From a Corporate Office to Streaming on Twitch Full Time
Interview with Content Creator, MALF
Back in April, I had the pleasure of interviewing my friend Michaelalfox, or MALF, who creates YouTube videos and streams on Twitch. A couple of months ago he decided to leave his steady, full-time corporate job to pursue his love for streaming and gaming full time.
MALF and I go way back, we’ve been friends for about five or six years. Over the last two and a half years we’ve spent every Tuesday night together doing Team Unity Tuesday.
When he had told me he was making the switch to go full time with content creation I was super happy for him. In my interview, I talked to him about what prompted him to do it and his background on the platform.
He told me that he has almost always been involved in content creation in some way. His older brothers would make little clips and videos, and once MALF got to high schools, he got involved in content creation as well, editing videos for his friends and brothers before he ever actually made it onto YouTube himself. In college, he continued to make videos here and there and even did some early vlogging around 2010. He tells me that it started as a “why not” kind of thing and that the videos were solely for him and his friends’ enjoyment and were posted on an older platform called DailyMotion.
MALF started creating his own gaming content in late 2010 from the influence of his friend Ryan who encouraged him to do a Let’s Play series which he hadn’t heard of before. After some trial and error, he really started to enjoy it and would purposely play bad games and then send it to Ryan to edit. Ever since then, creating gaming content has been a constant in his life.
Recently, it dawned on MALF that he has a decently large following around him that he could possibly make a living off of. He told me he had been thinking this all throughout 2018, while he was working full time. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that he was streaming after work when he was not at his best energy level, and yet, it was still becoming a great thing. MALF saw potential in putting the best hours of himself towards streaming and gaming and sounded excited to see where it would take him. With that said, he still talked fondly of his old job and still had a lot of pride in the work that he put into it. It’s just that now, he’s committing himself to what he loves doing more.
I asked MALF what that transition has been like for him now that he’s punching in his own clock now. He said that the support he’s been given from his community and friends has been great and really encouraged him to stay motivated and work hard. He says that he tries to take some aspects of his corporate routine into his streaming life, which is why he starts streaming early in the morning. Similarly, he mentioned that he’s going to be tweaking his content as he goes along because he doesn’t want to be stagnant with certain niches that he may encounter. The key, he told me, is to not do the same thing every day and make sure he has a variety of games: something that I can definitely relate to.
Finally, I wanted to know if he had any advice for a young MALF or other aspiring content creators that want to go full time.
“There really isn’t a formula to this sort of thing as much as people want like, ‘Oh, what do I have to do to be successful?’ It’s like [shrug] you have to figure it out. That’s part of the fun challenge to me.”
What worked for him was making sure he was prepared and saving money to fall back on. The security of the audience he had already built made the process a lot less scary since he has support from a community, which I believe is true. If someone is consistent in posting and streaming, those people tend to have a greater chance of success because their audience will know what to expect.
To hear a more in-depth version of MALF’s story and a financial take on what it means to transition to Twitch full time, listen on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or below.
