Introduction
Live streaming offers a huge potential of video monetization. It helps live broadcasters, sport content distributors and other businesses to earn revenue from live streams. The live streaming market size in 2022 is at US $70.59 billion dollars and is expected to grow by US $330.51 billion dollars by 2030. It is growing at a rate of 21.3% CAGR from 2022 to 2030.
How is Live streaming booming these days?
Live streaming is having a huge demand in the market because it provides businesses an interactive and engaging method of connectivity with the targeted audience. Live streaming provides an opportunity to capture an audience and keep them engaged for the duration of the video in real-time, all together at the same time.
64% of the internet traffic aged between 18 to 34 enjoy watching live streams. The live streaming business is projected to grow exponentially in the future. Live streamers all around the world stream a variety of events to make money. Live streaming has become a popular career choice for several people and live streamers are earning between US $50 to US $1,500 or more a month.
The popularity of live streaming has skyrocketed into the mainstream and impacted almost every sector globally. The convenience of streaming events in real-time and making it more interactive for the audience has made live streaming the most popular choice of communication with viewers. Live streaming has boosted the media and entertainment as well as the sports industry.
What can you stream to make money?
Live Shopping
Live Shopping is also referred to as live stream shopping. It is the method of providing viewers an opportunity to shop live while seeing a live stream. It is buying and selling of products through real-time video broadcast. It is more convenient as compared to TV home shopping networks because it includes built-in features like live chats, polls, direct link to purchase the products and many interactive features. Viewers from any corner of the world can access live shopping on any device with just a stable internet connection.
Live Shopping allows consumers to buy the products they see on the stream. While a live shopping session, viewers can click on the product and order the product right then and there. Interactive features like comments, questions, polls in a live shopping broadcast make viewers feel more engaged and connected to the brand and product.
Popularity of Live Shopping
Live shopping has thundered over the past few years and is projected to continue growing globally. Researchers suggest that live shopping may make up 20% of all eCommerce Sales by 2026. Live shopping is the combination of both in-person and online shopping. It is quite popular these days because it offers personalized attention and convenient shopping methods. Live streaming shopping is similar to standard live streaming, but with an additional feature to allow viewers to buy the product they see during the live stream.
Popular Platforms to for live shopping:
- Instagram Live Shopping
- Facebook Live Video Shopping
- Amazon Live Shopping
- Channelize Live Shopping
- Bambuser Live Commerce Stream Shopping
Live stream games
Live streaming games offer huge benefits to game streamers both through ads as well as subscriptions. Game live streaming allows viewers to have direct communication with their preferred streamers and this inturn helps game streamers to market their own merchandise on the live stream.
Live Game streaming is popular and is on the rise, as avid gamers are tuning in to see how certain games are to be played, whereas others are tuning in to see the game battles and competitions that take place on a regular basis.
Iconic and popular game streamers are either taking on sponsorships from other game companies, or locking their streamings for a PPV or Subscription to make money.
Some of the top game streamers and their earnings –
CriticalRole – $9.6 million
xQc – $8.4 million
Summit1g – $5.8 million
Tfue – $5.2 million
NICKMERCS$ – 5 million
Ludwig – $3.2 million
AuronPlay – $3 million
Live stream reviews of popular movies
Live streaming the reviews of popular movies helps live streamers to earn a huge viewership on their platform. Genuine feedback and reviews of a movie helps the audience to get a clear idea whether to watch a newly released movie or not. This provides streamers a great opportunity to earn revenue from subscription and ads. Movie production companies also spend money on the influencers to review their movies. Reviews of popular songs also help live streamers to gather a huge audience base. Distributing the reviews of the popular songs helps the audience create a fine-tuned playlist and in turn provides an opportunity to the live streamers to earn money through both subscriptions as well as ads.
Popular platforms where reviewers host their exclusive videos are:
- YouTube
- Facebook
- Instagram
- TikTok
- Patreon
Some of the top earning reviewers are:
- Taran Adarsh (indiaFM)
- James Agee (Time, The Nation)
- Hollis Alpert (Saturday Review)
- David Ansen (Newsweek)
- Michael Atkinson.
- James Berardinelli.
- Peter Biskind.
- Peter Bogdanovich.
Live stream reviews on YouTube videos
Reviews of YouTube videos helps viewers with a way to learn more about the contents about the influencer and choose to watch their videos or not. Video reviews are influential social proof that can help put some common audience concerns to rest. Streamers can use video reviews as content for live streaming to get authentic connection and make huge profit.
Live Stream Product Reviews
Product reviews help the audience to have better insights into any brand’s product. It also helps improve customer service as well as product quality. In order to increase trust and loyalty among viewers, various brands approach live streamers to demonstrate a live review of their products. Brand’s offer partnership which allows live streamers to make huge revenue. On the other hand, live streamers can also earn through subscription.
Popular Product Reviewer:
- Justine – Tech Product Reviewer
- Dom Esposito – Tech product Reviewer
- Geekyranjit – Tech Product Reviewer
- Jonathan Morrison – Tech Product Reviewer
- Sara Dietschy – Tech Product Reviewer
- Sheetal Chintapatla – Tech Product Reviewer
- Crazy Cool Challenges – Amazon Product Reviewer
Live Lessons and coaching
The Virtual Learning model is on the rise and several educational institutions have created their own virtual learning platform to help students learn from any corner of the world. Live classes and coaching are more interactive and offer a fun yet effective method to engage students in studies. Teachers or trainers can create live courses and stream them to earn revenue.
Inspiration talks
Young generation is proactive on the internet and is enthusiastically searching for solutions to each problem. To get some self-motivation, they also prefer watching inspirational talks online. Motivational speeches are vital because they work to inspire, augment creativity, reduce fear and apprehension, provide a new attitude on things, and help meet other people on the same boat as the viewer. Live streamers can stream inspirational talk and monetize it to earn revenue frequently through subscription and ads.
Religion Based Streaming
Power of the internet has bought everything online allowing the audience to conveniently attain everything from the comfort of their home. So, religious streaming has also empowered several religious foundations and missionaries to reach a global audience from their future programs. Live streamers can help various devotees around the world to connect, share religious content and reach a new community online. Religious streams can also be monetized by asking worshippers to offer donations and access religious streams all around the world.
How to make money from Live Stream? – 8 Best Ways
PPV – Create Pay-per-view Events
Pay-Per-View (PPV) is the simplest live streaming revenue model using which you can create pay per view events and have the complete freedom of charging your viewers per video. PPV revenue model has helped live streamers such as entrepreneurs, experts, and trainers from all industries to monetize their content and earn huge profits. It is also convenient for the viewers who do not wish to opt for the entire bundle of live contents and just want to watch the streams of their interest.
Request Donation from Viewers
If you want to make sure that your live streaming career is moving in the right direction or not, wait until you receive your first ever donation or tip from the audience. It is the most satisfying feeling to realize that the audience appreciates your hard work and send you a couple of dollars. Live streaming platforms help live streamers to publish their live streams and make money by letting viewers send donations or tips.
Recurrent Payment model (Subscription)
Subscription-based payment model is the most efficient model for live streamers that creates steady income opportunity. Recurrent paying viewers will keep paying monthly, quarterly, or annually to see some valuable content from your platform. So, you need to ensure all your live streaming sessions are valuable and interactive that will attract customers to subscribe to the platform. It is perfect for those content creators who wish to create long-term value by serving constant quality content in the form of live sports events, training, health & fitness, eLearning, etc.
Revenue from Ads
Ads allows content distributors to earn revenue by inserting ads into the live streams. Instead of charging viewers to access the live streams you can offer them to view the ads and watch the streams for free. Ads can appear as skippable or non-skippable pre-roll ad, mid-roll ad or post roll ad. It is a lucrative monetization model for live streamers with a lot of viewers coming and watching their preferred live streams for free. Different types of in-stream ads usually available are:
Pre-roll –
Pre roll ads are usually the ads that are played before a stream. It means viewers will have to watch the ad first and then watch the desired content.
Mid roll –
Mid roll ads are typically the ads that are played in between a stream. Platform owners have the option to enable mid roll ads while uploading the content.
Post roll –
Post roll ads are the ads that are usually played at the end of a stream. Post roll ads only appear on the video that has opted into an ad revenue program and typically is 10 to 15 seconds long and can be three minutes long.
Sponsorships
Sponsorship is another method for live streamers to earn money while streaming by engaging with businesses in a mutually beneficial arrangement. If you have a large audience base, brands will reach out to you with offers. You can also reach out to them. When dealing with business organizations, it pays to be professional and detail-oriented. You make money when businesses agree to pay you. You will want to negotiate every part of the deal, to be 100% sure you are on the similar page regarding your commitment.
Some of the methods you can make money include:
- Sponsorships – In this method, the whole streams are sponsored by a brand
- Banners and other types of ads – In this method, you can display ads during your streams or on your channel or profile page
- Sponsored Content – In this method, a brand pays you to demonstrate their product or service on a live stream. Like – when a game developer pays you to play their game on live streams.
Affiliate Marketing
Membership in an affiliate program can help you earn a commission every time a buyer clicks on your affiliate link and purchases something. Sometimes you do not even have to provide a link, because all you require is a promo or coupon code that your viewers can use when they buy something from the place you’re promoting. The link or else code is offered to you once you join the affiliate program. Usually, you put the affiliate link or else code in the stream description. But you could also mention the coupon code once or twice during the live stream.
Sell Your own products
Selling your own products or merchandise is a vital revenue stream for many people who broadcast live video contents. Various streaming platforms have identified this and offer users plenty of advice, providing them with helpful tools to boost merch sales. Live streamers can sell mugs, t-shirts, plush toys, digital products, e-books, home décor, health supplements, etc. It is again divided into 3 categories:
- You can entirely build your own online store and handle production, store inventory as well as shipping on your own.
- You can depend upon the platform approved merchandise company to produce, store and ship the merch for a cut of the profits
- You can also partner with stores and take the advantage of special opportunities on selected platforms.
These above-mentioned 3 methods provide different profit percentages and need different levels of contribution. Whatever you select, you can integrate your merchandise business to your live streaming.
Integrate Shopify
You can also integrate an existing Shopify store with a live streaming platform and earn revenue by selling your products on your live streaming app or website. It helps you showcase the products from your Shopify store on your website or application. You can also link the products to multiple digital contents (video/audio) and allow your end-users to buy these products from your Shopify store.
Which are some top platforms where live streamers can stream to make money on?
Twitch
Twitch is one of the most popular live game streaming platforms but it is not limited to game streaming. Instead, it helps you stream almost any events starting from music, sports to creative works. Twitch allows live streamers to interact, give live comments and give polls. It is a user-friendly platform that offers streaming on both desktop and mobile.
YouTube Live
YouTube is also one of the most widely used live streaming platforms that provides an array of functionality to live stream several events online. It allows you to live stream using mobile, webcam, or encoder. You can also monetize your live stream using YouTube Live. It also provides powerful analytics on your live videos
Instagram Live
Instagram is a popular social media platform that allows users to live stream their videos and earn revenue from it. Instagram provides plenty of opportunities for live streamers to share content. Instagram also saves your live streams to IGTV for the audience to watch the replay later. It’s live chat feature allows you to bring guests onto your live stream. You can monetize your live stream using in-stream ads and donation badges.
Own Website/App
You can also create your multi-device white label live streaming website or application to stream your content live and earn revenue by monetizing the same. Creating your own live streaming platform is quite easy nowadays. With several SaaS-based platform providers available in the marketplace, you can launch your platform and go live with your live events. Muvi Live can help you build enterprise-grade live streaming platforms and go live with eSports tournaments, corporate events, shows, training sessions on web, mobile & connected devices.
You can stream live videos straight from your handheld, mobile, or laptop camera. Just choose the video source as the camera and start a live stream with a click of a button. It also helps you convert and enhance a third-party live feed into a secure buffer-free live feed with DRM protection and built-in CDN. Muvi Live also helps you deliver a lag-free streaming experience to your viewers with adaptive multi-bitrate streaming.
Conclusion
Live streaming gives a broad opportunity to earn huge profits. People always prefer an interactive method of communication and the live stream serves viewers with an array of interactive features to make the live sessions even more engaging. If you want to pursue a career in live streaming, consider picking any one of the above-mentioned methods and start monetizing your contents now onwards. Once you build an audience base, nothing can stop you from making money. Multistreaming platforms like Muvi Live, helps you earn money on several platforms at once. Choosing Muvi Live as your live streaming platform provider can help you unleash your revenue potential by making live events EXCLUSIVE! Take a live streaming free trial to explore the difference between the ease of streaming live on Muvi Vs other platforms!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What’s the best platform for live streaming?
- Twitch
- YouTube Live
- Instagram Live
- Facebook Live
- Amazon Live
Where else can I monetize my videos?
Muvi Live can help you grow your video streaming business. Muvi is dedicated towards helping content creators monetize their videos with features such as white-label branded OTT apps, live streaming, a Netflix-style video platform, and a class-leading CMS.
How long can I live stream for?
The length of your live stream will depend on the platform you choose for your broadcast.
What are Sponsorships?
Sponsorship is another method for live streamers to earn money while streaming by engaging with businesses in a mutually beneficial arrangement.
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