Rachel “Valkyrae” Hofstetter is one of the biggest streamers in gaming. The 30-year-old was recently asked if she has tips on how to become a professional streamer. Her first advice: “Don’t quit your job, first get a real job”. Then you need to be clever, pay attention to the numbers, and build your “own brand”.
This is Valkyrae:
- The 30-year-old Rachel Hofstetter began her streaming career in 2015 on Twitch. Even in 2016 and 2017, she was a small streamer with about 300 viewers, primarily showcasing LoL.
- She made her breakthrough in 2018 with Fortnite, where she had an average of 1,900 viewers watching her build and score headshots. In early 2020, YouTube recruited the American and she flourished there during the Corona pandemic, becoming the biggest gaming streamer in the world with “Among Us”.
- But even today, Valkyrae faces setbacks, like with a miracle cream that is supposed to protect against blue monitor light. But she has wise advice for those who want to follow in her footsteps.
“Don’t stream with 0 viewers – hardly anyone scrolls to the bottom of Twitch”
Here are her tips for young streamers: Valkyrae says:
I’ll tell you straight: Don’t quit your job. First get a real job! If you want to stream so that it’s your job and you want to make money with it [Valkyrae laughs] – you can’t start streaming with that expectation. It won’t work. You have to do this for many years.
Valkyrae
Valkyrae advises to see streaming as a hobby while also approaching it wisely. There is simply no point in streaming with 0 viewers and 0 followers. Hardly any viewer would scroll down the list on Twitch so far to find someone without an audience.
4 tips for people who want to stream successfully
How to grow as a streamer: Valkyrae says streamers should:
- Expand their brand, create profiles on Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, and YouTube and actively engage with them
- Create content that interests others – preferably content that the streamer is passionate about
- Enter into many partnerships and collaborate with other streamers
- Try new content – if one thing doesn’t work and another thing works well, it’s probably best to intensify the thing that’s going well and benefit from it
Valkyrae is extremely successful with the same advice
What’s behind it: Valkyrae knows what she’s talking about. She is a streamer who wasn’t part of the Twitch hype from the very beginning like shroud, for whom streaming is incredibly easy. Valkyrae entered later, had to compete against established competition and work her way up.
She benefited from exactly the tips she now gives. She rode two hype waves, first with Fortnite, later with Among Us. Whether those were her “favorite games” or not doesn’t matter.
Valkyrae has particularly benefited from networking well with other streamers and then leveraging the interactions of those connections. She is personally friends with streamers like Pokimane, but also has contacts with streamers like Disguised Toast, Corpse Husband, or Sykkuno.
Especially Fortnite and Among Us were and are games that are ideal for such “synergy effects” because they offer modes for 4 or 8 players who can interact and fully express their streaming personalities. Valkyrae was in streamer cliques that ensured that viewers practically shared and grew strongly together.
The advice to first get a job is also sensible, as it keeps the financial pressure at bay. Streamers who desperately need money and almost beg their few viewers to donate rarely go over well:
Twitch streamer shamelessly demands subscriptions: “Being broke is not an excuse”
