One of the coolest things about Twitch is that there are people who are willing to pay you to provide them with great entertainment/content. How awesome is that? But, in order to receive compensation for your content on Twitch, you must first become a Twitch Affiliate.
In this article I will go over how long it takes most streamers to become a Twitch Affiliate, as well as things you can do to speed up the process. Now let’s hop into this my friends.
How Long Does it Take to Become a Twitch Affiliate?
For most streamers, it take about 1-2 months of consistent streaming to become a Twitch Affiliate; however, you can become a Twitch Affiliate even sooner than this as long as you hit all the requirements necessary to become a Twitch Affiliate.
In fact, many streamers will enlist the help of their family and friends to reach the affiliate milestone within a week or two. Although you can use family and friends to help you easily hit the affiliate milestone, I don’t think that is the best option for long term success.
Now let’s hop into what the requirements are for Twitch Affiliate, as well as tips for reaching each of these milestones.
What are the Requirements for Twitch Affiliate?
In order to be accepted into the Twitch Affiliate Program, you need to hit certain milestones. The milestones are as follows:
- 500 minutes (a little under 9 hours) broadcast in the last 30 days.
- At least 7 days broadcasted in the last 30 days.
- An average of 3 concurrent viewers over last 30 days.
- At least 50 followers
As you can see, the requirements are not super difficult to meet. Once you become eligible, Twitch will reach out to you within a few weeks to invite you to the program. You are not required to join, but if you want to start receiving subs and Twitch bits then you will need to be a Twitch Affiliate.
Being accepted to the affiliate program is a big step in your streaming journey because now people can support you monetarily for the content you provide. So 1-2 months sounds great, but what if you want affiliate now? How can you achieve Twitch affiliate even faster?
How to Get Twitch Affiliate Sooner?
There is no shortcut to Twitch Affiliate. You must hit the different milestones in order to be accepted to the program. But there are things that you can do to help you hit each of the steps even faster. I will go over eat of these steps below.
500 Minutes Broadcast
This one is easy. You could easily stream 500 minutes in just one weekend. Let’s say you stream 3 hours Friday night after work, 3 hours Saturday morning and then 3 hours Sunday afternoon then boom, you already have hit your required minutes.
Or if you are feeling extra adventurous, then you could knock out all 500 minutes in one day. It would be a major grind, but it is possible.
Long story short, this is not a tough milestone to hit and it just takes you making a schedule and turning on that “Go Live” button.
7 Days Broadcasted
This one is easy. Broadcast on 7 seven unique days within a 30 day period and you are good to go. Unique days just means different days. So you can’t do 3 streams on one day and count that towards your total. It would only count for one day. And there is no requirement for how long these streams have to be, just the fact that you “Go Live” is good enough.
Average 3 Concurrent Viewers
Concurrent viewers are people watching your stream live or at the same time and not the total number of viewers you have that visit your stream. For example if you have 3 viewers currently watching your stream, you have 3 concurrent viewers.
If you have ever looked at your stream summary after your stream then you may have noticed that you will have more unique viewers than average viewers.
This is because unique viewers are anyone unique who visits your stream. So you may have 10 unique viewers, but only average 3 viewers because they didn’t stick around. For more info on how Twitch views are calculated, check out my article here.
Anyways, I am telling you all this for you to understand that you will need to get 3 people who consistently visit and stay in your stream. This may seem like a lot, but honestly, it is not. If you try to do this organically then yes, it may take a few months to hit.
But you could always just go the easy route and have your mom, brother and girlfriend make Twitch accounts and watch your stream.
And then after a few streams, Boom! You are now averaging 3 viewers. In my opinion, this is probably the hardest milestone to hit on your path to Twitch Affiliate.
At Least 50 Twitch Followers
Averaging 3 viewers is probably the hardest milestone to hit, but getting 50 Twitch followers is probably the second hardest milestone to hit. However, if you have the right strategy, it really isn’t all that difficult to achieve.
For many, you will have better luck getting Twitch followers on platforms outside of Twitch such as Twitter or Youtube. Twitch just does not have a great discoverability feature when compared to other platforms. For more info on how to get more Twitch followers, check out my article here.
And if you want to know how I gained over 50 followers on Twitch in just one week, then check out my Youtube video below.
Once you have hit each of these milestones, you will then be invited to be a Twitch Affiliate. But sit tight because the process of being invited and accepting may take a few weeks.
What are the Benefits of Being a Twitch Affiliate?
Becoming a Twitch Affiliate is a big step as a streamer. Twitch Affiliate’s can now have people sub to their channel, collect bits, have custom emotes for the channel and use channel points among other things.
Being a Twitch Affiliate is a major step in creating a community amongst your followers. There are some streamers out there who do some really cool things with channel points for example.
Streamers will do things such as “X” amount of channel points and I will eat a hot pepper on stream. For a complete guide on channel points, check out my article here.
Emotes are also a great thing. Having custom emotes really make your stream unique, and even better, people can drop your emotes in the chats of other streamers as a salute to you.
Not only does Twitch Affiliate really start letting you build a unique community, it also gives you a way to start making money through streaming.
Subs and bits will now be available to you and so you can begin to turn your hobby into a little bit of a side hustle.
As you can see, a lot of great features become available to you once you become a Twitch Affiliate. You really are moving up in the streaming world.
Twitch Affiliate sounds awesome right, but if you want to know why you may want to wait before jumping into the Twitch Affiliate Program then check out my article here on multi-streaming.
You may learn a few things about the Twitch Affiliate Program that you didn’t know.
As always, if you have any questions or just want to hang with me, stop by my Twitch channel here and say what’s up!
For even more streaming tips and how-to content check out my Youtube channel here. And if you want to check out my streams then stop by my Twitch channel here.
In the end, rather it takes you two week or two months, hitting affiliate in Twitch is a big deal and your first major step in succeeding as a streamer. And if you follow some of the tips above, you will hit Twitch Affiliate in no time.
Good luck out there my friends.
May all your streams come true.
Eric streams 3 days a week on Twitch and uploads weekly to Youtube under the moniker, StreamersPlaybook. He loves gaming, PCs, and anything else related to tech. He’s the founder of the website StreamersPlaybook and loves helping people answer their streaming, gaming, and PC questions.
Tips to Reach Twitch Affiliate - Streamers Playbook
Thursday 25th of March 2021
[…] is a super underrated tip, especially when it comes to being accepted into the Twitch Affiliate Program. As you may already know, one of the requirements for being accepted into the Twitch Affiliate […]