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Everyone loves turning on their favorite Twitch streamer. It is like watching your friends play video games, and it can feel like a real community on the platform.
The difference is that Twitch streamers tend to have large communities and tend to work while they’re streaming.
Since Twitch streamers’ livelihoods are tied directly to the platform, we – as their community – want to keep their antics going by donating.
But how do you exactly donate on Twitch?
In this article, we will take a closer look at Twitch and give you a run down on how to donate.
How To Donate On Twitch
Twitch has become one of the most popular platforms for content creators. This includes streamers who make videos of themselves playing video games or live-streaming events such as tournaments.
With over 200 million unique users each month, Twitch is growing rapidly.
With such a high demand for the service and the eager amount of fans wanting their favorite streamers to keep streaming, donations to the platform and streamer are eagerly welcomed. In order to donate, though, you first have to make some simple steps:
Step
Login
Login to your Twitch account or go to the Twitch website and create a Twitch account.
Step
Go To Chosen Twitch Channel
Go to the Twitch channel that you wish to donate to. This can be a channel of your favorite streamer or a new up and comer whom you wish to help.
Step
Search For Donation Button
Search their page for the donation button. This is a black and yellow button that can be seen when you scroll down the page from the top. It will come with a little disclaimer about the donations themselves.
Step
Donation Button
Click on the donation button and fill in the donation screen. This will have the varieties of donation available, and all you have to do is click the one relative to your situation.
Step
Donate
Once finished, fill in your payment details and click donate. These will be credit or debit card details that are required each time you make a payment.
Step
Done
That’s it. You’re done. Once complete, the streamer will be notified of your donation.
Donate By Bits
Another way you can donate is by donating bits. Bits are a pseudo currency that Twitch uses, they are purchased by the viewer and donated by typing ‘Cheer’ during a stream.
So, for example, if someone typed ‘Cheer100’ into the stream chat, they would donate the value of those 100 bits.
Step
Get Bits Button
To donate bits, the process is the same until step 3 above. Instead of looking for the donate button, you would instead go to the ‘Get Bits’ button at the top right of the screen.
Step
Purchase And Donate
You would then purchase your bits, which you can donate to the streamer by the process we described in the paragraph above.
Subscribing
For those who don’t watch routinely, but would still like to donate and keep a channel alive for when they do watch, there is always the option of subscribing.
Subscribing to Twitch is somewhere between a YouTube subscription and a Netflix subscription. It keeps an independent content creator relevant like on YouTube, but it requires payment like Netflix.
Many Twitch channels employ this method in order to maintain an income, and it does have benefits.
For those subscribed, they can catch the streams at any time as they are recorded, meaning that even if they missed the live stream, they can still watch what happened.
Streamers often reward people who do subscribe with exclusive content and special privileges.
These can range from chat and emote features to full-blown control of aspects of the stream, in one case a whole system of governance for the Twitch chat was set up by the subscribers.
The only issue with this is that Twitch does take a cut of the subscription along with the streamer, so as long as you don’t mind Twitch having a portion of the profit, then subscriptions are a good deal.
Conclusion
Donating to a Twitch channel is relatively easy, and it should not stop you donating to your favorite streamer.
Still, be aware that Twitch is still a business, and they will still take a portion of the profit. However, this is a small price to pay for the continued streams we all love so much.
