Twitch is an awesome platform that allows you to make money while playing your favorite games. What more can you ask for? That’s every gamer’s dream, and the Twitch Dashboard can help you achieve those dreams! No need to get a job at a gaming company as a game developer, simply sign up for Twitch and earn away. You can also help build viewers and add to your Twitch experience by subscribing to Twitch Twitter.
But how do you navigate and get used to the Twitch dashboard? Well, in this post, you will learn:
- What information you can find on your Twitch dashboard
- Important features to look for
- Key actions that will make your livestream ten times better
Let’s dive in!
What Can I Find On My Twitch Dashboard?
As a streamer, your Twitch dashboard is the screen you’ll be staring at 90% of the time. It contains everything you’ll need to prepare livestreams, manage your livestream, and all the important analytics like subscriber count, followers, and viewers.
Your Stream Manager
Your Twitch stream manager is where all the magic happens. It is the central hub for all your streaming activities, and it’s also where partners and affiliates land. You have lots of options here and can do things like edit the layout, manage your activity feed, and much more.
The tools in the Stream Manager will help when creating content, building a community, and tracking your Twitch statistics. You can also check your recent activities, preview your Twitch stream, and use quick actions while you’re streaming to make your life a lot easier. It is definitely the place to start when you access your Twitch dashboard.
Insights
Channel Analytics
Twitch Insights will allow you to monitor everything about your live stream. You can check the average amount of viewers per stream, new followers, average watch time, and even the average amount of chatbox messages.
Keeping an eye on your analytics will allow you to test different streams and see how each performs. For example, if you want to up the engagement among your following, keep an eye out for the number of chatbox messages you receive and work to increase your average.
Another problem most Twitch streamers face is watch time. One of the easiest ways to increase your watch time is to take different streaming approaches and test them against each other to see which works best. You can facilitate that through your Twitch dashboard.
Analytics is your best friend.
Stream Summary
Stream Summary provides a summary of your past streams and includes stats, clips, achievements, and more. It’s the place to go if you want summarized information about your past streams.
Achievements
This section provides a summary of your achievements in Twitch. Achievements are designed to help you set goals and stay motivated, especially if you’re on the money making path. Achievements also let your affiliates or partners know how well you’re doing!
This section also contains categories to help clarify the next step to complete an achievement. The categories can change as you earn achievements. Following are some of the categories:
- Build a Community
- Path to Affiliate
- Path to Partner
There’s an “In Progress” section to display the achievements you’re currently working on and how to complete them. The Achievements section is a great feature on the Twitch dashboard.
Community
Roles Manager
While you are streaming and as your community grows, you will need assistance. Assigning roles allows you to task individuals with certain tasks during the stream. As you add people to your community and grow your following, you will inevitably need to assign roles on the Twitch dashboard.
- Editor: Editors can create highlights while you’re streaming, which is great for your viewers. If you are partnered, an Editor can run commercials. An Editor can also host channels after the stream and change the title and move your channel to a different game. An Editor does not, however, have access to your personal information.
- Moderator: The role of a Moderator is to essentially monitor the chat while the stream is happening. This is good to have as it facilitates interaction. It’s great to have someone to greet newcomers, keep the discussion going (and keep it positive). It’s important to keep your viewers engaged and ensure they come back to your next stream! Keep the end viewer the focus.
- VIP: The VIP role provides the streamer an opportunity to reward loyalty among its community members. The VIP badge can only be assigned by the streamer and cannot be bought or earned. The number of slots a streamer can assign is based on earning certain achievements. Among other privileges, VIP streamers can chat without all the usual restrictions and post links regardless of whether links are disabled.
Activity
This is a log of all your activity including games streamed and titles. In this section you can also monitor new followers as well as subscriptions.
Followers List
This is a list of all Twitch viewers following you. It’s great to have this list as you may want to follow some of your followers.
Content
Video Producer
If you are participating in the Twitch Affiliate program or Twitch Partner program, you can upload videos and edit them in Video Producer. Video Producer allows creators to promote videos to their audiences. Whether pre-recorded videos or videos created through streams, you’ll find all the tools necessary to edit, launch and promote the videos. If you progress to the point in which you’re participating in Twitch Rivals, you’ll definitely want to leverage the Video Producer.
Collections
Twitch Collections allow you to create playlists (list of video or audio files) of your streams and put your best work in one spot. This will facilitate viewers finding relevant content quickly. Collections most recently updated will be viewable at the top of your channel’s video page on your Twitch dashboard.
Clips
Clips allow streamers to showcase unforgettable or most-cherished moments from your Twitch videos and streams.
Settings
Stream
Stream Key and Preferences
- Disconnect Protection – Enable backup in case your stream is disconnected
- Store Past Broadcasts – Automatically store your broadcasts up to 14 days (more for partners, turbo, and prime users)
- Mature Content – Flag to indicate that content is not suitable for younger audiences. Make sure you understand the Twitch Terms of Service regarding content.
- Enable Clips – Indicate whether clips can be created from your content.
- Followers Only – Limits who can create clips of your content. Allows you to require viewer to follow you in order to create clips.
- Subscribers Only – Toggle to limit ability to create clips to subscribers only.
- Latency Mode – Set to either normal or low based on whether you interact with your subscribers real-time.
Permissions
- Allows you to view what channels you are able to Edit (i.e., have an Editor role)
- Allows you to invite viewers to stream on your channel
Raids
Raids allow streamers to help other streamers by directing them to another channel at the end of the stream. This reciprocity can help both streamers and allows you to change it up for your viewers.
Remember, it’s all about the viewers!
This section allows you to establish setting for raids. You can also block all raids.
Drops
If you have drops established for your stream, you can view them here on your Twitch dashboard
Channel
This section allows you to edit profile and social link settings.
Moderation
This section allows you to establish and edit the way you chat and engage with your audience. It is a crucial piece of the Twitch experience and critical for you to help build your audience as a streamer. You’ll be happy to have this functionality consolidated on the Twitch dashboard.
Viewer Rewards
Drops
Drops allow viewers to earn loot during a game. This section allows you to enable drops.
Streaming Tools
This section provides links to broadcasting tools to facilitate your streams.
Twitch Dashboard Tips
Hide Your Viewer, Follower, And Subscriber Count
Sometimes you don’t want others to see how many subscribers, viewers, and followers you have. Twitch knows this and that’s why they added an option to hide the number of subscribers, viewers, and followers currently watching.
To do this, simply head over to your Twitch dashboard and click on the number you’d like to hide. And voila! Nobody except you can see your channel statistics.
Your Preferences (Settings)
Twitch preferences refer to your settings and options. In a prior version of the Twitch dashboard, settings were labeled preferences. Your preferences are completely customizable and allow you to have a better user experience.
Maybe there’s a button that you rarely use, but it’s in the way. Simply head over to settings and remove it. Or maybe you want to add something that you always use but the Twitch dashboard doesn’t have. Don’t worry, you can add it by going to settings.
Your Extensions
Twitch extensions is software created by third-party developers that complements your Twitch experience. There are hundreds of good extensions to choose from, but here are 5 that every Twitch streamer must-have.
- Streamlabs is an engagement tool for your watchers that gives them loyalty points, mini-games, and they get to ask you to play their favorite games or songs. This is helpful since it attracts people to your channel by adding more value.
- Master Overwatch is an extension created for the game Overwatch. And who doesn’t love it? This extension displays all the necessary stats while playing Overwatch.
- Amazon Blacksmith is a cool extension because if your viewers like the gear you’re using in a particular game, the extension tells them what it is while acting as an affiliate link. This helps the gamer make money and the viewer easily finds whatever they’re looking for.
- Exclusive Content for Subscribers is a cool extension that does exactly what the name suggests. You can create content that only a limited number of viewers can watch and this creates exclusivity and intrigue amongst your followers.
- Snap Camera is an extension that brings the awesomeness of Snapchat to Twitch. You can choose from countless Snapchat lenses and your viewers can unlock whatever lens you’re wearing.
Now that we know which extensions you must get as a streamer, let’s find out what to look for on the Twitch dashboard.
What To Look Out For On The Twitch Dashboard
There are tons of cool quirks and features that your Twitch dashboard has to offer. But some are just so awesome, that it’ll be a sin not to include it in this post. These quirks and features include;
- Your Twitch stream information tab
- Your Chatbox
- And my personal favorite, raid and host a channel.
Stream Information
For content creators on Twitch, this is the most important part of your Twitch dashboard. Your stream information tab will contain everything your viewers see when they watch your Twitch livestream and it determines how viewers and subscribers will find your livestream.
Before you do anything else, you’ll need to give your livestream a name. Choosing a title seems like a challenge for most content creators, but it’s quite simple. Jot down what your stream is about, how your viewers will benefit from it, and put some eye-catching information at the beginning. You can now use this to form a title.
Next, customize the notifications that go out to your subscribers. When someone subscribes to you, they’ll receive a notification every time you go live. And for obvious reasons, you don’t want to send out the same notification over and over again. So come up with something catchy and clever.
Lastly, add information that your viewers need when deciding to watch your stream or not. Which game are you playing? If you’re not playing a game, are you painting, cooking, or interviewing somebody? This allows Twitch to place you in a relevant part of the platform so that viewers find your content more easily.
Your Chatbox
When someone is talking in your chat while you’re streaming, you can click on their profile and see the number of messages they’ve sent, how many bans or timeouts they’ve received, and when they started watching your live streams.
You also have options to block and timeout any viewers. This helps when you’re being trolled and spammed by someone. Simply block them and they won’t be able to comment on your videos anymore.
Raid And Host A Channel
This is by far my favorite feature on the Twitch dashboard. When I first heard about raiding channels, I thought it was something to do with popping up and raiding someone else’s livestream. But this isn’t the case.
Raiding simply refers to when you move all your viewers to another livestream to surprise them. It’s super fun and you can easily make someone’s week by doing this. Also, this is one of the best ways to end your livestream.
Hosting a channel is exactly what it sounds like. You’re hosting someone else’s channel by broadcasting their livestream on your channel. However, I’ve only seen this happen a handful of times. Raiding channels are far more popular.
Important Quick Actions That Makes Streaming 10X Easier
Sometimes streaming can be a hassle, especially when you must organize a bunch of things. But luckily for us, Twitch has made this experience far less complicated. So here are some cool features that’ll make your life a lot easier:
- Run ads for different lengths
- Clip that
- Defend yourself against trolling and spam
Run Ads
Twitch has added a cool little feature that allows streamers to make some extra money with ad companies. You can run 90-second ads, 120-second ads, 150-second ads, and 180-second ads.
But you shouldn’t abuse this. If you’re running ads all the time and not creating much content, people won’t watch your videos. So as a streamer, you must find the balance between creating entertaining content and running ads.
Also, you must be affiliated with the ad company before you can run their ads.
Clip That
“Clip That” is an awesome little tool that allows you to create a clip about something that happened in the last 30 seconds with a click of a button.
This is helpful for when you have a YouTube channel and something funny just happened. Simply click the button and add it to your YouTube channel. Now how awesome is that to be able to add content to your YouTube channel from the Twitch dashboard!
Defense Against Trolling And Spam
Trolling and spam are more prevalent than ever, but Twitch has come up with the perfect defense against trolls. These are:
- Toggle Emote-Only Chat
- Toggle Follower-Only Chat
- Toggle Sub-Only Chat
These are awesome tools against trolling and spam. Also, Toggle Emote-Only Chat is a great way of building hype for your Twitch livestream.
Twitch Creator Camp
If you are new to Twitch or need more help with the Twitch dashboard (or any component of Twitch), consider accessing Twitch Creator Camp. Learn everything there is to know about streaming on Twitch. There are videos and other content to guide you along. It’s definitely worth a preview.
Conclusion
Twitch is an amazing platform for not only gamers, but chefs, painters, and musicians. And sometimes the Twitch dashboard can seem a bit overwhelming for beginner streamers. But with this Twitch dashboard guide, you’ll be able to build a following while doing something you truly love. You’ll also be ready when the day comes that you participate in Twitch Rivals which is an awesome goal to have!
