Getting More out of your Twitch Channel Points
So what exactly are Channel Points?
If you’re just starting out on Twitch, you might be a bit overwhelmed by all of the tools available to you. That’s OK, there’s a lot to take in! What I’d like to cover today is a viewer interaction tool called Channel Points.
Channel Points are essentially a reward system, they’re a sort of micro-currency that are given to viewers for watching your stream. The viewers can earn bonus points for watch-streaks, subscribing and using bits, and even for just being active (there’s a little bonus chest they can click periodically).
The streamer can then set up ways for these points to be used. Twitch has some neat built in options, such as unlocking a subscriber emote for a day, or having a message highlighted in chat. However the real power of Channel Points shines through with Custom Rewards.
Custom Rewards are created by the streamer, and the result of these rewards is entirely up to you. You might want to give your community a way to remind you to sit up straight, or to have a drink of water, or you might want to give them ways to interfere with your game, like by forcing you to flip your controller.
Do they really help?
Channel Points have been shown to increase viewer engagement, and Twitch state that established channels saw an increase of 18% in time spent by viewers on their channels, as well as a 13% lift in chat participation among their viewers.
In a study performed by Twitch Creator and founder of Twitch news website CreatorHype, it was suggested that one of the factors for success of their test subjects was the use of unique engagement tools. Including taking advantage of the Channel Point system.
Do Something Unique
It is vital to stand out from the crowd, and while adding interesting Channel Point rewards for your viewers is a great step in the right direction, I think it’s important to strive to take things to the next level. When I created Better Points my goal was to do something that I had never seen before, creating complex and engaging events that allowed the viewer to feel like they were really a part of the experience.
What can I do with Better Points?
I am constantly working to add in new features, however I believe the core set of tools I initially released the app with are the most useful. At the time of writing you can do the following:
- Change scenes in OBS
- Modify source properties (set visibility, position, scale etc.)
- Toggle filters
- Text-to-speech from user input
- Giveaways
- Show and hide Custom Rewards based on your current game
With these building blocks the limitation is really only your creativity. Here are some ideas to get that spark lit:
- Let viewers play a sound or a video with channel points
- A redemption to hide your webcam
- Channel points reward to show a cat cam
- Spooky jump scares with channel points
Getting Started with Better Points
It’s really quite easy to make a start, just head over to https://dashboard.better-points.com and sign in with your Twitch account. The rest is quite straight forward:
- Make a Custom Reward
- Create an OBS Event
- Link the Custom Reward to the OBS Event
That’s it!
You’re all done, now when a user redeems your custom reward, it will play out the actions in the OBS Event. Congratulations, you now have the coolest channel point rewards on Twitch!
