My thoughts on the affiliate program

I've been growing increasingly frustrated with Twitch recently. My concerns mostly revolve around affiliation and partnership. I feel Twitch isn't being honest with its streamers and viewers about its motivations, and that really bothers me. Given how strongly I feel about this, I wanted to write up a detailed explanation of my concerns and steps I think Twitch could take to remedy them.

First, it's important to understand the details of the system as it currently stands. There are essentially three "tiers" of streamers in terms of an official agreement with Twitch.

1) Normal streamers. Anyone with a solid internet connection can do this. Normal streamers can receive donations though PayPal (or another service), but not through bits. They also don't have a $5 subscription button (glossing over for a moment the new $10 and $25 sub tiers for partners). Finally, normal streamers only have quality options (i.e. transcodes) as available (transcodes allow viewers with worse internet the ability to watch at a lower quality).

2) Affiliates (the new program). Affiliates must meet minimum streaming requirements, listed at https://goo.gl/oiBTZM. Once accepted, affiliates can accept donations through bits. In the future, Twitch has plans to give affiliates a sub button with 1 emote. Affiliates also get transcodes as available, but with priority over normal streamers. There are also future plans to open up ad revenue and revenue through game sales.

3) Partners. Partners have a $5 sub button and, if opted into, $10 and $25 subscription options (this was added very recently). Partners can receive revenue through ads and game sales and are given full access to transcodes. As opposed to affiliates, partners can unlock up to 50 emotes, unlocked through sub threshholds (listed at https://goo.gl/apnGYO). With recent updates, partners can enable a verified partner badge (badges are described at https://goo.gl/CBCMsv). Finally, partners have the ability to form streaming teams. See https://www.twitch.tv/p/partners for a general description of partner benefits.

This doesn't cover every detail, but those are the major bullet points.

Next, see https://goo.gl/vxoYtq for Twitch's official announcement of the affiliate program. In Twitch's own words, the affiliate program "allows eligible streamers to start earning income on Twitch", and "provides a stepping stone to bridge the gap between emerging streamer and Twitch Partner". Given that, three questions come to mind that I'd like to address.

1) How does the affiliate program help smaller streamers earn additional money?
2) What differentiates an affiliate from a partner?
3) How does being an affiliate bring you closer to partner?

I'll address those questions in order. As mentioned above, normal streamers (i.e. non-affiliates and non-partners) can already earn money on Twitch through donations (usually using PayPal). Given that, what additional sources of income does Twitch provide its affiliates?

1) Bits.
2) A subscription button (I'm assuming $5 a month, but that's not confirmed).
2) Ad revenue.
3) Game sales.

I'll tackle bits first. I could go into detail on why I believe bits aren't great in their current form (it's because Twitch's service charge is too high), but that's not actually relevant here. From the perspective of an affiliate, having access to bits only earns them extra money if more people would donate using bits who previously WOULDN'T have donated through PayPal. I don't have statistics to back me up, but I can't imagine donation revenue will substantially increase for most affiliates for that reason.

Next up, a sub button. Having a $5 sub button (assuming it's $5) is great, and in my opinion the single best thing about being an affiliate. That said, it seems likely that most affiliates won't earn much additional income this way either since, given Twitch's 50% cut, you're looking at $2.50 a month per subscriber. Additional income, yes, but you'd need a very large number of subs for that revenue to add up. If you, as an affiliate, could earn that many subscribers, you'd probably be a partner anyway. There's also a side concern about spending $5 for a single emote when, for partners, you could spend that same money on many emotes.

Third, ad revenue. I can't speak much to this point because I don't know Twitch's payment per ad. Pretty sure that information is hidden behind non-disclosure agreements for partners. That said, I believe similar logic applies to ad revenue as having a sub button. Ad revenue comes from views, and if you consistently had enough viewers to earn substantial money from ads, you'd probably be partnered.

Last is game sales. This part I know even less about than ad revenue, but again, I would expect similar logic to apply.

So that covers the first question about affiliates earning additional income, one of the major selling points of the entire program. I want to state firmly that I don't believe that the affiliate program is in any way hurtful to streamers, but on the money front, I don't think it will change much in practice.

Next up is the question "What differentiates an affiliate from a partner?", which directly leads into the followup question, "How does being an affiliate bring you closer to partnership?".

The primary difference between an affiliate and a partner is views. That's it. Having consistently high concurrent viewership (ideally in the 100+ range) will likely earn you partnership. Further, you don't need to maintain high viewership, although many partners do. All you need is to have consistently high viewership for as little as a few weeks, and once you're partnered, Twitch will never take that away. There are exceptions, but as a general rule, high views will get you partnered.

Given that, the real question becomes, "How will being an affiliate increase your views?" My view is that it won't. To my knowledge, Twitch has taken no steps to promote affiliates in any way. Possible examples include search filtering or affiliate spotlights on the front page. Affiliates don't even get a chat badge. So, unless you get very lucky, your viewership as an affiliate (as opposed to a normal streamer) will not increase due to your affiliation, which means that it does NOT bring you closer to partner.

I want to be very clear on a few things before I finish this. I do NOT think that the affiliate program is a bad thing. I am NOT faulting Twitch for partnering streamers based on views. Where I take issue is Twitch explicitly claiming that their goals are to increase affiliate revenue and pave a path to partnership, when I believe that the program doesn't achieve either goal. I also feel that there are relatively simple features Twitch could implement (like affiliate badges and spotlights) to help their stated goals, but they haven't added those features nor communicated any intention to do so (to my knowledge).

One specific feature I'd like to see is the abililty for affiliates to form Twitch teams. Based on my knowledge, I don't see a downside for Twitch to add that feature, but it would benefit the streamers.

Final paragraph. I think that the affiliate program is overall beneficial to smaller streams, but to have enough chat/view/donation activity to make a substantial difference, those affiliates would likely be accepted into the partner program anyway. I would advocate that Twitch be more transparent with their true partnership requirements or take additional steps to help affiliates grow, as Twitch claims they'd like to.