Kamcord finally offers a way for its mobile streams to make money

You can now get paid tips for broadcasting mobile games.

Kamcord, the mobile game livestreaming company that operates the Kamcord app for Android and iOS, has introduced a new way for viewers to directly fund their favorite streamers through donations. With Twitch and YouTube battling over traditional gamers on PC and console, Kamcord has stepped in to provide a destination for people who care more about Clash of Clans than League of Legends.

Twitch has 550,000 viewers at any one time, but when it comes to mobile, it has only said that viewers watched 155.6 million minutes of the smartphone-specific multiplayer online arena battler Vainglory in 2015. That’s only a fraction of the approximately 16 billion minutes viewers watch Twitch per month. And Twitch’s focus on hardcore gamers has led to the mobile community following popular mobile players to Kamcord — and, now, that audience can use Kamcord to connect with them through their wallet.

The direct funding in the Kamcord app and on the site is built right into the chat. The company positions it as a way for fans to show their support while also sticking out from the crowd. This plays on the crucial interactions between a broadcaster and their audience, and it provides streamers a way to make money from an audience that really wants their favorite streamer to notice them. Kamcord has had this option live for a few weeks, and it has led to streams where fans have donated more than $2,000 to the Clash of Clans streamer known as Galadon.

YouTube has direct funding and Twitch permits streamers to incorporate third-party donation sites, but Kamcord separates itself from this by not having ads or subscriptions as well as by obscuring the exact cash amounts by turning them into virtual gifts.

Kamcord has started generating cash through these contributions. That’s impressive considering the company has only had Kamcord up and running as a full service since June. But this revenue option makes the video service more appealing to mobile gamers who want a place to make some money while YouTube dries up due to people blocking ads.

“We’re obsessed with growing and capturing a global market, but it turns out that getting all the best creators on Kamcord is the key to that rapid growth,” Kamcord cofounder Adi Rathnam told GamesBeat. “Creators are motivated by wanting a bigger, more engaged audience, but — by far — the biggest motivation is the desire to make money.”

And Kamcord is providing a way to do that while also solving a problem where viewers dislike the idea of content creators making sponsored videos for games they don’t like watching. Those deals, where people like famous Clash of Clans stream Mike “Molt” Holt plays something like Marvel Champions in exchange for money, pay well, but it could potentially alienate some viewers as well.

But with direct funding on Kamcord, streamers can make some extra cash in a way that makes the audience feel even more connect to the broadcaster’s experience.

“The most powerful incentive for viewers is to get recognition from their favorite streamer,” said Rathnam. “The problem is that there are thousands of viewers. And there’s no way for the creator to give everyone a shoutout, so we wanted to build this as a way for the creator to give their biggest fans a shoutout.”

To accomplish this, Kamcord’s engineers came up with a model where viewers can purchase virtual gifts that have different real-world values. The gift part only exists in the chat, but everyone in the channel sees them and knows when they happen. And then the value of those goods goes into the streamers account, and they can cash that out as their pay.

“The biggest item we have is an $80 megastar that literally takes up the whole chat,” explained Rathnam. “One of our smaller streamers just received five megastars from a viewer, and he just went crazy. He was yelling so much his mom came into the room. Users ended up giving him $500 over twi hours in the form of these virtual gifts.”

Kamcord doesn’t disclose how much of that money it is getting, but it did confirm that it does take a piece of that cash. This means everyone is making money, and no one has to watch ads. That’s a deal that is working for Kamcord, and Rathnam points out that both fans and viewers love seeing those megastars.

“It just makes the stream more fun for everyone involved,” said Rathnam.