Many online would love to make a living as live streamers. According to YouGov, at least 11 percent of American teens feel that streaming is a dream job — beating out musicians, nurses, or athletes. But while there are thousands of hopefuls, only under 1 percent of the top Twitch streamers earn the median US household income of $75,000, according to a 2021 data leak from the company.
Kick, the live-streaming platform that started in 2022, has purported to address this income issue. For one, it offers a 95/5 revenue split for subscriber earnings (higher than Twitch’s 70/30). And interestingly, it also recently finished the first official month of the Kick Creator Incentive Program (KCIP), which pays creators an hourly wage to stream.
What is the Kick Creator Incentive Program?
According to Kick’s website, streamers who meet certain criteria can apply to be paid through the program. Those criteria include having an average of 100 concurrent viewers and streaming for 50 hours in the past 30 days. The program started testing with 33 creators in September 2023. However, there was little to no information on how much these streamers made.
Suddenly, at the end of March 2024, two dozen Kick creators posted their earnings on X. While some only made a couple of dollars, others pulled in four-figure sums paid out through the banking app Stripe.
“If I’m being honest, I made more in the past two months on Kick than I did in three years streaming on Twitch,” streamer Luke “Majin” Rodriguez told Passionfruit.
Rodriguez shared on X that after streaming 39 times for 155 hours in March, he earned nearly $3,000.
With 8,000 Kick followers, the Call of Duty and variety streamer was attracted to the platform because of the 95/5 revenue split and the possibility of standing out as a smaller creator on a platform that hasn’t become completely overcrowded yet.
Rogriguez was one of the original 33 “guinea pigs” of the Kick Creator Incentive Program when the requirements hadn’t been established. He was grandfathered into the current program.
How much does the Kick Creator Incentive Program pay?
What determines the hourly rate creators are paid in the KCIP still remains unknown. However, Rodriguez believes it is dependent on your CCV (concurrent viewership), how active your chat is, and other unknown factors.
Each session, this hidden formula can drastically change how much a creator earns during each stream. According to Rodriguez, in some streams, he’d earn “three to five dollars an hour.” In others, he’d be closer to “15 dollars.”
“Nobody really has a definite answer as to how it works,” Rodriguez said. “I like the fact that it scales, and nobody really knows how. Because I feel like it’s an adventure.”
It’s also unclear where the money for the Kick Creator Incentive Program comes from. On Twitch, streamers are paid out by advertisers and can earn extra money from paid sponsorships through the Bounty Board. Kick has few ads, though they are rolling out more, and no paid sponsorship opportunities.
“In terms of where the money comes from, I don’t know, I’m just here to get paid,” Rodriguez said.
The history of Kick
Kick was co-founded by Eddie Kraven, the Australian businessman who made billions in founding online cryptocurrency casino Stake.
From the start, the site struggled to break the dominance of other streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. Kick still seemed like a risk for some creators after earning a negative reputation online as the home for streamers banned on other platforms.
For example, Adin Ross, a 23-year-old streamer and part-owner of Kick, was one of the first streamers to rise to fame on the new platform. Among other things, Ross has platformed a neo-Nazi and encouraged a fan to throw urine on a family member. He also repeatedly endorsed Andrew Tate, a misogynistic influencer currently facing human trafficking and sexual assault charges.
The platform has also been accused of inflating viewership with viewer bots, though in December, it banned a large amount of bots. The Kick Creator Incentive Program has helped alleviate some of that fear, giving streamers more of a monetary reason to stick around.
The future of Kick monetization
On a March 31 live stream, Kick’s Streaming Experience Lead Andrew Santamaria said, “This isn’t some magic trick that we are hiding, come over here and get paid for your stream. Everyone has a shot.” When asked by Passionfruit on X why these payment metrics were finally being shared, Santamaria did not respond.
According to StreamCharts, Kick has nearly a million streamers. Most of them don’t reach the qualifications to get admitted to the KCIP. But just look on social media, and you can find creators grinding to get in.
“KCIP would change my life,” wrote one hopeful streamer on X. “Just seems like a no-brainer for streamers who trying to make this a full-time gig,” wrote another.
“I love what I do. I love entertaining,” Rodriguez said. “And, if Kick is the platform for me to be in, I’m here. This is my family right now.”
