How I Went From Failed Streamer to Getting Paid to Grow Channels

I got into Twitch streaming back in 2013.

I really didn't have anything going on in life at the time. Funny how that works growing up.

I was in my early 20s trying to figure out what the hell I was gonna do. Then I saw a stream from Ninja playing Halo, back on Justin.tv, remember when that was a thing before Twitch?

I thought hey, if he can stream and make money, I could too.

Well, that was not how it went at all.

The first attempt failed

I started streaming in 2013.

Within 6 months all I had was a few hundred followers.

Wasted hours upon hours of streaming and barely made anything. I don't think I made a cent, really.

Between that and my family encouraging me to figure something else out, I stopped.

The second attempt worked

I went back to community college and started babais1337.

That's where it actually worked. I grew a following to 1,000 followers in a year streaming CoD Ghosts.

Here's the problem though.

While all that was happening, life got really busy. I was doing good in community college, so I decided to go to university.

I stopped casting. I'd stream off and on when I could, but I didn't have time to dedicate to it.

Streaming without consistency just doesn't work. I learned that the hard way too.

Then it became a career

Fast forward to graduating with a BA in journalism and a masters.

I couldn't find work. So I got into freelancing, social media stuff, whatever I could get.

That freelance work turned into a real career. Today I run my own company and get paid to grow YouTube channels for businesses.

One client did over $300K in sales in six months from organic YouTube alone.

Why I'm writing this

I failed at zero. Then I got to 1,000. Then I quit at the worst possible time.

Then I spent a decade learning what actually grows a channel, because businesses pay me to know.

Most people teaching creators right now either forgot what zero feels like or never grew anything themselves.

I remember exactly what those dead streams with 2 viewers feel like.

To be clear about what I am and what I'm not. I'm not a 5 million subscriber YouTuber. I'm the guy businesses pay to get leads and sales from YouTube, and I've grown my own channels from zero. What I can teach you is the beginning, zero to your first 1,000. That's the part I know cold, and it's the part that kills most creators.

And honestly? My day job is teaching businesses how to do content creation non stop. Writing for actual creators is basically my therapy. I'm half joking. But only half.

So that's what First Thousand is. Everything I know about getting your first 1,000 followers, subscribers, and dollars, written for people starting from nothing.

Most of it will be free. That's on purpose. There will be some small paid stuff down the line for people who want more, but the playbook itself costs you nothing.

The same stuff I charge clients for.

What's next

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Next up: what to do in your first 30 days, why nobody is watching you yet, and whether you should start on Twitch or YouTube.

I took over a decade to figure this out. You shouldn't have to.