PAIVATAR LIVE Streams on TWITCH
Many years ago, All Fiber Arts used to have a weekly Chat session, that was hosted on Delphi. After a few years, Delphi stopped providing this service. I have recently discovered Twitch, that hosts live video, where viewers can participate in Text Chat with myself and each other during the Live Stream. I thought I might give this a try.
Turn the Camera On
I have often been asked if I could do teaching via Zoom. I haven’t wanted to, because it involves a lot or organizing and prep work to set up the classes. So I thought that I would use the ‘Turn the Camera On’ approach instead. I am working in my studio most days, doing different projects. So I thought that Live streaming through a platform such as Twitch might work.Sometimes I do a lot of talking and give explanations of what I am doing or working on. Sometimes I just work away at my task. Please feel free to ask questions if you wish to know more. I am not always looking up at the monitors but I try to check them every few minutes. I try to have some background music as I work – though Twitch removes the background music on the recorded version of the videos for copyright reasons.
Twitch vs YouTube
I tried to do some Live Streams on YouTube but found it difficult to use. Sometimes the connections don’t work. And YouTube has a lot of admin setup with each stream or video upload. I often spend several hours editing videos that I post – I would prefer to spend that time at my crafts. So after some testing, I am finding that Twitch has the simplest setup. Twitch is owned by Amazon.
Streamers are paid by the viewers of the stream, making Donations via Paypal, or by Subscribers – who pay a fee to Amazon. Amazon splits the revenue on a 50/50 basis to the streamer – once they reach Affiliate status.
I save copies of all of the stream videos. Depending on what I am doing, I sometimes edit the videos and cut/paste into a shorter video and post these on my YouTube channel. I find that the attention span of many YouTubers is very short – they often do not watch more than a few minutes of any content. I think with the introduction of YouTube ‘SHORTS’ the attention span has decreased even further. SHORTS seem to be a form of hypnosis.
