Chapter 4: Viewer Retention Vs. Follow Counts

Viewer retention is your ability to land viewers during a stream and keep them alongside other viewers in concurrency while you're broadcasting.

And sadly there are too many channels who think follow counts matter more than such.

If anything, I very recently got into a heated discussion with someone who formally streamed on Mixer over this.

How it started was them talking of wanting to see a feature like Mixer's Hypezone function on other sites, with me stating that it was one of the worst features on Mixer.

Before we go on, I want to clarify that I didn't hate the concept behind Hypezone.

Also since not everyone streamed on Mixer to know what I'm talking about, Hypezone was a series of channels dedicated to games like Fortnite, Siege, PUBG, and some other trending titles with a function similar to being featured where it brought an influx of viewers to your channel. The exception was that getting Hypezoned required being close to a win in a game.

The feature itself wasn't what was bad, though I didn't agree with how every time a new battle royale showed popularity, Mixer gave it a Hypezone with no real focus on things to help variety streamers out on the same scale. They claimed that they came up with the name Mixer in the context of streamers on the site all bringing a variety of content to mix together, yet all the Hypezones and battle royal focus made it more like a badly mixed smoothie that was watered down with too much of one ingredient and chunks of content here and there.

My issue with Hypezone was that the viewers that usually entered a chat through the function were toxic and a lot of times would try their best to troll the streamer to where they ended up losing, and then belittle them for the loss. I personally feel it would've been great if some form of means to filter trolls out could've been implemented.

Anyway, this person went on to defend Hypezone, talking of how they gained over 1700 followers in less than a year through it and co-streaming with what he hinted at as larger channels.

This also isn't exactly a bad thing in the scope of co-streaming with others to simply network, but his whole attitude about it and bragging about his followers came off as obnoxious.

This was backed up when he complained about Twitch's discoverability being 'broken' while also complaining about Twitch not having a co-stream function or Hypezone feature.

I explained to him that it was a matter of Twitch being much larger than Mixer and that at the end of the day if one was playing a trending game, they were going to be on an insanely large wall with countless other channels compared to if one was playing a much less popular title with a handful of other streamers playing it (explained more in part 7).

He asserted it was Twitch at fault so I told him that a reason why a lot of streamers on Mixer had grown in follows so quickly was because they played Fortnite on Xbox, which of course catered to most of the viewerbase of the site that were kids who only wanted Fortnite to the point of even entering a streamer's chat and telling them to 'play fortnite' if they were playing anything else.

'play fortnite', aka one of the many mating calls of Mixer's (now extinct) national animal.

I give you Imeightiicus Invitemeticus, commonly known as the Wild Blueberry.

My fellow former Mixer streamers can likely concur that the Blueberry was the Mixer Mascot we never asked for. Anyways moving on.

The whole 'play fortnite' thing was also mostly not because they wanted to watch the streamer play it, but because they treated Mixer as a looking for group site. Explained by another common phrase on the site. 'pc or xbox?' which led to a viewer usually leaving as soon as you said you weren't on Xbox.

Due to this, I ended up putting [PC/Switch] in brackets in my stream title as well as a text on my stream itself stating the same to assert to such individuals that I wasn't an Xbox streamer.

The person in question tried to make an argument on Fortnite and several other games being free on platforms other than Xbox while saying my points weren't valid, when my point wasn't about Fortnite's availability to download for free on other platforms, but that Xbox was the primary platform that most of Mixer's viewerbase played it on, with Mixer also being a Microsoft owned site that put priority on the Xbox which wasn't helped by a function dedicated to hyping Fortnite and other battle royal titles.

Short version, I was trying to tell him that one's lack of growth on Twitch is because it's a larger site not catered towards certain consoles, with a viewerbase consisting of more than just little kids who only want a single game with a bias towards Xbox streamers to a point where they didn't give PC streamers a chance.

Basically, the Xbox favoritism on Mixer was much more null on Twitch, and he didn't want to acknowledge that (As much as Twitch has plenty of problems) it wasn't the discoverability that needed improvement, but the content and networking of a broadcaster.

One of the main points to me bringing this all up is because of his view that follows mattered more than viewer retention.

After he brought up how many follows he had gained on Mixer, I told him that a streamer with less follows but more active viewers is still going to place higher on a list of who's streaming a certain game than one with more follows but less active viewers.

'More follows eventually leads to more viewers' was his response.

So, here's a question guys. Which is visible to a potential viewer browsing channels first?

That number on the thumbnail to your livestream?

Or the follower number that they have to click on your channel to see in the first place?

Even if you have over 9,000 followers, which would make someone say 'wow they have all these follows so they must be doing something worth watching', if you aren't pulling as many viewers as a streamer with much less follows but more people simultaneously checking them out? More people are going to likely click that streamer's channel before you because what they are doing is simply entertaining to a point where they are placing higher.

On a YouTube channel? Yea, subscriber numbers and cumulative video views are important, but YouTube aside from it's streaming functions is also a site based on pre recorded content that people can watch at any time.

When you stream? Other than your vods (if you allow your channel to save these recordings of your streams) which eventually expire unless you save your Twitch vods as permanent highlights? The only occasion that people can view your content on your stream channel is of course when you're live. This is why concurrent viewers are more important than follows.

Short version? Twitch and whatever other streaming sites out there aren't YouTube. Viewer retention >follow counts.

Sure, a streamer can have loads more follows than someone else and its completely fine to shoot for those milestones in regards to each hundred or thousand follows. While retention is more important, you do want to grow your following as well for sure without getting consumed by growing numbers and acting like its never enough.

But that badge of popularity some streamers try to rub in other's faces? You can have 10 followers and if every single one of them come back to your streams constantly? You have better viewer retention going on than someone with 1000 followers who are never around, especially so if most of them only came by for a follower only giveaway then not only bailed be it if they won or not, but unfollowed in the process.

This leads me to another way some streamers garner follows, which is promising a giveaway every X number of follows and different forms of clickbaiting.

Now before we go on, my view is this. Once again I see nothing wrong with either doing a giveaway to celebrate a major milestone or from time to time just for the heck of it. I myself have done both in the context of what I firmly believe a giveaway should be for. A thank you to one's supporters. At other times I've simply had a few extra keys from Humble Bundles and wanted to give some of my viewers a chance at free games, even going as far as just posting game keys in my chat or on my Discord as a first come first serve deal. If I had the financial means I would love to do occasional giveaways for game consoles or PC parts to my viewers as well.

But what bothers me is when a streamer almost endlessly offers giveaways every 100 follows or something similar when they're growing quick as is, not as a way to thank their supporters but to bait them in to increase their own popularity, seeing their viewers only as numbers compared to people that they want to take the time to get to know while never being satisfied with what they have.

On one hand, this is an effective strategy for increasing viewer retention during a broadcast. I'll admit that.

But not for growing a wholesome fanbase. Because in such a scenario those coming in solely for the giveaway care as little about the streamer as the streamer cares for them.

A story related to such. It may seem like I'm going off topic but there's a reason for this.

I've had two separate occasions (that I could tell what was happening given I've done enoug giveaways to catch a few tell signs) where out of the kindness of my heart compared to personal gain, I did a giveaway open to everyone without a need to follow me.

One was for a game called Pizza Titan Ultra, and the other for Call of Cthulhu.

And both times I had someone come in with several alt accounts that they used to join the giveaway and unfairly increase their chance of winning compared to other viewers.

On the occasion of Pizza Titan Ultra, the person running the alt's actually did win through one of the accounts. What backfired on him is that he was using so many separate accounts that he tried to claim it on one of the others he was still logged in on.

By the time he got back on the account that won? The time limit for him to be able to claim the prize ran out and it rerolled to one of my active viewers who immediately claimed it. A bit of irony given that the same thing he did to increase his chances actually caused him to NOT win.

Of course the person made up an excuse that latency between the chat and me announcing the winner kept him from seeing he won. Two things were wrong with this picture.

One. The time between a win and reroll on the chatbot I was using was 60 seconds, so he claimed that my low latency Mixer stream that normally averaged about 3 seconds actually took a whole minute, when not even Twitch has such high latency.

And two. Lets say my stream did have to catch up with the active chat. The bot acted in real time in the chat, meaning it still would've told him he won before I did on stream, compared to at the same time close to when the reroll occurred as he claimed. In all, my chatbot would've told everyone in the chat who won instantly.

He went on to try and beg the new winner for the game and when I gave him a warning? He went behind my back and attempted to whisper the winner begging, to which they told me and it resulted in a ban.

Not long after? All the other accounts (I counted 11) unfollowed one by one.

To add, the devs of Pizza Titan Ultra were amazing people who gave me a copy not just for myself but also dm'd me codes to give to friends and for this particular giveaway as well as some I did during my charity streams. They also gave me a code for their previous game (Starwhal). Overall you could just tell that they make their games for passion more than profit, so the fact that someone tried to be deceptive in such a way to take advantage of that was sickening to me.

As for the other giveaway? When I gave away Call of Cthulhu? Similar concept with one person using multiple alts, but I'd set up an entry fee of 150 channel currency they would have to gain by being in chat for a while to be able to enter. As you might of guessed? The situation with the Pizza Titan Ultra giveaway made me change my rules up some.

So when the contest started? They were unable to enter and they unfollowed after.

Point to me saying all this is that it goes in line with not just a method to try and get follows quick that isn't foolproof, but also in context of my advice before on handling discouragement.

If you ever have similar happen, namely given you're trying to be nice to people just for them to try and dupe you in return? Yea, it may be a tad heartbreaking when you see several viewers come in, follow and watch for a while, rudely ask 'have you done the giveaway yet?' then unfollow when either you say you already did the giveaway, or you do the giveaway and their name either wasn't called as a winner or for whatever reason? They couldn't enter.

I've been there and it sucks. You want to meet people while sharing your passion for gaming or whatever other content you stream with them, and in return for buying something to give away freely as a thank you? People come in with no care for your kindness, only getting something for themselves at your expense.

But keep in mind that be it in such a situation that it was one viewer with several alts or multiple people? They as well as you may think its hurting you to have them unfollow, but in two ways they're actually helping you.

First off, they came by caring only about getting something for free without supporting you, yet boosted your viewer retention and helped anyway. This is something that also happens with trolls.

The site you're broadcasting on doesn't see tasteful vs toxic when it comes to your viewers in the spectrum of statistics. Only that they are currently in your chat.

Sure, Mr '360noscopemilfhunter69' might be thinking that coming in and spamming racial and homophobic slurs in your chat is 100% negative to your stream, but he generates a view like anyone else in the end until he's banned and leaves.

Secondly, given a high follow/low viewership ratio for a streamer could theoretically paint a bad picture? Having followers who weren't going to come back anyway clear themselves out doesn't hurt you as bad as you may think. That and as I've said already, chances are even if they did win the giveaway they'd of unfollowed after regardless due to only following to be able to enter.

A few pointers I'd recommend taking into consideration if you want to do giveaways.

The aforementioned entry fee of channel currency through your bot that they would have to build up to be able to enter (small enough to be fairly obtainable, but large enough to where they'd have to be in the chat for a decent amount of time), or use a setting where only those in the chat for a set amount of time (ie. An hour) can join, which would deter those who leave and then come back constantly because they want to join, but not watch your stream. Such steps would make sure that if someone wants to take part in the giveaway? They have to put the time in on your channel. This makes it to where even if they do bail, win or lose, they still helped raise your viewership.

As I said in the forward post as an introduction to these guides, I cumulatively had 2000+ followers on Mixer. Not a huge number compared to other channels but it was still much more than I've ever had on any other social media site (yes, I said not to compare one's self to other channels, but I'm also not doing so in the context of self degradation, but instead that it was still progress).

Over time I realized a lot of flaws in how I streamed so I rebranded, changed the way I went about variety streaming (again, to be covered in my guide on playing what you want), and focused on trying to build myself up on Twitch, which is where I first started streaming.

Before recently doing my final stream on Twitch? I was at 164 follows which I was ok with seeing as collectively I was on Twitch about a year and a half total compared to the time I spent on Mixer which was longer. My progress on there was more than I thought I would ever achieve especially seeing as most of it was when I was still a rookie at streaming.

My active viewer retention on Mixer? I averaged about 10 viewers per stream out of those 1,000 and a large portion of those followers were those aforementioned kids on their Xbox who came in, instantly followed me, and left without a word, never to be seen again (though if they spoke it was usually the aforementioned Blueberry mating call).

'A follow is a follow' one might say in the grand scheme of one looking at a streamer's popularity based solely on their follow count, which statistically speaking? Is true.

But how is someone gonna notice that streamer in the first place if none of those followers are around to boost their viewer count up so their channel is placed higher among currently live broadcasters?

Example? Before they went under, Mixer changed their partner requirements from having 750 or so follows and what I believe was 50 concurrent viewers for a two month period, to where one needed 2,000 followers as the main requisite to be able to apply.

People including some just starting out streaming jumped on the F4F bandwagon to try and get their numbers up. Thinking that follow counts were what mattered more than anything and that 2k follows instantly got them partnership.

Again, not the same as YouTube.

The new partner requirements indeed focused more on an amount of follows more than active viewers, but it still required one to have viewer retention which I believe was changed to be scaled based on the content the streamer broadcasted. I want to say that they specified that one who played a trending title was expected to have higher viewer retention while those who didn't really pull as much but had the follows could still achieve it with lower retention.

Regardless, 2,000 follows worth of people who followed with no plans to watch the streamer given they did so only for a follow in return= the followers alone weren't going to get that sub button. They needed actual retention behind those follows.

Twitch last I checked requires a viewer average of 75 which is the most difficult of the steps to apply for partner. No matter how many followers a Twitch streamer may have? They have to get the retention to pass that step.

I'm not the most versed in math and what's coming is a lot of purely mocked up concepts from someone not the most articulate in arithmetic, but if I'm correct (and it'll be a miracle if I am but I'm trying), having 10 viewers show up on average out of my Mixer following of 1092 before? That was only about 1% of my followers.

Now take a streamer with 100 follows and an average viewer retention of 10.

That's 10% of their current amount of followers (be they following the streamer or not) that are currently in their chat which would be a 9% higher average than mine, and even when you take a streamer with 1000 follows and give them an average of 30 viewers? Again if my math is right? That's only 3%.

This means that smaller streamer was holding onto a higher ratio of viewers per follow count than my retention vs followers.

A couple more examples.

Say a streamer is bragging their ass off about having 200,000 followers compared to the smaller guys, but when you see them on the front page of the streaming site? They average about, hmm, lets say 60 viewers.

That'd be maybe about 0.03% of the cumulative amount of people following them compared to the streamer with 5,000 follows yet the same ratio of 60 viewers with about 1.2% of their follower count in their stream.

Translation? Percentages out the door, how much your viewers/followers watch is what you want to shoot for, not how many followers you can gain. The better concept of a truly supportive viewer isn't the one who looks at you as worth following for how many followers you have who aren't even there except for the number, but who follows you simply because they like your content.

Short version. A live channel with 50 followers will simply rank higher if the number of viewers watching is higher than that channel with 5000.

There were some streamers on Mixer with less followers than myself but similar levels of retention be it from playing something popular or simply shining with their personality, though sadly the viewer retention for some was because they were female streamers, which by no means whatsoever is knocking them nor their ability to gain viewers organically through that 'she steals my viewers because tiddy' bullshit.

I'm speaking on the fact that their genuine personality and gaming ability were being ignored due to kids with raging hormones and grown adults with no concept of respect for a person of opposite sex, namely one who just wanted to play a video game live and be supported for her content.

Yes, you do have some female streamers who intentionally let their assets do the work and some who even have used gaming focal live streaming sites to promote their own XXX camgirl page assuming they didn't just try to use Twitch or whatever else AS a cam site regardless of rules against such content (nothing against sex workers, just Twitch isn't for that kinda content).

But you have loads of them who cover up and still get that kind of unfair attention that they don't want just for, well, being a human being of the female gender surrounded by a bunch of thirsty dudes who honestly need to go buy a Sprite for that thirst they have. I myself have a few female friends who run Onlyfans pages, but they keep their streaming channel and their more adult content separate.

Point to all that? Different streamers have different ways that they may increase their growth, both legit and shady.

Some may grow with no actual knowledge of what reason others are following them for and will be very humble about it.

And yet there are others who'll go into another streamer's channel and blatantly try to steal their viewers through self promoting out of desperation. Because they feel more deserving of that streamer's viewers with no care on the fact that they are trying to throw that person under the bus for their own gain.

In the end, what matters is that you put out content that others with kindred interests enjoy that'll keep them coming back.