Have you ever wondered what your hourly income from streaming on Twitch is? Do you wish you could quantify how engaged your audience is with your stream? By applying two ratios—hours watched per hour streamed and revenue per hour streamed—this is achievable and simple to calculate.
Using your Twitch analytics export and a few calculations, you can perform advanced business analytics on your stream. In this article, I’ll walk you through how to get the numbers you need, how to calculate the ratios, and how to understand what it means for your stream.
If you don’t know how to download your Twitch analytics export, follow this guide here.
Hours watched per hour streamed
The first ratio we’ll examine is hours watched per hour streamed. By using the data point of hours streamed we can create ratios tracking the outputs of your stream compared to the inputs. In this instance, the input is your time spent streaming.
As a content creator, you want your content to be as far-reaching as possible. You could use the highest concurrent viewership, average viewership, or followers to gauge the reach of your content, but these show only a temporary snapshot of audience interest. Hours watched per hour streamed cuts through this noise and answers the simple question of “if you stream it, will they watch it?”
For example, if you stream for 1 hour to 200 viewers all watching for the entire 1 hour, you have a ratio of 200 hours watched per 1 hour streamed, simplified to 200.
To calculate the ratio, open your channel analytics export and find “Minutes Watched” in column M. Next, convert this to hours watched by dividing 60. Repeat the same process for “Minutes Steamed” in column N to get hours streamed.
Now that we’ve converted our numbers to hours, divide hours watched by hours streamed to get your hours watched per hour streamed ratio.
Since we’re looking for how much content your audience watches per each hour of you streaming, a bigger number is always better, meaning more content is being consumed. A bigger ratio means more people are watching and/or your audience is sticking around the stream for longer.
By calculating this ratio for each month, you can draw valuable insight into your stream.
Having a consistent range from month to month means you have a solid core audience returning each month.
Once you determine what your average ratio is, analyzing any variability from the average can reveal insights into your audience. If you have a month with a lower number, there is something your audience was less interested in, such as your game choice. A number larger than usual means there was something your audience was more interested in, possibly a special stream event or anticipated game launch.
If we look at our example, you’ll notice an average ratio in the 90s, a dip in January, and a huge uptick in April and May. Something went right in April and May which the streamer should explore and learn if they can recreate those streams.
Revenue per hour streamed
If hours watched per hour streamed is the answer to the question “if you stream it, will they watch it?” the next ratio is the answer to “if you stream it, will they pay for it?”.
We will use the same input of hours streamed, but now the output we measure for is revenue, getting the ratio of revenue per hour streamed.
Think of this as your hourly wage for streaming. For every hour you spend streaming, how much money do you make?
First, we’ll want to identify your total revenue in a month. On your channel analytics export, columns P trough W contain the revenue your channel earns on Twitch, though not all may apply to you.
Add all the revenue sources to get your total revenue. If you use third-party donation software add your tips to revenue.
Next, convert minutes streamed (Column N) to hours streamed by dividing by 60.
Dividing total revenue by hours streamed gives you the sum of money made on average per each hour streamed.
As with our earlier ratio, a larger number is always better (assuming you want to earn more money rather than less).
The goal is to have a consistent number across each month, so whenever you spot any outliers you should investigate further.
A smaller number than usual means your audience was spending less than average, and higher means more spending. The differences could be from events such as subathons or implementing donation incentives such as an audience song playlist.
In our example, the streamer is averaging roughly $30 in revenue per hour they stream. April was by far their most successful month with a huge bump to viewership and revenue. But, despite May continuing the surge in viewership, revenue had a sharp decline and is their worst revenue month.
Through this example, we see that more viewers do not always mean more revenue.
Whatever the audience loved seeing in April and May was also highly monetizable in April, but not May. Now the streamer knows something changed. This gives them a chance to improve!
CONCLUSION
Using these two ratios we can assess how interested your audience is in your stream. We also see how effective you are at monetizing audience interest.
While sounding like a complicated process, it’s as straightforward as getting your Twitch export and making a few simple calculations.
Growing your stream is difficult. This analysis can help you find paths to viewership and revenue growth.
What do these two ratios show you about your stream?
By Jay Cranford, @hjcranford
