Ask Lemmygrad

The general consensus I have heard from both hobbyist stremers and career streamers is basically what ComradeSalad said, don't go into it with the expressed goal of making it your career. Growing a channel from nothing is extremely hard because the bigger you are the more you get platformed and the easier it is for even more people to find you. When you have 1 or 2 viewers (if that), it is really hard to grow your channel because you won't be promoted nearly enough. It requires a LOT of dedication and long hours, and still then requires a lot of luck too. There's a lot of people out there that want to do it. Think of the last time you opened a stream and went straight down to the bottom of the list to watch people with 0-1 viewers.

If you get popular enough that you can make it a job AND want to do so, great. Don't expect that you will, and please don't go and buy a bunch of expensive equipment for streaming before you need it. It is unlikely you will really make any money at all, and even less that you can make enough to do it full-time.

Now that said, if you just like doing it? Go for it.

If you want to make content-creation your job, don't start with just streaming. Getting known for something else in a particular niche and then migrating your audience over is a way more likely thing.

It’s a hobby first and foremost. Go into it for fun, and have absolutely zero expectation that you will make a dollar. If you get lucky enough to gain any sort of following and begin earning enough to support yourself, then you can consider becoming a full time streamer.

Please don’t forget that the people who qualify to be in that category are less then 1 in a million. It is pure luck, and even if you earn something, it will be meager and extremely limited at best.

It is a fun hobby. Do not go into it thinking you’ll make it big and start raking in big bucks. Getting over 10 concurrent viewers is an insanely difficult task, and you will not make enough to support yourself till you breach several thousand. Which is a horridly minuscule, and tiny percentage of streamers.

If you want to be a streamer and maximize your potential for making that your full time job. Attempt to gain a following on YouTube first, then transfer some fans over to help you kickstart your live steaming.

If you ever do that - please invite us all to watch, I'll be happy to pay a visit. But do keep in mind that your chances of it becoming your job are slimmer than a butterfly's wing.

Absolutely not. If you like streaming - by all means, do it, it's fun, and it even might eventually take off. But it is an industry where 99% of people don't make any money after years and years put into it. Definitely do not start with the expectation to make a living. Any other form of content creation has better odds of working out. And it's almost always better to move into streaming after amassing some audience that way.

depends whether you like livestreaming. ignoring the poor likelihood of getting to the point where you can do it as a job, it's essentially like being a comedian or a talk show host or whatever except you can just up and do your job whenever and wherever you feel like no exceptions. you don't have to have a specific schedule and you don't have to convince anyone that you're worth hosting. you just boot up the stream and some weirdos show up and throw money at you to acknowledge their existence.

now, if we stop ignoring the likelihood of getting to the point where you can do it as a job... it's very very unlikely. if you're not already at least "internet famous" and you decide you want to be a streamer for a living, you essentially have to go out there and manufacture internet fame / some kind of viral effect