Meet Kai Cenat: Twitch's Most Subscribed Streamer...
Five days ago, Kai Cenat broke the all time record for the most subscribers on Twitch, amassing over 300,000 subscribers after a month long Twitch marathon...
Happy new week,
Last week, Kai Cenat broke the twitch record with 300,000+ subscribers, making him the biggest streamer on the platform. Kai has been able to build a Million dollar empire of his personality. For someone who just started streaming in 2021, this is very impressive.
Kai Cenat is a 21-year-old creator who has been on an astonishing rise in the last couple of years. He is known for being extremely entertaining, enthusiastic, and being his unapologetic self. His authenticity and infectious energy draws the young demographic of Twitch to his streams and content.
For the oldies that don’t know about Twitch. Twitch is an online video streaming service, where you can stream and watch live content. Live streaming essentially means sending a video across the internet in real time. This way, you can interact with the viewers while they're watching your stream. And with around 30 million daily active users, Twitch is one of the best and biggest platforms for this.
In order to reach 300,000+ subscribers, Kai ran a marathon, or in his own words a ‘Mafiathon’, where he promised to stream for 30 consecutive days, the entirety of US Black History Month. In this long streaming season, Kai featured unique content one after the other, and his community returned the effort in full force. Kai’s Mafiathon gave KaiCenat fans a completely new viewing experience of his life and habits, allowing fans to see KaiCenat like never before. He had guests like NLE Choppa, G Herbo, Rubi Rose, Nav, DDG, Skai Jackson, and KSI. All guests that his streamers love and find extremely entertaining.
Kai pushing the boundaries with his content, and coming up with new and exciting challenges and activities led him to break the Twitch record of most subscribers. Kai’s achievements can’t be downplayed, unlike Youtube, you have to pay to subscribe to someone on Twitch. To have over 300,000 people paying to subscribe to your channel is huge. Even the former record holder Ludwig jumped in to pay his tribute to Kai and his crew for breaking his record. He threw a jab at twitch by saying, “Twitch now pay the man before you lose another record breaker.” For context, after establishing his record, Ludwig left Twitch and became an exclusive creator on YouTube. He warned Twitch if they don’t want to repeat the same mistake they should pay Kai what he deserves.
Drake also said the same, commenting under a post sharing Kai’s achievement that twitch should “motivate the kids and send him 50M”. With Kai bringing so much entertainment to the platform and bringing on new users daily, Twitch does need to give Kai a cheque to keep him on the platform, before he starts looking at other platforms. For example, streamer Adin Ross, left twitch earlier on this year to sign the “biggest streaming deal of any creator”. However, Kai is still very much getting paid for all the hard work he does as a streamer.
The Twitch earning model
Paid Twitch subscriptions are one of the biggest earners for streamers. There are different subscription tiers, starting at £3.99/month and going up to £19.99/month. Each subscription tier comes with different perks for the viewer. You are only able to start offering subscriptions on your live stream once you become a Twitch Affiliate or Partner.
You can also earn ad revenue from Twitch. Ads run on any stream on Twitch, but you can only earn money from it if you're an Affiliate or Partner. These ads are shown to viewers during the live stream, except if they're paid subscribers to the channel. You have to be careful with the number of ads you allow in your streams. Too many ads can drive viewers away from your stream.
You can also earn money through donations. You can add a PayPal donation button to your channel description. You can set up leaderboards for PayPal donations and give your donors a shout-out during your live streams. You can also earn money through Twitch bits, once you're a Twitch Affiliate or Partner, you're able to accept bits on your channel. This is Twitch's virtual currency – it can be bought by viewers and sent to their favourite streamers to support them. These bits can be converted to real currency, a donated bit is equivalent to $0.01.
You can make money outside of the twitch platform through YouTube ad revenue. Kai currently has 2 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. He is able to create original content or repurpose his streams for YouTube. You get paid by YouTube for ads being run on your videos. You can generate extra revenue from brand partnerships or sponsorships from brands who want to tap into your audience or be affiliated with your brand. Some streamers diversify their revenue streams through selling merchandise such as clothes with their branding or catchphrases.
As you can see, streaming and content creation can become your full-time job. Kai is a great example of the endless opportunities available for content creators in this new day and age of the internet. It’s exciting to see what Kai has done in under two years and even more exciting to see what he’ll do in the future.