How to Start Your Streaming Service: Small Guide for Beginners

What will you choose – reading a book or watching a film? Most people will prefer movies because they are visual and more simple for us. Thanks to this feature, most of the internet traffic goes to sites like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Twitch, and YouTube. Below, we’ll show you how to use this trend by creating your live video streaming site and monetizing it. 

Step 1: Study the Video Streaming Market

Recent research by Sandvine Incorporated indicated that video streaming takes about 60% of web traffic (online streaming of news, TV shows, and series, sports events, movies, and games) on Netflix, Twitch, and other platforms. When starting a video streaming site, you should look for a development company and pay attention to their experience in development, design, and advertising. You may choose either a CMS or website developers that are able to implement all your ideas into life. For instance, you can hire a team from Gole.ms – drupal development services of the top quality. To make the right choice, you should also decide on the business model.

Step 2: Choose a Website Business Model

If we analyze the existing streaming services and their analogs, we can choose one of the following business models:

1. Paid subscription for all content

Subscribers have to pay a defined amount of money for a certain period to be able to download/broadcast their materials or watch other users’ videos. This financial model was taken by Hulu, Netflix, and Stadia. Meanwhile, clients are usually offered several subscription options, that vary in the quantity and quality of content. Selecting this financial model for your streaming portal means the absence of ads on the site and while watching videos.

2. Free access accompanied by ads and premium features

This business model can be implemented in the form of two sub-types:

• All videos and streams are free. The site is monetized via ads at the beginning of the video and/or while watching it. This business model is used by Twitch.
• Most of the content is free, but there are individual videos that you either have to pay a certain amount to access or subscribe to. This is how YouTube works.

In both cases, the site can receive additional profit due to premium features, such as the ability to chat with a streamer, original profile customization, disabling ads, etc.

Step 3: Decide on the Functionality

Streaming tools should be convenient for all users (video content providers, viewers, administration), regardless of their needs and content rights. List of the universal features includes:

• Homepage;
• Login/registration page;
• User profile;
• Language;
• Video search bar;
• Video library;
• Subscription and interaction;
• Payment options, etc.

In Conclusion

Having done all the above-mentioned, you can start the development of your streaming site. A lot of work is ahead, including making a design, advertising campaign, signing agreements, etc. However, we encourage you to consult with professionals at each stage to get an excellent result.