The live streamer’s principle: A focus on community

Online live streaming has become a new source of entertainment for many different people. Gaming, cooking and art are part of the many different categories you can stream online. Given its wide variety, it only makes sense that online live streaming has gained this much traction.

Though many can equate online live streaming as a way to make money, many users use it to create a community they can call their own. To create a place with like-minded individuals like themselves who can interact and develop friendships.

And one streamer did precisely that.

Evvy, more commonly known as, QueenBeeEvvy, is a local streamer on Twitch. Her streams focus on fun, whacky moments with an intense focus on interacting with the community she has built up over the last two years of her streaming career. 

Roy: So, yeah, let’s start us off. So why did you choose to be a streamer?

Evvy:  I wanted to be a streamer because I like entertaining people. And you know, getting into actual film, which was my dream for a long time, is, I think, a little too unrealistic for someone with no background in that field. And streaming kind of combines two of my loves, which is performing for an audience and like making people laugh and stuff and playing video games.

Roy: Awesome. I can relate to that. What does an average day look like for you then?

Evvy: Well, because I don’t get to do streaming as a full-time job. Typically, I work 8 hours a day, five days a week, full-time job, and then as soon as I’m off work, I go into streaming for at least 2 to 4 hours, depending on the day, and then sleep, wake up in the morning and repeat just every single day.

Roy: How do you balance streaming and your full-time job?

Evvy: I don’t. Well, I try to keep everything in check, but it’s really hard because the thing is, with streaming, it’s something you have to stay super consistent. Otherwise, there literally will never be a payout at the end of the day. It’s very algorithm based and you need to make sure that you at least get a couple of hours a day so people see, you know, that you exist.

But then because of my work schedule being like, afternoon, I have no time in the day to actually do anything with friends, which is really sad. But because streaming is something I care about and because we live in a society, I need money. So it’s hard to balance, but I try my best. At least I get to see my friends like once every month.

Roy: What obstacles/hardships do you go through in content creation? 

Evvy: Motivation. Because I think I find that a lot of the time it can be really hard to stay consistent and stay streaming when you don’t have a lot of viewers because, like, you know, I had a time where I would be streaming to like 20 people on average every day and I kind of felt like, okay this is good. I can keep doing this. This is fun. And then I kind of stopped streaming for a while because of personal reasons, came back, and now my viewer account has gone back down to like five to 10. And I kind of feel like, is it worth it for me to keep going? 

But at the same time, I love it. This is something that I love and I’ve kind of learned to stop caring too much about the view count. I guess. And now I just do it for fun. But yeah, that was a huge struggle a while ago. 

Roy: What’s it like to be a content creator here in Edmonton?

Evvy: Um, personally, I have not had a lot of interaction with other Edmonton content creators outside of something that I did with a couple of university friends a couple of years back. We did a Dungeons and Dragons podcast two years ago, three years ago, and that was pretty much as far as it went for me, hanging out with other content creators in Edmonton. But yeah, like I don’t personally hang out with a lot of Edmonton local content creators. It’s something I would like to do more of because it’s always fun to have a little bit more community.

Roy: What plans do you have as a content creator?

Evvy: I do want to start actually making YouTube videos and having kind of my content immortalized on the Internet. But again, because my life is very chaotic right now and just extremely busy, I can’t do it right now. But yeah, making YouTube videos would be something that I really want to do. And you know, at the end of the day, like I said earlier, I love performing in front of audiences. So doing live performance stuff would also be super cool in some way.

Roy: And finally, is there something you want to say for people who want to get into streaming but are doubting themselves?

Evvy: Yeah, honestly, just do it. At first I was scared too, but I started streaming with like, you know, a crappy headset with the crappiest microphone and my camera quality was trash. Like everything looked bad, but I did it anyway, and it was fun. And I’ve created a community since then. It’s a small community, but it’s a community and we’re all friends and it’s all fun. And I think that you just got to go for it. Don’t hold yourself back because you don’t think you’re going to make it.

Evvy has been streaming since 2021, has amassed over a thousand followers, and has only been growing ever since.

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