Do you have a favorite streamer on Twitch? Or do you like to spend time watching exciting and useful broadcasts on the platform? It makes no difference how much time you spend on the platform, the main thing is the fact that you can interact with streamers and other viewers and get pleasure from watching absolutely free of charge.
You will agree that streamers create their channels with the desire to share their knowledge and experience with others. Only a small number of streamers manage to achieve some kind of monetization thanks to ads. The rest of vloggers work absolutely free of charge and require support from viewers.
The most popular way to encourage broadcasters for their new projects is donations. Twitch offers several types of donations for viewers to choose the most suitable one.
This article will shed light on the main types of donations and the process of how to donate on Twitch.
How to Donate to a Twitch Streamer
Every donation made to a streamer is an incentive to continue the job he does online. Twitch can boast the biggest number of live streams on the web and people who do that usually start their online career with a couple of amateur videos. There are beginner streamers who turn out to be very talented and skillful and they require the support of viewers most of all. Otherwise, they will not understand that their efforts are appreciated and cease streaming forever.
The same situation is with experienced and famous streamers. Despite a big number of fans, they still require help from their viewers since high-quality projects always need investment and who if not viewers will make a contribution to get a possibility to enjoy their future creations too.
If you understand the importance of donations and want to show your passion for one or another channel, learn the most popular ways of becoming a donor and how to enable donations on Twitch.
Donate Money
The most reasonable way of making donations is sending money directly to the wallet or credit card of the streamer. In fact, Twitch supports the function of transferring money directly to the PayPal wallet on the basis of the email address provided by the streamer. This way of payment is suitable for people who have a PayPal account and takes only a couple of minutes to proceed it.
The process looks as follows:
- Log in your Twitch account.
- Open the channel of the streamer you want to donate to.
- When you open the page, scroll it to the bottom and find a ‘Donate’ button (it can be also called ‘Donations’).
- Click it and the system will open you a window to fill out.
- Provide your username, indicate the amount of the donation, and write down a message if you wish.
- After you click ‘Donate’ button, you will see a page to submit the payment.
If you follow this process on Twitch, you can donate money only via PayPal or crypto wallet. Viewers who watch streams on StreamLabs or StreamElements, third-party services to make Twitch experience more exciting, can also send cash donations from their credit cards and other methods suggested.
Donate Bits
Since real money donations are preferred not by everyone, Twitch has introduced its own virtual currency called Bits. The process of donating bits on the platform is known as cheering.
Bits donations can be made only by Partners and Affiliates, so you need to be registered on the platform to be able to donate. Moreover, it is necessary to obtain bits to be able to send them to streamers.
Bits can be purchased online directly on the platform through Amazon Payment or earned by watching short ads. This way of tipping streamers is much more exciting since you can send bits in the chat at the time you are watching a stream and they are represented in the chat in the form of animations depending on the number of bits you have sent. Moreover, every bit can be accompanied by exclusive Twitch emoticons, while users who donate bits are awarded badges.
The cheering procedure is incredibly simple:
- Enter your Twitch account and get to the channel you like.
- Find a chat window and click the animation representing bits to find out how many bits you own.
- Type the word ‘cheer’ and the number of bits you want to donate (for example, ‘cheer400’). You can also continue writing your message.
- As soon as you press enter, you will have 5 seconds to cancel your message if there are any mistakes made.
A streamer gets bits cheered to the account immediately. One bit is equal to 1 cent donated.
Buy Subscription
It is free to sign up for Twitch and learn about new streams appearing on the platform. However, if you want to follow a streamer you like, you need to subscribe to his or her channel. There are three subscriptions with payment and a prime subscription which is free for members of Amazon Prime and Prime Video. Depending on the Tier you want to subscribe with, you need to pay $5, $10, $25/month respectively. It allows watching your favorite streams without ads, sending emoticons, as well as donating money to your beloved broadcasters – they receive 50% of the subscription cost to their accounts.
Donate Twitch Gifted Subs
In summer 2018, Twitch offered users a new feature called “Community Gifting”. It allows users to present any channel with a certain number of subscribers purchased as a gift.
For this purpose, users should open the channel they have chosen and select an option below the tab ‘Gift a Sub’. It can be one of three Tiers offered for subscription. After that, it is necessary to select the number of gifts each sold for a certain amount of money. It is possible to choose from 1 to 100 subscribers. As soon as they are paid for, the notification about every new subscriber will appear in the chat. A streamer receives half of every user’s subscription cost to the account as a donation.
Donate Your Time
Viewers who look for cost-free donation methods on Twitch can sigh with relief since they do exist too. Despite the fact that you do not donate your own money, streamers still get some monetary support thanks to the time you spend on the platform. How does it work?
Look: it is possible to donate a streamer by trying a game or application.
One of such tools is Rechaaarge.com, for example. Usually, streamers place links on their channels which allow ‘Donate for free’. For this purpose, you need to do the following:
- Click the link on the creator’s channel from your mobile device;
- Select the application to try from the list (each of them costs a certain number of coins);
- Add these coins to the donation box of the streamer and provide your Twitch account name;
- Enter the store to download an app and open to try it;
- Your donation will be delivered to the creator in a few minutes spent in the app.
The number of such free apps is unlimited, so you can donate as much money as you want to be persistent. Moreover, it is a great way to see the novelties offered to users and find anything appealing to you too.
Conclusion
Twitch donations play a very important role in the development of creators streaming on the platform. That is why it is of great importance to make donations and support streamers in any of the ways suggested. No matter what type of donation you will choose, each of them brings about encouragement and profit to broadcasters, so never neglect this great feature on the Twitch platform.
