If you’re tapped into the streaming world, you’ve most likely heard the name Kai Cenat.
As AfroTech previously told you, in February, the 21-year-old was reportedly the first Black streamer to reach 200,000 subscribers on Twitch. Additionally, he was said to be only the third person to achieve the milestone.
As Cenat’s channel continues to skyrocket, he has now opened up about how he pockets money based on Twitch’s subscription model.
During an interview with Complex’s Speedy Morman, Cenat shared how the popular live streaming service works.
“Everybody usually confuses it,” Cenat explained, according to Complex. “So followers is like, ‘Okay, let me follow you.’ When you subscribe, you’re paying to, like, [not] get any ads. So you can just watch the shows straight. You get, like, these fire emotes that I created. … It’s just a whole bunch of benefits that you get that somebody who follows doesn’t have.”
The outlet discloses that, at the time of Cenat’s interview with Morman, he had around 81,000 subscribers who each paid $5 per month, totaling $405,000. However, he mentioned that the majority of revenue splits on Twitch start at 50/50. While he made it clear what the general process was, he didn’t go into detail about his own split.
“When it comes to money stuff, I don’t like talking about it,” he said. “But with Twitch it’s like, with a subscriber—with a sub—it’s originally, it’s 50/50. People in the Twitch space have different splits. I’m not gon’ say mine but people have different splits and that’s how it is. A lot of the other money comes from ad watching and all that other stuff.”
As for how much money Cenat generates monthly — given his increase in subscribers — figures would look much differently now. On the other hand, he has 6.2 million followers (as of this writing).
Cenat’s journey to building a lucrative streaming channel began during his teenage years.
As previously reported by AfroTech, he credits Aunt Cathy, the woman standing next to him in his Twitch profile picture, for helping him by buying him his first laptop to edit videos.