How Do D2 YouTubers Do It?

I’ve been curious about this for a long time, just wanted to know what you guys thought: How do Streamers / YouTubers like LlamaSC and Dbrunski do it?

- They clearly put enough time and effort into it that it’s basically a FT job

- But I don’t think the viewer / sub base pays anywhere close to a FT job by North American standards

- By now they’ve probably found every conceivable item and made every conceivable build. How is it not terribly dry and tedious to keep farming the same areas and hunting for the same items over and over and over again for years?

I realize there’s also the possibility these people have family money / are independently wealthy so they can just do whatever, but that still leaves bullet #3. It seems like just a soul-crushing grind.

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

- But I don’t think the viewer / sub base pays anywhere close to a FT job by North American standards

It depends. Twitch is a winner-takes-most affair, like most sites with user-created content. So the top creators do quite well, the next tier may be struggling, and it's a hobby with a little remuneration for everyone else. Additional sources of income can help, such as Patreon, sponsorships, merch, and whatever else creative people can think of to make money off streaming.

There was a data breach a few months ago that exposed Twitch earnings from August 2019 - October 2021. The data is easy to find online. Even without that, follower count can be used as a rough proxy for Twitch earnings.

Basically, for dedicated Diablo streamers you have MrLlamaSC making professional salary (doctor/lawyer/dentist). There are few people in the next tier making reasonable middle class wages. Everyone else is still working day jobs, or perhaps scraping by on what they earn by living in mom's basement or something. I suspect that you see the most success with variety streamers that picked up D2R for bit then shifted to something else. The audience is too small outside of the launch window to support many big streamers.

As far as playing the same game endlessly, you can find obsessive fans of just about any activity. That's how world records get set in all sorts of bizarre endeavors. Some of the streamers have been lucky enough to monetize their particular poison.

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

- By now they’ve probably found every conceivable item and made every conceivable build. How is it not terribly dry and tedious to keep farming the same areas and hunting for the same items over and over and over again for years?

MrLlamaSc is Speed Runner and those people love to perfect what they do. He did a Hardcore, no Healing/Merc/Town Run last time. New Challenges can make a Game fresh again.

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

- But I don’t think the viewer / sub base pays anywhere close to a FT job by North American standards

lmao. MrLlama literally makes a couple hundred thousand a year just from his twitch subs alone, not including any sponsorships or youtube revenue. Streamers make BANK dude. They have for awhile. Even Dbrunski125 makes great money, def over 6 figures.

Dunno about dbrunski, quite possibly but yeah llama makes helluva good income from twitch alone. And that's not his only source of income.

BillyMaysed wrote: 2 years ago

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

- But I don’t think the viewer / sub base pays anywhere close to a FT job by North American standards

lmao. MrLlama literally makes a couple hundred thousand a year just from his twitch subs alone, not including any sponsorships or youtube revenue. Streamers make BANK dude. They have for awhile. Even Dbrunski125 makes great money, def over 6 figures.

He makes that much on D2 subs?

Sekraan wrote: 2 years ago

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

- But I don’t think the viewer / sub base pays anywhere close to a FT job by North American standards

It depends. Twitch is a winner-takes-most affair, like most sites with user-created content. So the top creators do quite well, the next tier may be struggling, and it's a hobby with a little remuneration for everyone else. Additional sources of income can help, such as Patreon, sponsorships, merch, and whatever else creative people can think of to make money off streaming.

There was a data breach a few months ago that exposed Twitch earnings from August 2019 - October 2021. The data is easy to find online. Even without that, follower count can be used as a rough proxy for Twitch earnings.

Basically, for dedicated Diablo streamers you have MrLlamaSC making professional salary (doctor/lawyer/dentist). There are few people in the next tier making reasonable middle class wages. Everyone else is still working day jobs, or perhaps scraping by on what they earn by living in mom's basement or something. I suspect that you see the most success with variety streamers that picked up D2R for bit then shifted to something else. The audience is too small outside of the launch window to support many big streamers.

As far as playing the same game endlessly, you can find obsessive fans of just about any activity. That's how world records get set in all sorts of bizarre endeavors. Some of the streamers have been lucky enough to monetize their particular poison.

I watch Llama’s short YouTube clips, and they are generally pretty entertaining.

There is no chance he has the time to practice as a doctor / lawyer / dentist with how much he plays and how often he streams / posts content.

On some of his videos he basically talks about waking up every day at like 1pm.

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

There is no chance he has the time to practice as a doctor / lawyer / dentist with how much he plays and how often he streams / posts content.

The post was about him making an equivalent salary from streaming, not being a doctor/lawyer/dentist off-stream.

Just been really curious. He has 204K followers. If you assume 1-2% of his followers are subscribers, then that’s 2K to 4K subscribers.

At $2.50 per subscriber, that’s $5K to $10K per month, and that’s not including his other revenue sources.

I’m glad I went and did the math. I’ve been curious for a long time

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

Just been really curious. He has 204K followers. If you assume 1-2% of his followers are subscribers, then that’s 2K to 4K subscribers.

At $2.50 per subscriber, that’s $5K to $10K per month, and that’s not including his other revenue sources.

I’m glad I went and did the math. I’ve been curious for a long time

His subs aren't private. He had like 4000 or 5000 last time i looked. but ya MrLlama def has a lot of mid to top tier subbers whove been following him forever. I would guesstimate he makes somewhere over 3-$400,000/year JUST from twitch subs. Then if you include youtube ad revenue and sponorships he probably makes close to if not over 7-figures since D2R launch boosted his following on both.

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

- They clearly put enough time and effort into it that it’s basically a FT job

True; if they haven't hired professional editors or content writers/planners already, then they will be working a 8-12 hour day putting out the variety of consistent quality content that they have. That is a serious amount of hard work to take it from a plan to an uploaded youtube video. So yeah, agree with you on this that it's a full time job for them in terms of the hours and commitment put in.

It depends on how they've decided to organise it really. I have friends who work on YouTube full-time, for a full-time salary, who just write content, or edit, or do research, and feed into another channel (not their own). I think that the big boy channel owners all do this - they outsource the drudgery of the full-time work to other people and still make a handsome profit, without the headache of having to edit and administrate.

So if they've decided to put aside some of their revenue to hire and ease the workload a bit, as most pro youtubers do these days, then it's not so much a full-time job as it is owning a Brand or business if you like. Still a vast commitment of time and energy, and will still take up most of their time to oversee and administrate everything.

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

- By now they’ve probably found every conceivable item and made every conceivable build. How is it not terribly dry and tedious to keep farming the same areas and hunting for the same items over and over and over again for years?

I first saw Llama at a speedrunning event (AGDQ) wearing

Chain Mail and he was running LoD. This guy loves the game, he always has, and it's clear to anyone who watches any of his content, that that is undeniably the case. He just loves the game world, he loves to hyper optimise for running, he loves his community. This is a man who is heavily invested in the game out of Passion, let's not forget that guys.

Financial success aside, we know that Llama would still be there making videos and streaming had Resurrected never happened, and loving it just as much. I don't think I can say the same for the other streamers that have popped up (Dbrunski etc.) though - many of these videos have a very, very financially incentivised feel to them and I have no desire to watch them at all.

So his love for the game - that's likely what keeps him going, but there will no doubt be some degree of burnout. I'm talking from experience here having spent years building blizzard community fansites, tools, and websites. After developing Barrens Chat I played WoW Classic for about 10 hours, then stopped, because I was so saturated in game news, updates, artwork etc. that I literally had no desire to play the game after having worked on creating content for it for years.

The same thing happened here with diablo2.io - I spent years developing, planning etc. for it... and when the game came out? I played about 12 hours of it, then went straight back into working on the site here and other stuff. When you spend so long creating content for something, the actual game itself becomes less appealing to you as time goes on, because you are 'playing' it, or experiencing that game world, by spending your time building for it.

As for the money estimations being made here - don't forget that these are all figures pre-tax/insurance and their take home pay will be much less at that kind of band. All I have to say on the subject is that some people in this thread are seriously underestimating how much is made on successful Streaming/Youtube ventures like this, whether they are organic communities or artificially put together by profiteers.

llama showed up in simpsons 3111

I guess they have other people that farm for them, also they probably bot with secondary accounts and buy items with real money.

BillyMaysed wrote: 2 years ago

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

Just been really curious. He has 204K followers. If you assume 1-2% of his followers are subscribers, then that’s 2K to 4K subscribers.

At $2.50 per subscriber, that’s $5K to $10K per month, and that’s not including his other revenue sources.

I’m glad I went and did the math. I’ve been curious for a long time

His subs aren't private. He had like 4000 or 5000 last time i looked. but ya MrLlama def has a lot of mid to top tier subbers whove been following him forever. I would guesstimate he makes somewhere over 3-$400,000/year JUST from twitch subs. Then if you include youtube ad revenue and sponorships he probably makes close to if not over 7-figures since D2R launch boosted his following on both.

That’s crazy. I honestly did not think you can monetize a 20 year old game like that.

I think that’s more than some of the top Starcraft players make - and there’s prize money in tournaments for those.

I looked at the leaked data, and when I saw the top streamer made almost $10M in two years, I almost fell out of my chair.

That’s mid-tier NFL starter money. Good on these guys for getting their bread!

You guys remind me of my little nephew.

His plan was to play Fortnite for a living. He showed me an article about some kid making $1 million a year doing it.

I had to explain to him that only .0001% of people can make that sort of income playing any particular game.

You can find those sort of outliers in any profession. I know cops that make $500,000 per year, electricians making several mill, doctors making 10 mill, even garbage men making mills

dilbert383 wrote: 2 years ago

You guys remind me of my little nephew.

His plan was to play Fortnite for a living. He showed me an article about some kid making $1 million a year doing it.

I had to explain to him that only .0001% of people can make that sort of income playing any particular game.

You can find those sort of outliers in any profession. I know cops that make $500,000 per year, electricians making several mill, doctors making 10 mill, even garbage men making mills

I don't think anybody here has unrealistic dreams of being a streamer.

I was just curious whether streaming a really old game (albeit a recently remastered one) can actually make you enough money to get by.

Seems like the top D2 streamers still do really well for themselves.

Teebling wrote: 2 years ago

The same thing happened here with diablo2.io - I spent years developing, planning etc. for it... and when the game came out? I played about 12 hours of it, then went straight back into working on the site here and other stuff. When you spend so long creating content for something, the actual game itself becomes less appealing to you as time goes on, because you are 'playing' it, or experiencing that game world, by spending your time building for it.

I didn't know how true this was until i spent 6+ months creating a bunch of diablo 2 guides, soaking up every tiny spec of info in several forums and watching hundreds of D2 streams. It definitely made me burn out on D2R extremely fast and at first i didn't get why lol. I have zero desire to play rn until 2.4 and ladder drops, and even then i doubt ill be doing any 8+ hour days.

dilbert383 wrote: 2 years ago

You guys remind me of my little nephew.

People being fascinated that D2 streamers make a lot reminds you of your nephew? huh? No one said anything about wanting to become one or how easy it is. lmao

BillyMaysed wrote: 2 years ago

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

Just been really curious. He has 204K followers. If you assume 1-2% of his followers are subscribers, then that’s 2K to 4K subscribers.

At $2.50 per subscriber, that’s $5K to $10K per month, and that’s not including his other revenue sources.

I’m glad I went and did the math. I’ve been curious for a long time

His subs aren't private. He had like 4000 or 5000 last time i looked. but ya MrLlama def has a lot of mid to top tier subbers whove been following him forever. I would guesstimate he makes somewhere over 3-$400,000/year JUST from twitch subs. Then if you include youtube ad revenue and sponorships he probably makes close to if not over 7-figures since D2R launch boosted his following on both.

So I went and did the math in more detail (couldn't help it, I was curious):

If it's 4-5K, it would be $120K to $150K (Twitch's payout is 50% of $5 per month). It's actually probably a little lower than that because there's a 15% discount if you give a 3 month commitment.

Llama also has 85M YouTube views since 2012. That averages 9M views per year. Assuming that he's more popular now than he was when he first started, let's assume he makes around $36K in additional annual revenue from YouTube.

https://influencermarketinghub.com/yout ... alculator/
https://www.youtube.com/c/MrLlamaSC/about

Let's say he makes another $5K per year from additional sponsorships and whatnot.

That would bring his annual income to:

Twitch: $120K-$150K
YouTube: ~$27K - $45K
Sponsorships: $5K

Total Estimated Income: $152K to $200K.

It's a good salary, but it's not as high as you estimated. And if he is by far the most popular D2 streamer, then the other top D2 streamers might just be making in the $70K-$80K range.

Anyway, I'm glad I was able to answer my own question - thanks for everyone's help and inputs on this. Was curious for a long time

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

If it's 4-5K, it would be $120K to $150K (Twitch's payout is 50% of $5 per month). It's actually probably a little lower than that because there's a 15% discount if you give a 3 month commitment.

Nah, that would be if every single sub was a tier 1 sub. so its most likely 2-3x that amount.

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

Sponsorships: $5K

Most twitch streamers make more from sponsorships than their twitch subs... xD. Either way hes making great well deserved income, but its definitely closer to 7 figures. A lot of top streamers have multi million dollar sponsorship deals.