crimsonheadGCN
Banned
Your average news story about streaming site Twitch usually begins with a statement that's meant to shock readers: You can make a living playing video games.
But this isn't really news to anyone who's followed the platform over the past four years. Twitch is now the No. 4 highest trafficking site on the Internet during peak hours, putting it right behind Netflix, Google, and Apple. If you’re sleeping on the effect that gaming has on the Internet, think about how the second youngest company (Netflix) on that list was founded 14 years before Twitch existed.
To become a partner, Twitch requires that your average viewership be above 500 and that you stream at least three times a week. New users coming from sites like YouTube should apply only if they have over 15,000 views per video and over 100,000 subscribers. The advantages of being a partner? First, you can add a broadcast delay, which makes it possible to stream a tournament without having cheaters on the other end updating players with what the other team is doing. Another benefit is the more applicable here: You can get subscribers. Partners charge $5 monthly to allow for private chats, emoticons, and whatever else the streamer can come up with.
Bonnell's income stream is different than many other streamers. He has his own website where he has his own subscribers at various levels, which differs from the standard $4.99 subscription cost that Twitch allows for streamers.
“I make probably less than $1,000 a month off of Twitch, streaming around 200-250 hours a month, with an average of maybe 2,500 concurrent viewers,” said Bonnell. “That's just ad revenue.”
First, Bonnell works roughly 60 hours a week, 20 hours more than your average, full-time employee.
But there's another important source of revenue on Twitch. Bonnell makes the majority of his money from his Twitch subscribers, and he says the split with Twitch is $3/$2. He said he couldn’t get an exact count, but probably makes around $5,000 a month solely from this source.
Bonnell also gets money from donations—an even bigger source of money for some. He recently started a new Twitch account based on a tournament he hosts, so he told me that naturally the donations will be bigger during the month we talked, in which he made $6,000. He told me that he typically makes about $1,500 a month from donations.
Finally, he has several other small revenue streamers that increase his yearly income. These are: AdSense from his website (varies), YouTube ($2,000 yearly), sponsorships (varies) and Amazon and other affiliate marketing programs (about $1,000 a month). We added his yearly income from last year up to land right around $100,000. This number will only go up if he continues to put out content and bring in new viewers.
Figured this needed to be added
There's more at the article: http://www.dailydot.com/esports/twitch-streaming-money-careers-destiny/
I found it yesterday while browsing reddit. It was an interesting article, since I don't think anyone has actually gone this in-depth about it.
Podcast interview here with n0thing that covers the same topics, twitch/competitive earnings. Also talks some about times he's been swatted.
http://www.allworkallplaypodcast.com/n0thing/