超过55人,抽搐上有5000个粉丝, 电脑动画 grad Mav has built a considerable following both on her personal page as well as through her work with the gaming collective 劳驾. Since 2014, she’s been streaming under the gamer tag TheMavShow. 通过与抽搐的合作, she’s been able to turn her love of video games into a full-time job — one that often finds her wearing silly costumes and 和她的狗在家里跳舞. 从各方面来看，她都实现了梦想.

但我是怎么做到的呢? We spoke with Mav about her journey to professional content creator, to get her three best tips for building a 抽搐 stream.

最好的主播总是忠于自己.

Streaming is a huge technical undertaking that goes way beyond simply turning on your laptop’s built-in camera. Polished content tends to outperform content that looks and sounds second-rate, so Mav suggests new streamers invest in a decent microphone to provide their stream with clear audio.

Once you’ve got your set-up ready, it’s go time. Mav says another big mistake new streamers make is putting pressure on themselves to be pros right out of the gate.

“You’re not going to be the best on your first day. You’re not going to be the best your first year. 不过没关系. 抽搐并不是一个精心策划的成品. 它会和你一起成长, if you’re genuine then people will have a genuine response to you,她说。.

Staying true to yourself means playing games that make you happy, 即使它们不是最受欢迎的. The goal is to attract like-minded people to your channel and to make quality content that captures the joy you feel when you play.

“No one wants to watch anybody play a game for the first time. Your audience expects you to be knowledgeable about whatever you’re playing,她说。.

Work to build a good 社区 on (and off) 抽搐.

Early on, Mav found moderate streaming success through 抽搐. She was living in Florida at the time and just finishing up school, she was playing a lot of 命运. “I was getting hundreds of people on my stream but not thousands,” she explains.

That all changed as she became more involved with the 命运 社区. She made friends with Kevin Murray and Alex Bamberg, two Tampa-based streamers who produce content under the name 罕见的下降. Kevin and Alex are also the co-founders of GuardianCon, Florida’s premier gaming convention.

“它开始是因为所有的 命运 streamers wanted to come together and meet our viewers and each other,” says Mav. “Now it’s this big convention where we raise a ton of money for St. 裘德儿童医院. GuardianCon has raised over $2 million in just a couple of years.”

When Mav relocated to Seattle, WA, she took her ties to the 社区 along. “命运 has been a really big part of my life,她说。. “他们是我最好的朋友.”

记住:每个人都在一起解决问题.

The best thing about platforms like 抽搐 is that they’re constantly evolving. Viewers expect consistently, but creators get to define the terms. For Mav, that means balancing life with her family (she’s a mom of two) with her life online.

“For me personally, I pick and choose,她说。. “Sometimes I’ll think, ‘I haven’t seen my kids much today,’ so I’ll take time off. Sometimes I want to take a day off but there are five games coming out that week and I can’t. We make it a point to have dinner together as a family, I try to stream when they’re at school or in bed.”

最后，做你喜欢做的事，她说.

“If you’re happy with a nine-to-five and you like streaming on the weekends, then you win. I wanted to do it the hard way and be my own boss. I wanted to create an awesome show and leave my mark on people. 我想要天空和星星，所有的一切. 这一切都让我更加努力.”

追随五月 抽搐, 推特, Instagram.