Streamers on the Rise: JoeWo gave himself one year to git gud

Welcome to Streamers on the Rise, where we find streamers who are growing their channels, content, and audiences in extraordinary ways. Each week we’ll talk with a creator about what goes into livestreaming–both on and off camera.

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JoeWo says he’s a late bloomer when it comes to gaming. Unlike many of his fellow streamers, he didn’t grow up playing video games. Instead he spent most of his time on the basketball court, fostering a sense of competitiveness he carried with him into college.

But he didn’t have much to do with it in college. He was going for a finance degree, and suddenly had a lot more free time than he’d had in high school, without a lot to do. He didn’t exactly dig the party scene, and he didn’t have a basketball team to hang out with.

“I was like, okay, now that I have a ton of time on Friday nights, Saturday nights, I get sometimes like, ‘What the heck can I do?'” he says. “Prior to that, I had barely gamed or anything at all. I had no idea what streaming was, Twitch was.” He heard about streaming in his junior year, and decided to just go for it: “I was like, ‘This sounds fun.'”

He channeled his competitiveness into playing Call of Duty, and immediately found a home within the community of CoD enthusiasts looking for Twitch streams. He’d also noticed, from seeing friends who streamed, that just streaming wasn’t enough to build a solid audience. So he got on YouTube, too, and maintained a regular presence on Twitter. By the time he graduated, he had enough solid viewership that, despite getting accepted to grad school, he thought maybe this could become a full-time thing.

“I graduated in May, I moved home and I said–which was super crazy too, because again, no friends of mine streamed, families, nobody streamed–I was like, ‘Okay, hey Mom, give me one-year time and I will make this work.’ She was like, ‘I don’t know a thing about gaming. I don’t know a thing about streaming, but if that is your thing, go for it,'” he says.

That year changed everything, and set him on the path to where he is today, with 730K followers on Twitch, 530K subscribers on YouTube. He has a plan to continue introducing more and more variety into his streams, including IRL content, so people can get to know him behind the camera and beyond.

Check out our chat with him below.

 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tubefilter: Very excited to get to talk. Let’s jump straight in! For anyone not familiar with you, can you give me some background about your life before streaming?

JoeWo: Yes, of course. To start it off, I went to college in 2016. Very quickly, I was like, hey, I’m not really a very big club person or bar person and stuff. Prior to that, I barely gamed or anything at all. I had no idea what streaming was, Twitch was, anything at all. Then I was like, okay, now that I have a ton of time on Friday nights, Saturday nights, I get sometimes like, “What the heck can I do?”

I found streaming pretty late. It was my junior year. Then I was like, “This sounds fun.” I started streaming, graduated college, and then I was like, “Okay, do I try streaming because this is a fun thing to do?” Even though I had a ton of friends who were like, “Yo, you can’t play video games. That’s not a job,” because it’s just not that big here, right? It’s just not a thing. I was like, okay, do I try this streaming thing that I love to do, even though I have really no idea, or do I go to school? Because I got into grad school in spring.

Tubefilter: What was your major?

JoeWo: Finance. I got into grad school then. I’m like, okay. Even though everybody was like, “You have to go. It’s grad school, obviously.” I was like, “Okay, that’s going to sound crazy, but I’m not going to go to grad school for you guys. I’m going to try this dream that I have.” I started streaming then, and it just exploded. It just went crazy. Here we are.

Tubefilter: Did it take off right away for you? Because one thing that a lot of streamers I speak to, they really struggle with how to find an audience in the beginning.

JoeWo: From the start, it was very, very slow. Then–because of college, you could say, I saw this a little differently, because I had so many friends that just streamed. I saw it’s like, “Okay, there’s so many platforms.” Seeing that if you did just streaming, it was not growing at all. It was not growing. I saw Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, all that stuff. The second I put a ton of time there, that’s when a ton of people came from there to normal streams.

Tubefilter: Yes, that makes sense. That tracks with what I hear from most people, is that relying on Twitch’s admittedly very slim discoverability tools has not worked out. You have to bring in people from elsewhere.

JoeWo: 100%.

Tubefilter: What games did you first start streaming?

JoeWo: The first game I played was Call of Duty from the very, very start, which I loved. I didn’t get to play a ton of Fortnite. I tried a little bit, but that was peak, peak, peak time for that game. I don’t know why, I just didn’t really have a ton of fun on it. Then when Warzone came out spring of 2020, that’s when I was like, “This is amazing.” Then it just crazy, exploded from there.

Tubefilter: Yes, got you. I know you play Apex, too, right?

JoeWo: Yes, I love that, too.

Tubefilter: Very good game. I also don’t jive with Fortnite, and I could never really get into Overwatch. They just feel too cartoony compared to Call of Duty and Apex.

JoeWo: I agree, 100%. It’s just like…I don’t know. I can say, though, that those times helped out this whole scene so much because that game, I think at least again, I’m a very late gamer, very late, but Fortnite exploded the whole scene and made it where gaming then was cool, because you had pro sports players playing and streaming, you had rappers, athletes, and that’s crazy.

Tubefilter: That was a wild time.

JoeWo: That had never happened. That game, even though I don’t care for it that much, really just exploded the whole scene.

Tubefilter: It was a big cultural moment.

JoeWo: It was huge.

Tubefilter: Same with Among Us. I never really got into it, but it was again, if you can get one of our senators to play Among Us, that’s a pretty big deal.

JoeWo: That’s insane. Literally. That’s insane.

Tubefilter: It is. So you committed to streaming right out of college. Was there a point where you were like, “Okay, this is actually going to be my full-time career?” Where you knew not going to grad school had been the right move?

JoeWo: It sounds crazy. It’s how I think, but I had no plan B. I was like, “This is going to work. I don’t know how, but it’s going to work.” I always see it as like, if I plan out plan B, C, D, that’s already saying that my first plan will straight up fail. I was like, “There’s no plan B, I will make this work somehow some way.”

Tubefilter: That’s some balls. I’m not going to lie.

JoeWo: It was crazy.

Tubefilter: It did work out.

JoeWo: I said too that from the time I graduated in May, I moved home and I said–which was super crazy too, because again, no friends of mine streamed, families, nobody streamed–I was like, “Okay, hey Mom, give me one-year time and I will make this work.” She was like, “I don’t know a thing about gaming. I don’t know a thing about streaming, but if that is your thing, go for it.” She’s been super great too. I said, give me that time and it’s been great.

Tubefilter: So during tha year, I know you said you approached with this multiplatform strategy. What were you doing? How often were you streaming? How many videos? How many tweets? What was your overall strategy?

JoeWo: I streamed, I want to say for the first year or from the time I graduated, I streamed I think every single day except three days for my twin sister’s wedding. I streamed every single day. Honestly, though, I was so annoyed. I was like, “Mom, is there any way I could like–” She’s like, “It’s your twin sister’s wedding.” What do you say? I was like, “I got to grind, Mom! I got to grind!” I streamed literally every single day. Then once I got done streaming, I would clip every single clip, all of the things from those streams, and then post them out.

Tubefilter: Are you working with anybody now, like an editor?

JoeWo: Oh yes. That was a very, not rough time, but just a learning experience, because that was way too much. Again, it was just part of the journey then of like, “Okay, stream. Then do a ton of other stuff.”

Tubefilter: That’s a huge workload for one person.

JoeWo: Thankfully, I’ve got a great, great team now, they have saved me a ton of time.

Tubefilter: Has your strategy shifted at all?

JoeWo: I would say it’s changed because I’m trying to do less gaming stuff and more things that aren’t just gaming, like doing more vlog stuff, because from the times that I’ve seen, a lot of games have their highs and then a lot of games seem like they have very low lows, and I have tied myself to a game for a long time. I feel like when there is a lot of times of the lows, if you don’t try to do vlogs or try random games and stuff, that can really hurt you, because then it’s not like, “Yo, JoeWo, just play CoD.” Then it’s like, “Yo JoeWo, love your vlog content,” and things that aren’t just gaming.

Tubefilter: It’s difficult to diversify that way. I know you do IRL content too. What inspired you to try that?

JoeWo: I just saw it as, a lot of streamers, they only stream, they never actually go out and vlog or go to concerts or whatever. Everybody sees them only at their setup. It seems like a lot of people love to see them just doing, it could be the most boring vlog ever, going to Target and going to get a coffee. They love to see what we have when we own stream. It’s just been cool to see.

Tubefilter: Very interesting. Do you feel like your audience has been receptive to getting to know more about you and not just gaming? I know you said there’s some difficulties around there.

JoeWo: Yes, because no joke, I’m like an open book, which is a good thing and a bad thing. I am very chat-focused because there’s people that– and it’s just the weirdest thing. It’s so crazy. There’s people that take time from their day, from their work life, family, friends, all that stuff to watch me play a video game or chat or anything. The absolute bare minimum, least I could do is, just talk to them about life, about family, about stuff. They know literally everything about me, I’m an open book. On the other side of that is there’s a ton of streamers that are very private, which I get, but I could never do that because there’s times where I spend so much time streaming, more than my friends or family. My chat is basically like my family almost, right? It’s so crazy.

Tubefilter: I’m sitting here and thinking, if I’m in the middle of getting nuked in Apex, how am I going to read a chat? What’s the learning curve on engaging with chat versus engaging in high-level, fast gameplay?

JoeWo: There’s some days where I’m like, “Yo guys, we have a tournament and stuff.” Then they know, okay, he’s super, super, grinding the game. Most of the day I will put the streams either doing random stuff where I can pay attention to chat.

Tubefilter: No, totally. I can only imagine. I don’t have that much attention span.

JoeWo: Oh, trust me. I’ve died so many times because I’m like, “Yo, yo, hey, name,” or “Hey, name” and then there’s literally somebody right in front of me, like, “JoeWo, there was a guy right in front of you.” I was reading chat! I’m like, “That’s your guys’ fault now. Like, what?” I die all the time because I’m like, “Oh, there’s a guy literally standing in front of me and I’m like, ‘Yo, what’s up, James? How’s it going?'”

Tubefilter: It’s chat’s fault. There you go.

JoeWo: Always, always.

Tubefilter: How has your audience growth been over the last couple years? Have you noticed anything that spikes it particularly or has it been steady?

JoeWo: It’s been, I would say really steady because I’ve gone from just playing CoD games or things like that. Again, I could be wrong but I think long-term, it’ll be way better, because we’ve seen a ton of games, like I said, have their great times and their bad times.

Tubefilter: Definitely. Any cool projects that you’re looking forward to or any goals that you have overall as a creator?

JoeWo: Ooh, that’s a great question. Goals as a creator…Well, a lot, but I would say just trying to grow my stream when I’m not playing CoD or things like that. Just trying out more either vlog stuff or things like that that’s not just playing games and stuff.

Tubefilter: It seems like you’re really, really dedicated to expanding out of just gaming.

JoeWo: 100%.

Tubefilter: Very cool. Are you hoping to grow your audience on other platforms outside of Twitch?

JoeWo: Oh, for sure. For sure. They changed it too where you can stream now on other sites too, while you’re on Twitch. I’m going to be trying that soon for sure.

Tubefilter: Yes, that’s a huge deal. Let’s close with, what would be your number one piece of advice for somebody who’s looking to get into streaming?

JoeWo: Number one piece of advice? Ooh. That’s a great question. Care about your chat and those that are there. There’s so many times where I see a lot of streamers, actually a ton where my number one pet peeve of streams is they’re on their phone all the time. Your job is streaming. If I am going to get food, I would never be on the phone with somebody else being right there. That’s just saying, hey, I’m on Twitter and that’s way more important than you.

I just think that’s my number one thing is being super chat-focused because of all the things people could be doing and even if it’s one person, five people, 5,000 people, that person is taking time from their day and their life to watch you stream. That is still unbelievable and showing them that and saying, thank you, guys. I probably say that a thousand times to stream, thank you guys so much. They could be doing so many other things. That is so important, being like, guys, thank you. That means so much to me that there’s people that will take time from their day to watch me play a game or chat. Who knows? That’s just so crazy to me.