How to Quit Twitch Affiliate

Twitch solved this by creating the Twitch Affiliate program. It’s an actionable “in-between” step that allows newer streamers to begin making money. The requirements are fairly easy to reach, especially if you have a few friends to help you out:

• 50 followers
• At least 8 hours streamed in the last 30 days
• At least 7 days streamed in the last 30 days
• An average of 3 or more viewers over the last 30 days

Should You Be a Twitch Affiliate?

Does becoming a Twitch Affiliate seem like a no-brainer to you? A way to have emote slots and make money when you couldn’t have previously? There are definitely some major benefits you get from becoming a Twitch Affiliate, but there are some serious reasons to consider holding off if you’re not making much. Without going into the details of other platforms, here are some of the pros and cons of becoming a twitch affiliate:

Pros

• Requirements

  The monetization requirements are very easy to reach compared to YouTube and Facebook.

• Access

  Your stream is monetized, allowing you access to paid subscriptions, bits, and ads.

• Tools

  Emotes and channel points can be fun and useful tools to help build your audience and community.

• Hype Trains

  Hype trains, even as a small streamer, can put you on the front page of Twitch, getting a lot more eyes on you.

• Reinvestment

  Any amount of income you receive can be reinvested into your stream — new games, computer hardware, lighting, cameras, etc.

Cons

• Ads

  Pre-roll ads can’t be disabled and have approximately a 30% bounce rate, so small streamers can lose 3 in 10 potential new viewers before they ever see your content.

• Revenue Split

  While you have access to ads, there is a flat ad revenue split with Twitch taking up to 90% — even large streamers make very little revenue from ads compared to other sources.

• Platform Comparison

  Subscriber revenue split isn’t as good as most other platforms.

• Exclusivity

  You can’t stream the same content simultaneously to other platforms, and multistreaming can significantly increase your discoverability without much additional effort.

While Twitch is still the most popular streaming platform to date, other platforms are gaining ground in the space. Twitch has a lot of issues that make it less creator-friendly that other platforms do better. With this in mind, some small creators who have already signed an affiliate agreement may be interested in leaving the agreement to diversify to other platforms.

How to Terminate your Affiliate Contract

1. Step 1

   

   Go to the Twitch contact support page.

2. Step 2

   

   Select “Category” → “Affiliates.”

3. Step 3

   

   Select “Sub Category” → “Account (Affiliates).”

4. Step 4

   

   Select “Detail Category” → “Offboarding.”

5. Step 5

   

   Fill in subject.

6. Step 6

   

   Fill in Description.

7. Step 7

   

   If applicable, select an option from “Platform/OS where issue is experienced” – most likely, this is “None” for Affiliate Offboarding.

8. Step 8

   

   Submit the reCAPTCHA code.

9. Step 9

   

   Submit the contact form.

Next Steps

I submitted my request to cancel my affiliate agreement on February 9th. The next day, I received a response requesting the following information to verify my identity:

• My Twitch ID/Username
• My current IP address (link.twitch.tv/whatsmyip)
• My birthday
• Transaction ID of my last purchase on Twitch (e.g. channel subscription or Twitch Turbo)
• My email address

After replying with the appropriate info, my account was removed from the affiliate program within the hour.

Twitch Affiliate Offboarding Complications

If you’ve already begun building a community on Twitch, you may face some complications when canceling your affiliate agreement — both on Twitch’s end and your community’s end. For dedicated viewers, it’s no small thing to lose your emote slots, subscriber badges, and the potential perks of channel points. This can be mitigated by using services like BetterTTV or FrankerFaceZ for emotes and using the loyalty points built into a chatbot like Cloudbot as a replacement for channel points.

One difficulty I faced was with getting paid out by Twitch. Per the affiliate agreement, you get paid automatically every time your account reaches a $100 balance. However, if you terminate your contract with less than $100 accrued, Twitch will keep all of that revenue. I had $86 in revenue attached to my account when I wanted to request termination. I reached out to Twitch asking if I could still be paid out, and received this response:

“As per the affiliate program agreement, if you have not met the $100 threshold when you decide to offboard the funds will remain on your account unpaid.”

Since I was close to the $100 threshold, I had a friend cheer 1500 bits (worth $15) to push me over the payout limit to get around this. I thought this would get me around the issue, but there were still issues. The same day I cancelled my Affiliate agreement (2/10), I received  an email from their support team:

“Do note that you are currently ineligible for payout as per the payout terms listed in our Affiliate Agreement.”

I replied stating that I was over the $100 threshold and should be eligible for a payout, and received no response. I followed up a few days later (2/13) requesting further information. I didn’t receive a response until a month later (3/10) stating that they were in error and I was eligible for a payout. The next day, I received my payout from Twitch.

Conclusion

Is it worth it to be a Twitch Affiliate? That depends on where you’re at in your streaming career. If you’re a new streamer weighing options and planning ahead, it may be worth it to take a pause to think about it. If you’re already an Affiliate, it may mean a loss in revenue — but you may be able to diversify and set yourself up for bigger payouts later from other sources. Whatever your scenario, you should be in a position to choose, and change your decision later if you so choose. Hopefully this helps you make your own decision and guide you through the process of cancelling your agreement if you need to — and hopefully your communication with Twitch is less bumpy than mine was!