What Are Gifted Subs on Twitch & YouTube?
Do you know about gifted subs and memberships on Twitch and YouTube? Click here to learn what they are and how to use them on streaming platforms.
If you’ve been on Twitch for any small amount of time and followed any of the big creators on the platform, you’ve probably heard a streamer or two say that iconic phrase: “Thank you for the gifted subs!”
Clearly, based on the reaction of the streamer alone, you can imagine that gifted subs are super important on the platform. But if you’re new to Twitch, you might not be familiar with these precious gems or why people get so stoked about them.
So today, we’re gonna chat about all things related to gifted subs. If you want to become a streamer one day, or if you’re looking for more ways to support your favorite creators on Twitch, keep reading.
What Are Gifted Subs?
Gifted subs are pretty much exactly what they sound like. If you subscribe to a channel, you can pay for someone else to get a month-long subscription to that channel. It’s a fantastic transaction that benefits everybody. The creator gets a new subscriber, a follower gets to have a subscription for free, and you get the satisfaction of supporting your favorite creator.
If you’re gifting subs, you can decide whether to give one, three, six, or 12 months of a subscription. You can also decide to give them anonymously, and you can even choose specific viewers or followers that you want to gift to.
Gifted subs are a super big deal to Twitch streamers. Whenever creators get gifted subs, most of them will make a point to give a big shout-out and thank the person who gifted those subs.
How Often Do People Gift Subs?
This question largely depends on the size of the creator. Smaller creators don’t often get gifted subs. Gifting subs is a big deal because it costs a decent amount of money. Most people only gift subs when they’re really passionate about supporting that creator’s channel.
Naturally, this is going to happen much more often on bigger channels. The biggest creators can even get several gifted subs every single time they stream.
Other Twitch Features for Streamers
There’s more to Twitch than just gifted subs — if you want to make money streaming, it’s important to know how Twitch works and what you can do on the platform. Here are a few basics about the features of this live-streaming giant and how people use them.
Related article: 9 Tips to Get Viewers & Grow on Twitch
Channels
On Twitch, channels are very similar to channels on YouTube. A streamer can create a channel, and they can stream live from their channel whenever they want. Head to their channel, and you can watch them live, go back and see previous streams, learn about them, see their schedule, and more.
Chat
Chat is one of the most fun features on Twitch. As a creator is live streaming, anybody can type in the chat and comment in real time on what’s going on in the stream. You can ask the creator questions, compliment them on their game, razz them, interact with other fans, and so much more.
Through the chat, you can also engage with the creator in a way that supports them financially — but we’ll get to that in a minute.
Followers
If you like a creator, you can become their follower. At the click of a button, you’ll start to get notifications when they go live, and their content will show up on your home page when you open Twitch.
It’s a completely free way to support the creator you like and have their content more readily available to you.
Subscriptions (Subs)
On Twitch, any user can head to any creator’s channel and check out their content for free. You can watch them stream live, watch their previous streams in their library, talk in the chat, and even become a follower, all for no cost. But the real fans purchase subscriptions to their favorite creators, which offer a lot of perks.
Subscriptions, or subs, are a monthly fee that you pay to one specific creator to get an enhanced experience on their channel. Each creator decides what benefits their subs get, but it can include things like emotes, badges, exclusive chat rooms, and even ad-free viewing. But at the end of the day, it’s up to the creator to decide what their subscriptions mean.
Creators can even have tiered subscriptions, allowing you to pay more to unlock more exclusive features and have an even better experience. Most standard subs are $4.99, but there can also be tiers at $9.99 and $24.99.
On top of that, because Amazon owns Twitch, if you’re an Amazon Prime member, you have access to Prime Gaming, which gives you one free Twitch subscription per month.
Related article: Twitch vs. YouTube for Streaming: Which is Best?
Bits, Cheers, and Cheermotes
Lastly, let’s talk about Bits, Cheers, and Cheermotes. These are some of the other ways you can support creators on Twitch and get noticed by the creator and their other followers and subs.
Bits are a sort of “Twitch currency” that gives you tons of ways to show some love to your favorite streamers. Once you buy Bits, you can use the bits to Cheer in chat during a stream.
Cheers will highlight your comment in chat as well as give you an animation for your comment. These animations are called Cheermotes. You get noticed, your comment gets pinned, and the creator gets about one cent per bit you use on their channel.
The more bits you use per cheer, the more extravagant the comment becomes. The Cheermote animation gets more intense, and your comment gets pinned higher the more bits you use.
Are There Gifted Subs on YouTube?
As you might know, YouTube has also broken into the live-streaming space in a big way. Lots of gamers are moving away from Twitch and toward YouTube to stream their gaming sessions to the masses. And YouTube has adopted a lot of features that are similar to Twitch.
YouTube already has a different definition for the word “subscriber,” so the YouTube equivalent of a Twitch sub is called a “membership.” Memberships function exactly like subs. You can pay a few bucks a month to unlock exclusive perks on a channel and support the creator.
Gifted Memberships
YouTube also allows you to gift memberships to other users. It works in the same way that it does on Twitch, but on YouTube, the way Memberships are gifted is slightly different.
Specifically, YouTube has a different process for deciding who gets the gifted memberships. First, users who would like to receive gifted memberships have to opt in by clicking the gift icon in the chat and selecting “Allow Gifts.”
On top of that, YouTube will give the membership to the subscribers who are most active in the channel. YouTube wants to reward active users, so if you want to be more likely to receive a gifted membership, make sure you watch a lot of streams, like a lot of videos, and comment!
Do Gifted Subs Stick Around?
On Twitch and YouTube, people who receive gifts have the option to upgrade their gift to a regular subscription or membership, which turns into even more support for the creator. This is why gifted subs and memberships are such a big deal. They often translate to long-term support and engagement for the creator.
There are a lot of users out there who want to subscribe or get a membership to a creator, but they just don’t. Then, all of a sudden, that gifted sub comes in, and their mindset changes. It’s like being invited to the cool kids’ lunch table.
They’ll start having more courage to chat and to use bits and cheers. And some will even decide to convert their gifted sub into a regular subscription, which just means even more long-term support for a creator.
How To Get Your Fans to Gift Subs and Memberships
If you’re a career streamer, you’re going to want your followers to gift subs to other followers. It means more support for your channel, more confident fans, and an overall better community. But how can you convince people to donate?
Well, for starters, it’s incredibly important that you take a moment to sincerely thank people when they gift subs to your channel. Lots of creators will take a pause from the game to call the gifter out by name and tell the other members of the chat to show them some love. Some streamers even have a signature phrase or action they’ll do to thank gifters.
If your viewers see that gifting subs or memberships will get them positively noticed by you, they’ll be much more likely to give gifts themselves.
On top of that, it could be helpful to take note of who receives the gifted subs. It could be worth it to keep them in mind so you can make a point to engage with them in the future. The more you engage with people, the more likely they’ll be to turn that gift into a recurring sub or membership.
The Gift That Keeps on Giving
That’s everything you need to know about gifted subs and memberships on Twitch and YouTube. Go on and gift some subs to your favorite creators to show them some support and help them achieve their dreams. Or, if you’re a creator, keep grinding on streams so you can get some gifted subs of your own!
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