Pokimane explains why YouTubers can make more than Twitch streamers

Streaming star Pokimane explained why YouTube is the most profitable social media platform for influencers looking to make content creation a full-time career.

Imane ‘Pokimane’ Anys is the most-followed woman on Twitch and boasts over a decade of experience streaming to an audience of millions of viewers.

After ending her exclusive partnership with Twitch earlier this year, Poki has started traveling more and even launched her own podcast, where she told listeners the reasons why Twitch actually isn’t the best place for streamers to make money.

In her podcast, Poki broke down the least and most profitable social media platforms for creators, with TikTok coming in dead last. Instagram came in third place, as it offers a wider variety of content that creators can monetize.

Twitch came in second place thanks to its built-in ads, sponsored ads, subscriptions, donations, and merch that can be linked to streamers’ profiles… but she claims that it’s still not as good as her first-place pick, YouTube.

According to Pokimane, Twitch is “much more volatile and audience-based” than YouTube, whose ads “pay the best” out of any other platform.

“Every piece of content you make is, in a way, a long-term investment, and it can still make you money even years and years down the line,” she explained. “That’s very common for YouTubers, to still make even a couple hundred bucks off of popular videos that they had five or ten years ago.”

Although Pokimane made her home on Twitch for more than a decade, she’s been branching out to other platforms over the last few years like TikTok and YouTube, where she’s been uploading monthly vlogs and even occasionally streaming.

Poki has made her stance on Twitch quite clear in the months after ending her contract with the site, which she called “messy” following its numerous issues with inappropriate content dominating its platform in late 2023.