Streamers on the Rise: ChocoTaco decided to try Twitch for just one month

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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For ChocoTaco, PUBG changed everything.

He never exactly planned to be a streamer. He “had always been into competitive gaming and interested in streaming,” he says, but he’d gone to college for trumpet performance, and had a career working for a company that teaches engineering to kids.

Then PUBG–aka PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds–came out, and ChocoTaco was good at it.

Like, very good at it. “I wasn’t really attempting to do this, but I ended up really high on the leaderboards,” he says. “I decided it might be a good opportunity to stream to use my higher rank. I was rank one when I started streaming, so I used my higher rank to advertise my stream.”

He decided to give himself one month to try streaming on Twitch. Being top rank was a big bump for his then-new channel, and he found himself fitting streams in around his full-time job–something that resulted in him working 16-hour days (if he was lucky). He ended up leaving his job to stream, and for years, didn’t take a single day off. He streamed twice a day to hit as broad a range of viewers–people who watched while they were at work, people who watched after work, people in U.S. time zones, people in U.K. time zones–as possible. It was a grind, and not one he could sustain.

These days, he has a bigger presence on Twitch (1.3 million followers) and YouTube (1.6 million) than ever, but some things have changed. He streams just once a day now, and takes a day off per week. He’s also in the middle of figuring out exactly where he wants to go from here. PUBG has been his bread and butter for years, but it’s not as popular as it used to be. He’s expanded into other games, like DayZ, to see whether longtime viewers will follow him to new lands–and, further in the future, he’s eyeing a potential move into game development.

Check out our chat with him below.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tubefilter: Very nice to meet you! Let’s jump right in with a little background. Where are you from? What did you get up to before streaming?

ChocoTaco: 100%. I went to college for music. I actually have a degree in trumpet performance, and I did have a career before this. Before streaming, I worked for a company that teaches engineering to kids using Lego. It was a very cool job. I was a teacher for them for several years and then I was a manager for them for Illinois. I did that. Before that, I was into gaming, but I had never really done streaming. Then I decided to start streaming in 2017 when PUBG came out, and that’s how I got into the whole streaming scene through PUBG.

Tubefilter: What was your trigger point for getting into streaming specifically?

ChocoTaco: I had always been into competitive gaming and interested in streaming, but the thing that really triggered it was just PUBG, because I was playing PUBG when it came out and I ended up just– I wasn’t really attempting to do this, but I ended up really high on the leaderboards, and I decided it might be a good opportunity to stream to use my higher rank. I was ranked one when I started streaming, so I used my higher rank to advertise my stream.

I wasn’t that interested in trying to stream because it’s such a grind usually and there’s so many people trying to do it. I saw an opportunity with my rank to use that to catapult myself and get viewers quickly, and I decided I would just try it for one month and see what happens. Then this happened, so now I’m here.

Tubefilter: Got you. You had your rank, which is probably a great entry point for people to start watching you, but how did you originally start growing your audience? Did you focus on growing on Twitch? Did you post stuff on other platforms to help bring an audience to Twitch?

ChocoTaco: Yes. For a long time, it was just Twitch. I grew my audience just– I had unusual start, because my career, as far as viewership and audience, was pretty explosive. It was 100% because of my rank, because at the time, this was the biggest game on Twitch and I was able to be rank one in my title. That doesn’t always do it for streamers. I have other stuff going for me too. I’m good at talking, people like my voice, etcetera, etcetera, so I was able to get viewers to watch my stream and then I was also able to retain those viewers for other reasons. That’s pretty much all it was.

I didn’t do YouTube for a while. I do YouTube now, but I didn’t do YouTube, I didn’t do Twitter, I didn’t do anything at the time.

Tubefilter: How has your streaming schedule changed over the years?

ChocoTaco: Big time. When I started streaming– First of all, for the first several years, I had no days off. I think I had zero days off. Sorry, let me back up for one second. When I started streaming, I was part-time. I was working my full-time job with the Lego engineering stuff. I was doing that for, whatever, eight hours a day, and then after that, I would stream for six to eight hours right after that. That was an exhausting time, because I worked full-time and it was long days. It was 16-hour days. It was really fun and exciting because I was growing my stream really rapidly, and eventually, after only three months, maybe, I was making more money from streaming than I was at my job. I was able to put in my notice for my job, and after six months, I was able to go full-time.

When I started full-time, that’s when I went to streaming every day, seven days a week. My schedule was unusual. I did two streams per day for about five hours each. I would do like– I’m trying to remember, I did 11:00 AM my time, Central, to 4:00 PM, and I would take a three-hour break and then I would do 7:00 PM to midnight. I would do that every day. It worked really well because at the time a lot of people watch streams, they still do, but a lot of people watch streams while they’re working.

I hit that for North America, and also during the afternoon when I was streaming, it was nighttime for Europe. Then at night people would be, their commute would be over, they’d be home from work, so I hit that time period as well. That was my schedule then. Then several years later, that schedule was terrible because streaming is exhausting already. It just made it so I had no time to do anything during my days. Eventually, after l maybe three years or something, I changed my schedule and now I just do 8 to 10 hours a day, which is still a lot, but eight to 10 hours a day live in one sitting.

Tubefilter: Do you find that’s better for you?

ChocoTaco: The two streams was much worse. Two streams is much worse because even just streaming for five hours, at the end of it, you’re mentally done. You’re so exhausted depending on what kind of streamer you are. Some streamers might say they’re not, but a lot will agree that you get really exhausted. After that, taking a three-hour break and then having to come back and start again was very hard in the long run. It got harder with any job. I think it got harder the longer I did it because the fun factor starts to wear off a little bit. It was definitely harder for the split schedule.

Tubefilter: You find the longer streams are just better for you in terms of managing your time?

ChocoTaco: Yes, it works better, because instead of having two-hour chunk of time in the afternoon to do stuff and then a two-hour chunk after, which was at like 1:00 AM, now I have a bigger chunk of like five to six hours a day after streaming where I can do whatever else I want to do. It’s definitely a healthier schedule. I will say I wish I took more days off. I do take a day off now.

Tubefilter: Just one?

ChocoTaco: One per week, yes. Most streamers don’t do that. I did two for a while, but I don’t know, I think one just works better.

Tubefilter: I do feel like streamers especially are very hesitant to take any time off.

ChocoTaco: 100%. It’s a big thing. Not a lot of people talk about, but anytime you’re not streaming, it feels really bad as a streamer, because you feel like your viewers are just going to go somewhere else. It’s a competitive place. It feels bad when you’re not streaming.

Tubefilter: Is there a measurable dip in subscribers when you don’t stream, or is it more like a mental health kind of thing?

ChocoTaco: I wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t say there’s a dip. I would say it’s more of a mental thing. I think most streamers, including myself, could take more time off, but there’s no job security in streaming. Other than people who have made it really, really big, way bigger than me even, we’re all worried that in a month or in a year or whatever, there will be no more career. That has happened to some people that I know. It’s very scary.

Tubefilter: On Twitch?

ChocoTaco: Oh yes. There’s lots of people from the PUBG scene that like– PUBG is not very popular anymore, and I know a lot of streamers, I have friends who have tried to transition to other games and it’s not gone that well because it’s difficult.

Tubefilter: People are at the mercy of both the platform and at the popularity of games.

ChocoTaco: 100%, because viewers, they don’t…Like for me, I could go to playing PUBG for like 3,000 to 4,000 viewers and if I switch to something else, I might go down to 1,000 viewers because a lot of people like the streamer, but most people want to watch their streamer for the game they play, because most streamers are known for playing one specific game.

Tubefilter: I noticed that you do play several different games.

ChocoTaco: I do.

Tubefilter: How have you been able to balance that? Do you just have different segments of your audience watching you on different days?

ChocoTaco: Some watch no matter what. I think there’s different viewers. Some watch no matter what, they just watch because they like me or they like the stream, like the community. Some will only watch specific games. It just really depends on the viewers. I don’t really do anything specific for picking. I used to, I used to do when I started streaming for the first several years, I made sure to do at least one day of variety per week. A lot of streamers don’t do that but I just use it as a way to get my viewers used to me playing other things and to just test the waters to see do people watching this. Yes, they do. Do people like watching this? Oh my gosh, they definitely don’t.

Tubefilter: That’s stressful. How do you protect yourself against the possibility that things could disappear on you?

ChocoTaco: Well, it’s very stressful. One of the things what we talked about is I think people just stream every day. They just keep going and keep grinding and try to be alive as much as possible because the more you’re live, the more you’re going to retain viewers and they’re not going to go somewhere else because if you’re not live, they’re going to go somewhere else because they’re not going to, just most viewers are going to Twitch is a very interactive whole community of tons of streamers.

If I’m not playing PUBG and someone wants to watch PUBG, they’re not just going to not watch anything. They’re going to go watch someone else. I think just being live as much as possible is the best way to combat that. I think, like I said, getting your viewers used to you playing other things is really important. Something I don’t see a lot of streamers doing because then eventually when they try to transition to something else it’s not good.

Tubefilter: It’s difficult. How do you structure your streams? I noticed you do just chatting as well.

ChocoTaco: Just chatting for me, if it’s listed as that, it’s not something I normally do. Sometimes I might start the stream with that because I don’t know what I’m going to do for the day yet–but even if it’s listed, I wouldn’t say I do just chatting. 99.9% of all my content is just playing games. I don’t do react content. I am anti-react content, actually. It’s just all games for me.

Tubefilter: Do you feel like react content is a big part of just chatting?

ChocoTaco: Yes, 100%. I don’t pay super close attention to it. Over the years I have narrowed my view of what’s going on for mental health reasons. It’s very easy to pay attention to everything that’s going on and compare yourself to everyone that’s doing everything. I only pay attention now to people in my direct who I play with and what games I play. I do think react content is a lot of what just chatting is at the moment, but there’s other stuff going on too. There’s a lot of people doing really cool content in that category.

Tubefilter: This is your full-time thing. We’ve talked a lot about your daily structure and your streams. What is your plan moving forward? Do you have any plans or goals over the next year or so? Are you expanding your content at all?

ChocoTaco: Well, Twitch just enabled multistreaming, which is insane. That’s huge news. I think it’s not huge news for everyone, but I have a big YouTube following, so it’s potentially very big for me because most streamers do not have a very healthy YouTube channel. I’m lucky because PUBG has a good YouTube audience so it’s very easy.

Tubefilter: Is it a bigger audience on YouTube than Twitch?

ChocoTaco: No, I wouldn’t say so, but it’s certainly a different audience, because YouTube has a lot more international viewers, whereas Twitch is mostly North America and Europe. I’m tapping into another audience, but it’s great for me because I can just multistream. Let’s say I’m playing PUBG, I’ll have like three to 4,000 viewers on Twitch and I’ll have 1,000 to 1,500 on YouTube, which is very fortunate for me.

Like I said, most streamers don’t have a very healthy YouTube channel, and it’s not their fault. It’s just extremely hard. It’s just like Twitch–it’s extremely hard to grow your channel. Even though other streamers can multistream, they might start multistreaming and only have five viewers, ten viewers.

Tubefilter: For you, you know that it’s a significant opportunity.

ChocoTaco: 100%. Other than that, my plans are just to keep streaming trying to find games that I can play that aren’t PUBG. I’m trying to not do PUBG very much anymore because I have 8,000+ hours into the game and I’ve been playing it for too long. It’s more of a job and I don’t really enjoy it that much anymore. Just trying to experiment. I’ve been playing a lot of a game called DayZ, which has been good for me. Just trying to feel that out. I would love to get into some other things like game development, but every time I’ve tried to do that, I just don’t have time. I just don’t have extra time to do anything.

Tubefilter: It’s very hard to do that when you’re streaming six days a week. Do you feel like there’s ever going to be some–not breaking point, but point where you can take more time off and take more time to learn other things? You’re in a very committed intense schedule right now.

ChocoTaco: I have always viewed–and I don’t view it as much anymore, but during the time when PUBG was popular–I always viewed streaming as get as much as I can while I can. I’m not huge into the business side of things, but I’m just trying to get it while it’s there. As far as other interests go, those are just things I might do in the future. For now, I’m just totally focused on streaming and making content for Twitch and YouTube. I don’t have any specific plans to get– I would love to do game development later in life, but maybe I’ll make enough money to retire early and then I could get into that because that would be really fun. It’s something I’m really interested in, but currently, it’s just streaming.

Tubefilter: I know you’re repped by Viral Nation, but do you have anybody working with you? Editors or anybody?

ChocoTaco: I have just one person. My YouTube editor. She goes by Broad Stroke. She’s been my editor for two or three years. Basically, got my YouTube channel started, and she’s fantastic. She just does all my YouTube videos and does clips for social media and all that stuff. That’s it. Some streamers have a bigger thing going on where they have a lot of different editors, but I just have one editor, and then like you said, Viral Nation.

Tubefilter: Perfect. To close, do you have any advice for fellow streamers?

ChocoTaco: As far as advice goes, I get asked this question a lot, actually. Of course, there’s…I don’t know how many unique streamers every month on Twitch. Millions, I think. I do get asked about advice quite a bit. My honest advice to people is always to just do streaming for fun and see where it goes and take it from there. A lot of people that try to do streaming, just go like, I’m going to be a full-time streamer and there you go, and it just doesn’t work. It’s just so competitive and difficult. My advice is just to do it for fun, and this is exactly what I did. I was just like, I’m going to try it for a month and see what happens. I got super lucky and I was really fortunate, but that’s not the case for 99% of people. My advice would just be to do it for fun.