Twitch streamer Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa is now the biggest streamer on Twitch. But that wasn’t always the case. As a small streamer, she lived mainly from “whales” – men who donated in competition to outbid each other. Speaking to xQc, she explains what changed for her when she hit 5,000 viewers.
In what context does Amouranth speak? Amouranth has been on Twitch since 2016 and has had a slow but steady career:
Visiting xQc, Amouranth talks about her growth and how women and men compare on Twitch. xQc, who listens to her with interest and shares his own experiences, is the largest male streamer on the platform.
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Small streamers benefit most from donations from rich men
This is what Amouranth says about her life as a little streamer: Amouranth says: Until she broke a certain viewer limit, she would have 3 to 5 men in her chat, each giving her around $90,000 a year (€83,000). Such people who spend extremely large amounts of money are called “whales”, a term that has crept from the animal world into the world of gambling and casinos.
The men would donate as much to get the streamer’s attention. They would even compete with each other and outbid each other with donations. Amouranth speaks of “donation wars”:
I’ve had 3 to 5 guys who donate over $90,000 annually. So everyone. But if you get over 5,000 viewers, you might end up with $90,000 in total from all of them. As you get bigger, the whales won’t give you as much because there are so many people chatting – but you’ll make more money from ads, subs, and by directing people to other sites. So it’s a question of whether you’re doing a scaling model or small but with large donations.
How does xQc react? The idea that whales donate to each other competes to see who gets the most money. He hadn’t thought of anything like that at all.
As a male streamer, he’s experienced a very different growth on Twitch: The Canadian began his career as a Twitch streamer after being kicked out of the Overwatch League for lack of impulse control. But his outbursts of anger, which cost him his esports career, propelled him to stardom on Twitch.
xQc had its breakthrough in December 2019, when the previous top dogs switched from Twitch to Mixer for a lot of money.
What are the disadvantages of a small streamer? Amouranth says that with a small streamer, “parasocial relationships” often arise, which pose problems: the men would expect to get something in return for large monetary donations, such as private video chats or messages.
Especially with small channels, the risk of having a stalker among the viewers is extremely high. Even with 10 spectators you could expect to have a stalker with you.
Big streamers get more money from companies
What changes with a big streamer? Amouranth says that when you get about 2,000 viewers, the game changes completely. The men who donated so much money would stay away now because they no longer expected so much attention from a streamer. The chat is just too crowded for the streamer to focus on individual viewers.
In addition, the men would calculate that such a large streamer would not be financially dependent on grants.
Oddly enough, the stalkers would also be fewer with such a large streamer.
From this size, the business model changes: You can no longer count on such high donations, but advertising income is higher. Now you earn “money from the industry”, i.e. from Amazon, via subs, advertising or OnlyFans.
Amouranth’s business model is to post free, lewd images and videos via Twitter, Twitch, and Instagram, and to offer more explicit content on Onlyfans – but then for taking money.
Twitch streamer explains how much money she’s making from a nude platform and why she’s giving it all up
Women grow “small” very quickly on Twitch – But encounter difficulties
What does the streamer say about growth on Twitch? The streamer says that as a woman, it’s relatively easy to reach a certain level with good looks, an attractive face, breasts or butt, but beyond that it’s hard.
Females can grow very quickly at low levels.
xQc adds: With small streamers, the men would not have so much competition and would get a lot of attention from the streamer. But this growth quickly reaches its limits and is “capped”.
Amouranth continues: On the other hand, if you start out as a man on Twitch and get over 100 viewers without any contacts or any relationships, for you “The sky is the limit” because you can be sure of being watched because it is really entertaining.
“It’s hard for girls to build a large audience on Twitch because you stream to guys and every guy has different preferences. It’s also a weird vibe. Men feel like they can’t watch a woman without expecting something from her, fantasizing about her, and feeling guilty about watching a woman they’ll never have sex with. So it’s harder to grow as a woman.”
Amouranth says, “As a small streamer, there’s pressure to keep the viewers you have and make them happy without making them feel like they’re part of the streamer’s real life, because that creates problems.
As a big streamer, you can sometimes tell people to fuck off.
Streamer conquers Twitch since she appeared in a bikini – Amouranth says: It annoys her how companies use attractive women
When Amouranth says “girls on Twitch,” she really means only herself
How is that classified? When Amouranth speaks of “women”, she doesn’t really mean all women, she means herself.
In many ways, Amouranth is an exceptional appearance on Twitch because she is not just a “shameless e-girl”, as she describes herself, but works in an extremely disciplined and goal-oriented manner, demonstrating great business acumen.
As a result, their earnings are in regions that most streamers, no matter how they perform, can only dream of.
The idea that anyone can simply repeat Amouranth’s model is illusory. Female streamers who followed similar paths to Amouranth have now been banned and disappeared from Twitch.
The success of “I speak in a way that Twitch has to slow down to understand me”-xQc is also difficult to explain.
However, both are at the forefront of Twitch and different rules apply to them. There is certainly no formula with which one could simply follow one of the two.
When Amouranth once told how high their earnings on Onlyfans are, other users of this platform reported and said that although they were among the top of Onlyfans, they were far from reaching Amouranth’s miraculous numbers:
Twitch streamer publishes exact numbers of how much money she made with OnlyFans – Others warn about it