Categories
DJ How To Ideas

DJ Tip: If You Make A Mistake Just Keep Going

Hey everyone. Today I would like to write about a DJ tip that I have discovered over the many hours I have spent practising mixing music as a DJ. The trick is this; if you make a mistake while you mixing music as a DJ, you simply have to keep going. This point may seem obvious but sometimes as a DJ we may worry about our sets being too perfect. We should drop this worry and focus on recovering from mistakes as quickly as possible. Listeners likely won’t notice slight mistakes and sometimes errors can lead to magic while performing as a DJ.

Recovering From Mistakes

While you are performing as a DJ you may sometimes make a mistake as you are mixing the tracks. I’ll give you an example of what happened to me. Recently I was recording an episode of my radio show “Lunar Surface Radio”. I’ll leave a link to the DJ set I was recording here. If you skip ahead to the 25:00 part of that DJ set you will hear where I made the “mistake”. I’ll explain what happened. Since I am a one person DJ show, I was multi-tasking as I was recording this DJ set. I was trying to take some promotional photos for the show while I was recording and I did not have a proper track ready to mix in when the time came to do so.

Since I did not want to lose an entirely good DJ set up to that point I had to think quickly. What I ended up doing was looping a very small part of the track which I had playing. This bought me time to find a proper track to mix in. What happened next was a bit lucky. The track that I ended up quickly choosing to blend in to the previous track ended up actually sounding absolutely perfect with the track which was looping. I ended up saving what was an otherwise good DJ set with this simple trick. The results actually ended up being my favourite part of the whole set. Don’t forget this DJ tip. Sometimes mistakes can make a set sound even better.

Never Stop The Music

As a DJ you have to never let the music stop playing. If a track simply ends, and there is complete silence, a crowd will likely not be happy. I feel like looping a short part of a track is a good strategy to use as a back up plan just in case you somehow forgot to have a proper track lined up in time. This actually used to be my “go to” strategy for mixing when I started out as a DJ. I would get one or both tracks looping in short loops and then blend them together. It can actually sound quite good in many instances. It is also a strategy to use if you have tracks which are not “extended mixes”. Sometimes you simply do not have enough time at the end of a track to mix the next one in so you have to incorporate a looping mechanism of some kind.

Richard’s DJ rig

Just Keep Going

The lesson of the today’s blog is to just simply keep going if you make a mistake while you are mixing a DJ set. Most likely the crowd will be enjoying the vibes you are generating and will not notice too much any slight error that you make while mixing. Just keep the energy and the vibe alive and don’t be afraid to use that looping technique that I wrote about earlier. Practice makes perfect. Just keep going. If you are just starting out as a DJ and you would like to learn the basics then check out this article I have written previously on this website.

I hope you enjoyed this DJ tip today. If you like electronic music, head on over to my Mixcloud page and follow me there. I post new DJ sets each week for everyone to enjoy.

Thank you for reading this blog and have a great day!

©2021 Richard Gillespie

Categories
Ideas Motivation Psychology

Hard Work Always Wins: Take Action Now

In this blog I will write about my belief in the power of hard work. Hard work always wins in the game of life. There are no shortcuts to success. Often we look to others for tips and advice on how to succeed in life. Often we are looking for shortcuts or advantages which will help us to succeed. Sometimes we can find inspiration from other people, but if we do not take concrete action towards achieving our goals then they will only remain dreams. In this post I will walk through why I feel that hard work always wins.

Hard Work Always Wins

Hard work always gets us ahead in life because it is logical that it would do so. Think about it. In ancient times, the hunter-gatherer who worked the hardest and hunted and gathered the most would obviously collect the most materials necessary for survival. Sometimes as individuals we can get into the habit of thinking that we simply currently do not know enough to succeed. We may think “if only there was a particular piece of knowledge that I had, then I could begin to be successful in life.” In the case of someone trying to work in a specific profession this may be true but those of us who already have higher education may not actually require additional knowledge to succeed.

We need to stop looking for some secret piece of knowledge that is going to help us become more successful in life. The secret is right in front of us. The secret is hard work. I have written in previous articles about how hard work is the key to success. If you have read that article then this blog post may sound repetitive but the idea needs repeating.

Excuses For Why We Fail

Often we give excuses for why we do not succeed in life. Perhaps we believe we are born in the wrong place and do not have access to the right opportunities. What we fail to realize is that location is no longer important in today’s digitally connected society. Living in an expensive city may not be necessary in order to create the kinds of art or businesses you wish to build. Instead of coming up with excuses for why we haven’t succeeded, let’s instead realize that it is likely due to the fact that we have not worked hard or long enough on what we are trying to achieve. Hard work always wins so let’s keep our heads down and keep working until we succeed.

An Empowering Philosophy

Realizing that we simply have not put in enough work yet to achieve our dreams empowers us to double down and continue taking action. If we believe that hard work always wins then we can have a motivating factor to continue to proceed towards our goals. Any great deed will require great efforts and actions in order to be achieved. Olympians train for years before they win gold medals. Rome was not built in a day. Neither will your career in a field that you enjoy. There is intense competition to make a living by doing fun and enjoyable careers. While these careers may seem fun from the outside they likely took hard work to obtain. Keep working hard and you will succeed.

Conclusion

Hard work is the key to success in life. Unless you happen to be born with millions of dollars already in your bank account, chances are you will need to work hard in some capacity in order to succeed. Instead of looking for secrets or shortcuts to success, know that hard work is an honest and trusted method to success. Used by athletes, inventors, musicians, artists, and many other fields. Hard work is a surefire method of successful action. You can trust that hard work always wins.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog today. Have a great day and keep working hard.

©2020 Richard Gillespie

Categories
Blogging SEO Writing

Should You Run Ads On Your Blog?

In this blog post we will consider whether or not you should run ads on your blog. I will go over why I feel you should not run ads on your personal blog. I will tell you a bit about my personal experience doing so and offer you some advice if you are just starting out your website.

Should You Run Ads On Your Blog?

I believe that it is probably not a good idea to run ads on your personal blog when you are starting out your website. Let me explain why. When someone visits your website, they are there to gain information, either about you or some kind of topic. It is generally not pleasant to see ads as soon as you visit a new blog or website. First impressions are important. If someone stumbles across your blog and they are immediately hit with an advertisement, it will likely make the viewer feel less favourable about your blog or website. Ads can be distracting so I feel that you should have the focus of the website be on you or the content you are creating.

How To Generate Revenue

You may be wondering how you can generate income from your blog without having ads. Here are a few ideas. Since you are a blogger it may be possible to put your blogs together into book format. This can be one way to monetize your blog. If people enjoy your writing and gain value from your blog, they may be inclined to support you by purchasing a copy of a book you have written. Perhaps you are a musician or you have some other product or service that you offer. You can have your blog act as a tool for bringing new customers over to your product or service. This is why it is likely a good idea not to run ads on your personal blog. If you are already a brand which offers products, it may not be advisable to run advertisements on your website of potential competitors or other companies. Promoting other brands alongside your own might be distracting for audiences.

Ads Might Hurt SEO

It is possible that ads could effect your SEO or search engine optimization as well. I’ll admit I am not the biggest SEO expert but I have read somewhere that having ads on a website can potentially negatively effect your search engine rankings. Let’s think about this for a moment. This may seem odd since you would think Google would want to rate sites which host their ads higher on their search engine to increase ad revenues. Think about the Google algorithm for a moment. Part of the way that the Google algorithm works is based on links. If a lot of sites link to a particular website, it is seen as an authority website on a particular topic. Think about Wikipedia, for example. There are no Google ads running on Wikipedia but it regularly ranks at the top of Google for many search topics. Should you run ads on your blog? You may not want to because theoretically less people might link to a website which is laden with ads. Less links to your website means weaker SEO.

Conclusion

If you are just starting out your website as a blogger I would recommend not running ads on your website. I did so for months and saw no revenue from doing so. I am pretty sure the look of the ads was unpleasant on my website and they did not help to build or grow my brand. You don’t have to take my advice but I would personally recommend not running ads on your personal blog. I have removed mine and we will see how it goes from here. I prefer the cleaner look and feel of the website without the ads.

Thank you for reading my post today regarding whether or not you should run ads on your blog. Have a great day.

©2020 Richard Gillespie

Categories
Productivity Social Media Time Management

Creating Content: Building A Social Media Schedule

A good strategy for creating content is to have a social media schedule.

Nowadays, in order to be a content creator you need to be creating content on a consistent basis. In order to do so it is a good idea to produce content on some kind of schedule. While it may seem cumbersome to schedule your content in this way, it can help you by providing structure. In this article I will go over why building a social media schedule can help you as you are creating content.

Creating Content

You love creating your content and posting it on YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms, and you are not alone. The competition among content creators is growing more and more over time. Individuals are drawn to the entrepreneurial aspects of social media, as well as the creative freedom that it offers. In previous articles I have written about the power of consistency and how it is important as someone is creating content. One reason why aiming at creating consistent content is important is it forces you as a creator to upload some kind of content on a regular basis. It is kind of like going to the gym, or going to a job you do not really like going to. While some people may just love going to the gym, many force themselves to experience the unpleasant physical stress of going to the gym because they want the results. Creating content is the same. If you do not put in the work, even when it is difficult, it will be hard to see any kind of results.

Building A Content Schedule

I am as guilty as anyone of not sticking to a consistent content schedule as a creator. I would like to try to stick to the content schedule I am laying out for you in this blog. Feel free to copy or modify this schedule so it can fit your own social media content creation needs. First, let’s take inventory of the social media platforms that I want to create content for. The platforms I currently use are Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Mixcloud, and Twitter. I may use other platforms once in a while but those are the main ones I tend to use. Now that we have a list of the platforms we will be creating content on, let’s create a posting schedule for each of them.

How Often To Post

Let’s decide how much content we should post on each platform each week. Twitch is a live streaming platform so it can take up a lot of your time if it is all you focus on. Generally, it can be hard to grow on Twitch if all you do is stream on Twitch. It is usually recommended to post content on other platforms to help grow your Twitch channel. It helps to have large followings on other social media that you can direct back to your Twitch channel. Currently I try to stream on Twitch Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, at around 3:00 PM Eastern Time. That gives me time to have other content creation activities outside of Twitch to focus on.

I believe that my current weakness with my social media strategy is not posting enough to other platforms outside of Twitch. So let’s lay out a content posting strategy that I can use daily to post on other platforms and aim to stick to it.

YouTube Posting Strategy

My YouTube hasn’t been growing very much over the years and I would like to change that. This is why I am going to be bold and try to aim for one new YouTube video to be posted daily on my page. Normally I am never that consistent with my YouTube videos. I feel like if I could create some kind of content daily for that platform it would have to have some kind of effect in growing my channel. So the new goal is to aim for 1 new YouTube video post per day. Let’s see if I can stick to it.

What About TikTok?

You hear a lot of people online talking about how often to post on TikTok. There is no real science behind it in my opinion, but generally the more you post the more chance your video has of being seen by people who may be interested in it. Some successful accounts are posting once a day, while others are posting 5 or more times per day. It really depends on who you are as an individual. Certain celebrities may post less than once a day but still have large followings. I think for myself a good strategy for creating content for TikTok will be at least one video per day. If I can do more, I should. If do less than one video a day I may be missing out on opportunities to reach people.

Instagram & Twitter

I believe my strategy for posting on these platforms should be similar to the TikTok posting strategy. At least one post per day for regularity, but if I can post more then it may be a good idea to do so. Some people might argue that the quality of my posts might suffer if I am forcing myself to post at least once per day. I used to feel this way but what I am learning from listening to branding experts like Gary Vaynerchuk, is that in the social media business; it’s quantity over quality. As I mention in this YouTube video below, your content will never be perfect. It’s time to start creating content.

Overall Conclusions

Sometimes writing is a good activity because it can help you to crystalize your thoughts and develop a solid strategy. The overall idea that I am realizing as I write this blog is that the best social media strategy for myself will be the “at least one post a day per platform” practice. One YouTube video a day, One blog a day, One TikTok a day. On each of those platforms I should be producing one piece of content per day; bare minimum. If I can produce more content, then I should. If I don’t produce at least one piece of content for each of these platforms a day, I am not hitting my target, and I am be missing out.

Thank you for taking the time to read this social media strategy blog. Have a great time creating content and have a good day.

©2020 Richard Gillespie

Categories
How To Ideas Motivation

How To Stop Procrastinating

This photo shows the hands of a person using a smartphone. If you are wondering how to stop procrastination then taking a break from social media apps can be a good idea.

In this blog post we will discuss ideas regarding how to stop procrastinating. Procrastination is a huge problem that prevents many of us from maximizing productivity and getting work done. Whether you are a student or creative professional, it can often be hard to stop procrastinating and get down to work. In this blog post I will discuss various techniques and mindsets to help you break out of this unproductive habit of procrastination.

How To Stop Procrastinating

If you are engaged in any kind of creative activity, you will understand how easy it is to get into a cycle of procrastination. We know in our mind we need to do something, but we neglect to actually get down to work. Instead of getting busy with what we need to do, often we will look for distractions to pass the time. This is a way of delaying the inevitable work that we have to do. Unfortunately, if you are a freelance writer or content creator, this procrastination can really lead to a lack of productivity quickly. Let’s discuss why you should limit the amount of time you spend procrastinating and start focusing on productive activities instead.

Procrastination Limits Success

If you spend the majority of your time procrastinating you will limit your ability to succeed in life. When I was studying in University, I spent quite a bit of time procrastinating. I knew I had assignments that needed to be done, but I would often put them off until the last minute. You may be able to get away with this kind of activity in an academic setting, but it will rarely serve you well in the real world. If you are a freelance writer who spends most of their day procrastinating and only a small portion of the day writing, it will likely be quite hard to succeed. So how do you motivate yourself to stop procrastinating and instead focus on your creative activities? You need to realize that there is no reward for procrastination.

No Reward For Procrastination

Whenever you are sitting there, scrolling through social media instead of being creative, remember; there is no reward for procrastination. If you sit around procrastinating all day, I can pretty much guarantee that you will not be successful. As I mentioned in my last article, hard work is the key to success. You need to work very hard in order to achieve greatness in today’s competitive environment. If you are spending most of your day procrastinating, how can you rise to the challenges of our modern age? You will not be rewarded for idly browsing social media or news websites. Those news websites and social media sites will actually make money off of you spending time on their sites. Start spending time creating your own content instead.

No Pain = No Gain

It can often feel easier and more enjoyable to consume content rather than be the one producing it. Often we fall into the trap of simply consuming media but not producing it ourselves. This is a negative trap that will hurt us financially if we are not careful. Perhaps many people simply have no desire to be writers or content creators of any kind. If you are one of those people then this article may not apply to you. However, if you are someone that wants to create content for a living, beware of the trap of consuming too much of other people’s content. If you consume too much content from other writers and creators it will limit the time and energy you have to create your own productions. I have written about this concept before in the past and you can read that article here.

The Key To Stop Procrastination

The main sources of distraction when you are trying to get things done tend to be various types of outside media sources. Social media companies, online video websites, advertisers and others are spending millions of dollars annually in hopes that you spend more time on the internet consuming content. When you have something to do in life and you feel like distracting yourself, it is far too easy to scroll to a myriad of websites and lose hours of time in the process. That is precious time wasted that you could have spent working on your artistic craft. While you should spend some time researching various topics online if you are a writer, it can become a problem if too much time is spent.

Conclusion

You have to realize that no real reward will arise from spending hours scrolling through various social media websites. You need to focus on your priorities. There are most likely various goals and activities that you personally want to achieve in life. You don’t have time to keep up with the activities of every actor or celebrity. You need to focus on yourself, first and foremost. Spend at least as much time creating your own content as you do consuming the content of others. If you are spending most of the day consuming the content of other people then you are generally not going to be the best content creator you can be.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and have a great day.

©2020 Richard Gillespie

Categories
Business Ideas Motivation

Hard Work Is The Key To Success

A photo showing workers engaged in construction. In this article I will write about my belief that hard work is the key to success.

In this article, I will write about why hard work is the key to success in business and life. This may seem obvious, the harder you work, the more you will achieve. However, many people in life are often looking for a shortcut to success. While a few people may get lucky and win various sorts of lotteries in life, I believe that for the majority of people; hard work is the key to success. Let’s expand on this idea a bit more.

Hard Work Is The Key To Success

In previous articles I have written about how consistency is key when you are engaging in media production and business activities. You must put forth a consistent level of hard work in order to succeed in society today. Successful entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban have stated in interviews that he believes hard work is the key to success. Think about it for a moment. Whenever you engage in any kind of business activity you are rarely operating in a “vacuum” as Mark Cuban describes it. There are always competitive forces around you. You always need to outwork your competition in order to succeed.

People Respect Work Ethic

When you see someone working hard to achieve their goals, it can be inspiring. People tend to respect others who have worked hard to achieve what they did, rather than someone who simply got very lucky. Imagine a co-worker who wins a large lottery and quits their job. The co-workers who have to remain working at that job may resent the lottery winning co-worker and their newly found wealth. This is why I believe you should not always seek to get ahead in life by some kind of lucky or extremely risky tactic. Sometimes you may get lucky here and there in life and business, but you should not bet on it. Count on the fact that working hard will bring you success. That’s a guarantee you can be sure of.

Winners Work Hard

Billionaire founder of Tesla, Elon Musk, has stated similar sentiments in the past about the power of hard work. In interviews he has said that you can accomplish in 4 months what would take someone else a year if you work 100 hours per week. Watch the video clip below to hear Elon talk about the power of hard work when asked about how to succeed as an entrepreneur.

So don’t just take my word for it. Billionaires like Mark Cuban and Elon Musk are telling you the exact same thing. The key to success is hard work. The only other way you might get successful is by luck, and you don’t want to bank on luck. You want to do what you know works, and that’s hard work.

Conclusion

So if you’re an entrepreneur of any kind you need to realize this fact. Success will not magically materialize by itself. You need to put in the work. Focus, work hard, and success will happen. You just need to be consistent, vigilant, and never give up. I believe if we all work hard we can achieve. Thank you for reading this blog today and let’s all keep our heads down and get to work on achieving our dreams and goals for the future.

©2020 Richard Gillespie

Categories
Business Ideas Life

Don’t Work For Free

Work is work. Don't work for free.

In this blog post I will write about how you should not work for people for free. This article will mainly pertain to freelancers such as musicians, photographers, bloggers, and others. The essential idea is that you should not give away your talents and energies to other people without compensation. There are many businesses and individuals who will try to take advantage of you, if you let them. Don’t be a pawn in someone else’s game.

Don’t work for free

You may have found this article by googling “don’t work for free” or something along those lines. Maybe you have had similar experiences to the ones that I have had. Throughout my life, people have tried to take advantage of me in various ways. As a musician, certain promoters used to often try to get me to play for free in their clubs. Now, as I branch out into freelance writing, I have experienced a similar scenario. People wanting you to do work for them, but when it comes time to pay you, it becomes rather difficult to receive the funds. Let’s go over some reasons why you should not work for free.

Exploitation is wrong

The first reason why you should not work for free is simply because it is morally wrong. People should not feel entitled to use you to build their businesses without paying you. The philosopher Immanuel Kant believed that it is unethical for one human to use another human being as simply a “means to an end”. In other words, you shouldn’t ask people to do things for you without any kind of benefit to themselves whatsoever. This kind of exploitation is actually illegal so do not put up with it as a freelancer. Always stand up for yourself.

People will try to exploit you

People will attempt to exploit you as a freelancer. There are people out there who will try to get you to do work for them for free without paying you. Again, I will repeat; don’t work for free! There are all kinds of unscrupulous individuals out there just waiting to take advantage of you. Individuals who simply “forget” their wallet at home when it comes time to pay at a restaurant. People in business who just neglect to read the part of your email where you ask for payment. These are the kinds of people you should avoid in business and life. If someone other than a charitable organization is expecting you to work for them for free then this is a scam and this person does not respect you or your time.

Stand your ground

Don’t allow these kinds of exploitative and manipulative people get you to do any kind of work for them for free. If the person who is asking you to do work for them refuses to pay you then simply refuse to work for them ever again. I apologize if this blog post comes across in an irritated manner. Let me explain what recently happened to me.

Recently, I was contacted by an individual to write blog posts for their website. When I asked for payment this person simply ignored it and asked me to write another blog post for them. This kind of conduct is infuriating to me and I will probably never work with this person again.

Conclusion

Don’t work for free. Do not allow yourself to be exploited by people. Believe me they will try. If unethical individuals can get away with not paying you, they will. As a freelancer; always make sure you are getting paid. Don’t let exploiters take advantage of you. People will try to use you. Demand to be paid. Don’t let them take advantage of you.

©2020 Richard Gillespie

Categories
Ideas Life Motivation

Believing in Yourself: Building Confidence

You need to start believing in yourself as an artist or content creator. If you do not have the confidence to create, you will stop doing so. Creativity is not difficult, we have just been told that it is. Anyone can be an artist or content creator, you just need to be in the right frame of mind.

Believing in Yourself

We have been programmed to believe that only certain special people get the right to be creative. Some people think that in order to be an artist, you need to study at art school. I recently told someone that I might like to try my hand at creating visual art. This person told me “if only you could take a course in that…”

Why do some people make us feel that we are always inadequate in some way and that we need to pay or study with someone else in order to make us adequate?

I feel like this is part of the problem with modern society. People make a living off of teaching us that we are somehow inadequate and that we need others to educate us properly. Some college students go deeply into debt to study art under the assumption that they are not quite good enough. For example, it currently costs $75,000 per year to go to Harvard University. If a musician or artist was good enough, why would they need to pay a prestigious institution in order to be educated on what is “good” or “bad” art? I’m not saying these institutions are bad but they do have a vested interest in the idea that we are not yet complete without their help. This is why I think you need to start believing in yourself and your own instincts more.

Not Quite Good Enough

Forget those people who ever told you that you were not quite good enough. You do not need those kinds of people in your life. As a musician or artist, you are perfectly fine just as you are. Keep creating the music and art that you want to create. Quit trying to mold yourself into what other people would like you to be. You will never be perfect enough for these people. Create the kinds of music and art that you want to create. Period. Do not try to settle up to someone else’s version of perfection. You will be left unsatisfied in the end.

Be Confident in Who You Are

Creativity should not be difficult. If you are having to strain to create something then maybe you are not creating something you enjoy. Creativity should flow easily and naturally. If it was painful for you to create something then it may end up being somewhat painful for the person who has to experience your creation. In other words, if you had to struggle and strain to create something, chances are it won’t be enjoyed as much by the person who experiences it. Imagine a musician who actually doesn’t enjoy the music they are making. They may trick some people into enjoying their music but it will not be genuine and that musician will soon stop creating.

Creative Flow

The key to being creative is to having a good creative flow. You need to remove the critics in the back of your head while you create. There will always be those negative voices in your head as you create something. You might have thoughts like “this sounds bad” or “no one will like this music”. Try to ignore those thoughts and let your creativity flow naturally. Silence those critics in your head and just create. Imagine if every time you went to create music, you went back and looked at it in a negative light. You would soon stop creating. Stop criticizing your own music and art. Create it and put it out. Let the world decide if they like it or not.

Conclusion

Overall, you need to start believing in yourself more. In order to be creative, you need to silence those negative critics in your head which keep telling you that you can not do something. You are not inadequate. You’re already a great creator. Just create. You are not a creator if you do not create so stop letting those negative critics in your head prevent you from doing so. Start being creative now. The world needs your creativity. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Just be yourself and let your creativity flow.

©2020 Richard Gillespie

Categories
Business Twitch Uncategorized Video Games

Twitch Affiliate: How To Become One

A photo showing a microphone. Having good quality audio can potentially attract viewers and help you to reach Twitch Affiliate.

Are you a new streamer on Twitch or someone who is thinking about starting a Twitch channel? Are you looking for tips and advice on how to reach “affiliate” status on Twitch? I will do my best in this blog to offer the best tips I can on how you can reach Twitch Affiliate status. You can check out my Twitch channel here. I just recently became a Twitch Affiliate so I thought I would write this knowledge down while it is still fresh on my mind. I hope these tips can help you.

Twitch Affiliate

Let’s get into some tips and advice for reaching Twitch Affiliate status. First of all, what is the Twitch Affiliate program? Basically, this is how you begin to earn revenue from your Twitch channel. When you first start out on Twitch it is not possible to earn money directly from Twitch itself, outside of donations that people might send you through PayPal, for example. The Twitch affiliate program allows you to begin to have people subscribe to your channel. People can also cheer you on by sending you “bits”, a form of digital donation, during your streams. These are ways you earn monthly income from your Twitch channel. Let’s discuss how someone becomes a Twitch affiliate.

Becoming a Twitch Affiliate

So you have decided to take your Twitch streaming to the next level and go for affiliate status on Twitch. Sometimes this is referred to as “being on the affiliate grind”. Reaching Twitch affiliate may come easily to you or may require some consistent effort to obtain. I’ve seen some people who obtain the status of Twitch affiliate very quickly, while there are others like me who took months of solid grinding to reach the status. I will give you some tips and advice on how to potentially reach affiliate faster and hopefully start to earn some income sooner. This is imperative if you have bills, a family to support, student loans, or more.

Tips and Advice

First you should get clearly into your head that this is your goal. It can be hard to obtain a goal unless you clearly set that goal in your mind or write it down. There are 4 requirements that you must meet in order to become a Twitch affiliate. We will go over those requirements now and how to obtain them. This information is current as of October of 2020. Twitch affiliate requirements may change over time.

Requirements for Affiliate

Here are the four current requirements for reaching Twitch affiliate status. If these requirements change in the future, modify your tactics to adapt to the new paradigm. This is directly from the Twitch website which I will link to here.

(1) At least 500 total minutes broadcast in the last 30 days:

This is fairly straightforward. You just need to make sure you broadcast at least 8.4 hours in the last 30 days. This is totally in your control. Unless you have a crazily hectic and busy life. In that case you might need to rethink becoming a Twitch Affiliate streamer. The process does take some time. Think about how much you like to play video games and make sure this is a worthwhile activity for you before investing too much time into this.

(2) At least 7 unique broadcast days in the last 30 days:

Again this is a fairly straight forward requirement. If you can only manage one marathon streaming day a month but are unable to stream on other days then you cannot reach affiliate at this time. You need to make sure you are broadcasting at least 7 times in the last 30 days so try to focus on running at least 2 streams a week to stay consistent. Consistency is key. Make sure you are running frequent broadcasts to clear this particular part of the affiliate process.

The more challenging requirements

(3) At least 50 Followers:

This is again a very straightforward requirement. This one may or may not be difficult for you. Some people already have large followings on other social media platforms. They can simply promote themselves on these platforms and potentially reach 50 followers very quickly. Personally, I do not have large followings on other social media platforms so I actually had to stream longer and use Twitch as a platform itself to gain new followers.

Larger Twitch streamers on YouTube like Harris Heller and others have mentioned the importance of creating content on other social media platforms in order to gain followers. I agree that this is very important. You should be posting videos to TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter as well to attract attention to your channel.

(4) An average of 3 concurrent viewers or more over the last 30 days

This is the requirement that I have seen cause people the most difficulty in trying to obtain. The reason is that it often seems to be somewhat simple for people to obtain followers, and it is not terribly difficult to meet the time based streaming requirements in terms of the duration of how long you stream. The real challenge seems to be in maintaining an average viewer count of above 3. Let me provide you a simple solution to this problem. Stream on Twitch less! Let’s break down in the next section of this article why this can be an effective strategy to reach affiliate.

Less is more

Maintaining 3 average viewers over all of your broadcasts in the past 30 days can be difficult if you are streaming for many hours each day. When you are streaming for up to 8 hours a day as a new streamer, sometimes only 1 or 2 people will be tuning in. This is actually damaging for your chances of reaching affiliate quickly. If you stream for 80 hours a month, you will have to have an average of 3 viewers tuning in for all 80 of those hours in that month. This can be difficult for newer streamers. The solution is to stream less, build up hype for your broadcasts, and set a schedule. Let’s talk about these points a bit more in depth before we close out this article.

Schedule and Promote

Here’s my advice to you. Stream for a while without thinking about average viewers too much. However, keep an eye on the times when people are tuning in the most. Next, set up a strict schedule of broadcasts which sync up to the times when your followers are tuning in most often. Eventually your followers will begin to know that those are the times at which you stream and they will tend to tune in more frequently around those times. Promote your broadcast on other platforms as well such as Twitter. Finally, if you are having trouble reaching the average viewers needed for affiliate, call up a friend or family member and tell them to please tune in. Explain to them the situation and tell them that you’d really appreciate their help. They may actually end up enjoying your broadcast.

Conclusion

Reaching the Twitch Affiliate status is not something that came easily to me but I hope these tips can help you out. Try not to see it as too much of a grind. Have fun with it. Hopefully some of these tips can help you reach Twitch Affiliate soon. All the best, good luck, and if you read this article and want to say hello to me on Twitch, I currently stream Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 3 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Here’s the link to my Twitch channel once more.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this blog. Have a great day!

© 2020 Richard Gillespie

Categories
Blogging How To Writing

Freelance Writer: How to Get Started

A freelance writer works at a laptop.

In this blog post I will write about how to get started as a freelance writer. Are you someone who enjoys to write? Did you know you can potentially turn your passion into a paid career? Let me explain how this can work and some steps you can take to get started in the field of freelance writing.

Freelance Writer

First, let’s discuss some reasons why you may want to work as a freelance writer. One reason to start a business as a freelance writer is that you can literally work whenever and wherever you want in the world. Generally, when a client needs a piece of writing done, it is not essential that you live in the same city as them for the work to be accomplished. Freelance writing is also a good career path to think about if you do not like having to commute to work every day. If you can write articles from the comfort of your home there is no need to commute. Not having a daily commute saves you time and money, and lowers your carbon footprint as well. Finally, if you love writing, getting to work in a field you enjoy is a very rewarding experience.

Why Companies Need Writers

Companies of all shapes and sizes are in need of content creators to create blogs and articles for their websites. The reason for this is simple. When you go to a search engine and attempt to find a product or service, Google will give advantage to websites which have new and fresh content posted to them often. I have written in the past about SEO and why it is important to be consistent with your blog content. The reason for this is straightforward. In order to drive traffic to websites, companies need to create “traction”. They need to create a lot of content so that search engines will give them preference over other websites.

Imagine you have two competing websites. Both have existed on the internet for one year. The first website gets updated once a month. In total it has 12 blog posts. The next website gets updated once a week and consequently has 52 blog posts by the end of the year. Which website do you think Google will rank higher when it decides which website to recommend to users? Remember, Google wants to deliver users to high quality websites with rich amounts of content. If your website is rarely updated, it does not send a good impression to search engines, readers, or customers.

How To Get Started

So, how do you actually get started as a freelance writer? I’ll give you some tips. First, you should start up your own blog and start creating some content as soon as possible. People are unlikely to hire you for freelance writing work unless you can display your abilities first. Try to get a website domain that is your name, like the one I am using here at www.RichardGillespie.ca. Next, it is time to start creating content for your blog. The more quality content you create, the more search engines will direct content to your blogs. It’s that simple. Be consistent and write about your passions. If you love video games, blog about gaming every day. It is possible that a company may contact you one day to review their video game. You never know what can happen.

Additional Tips

If you need to improve your writing abilities, try taking writing courses at your local college. I honed my writing ability while completing an undergraduate philosophy degree at a local university. Students were expected to have impeccable argumentative and writing ability in order to earn successful grades. I found that this strong emphasis on constant writing definitely honed my ability but completing an entire writing focused degree may not be necessary for you to start as a freelance writer. Simply taking some basic college courses or studying YouTube tutorials on writing can help. The most important piece of advice I can offer is to simply get started. Do not delay. Start creating today.

Begin creating content for your website now so you can draw visitors to your site who may require your freelance writing skills.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article and I hope you enjoyed these tips. Do not overthink your content. Just go for it!

Have a great day.

©2020 Richard Gillespie