My project was created with the goal of making a Twitch channel. Over the course of my semester in Propel, I had to learn a lot about the world of content creation. The semester began with getting more familiar with the streaming process. I already had some experience with using recording software like OBS because I had dabbled in YouTube for a while. I started by learning about video quality, aspect ratio, pixels, and more. This gave me a very good foundation to start with, allowing me to focus on the actual streaming portion.

Once I started, my goal was to stream consistently every week to build a following. As time went on, the quality of my streams continued to improve. I learned more about keeping my Twitch chat engaged during my streams and creating an image to uphold.

Eventually, my channel grew enough that I was able to reach affiliate status. To reach affiliate status, I was required to reach 50 followers and stream 7 times for a total of 12 hours in the past 30 days. I also needed to have an average of 3 viewers. Once I became an affiliate, I gained access to a multitude of different monetization resources such as ad revenue, Twitch bit donations, and subscriptions. Twitch bits are Twitch’s own currency that people can donate through to support me. Since Twitch handles the transaction, I am protected from chargebacks. There are many ways to use Twitch bits, such as extensions that can do different things if viewers donate through them, and viewers can also cheer bits directly to support me.

Subscriptions work by people subscribing at a monthly rate, which can give them benefits when they are on my channel. These benefits include ad-free viewing, more channel points, subscriber-only streams, and more. There are also different tiers that people can subscribe to, but after tier 1, it isn’t really worth it because it gets much more expensive for very little reward. At that point, you’re really just supporting the creator out of the kindness of your heart.

That aside, the rest of my Propel semester was spent becoming more familiar with programs such as Premiere Pro. I used the knowledge I gained to create short-form content for my Twitch channel. I did this by clipping funny segments from my streams and editing them in a way that allowed me to post them on YouTube Shorts and TikTok. Over time, my efficiency in creating these shorts increased greatly as I continued to improve my workflow. The quality of my shorts also increased thanks to feedback from my peers. These shorts were very helpful as they allowed me to find my audience across more platforms. Some of my shorts were able to reach 10k views.

Reflecting on my semester in Propel, I am proud of my progress and the skills I’ve acquired in the world of content creation. Building and growing my Twitch channel has been an incredibly rewarding experience, and has taught me valuable lessons in consistency, engagement, and multimedia production. In the future, I plan on continuing Twitch streaming for as long as I can. I am excited to see where the future of my channel will lead and to explore new opportunities.