Whether starting a streaming business from scratch or turning your hobby into a profession, there’s a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding when it comes to judging how well a streaming business is doing. Having a clearer picture of what is expected can help relieve any anxiety and show your real progress. Goal setting will empower you to make better-informed decisions.

What goals should I set for my new game streaming business? Your first goals should be focusing on getting a good quality regular content on the platform. While engaging with the community through the comments. This type of interaction will build trust and will massively impact the retention for the channel.

Read on for a look at the things that really matter when starting a gaming streaming business. There are different ways that you can track your progress.

Setting goals and tracking data will enable you to concentrate on important success factors while growing your site. Managing your expectations and knowing where you are, on your path to success. This will allow you to have a more enjoyable journey on the road to making your venture a financial success.

What type of goals could you set

Setting the right type of goals helps you put your energy where it can be most effective. A goal can help you focus at the task at hand. But, what type of goals can you set? Here are just a few:

1: Income

2: Views

3: Subscribers

4: How many videos you upload

5: Personal based goals

Remember these goals aren’t just a measure of your success, they are tools in helping you achieve your dream. The first types you could set are, income, viewers and subscribers. These numbers are hard cold truths then shine a light on the current health of your business. Personal goals can be a lot more subjective and in some ways harder for you to measure. Especially those that aren’t very good at time management.

Try and break down your goals into three different types, bitesize goals, small goal, and milestones. Think of as milestone as your major target, and the bitesize and small goals are steps you’re going to a take in order to achieve your milestones.

Your milestone goal might be to get 10,000 subscribers. Your small goal might be to work out how to best get a subscriber. How long should you spend on asking in each video and where in the video should it be. The bitesize goal is to try different things in the videos and see which has the best response.

Remember just hoping for more subscribers is not a goal, its a target. A goal is something you have direct influence over, something that you can change to improve the outcome.

Small goals will have the biggest impact on your progress because they are tasks, not targets.

Don’t set unrealistic goals

Don’t set unrealistic goals because you think they sound good. Don’t set goals on the basis of hearsay, your goals should be carefully considered and researched. Only set goals that you can achieve, make all goals active not passive.

Make all goals active not passive.

Take pleasure in the small victories, not just in the big milestone goals. You need to enjoy your bitesize goals as much as the big successes. Firstly you will achieve more smaller goals. Second it will stop you focusing on the things you think you’re doing wrong.

Just because PewDiePie is making millions of dollars a year doesn’t mean you will, or that you should. Don’t compare yourself to others because you will always find somebody more successful than yourself. That doesn’t mean you should give up. In fact it gives you somebody to learn from, which can be a huge advantage in and of itself.

Don’t compare yourself to others. You are on your own journey.

Track your Progress / goals

Setting goals in the form of different size goals will help you track your progress. The key to this is writing it down. Don’t just set up abstract goal inside your head. You need physical records of your goals and targets. Try using Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers or even Google Sheets. Don’t just rely on the information from Youtube or Twitch. Take control of your data, make it work for you.

Understanding your goals and your progress will allow you to look at the big picture. You will have videos that do extremely well and videos that will do poorly. Sometimes you won’t be able to work out why. That’s why you need to concentrate on growing the whole of your channel not just on one single video. Streaming content can have an inconsistent audience. Viewers may just tune in for the a single game. Don’t take it too personally, if viewing figures from one video don’t translate to higher views for your other videos/streams.

Don’t be a slave to the numbers by complaining if a video doesn’t hit the goals you have set. Try and work out why, was it a one off or is a pattern emerging. If a pattern is emerging set some goals to work out why.

Future proofing

Keeping track of a lot of this data is going to be crucial in your success as a business in the future. Treat your business from day one as if it’s going to grow into a large corporation with employees. Make documentation that keeps track early on, it’s going to pay you back tenfold in the future. It will allow you to understand how to best systemize your approach to your game streaming business. This will show you future costs. After all if you don’t know how long it takes to make a video. How can you work out how much you should pay an employe or freelancer in the future.

Income

Setting a income goal is quicky and easy. Achieving an income goal is extremely empowering. That’s because when we start a project we focus on the long-term benefits. Not necessarily the road map on how we’re going to get there.

For many people it is not the right type of goal to set. It can all too often lead to daydreaming about how you are going to spend your fictional money. Thats because it is not an actionable goal in and of itself. It is a long term milestone or your endgame. It might be the figure that allows you to leave your part time job or buy that new car you have always wanted. Whatever the number, don’t focus on it because it can be demoralising if you don’t reach your goal or expectations.

At the start of any project is when you’re at your most enthusiastic. Full of energy and ready to tackle the many challenges. In today’s world we expect automattic success. It is just the culture of the world we live in today. After a burst of work, we expect to be rewarded. That is why people set unrealistic goals. Comparing themselves to people further along their journey. Don’t fall at this hurdle by setting unrealistic goals.

For many, money is the ultimate indicator of success. But it’s important to remember there are different paths to success.

Different types

If you’re determined to set income goals, be modest and realistic. Try and find information about where you should be on your journey. Don’t compare yourself to channels that have been running for years with millions of subscribers.

There is a saying in the UK, “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.” In this case it means if you focus on small short income goals they will eventually add up to a large income.

There are three main ways you are going to get that income, asking for donations, subscriptions and advertising revenue. Remember you can do this on multiple platforms.

Subscribers on Twitch
Twitch Donations
Patreon Donations
Patreon Sign-ups
Advertising revenue

Yes, there are more ways like sponsorship and gaming tournaments etc. Early on while you are just starting out these might not be an option, unless you are well connected or super lucky.

Asking for donations, especially at the beginning of a channel creation can often feel like your pleading for money. Remember you are adding value to them with your great content. If you are not adding value, then ask yourself why would someone pay to support your content.

Remember you will be on a lower rate as a starter. Only when you have a large audience can you earn more money from advertising so don’t compare how much you’re making it how much PewDiePie’s making.

So technically you can advertising on your website early on. It will offer zero to little income in the short term. Only when you have built up your audience can you really take advantage of advert revenue.

It might even be a good idea not to include any adverts while you’re starting to build up your community. On YouTube adverts are a barrier to your viewers watching your content. Even if you are allowed your viewers to skip the advert after 6 seconds, that’s still six seconds they have a decision to make about whether they want to click off your video. Consider only including adverts once you reach a certain size in viewership.

What goals can you focus on early on

Early on you should only focus on goals you have direct influence over. They are going to be personal to you. They are going to be more focused on you as an individual. Allowing you to get into a routine, not on achieving views or income.

Nearly all of your early goals will be personal goals, such as:

The amount of videos to upload a week.
How long you interact with the comments a day.
Dedicating time to learn new things that will help you make better videos.
Making sure you stay motivated.
Set a goal for streaming.

Aim for Consistency

The goal should be to aim for consistency, don’t put to much pressure on yourself to fly out of the gates. Don’t set a pace that you know you will not be able to maintain. When ever we make estimates, people naturally tend to underestimate how long things take. So when you set yourself time to complete tasks try and air on the side of caution.

The goal is to be consistent.

When you achieve consistency you have a few options. You could then try and bring up the average level of all of your content. The second option would be to focus on speed in which you output your content.

Try and build yourself a buffer of content just incase you get ill or life gets in the way. Viewers may be understanding if you communicate with them. But, they’ll still leave get their fix from somewhere else. If possible try and plan for this.

Growth

You should be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses. Try and set goal around improving your weaknesses. You might not be very good at editing your videos. If so set time to begin to address the issue. Think about ways you could learn to edit better. The internet is a powerful information-full tool where you can learn almost anything. Never have we been empowered with such a resource.

To set up any business is to put yourself on a journey of self learning. You can learn from articles, videos and even custom courses at websites such as Udemy. You should set goals to help you and your channel grow.

Learning new skills should be a goal. Just because the skills don’t translate immediately into income or views. They will increase the production value or the speed at which you can make videos. They will have a long-term impact on your business and on your personal growth as a content creator.

Conclusion

Your first goals for your new game streaming business should be focusing on getting a good quality regular content on the platform. The goal is to be consistent.

Use different size goals, bitesize goals, small goal, and milestones.With milestone being the target and the bitesize and small goals, steps on the way to achieving your milestone. Make your goals active not passive. They have to be things you can do, not just hopes and dreams.

Don’t focus on income, views, subscriber goals. These will come in time and will only distract you from the real work. Instead concentrate on the amount of uploads or streams. Make personal based goals, like how much time you are going to spend on making videos this week.

Don’t compare yourself to others, you are on your own journey. Everybody had to start at the beginning. Now you know what type of goals you should make. Go and set yourself a goal for today. No matter how small, each task you complete will take you one step closer to your dream.

Setting Goals for a Game Streaming Business (Easy to follow System)