How much money can you make on twitch?

While there's potential in making a good livelihood through Twitch...  it's a very crowded area & difficult to reach sustainable levels.

The first & easiest objective is to obtain affiliation, there's hard minimum requirements to reach in a 30-day window.  These are...

* Broadcasting 500 minutes [8h 20m] or more over all streams

* Broadcasting for 7 separate days or more (counted by START DATE)

* Have 50 Followers

* Having an average CONCURRENT viewership of 3 or more viewers

Once you reach & maintain these minimums for a few weeks (mostly for Twitch staff to verify), you'll be able to start getting subscribers & obtain bits.  Subscriptions will typically net you $2.50 / subscriber (Tier 1 = 1 sub, Tier 2 = 2 subs, Tier 3 = 6 subs).  For COMPARISON PURPOSES (using 40 hr / week & 4 weeks / month... or roughly 160 hrs / mo), you're working wage is....

* $0.015625 / hr / subscriber

* $0.0625 / hr / 4 subscribers

* $0.25 / hr / 16 subscribers

* $1.00 / hr / 64 subscribers

* $7.25 / hr / 464 subscribers [Current US Federal Minimum Wage]

* $11.00 / hr / 704 subscribers [Base Wage at Walmart]

* $12.50 / hr / 800 subscribers ["Sustainable Level" Wage]

* $15.00 / hr / 960 subscribers [Proposed US Federal Minimum Wage]

* $15.625 / hr / 1,000 subscribers

I will note that most streamers typically don't work a 40-hour work week.  Some tend to work around 60 - 80 hours per week, which will cut into these figures (by 25-50% respectively) without throwing Overtime Pay rates into the mix (further complicating the figures)

Using 800 monthly subscribers as the "Sustainable Level"

* Gross Pay = $2,000 / mo OR $24,000 / yr

* LESS Federal Income Tax [12%]  =  $240 / mo OR $2,880 / yr

* LESS State Income Tax [8.75% max for Oregon] = $175 / mo OR $2,100 / yr

Oregon is being used as it has the highest tax rate for this level of income.  Some states (like South Dakota & 4 others) have no state income taxes, so that deduction can be negated.

This would give you a NET INCOME between $1,585 - $1,760 / mo OR $19,020 - $21,120 / yr.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please be aware that these figures may not be 100% accurate.  I'm only doing SIMPLE tax calculations (not the exact tier-based stuff) & this is only counting subscriber counts (cheer bits earned are NOT being considered here).  I'm not a tax expert here, so please refer to an actual tax professional (like a lawyer) for any questions you have on your income tax liabilities you would incur (& when they need to be paid) if you choose to become a professional streamer.

With that said, only about 5% of your followers (ON AVERAGE for small-scale streamers, this can fall down to 0.5% for the largest streamers) will actually subscribe to you...  so you need around 16,000 followers to get around 800 subscribers.  Therefore, you'll want to explore other options (like Patreon & sponsorships) in addition to Twitch subscriptions & cheers to make a living as a full-time streamer.

Around the Top 20,000 streamers, you could hit US Federal Minimum Wage

Around the Top 10,000 streamers, you could hit the "Sustainable Level" Wages

Around the Top 5,000 streamers, you can definitely make some good money (grossing ~$5,000+ / mo or ~$60,000+ / yr)

Around the Top 1,000 streamers, you can definitely earn great pay (grossing ~$14,000+ / mo. or ~$168,000 / yr)

In the Top 20 streamers, earnings potential can reach the millions in gross income on subscribers (44,000 subs = $110,000 / mo or $1.32 million / yr).

Please be aware that these figures are only based on subscribers.  Sponsorships, Bit Cheers, Tips / Donations, Patreon subs & options can greatly supplement their income into the multi-million range for the top streamers.

In Short (TL;DR), you can potentially earn millions...  but it's an extremely tough road to get up to that level.  You're more likely to hit Lower-Middle to Middle Class earnings, if you really commit to it.

If you're someone like Ninja you might end up with a net worth of over $25 million, but most people aren't Ninja.

For most people? Probably not much. It takes a while before you can even start taking subscriptions, and then when you do, Twitch gets half of every sub, so you get about $2.50 per sub on average.