Did you know that 85 percent of U.S. households have at least one video streaming subscription? Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, people have started going out less for movies. In fact, 2020 was a horrific year for the movie industry, generating the lowest revenue of the past 40 years. While 2021 capped out at around $4.4 billion, – a 91-percent increase year-over-year, it was still 61 percent shy of the pre-COVID days.
Thanks to livestreaming services like YouTube and over-the-top (OTT) platforms, such as Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max,that allow movies and shows to be viewed at home, the video streaming industry was valued at $370 billion in 2022, and is projected to experience a whopping CAGR of 19.9 percent in 2023. The subscription count for these platforms is constantly increasing, with a plethora of new content coming out every day.
In this article, we’ll discuss some of the most popular streaming platforms, and teach you how to build your own livestreaming service. Keep reading to learn more.
What You’ll Learn In This Post
- What Is a Livestreaming Site
- Top 3 Livestreaming Websites
- Popular Livestreaming Website Features
- Steps to Build a Livestreaming Site
- How to Market Your Website
- How to Monetize Your Livestreaming Site
What Is a Livestreaming Site?
Livestreaming websites allow users to watch and create videos in real time that can be shared with friends and family.
With versatile content and diversified creators, these websites are able to engage every demographic by enabling viewers to post comments on videos and also give ratings.
Top 3 Live Streaming Websites
Livestreams have become one of the most consumed digital content by people of all ages. With the increasing interest from the general public, there are numerous websites available that cater to the audience who love to watch live content and interact with streamers. The most popular livestreaming platforms include Twitch, YouTube and Vimeo.
Twitch
Since its release in 2007, Twitch has been a go-to hub for the gaming community. In addition to an abundance of digital content and flawless high-definition quality, Twitch is user-friendly, interactive, and free for basic use.
The fan base who support the platform’s stream channels and interact in live chat are provided with badges and emotes in response to their “cheermotes” – or purchasable support tokens) that eventually boost earnings for content creators, while also keeping the audience engaged.
YouTube
With 2.6 billion active monthly users, YouTube has no shortage of video content. Anyone can livestream on YouTube without spending a buck. The platform provides real-time analytics and a live chat feature in which viewers can interact with streamers and even financially support their favorite creator. Livestreamers can also enable advertisements, which contributes to YouTube’s revenue along with subscriptions.
Vimeo
Vimeo is one of the best video streaming platforms available on the web today. This platform enables users to broadcast high-quality videos and stream in high definition without any advertisements. It even lets you backup your streams and perform various customizations in the stream. Avid streamers can also opt for Vimeo’s premium package, which allows up to three concurrent livestreams of 1080p resolution, viewer analytics and unlimited viewer count for $75 per month.
Popular Livestreaming Website Features
To learn how to make a video streaming website, you first need to have a decent idea of the characteristics of a top-notch streaming platform. These features will ultimately ensure your site is poised for success.
Video Content Management Tools
Video CMS tools allow users to create, store and monetize video content on a livestreaming website. When using these tools, broadcasters will store and organize all the properties of the video content uploaded on the site so videos can be hosted properly with correct labels and information. This eventually helps the users to easily search within the library of videos to select the content they want.
Secure Video Streaming
Considering that by 2025, the compensation for cybercrime will be around $10.5 trillion, it is necessary to secure video content on your website. These digital assets are always vulnerable to cyber attacks or piracy. Various encryption methods (standards), such as SSL-encrypted payloads and AES Encryption, are implemented by top streaming websites in order to maintain secure video streaming on the platform.
Low Latency Streaming
Statistics show that 40 percent percent of people completely lose interest in a video due to continuous buffering. No viewer would tolerate lags and delays while watching a livestream because it completely kills off the real-time experience of the video content. Hence, it is essential to provide low-latency streaming by the use of high-speed servers and reducing access time in storage devices if you are to build a successful livestreaming website that people would love. Using CDN (Content Delivery Network) servers might help to reduce the latency in streaming, as well as improvise the security of video content.
4 Steps to Successfully Build a Livestreaming Website
After getting your head straight with the key features, you must be thinking how to make a website for livestreaming by yourself. It obviously isn’t an easy task to challenge massive platforms like YouTube in terms of user count initially. However, you could add a specific element in your streaming platform that differs from others that can garner a certain level of attention from the people and eventually lead to the success of your streaming platform. There are some key steps you should follow to make sure you come up with a top-notch streaming website that people would love to visit.
1. Determine Niché
Every website caters to a particular niche that aims to deliver its products and services to a specific group of people. This is especially applicable in the case of startups and new businesses, since it’s an easier and smarter choice to find a target demographic and center your product around it. When creating a livestreaming website, you’ll need to determine your audience who will tune into your site and satisfy their appetite for digital video content. For example, a livestreaming site for kids would have a colorful layout and content mostly associated with games, cartoons, or toys.
2. Conceptualize Functionality
Before designing a website, you need to conceptualize the functionality that the site will possess. The proper design of your website is completely based on how you visualize the purpose of the site in your head. Thus, preliminary research and plans must be conducted to understand the perspective of a generic internet user so that you can capitalize on the market by winning over those people and inducing a positive impact in their lives. You should then consult creative UI/UX designers to give your ideas a visual form and see if it feels right.
Users always prefer easy-to-use clickable interfaces for a streaming site with simple video control options. Proper design aesthetics is a must when it comes to a streaming platform’s usability, as it can be off-putting if a user has to jump through hoops to watch a single video every time they visit. A livestreaming website should be minimalistic to the eye but fascinating with its content.
3. Hire A Website Developer
After that, it’s time to develop your livestreaming website. After finalizing its design layout and engaging features, you will need to prepare a proper team of professionals who have a stronghold in web development toolkits and frameworks, unless you are a full-stack web developer yourself.
It’s a good idea to consult with a web development agency to easily carry out this task without having to worry about the technicalities. While hiring professionals, however, you’ll need to look out for these things:
Portfolio and Experience
A portfolio of a company gives an idea about its skillset and caliber. Generally, in a portfolio, a company includes all of the websites and projects that they have made for their clients over time, which can provide insight on how they get the job done for their upcoming projects. Checking out their portfolio will also paint a picture of whether or not the professionals you have approached are capable enough to create a livestreaming website for you.
Clearly Defined Development Procedure
The team should be given a proper development road to building the application with a clearly defined framework built after doing the required research. In return, you should demand complete transparency with the team you hired during the entire developmental stage of your livestreaming website. The development team should communicate with you about the tech stack being used, as well as the details about the servers and database that will constitute the website. They should also be open to inputs from your end during the process.
Post-Release Support Options
All the post-release terms and service options should be disclosed clearly to the development team during the hiring process. Since a website will most likely need bug fixing, upgradation, and maintenance after release, it’s best to sign an agreement with the development team before you make a video streaming website to make sure adequate support is provided to you and your streaming platform even after delivery.
4. Deliver and Maintain Site
Before launching the site, you need to make sure the site is properly tested for bugs and errors before delivery. The entire project should be subjected to quality assurance and ready for web deployment so that people can easily access the livestreaming website.
Your website should definitely have a feedback portal to receive genuine criticism or gratitude from the users that visit your site. Taking those insights, you should plan to make the site even better and more innovative. Additionally, the team should make preliminary plans to handle large video files and traffic congestion, which will definitely require periodic maintenance throughout the operation of the site. The video content on the site should also have a regular backup system in case of a disaster.
How To Market Your Website
Just because you deploy a website on the internet doesn’t guarantee that users will consider using your site, especially when they already have sites like YouTube and Twitch providing excellent content. This means that you need to adapt proper marketing strategies to divert traffic to your site and increase your active user count. Here are some effective ways to do so:
Search Engine Optimization
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a simple but elegant technique for digital marketing of your livestreaming. Search engines can mobilize bots on the web to scrape information from the site and push its index to the top of search results. This will eventually increase user traffic because your website will be easily accessible on the web when people search for easily relatable keywords to find particular videos and streams.
Google Search Ads
Pay-per-click (PPC) is a digital advertising revenue model for Google AdSense where the
the service provider gets charged for every click on the advertisement. These Google search ads are economical in comparison to any other paid subscription models for ads. With the use of PPCs, the advertisements show up on Google search results or Google-based applications using Google AdSense when people search for terms or look for apps that serve the same purpose as you. This turns out to be extremely effective in diverting traffic to your streaming website.
How To Monetize Your Livestreaming Site
After going through the development and launch of your own digital content platform, you obviously expect it to make money for you. After putting out an enormous effort and serious investment, you would want the website to sustain itself, while also keeping your business afloat by generating some considerable revenue. Here are some ways to monetize your livestreaming site to reap the benefits of the user base that you have created and start generating some profit in no time:
Run Video Ads
One of the ways many video streaming platforms generate money is by running video ads during the watch time of the videos. Sites like YouTube allow creators to enable advertisements from various different sources, letting the content creator earn money while also generating revenue for your website for hosting those adverts. This model is highly effective and is incorporated by virtually every livestreaming platform today.
Donation Commissions
Many popular livestreaming websites allow their content creators to provide memberships and subscriptions to their community for which their followers will get different perks and benefits that they can make use of when watching the livestream. You can also integrate your site with payment options so that the streamers can get direct donations from their viewers in which you would get a certain cut of the sum. This serves as a win-win scenario for the audience, the creator, and the platform.
Legal Considerations
At this stage, you’re likely eager to get started and build a livestreaming website for your business, but there are a few more considerations to make before launching your site. Legalities. It’s essential that you carefully consider and consult with legal professionals regarding your live streaming site. Otherwise, you could encounter content copyright and safeguarding issues.
DMCA
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) means that because your website allows users to create and post content, there must be a mechanism in place to report copyright infringements. Failure to comply with the DMCA can result in hefty fines and penalties from the government. You can read more about the DMCA and how to protect yourself by referring to this Idea Maker guide, which has covered the topic in detail.
User Safeguarding Policy
How will you safeguard your users from harmful content? Or do you plan to take a free-speech approach by encouraging users to self-regulate? Either way, you’ll still need to consider age restrictions to ensure children do not use your platform and engage in something that they shouldn’t as minors. Creating a safeguarding policy for young users, women, and people of all backgrounds is essential for a public platform like a livestreaming website. It’s always best to consult with a legal professional for advice before starting out.
Livestreaming Website Development Cost
The cost of developing a website will greatly vary depending on several factors. These include, but are not limited to, the number of features, functionality type, design structure, development timeframe, platform support, and scalability.
A site like Twitch will take about $90,000 to start development of the site. The total development cost should include the cost of hosting the domain for the site alongside the cost of video stream servers, which provides high bandwidth and low latency for a certain subscription. One should also include the cost of storage devices or RAID arrays of disks that store the video content for backup to actually finalize the development cost of the site.
Idea Maker’s Experience In Website Development
Idea Maker is an application and website development company that aims to enhance small businesses by expanding their horizon. Our team of experts and developers make sure you have a properly engineered website that incorporates the true essence of your business idea.
Recently, we came up with a unique social website that allows people behind bars to keep in touch with their families. The family and friends of inmates can call, as well as send photos and MMS that get stored in the service center of InmateMall. The messages are then given out in printed form..
Just as with Inmate Mall, our team will listen to your problem statement, unravel the concepts behind it, andlater aim to make that dream a reality before ever selling you a product or a service. This way, you’re guaranteed full transparency through the website’s design and development.
If you’re ready to start your own livestreaming website or a mobile application, wait no further. Schedule a free consultation call with us today, and get important insights and guidance from the experts at Idea Maker.
