What it Takes: How Twitch Streamer Deadlyslob Rose to the Top
Today, Deadly averages over 2000 viewers on Twitch and is one of the leading content creators for the immersive survival game Escape from Tarkov.
However, when Deadly first started streaming in 2014, he quickly realized that making a living off of the platform would not be as easy as he first thought and struggled to grow his viewership. Since then, things have obviously changed as Deadly is now one of the most successful streamers in his space.
I had the chance to talk with Deadly and interview him for the podcast. During the interview, Deadly was adamant that his success was not due to any natural talent; rather, it was hard work and dedication.
These are the three main things that Deadly told me he learned to make it on Twitch.
1. Stick to it
One of the first realizations Deadly made in his streaming career is that he had to find a way to separate himself from the thousands of other people on the platform and the hundreds playing the same game as him.
“If I want to grow this channel, I need to work harder than everybody else in this category.”
With this thought in mind, Deadly began streaming for long periods of time every day of the week and made sure that he stuck to a schedule. However, hard work can only take you so far and after a year, Deadly realized that streaming wasn’t going as well as it needed to be and that something needed to change.
As it turned out, multiple streamers playing the same game as Deadly had reached the same conclusion, streaming for crazy amounts of time every single day. It got to the point that the lengths of time Deadly and these other streamers were live for, with 24-hour marathons and the like, bordered on unhealthy, and Deadly realized this.
Once again, Deadly needed to find a way to separate himself. He needed to find a way to not just work harder but also smarter.
2. Find New Ways to Grow
The solution to the dilemma Deadly found himself in lied in another popular video platform, YouTube. Deadly began uploading compilation videos from his streams on Twitch to the platform.
Not only did this provide an additional way to make revenue, it gave people a new way to find his Twitch stream.
This new approach quickly paid off as Deadly went more than doubled his viewership from 150 to 450 people in a very short period of time.
Deadly’s past job also helped him succeed in this area. Because he used to work for (and helped founded) a YouTube network that would help connect content creators to advertisers in the early days of YouTube, Deadly had behind-the-scenes knowledge of how YouTube’s algorithm for recommending videos worked.
For example, in the past few years, YouTube has switched from relying more on view counts and likes to determine recommendation to how much of the video was watched. Deadly put this knowledge to good use when creating video guides for games like Escape from Tarkov by making them short and to the point because he knew that it did not matter how long people watched his video for but how much of it they watched.
This decision propelled Deadly’s channels to new heights of upwards of 1,000 people last year, a growth that has only continued to the present day. By finding a new medium to create content in YouTube, Deadly found a new way to grow.
3. Be Yourself, but Also Keep Yourself in Check
Deadly believes that one of the best ways to grow and attract people to your channel is by being your own unique self; however, that is not a hard and fast rule.
“You need to keep yourself in check a little bit.”
As Deadly explained, there are some times when you should try to alter your behavior in order to maintain a positive attitude while streaming. Getting overly resentful and angry after a death in a game for instance, can alienate some of your viewers in addition to not being a necessarily healthy way to approach your job.
In addition, by maintaining a positive attitude on your stream, you are encouraging a positive atmosphere in which your community can grow. Such positivity also helps create a more loyal viewership and a welcoming first impression for any new viewers.
It’s a change that Deadly had to make, and it is one that he encourages other streamers to adopt.
“The moment you do that, you are going to notice immediate improvement.”
