiliate!

The numbers in the following list may not seem that high at first, but you should not underestimate them. There is usually a lot of work behind it - unfortunately, you won't become an affiliate overnight, because once you've checked off one item, it doesn't mean that the next one will just fly by. To become a Twitch affiliate, you should have streamed a total of at least 500 minutes within a period of one month:

• Streamed a total of at least 500 minutes.
• Have streamed on at least 7 days.
• Have at least an average of 3 viewers in each stream.
• Have at least 50 followers.

The last point in particular is a special hurdle for new streamers and usually requires more than a month of work. For example, if you stream 10 times a month and have about 5 viewers in each stream, each of them would have to leave a follow in order to generate 50 followers in the first month. That being said, those 5 viewers would of course have to be unique, which means that without at least 20-50 regular viewers, you can't get to 50 followers in the normal way. This means that you should build your community slowly in order to convince potential followers. To view your current progress, Twitch has introduced the Achievement "Path to Affiliate". There you can see which requirements have already been met and which still need some work.

3 Twitch Affiliate vs. Twitch Partner

In general, Twitch's affiliate program can be described as a light version of the partner program. You get access to the basic features that affiliates can also use - but in a much slimmed-down form. For example, you can enable sub-emotes for your viewers, but only one and not 50 as with a Twitch partnership. You also have access to the automatic archiving of past streams, but while partners can access them for 60 days, as an affiliate you are already denied access after 14 days.

However, there is one important feature that is exclusively reserved for affiliates: stream delay. This is the possibility to delay your stream by up to 15 minutes, for example to avoid stream snipers as best as possible. So while you've been playing Warzone for 10 minutes, your viewers see you still in the lobby looking for a game. This feature is also very important for IRL streams of prominent streamers, because it's not uncommon for many fans to gather where the streamer is, which many creators find awkward.

4 How to become a Twitch Affiliate - Frequently Asked Questions.

How to become a Twitch Affiliate?

You can find a detailed answer to this question above under the "Twitch Affiliate Requirements" section.

What does a Twitch Affiliate earn?

Your final earnings depend on how many subs you have and how many people send you bits and donations.

What is the difference between twitch affiliate & twitch affiliate?

The two programs are different from each other, of course. You can find out more about this in "Twitch Affiliate vs Twitch Partner".