IvanaHyde – Variety Streamer & Model Who's Built a Strong Community

Tell us your history with video games in general

My first gaming experience was with my dad, every other weekend when I was over we played Tomb Raider I, II and III, we always gamed together, mainly Grand Turismo as my dad is really into F1 and well I definitely took that over from him, it’s not something I stream, but we still play whenever I fly to the Netherlands to visit my family. (I moved to London, UK in 2018).

I always played single player games when growing up as I had no friends to play with. Eventually I met a really nice group of people I still play Heroes of the Storm with today and was roommates with for a few years as well, but only do that in my own time to really be able to hang out with them and not get distracted by the fact that I am streaming.

The origin of my gaming name is actually my model name. I combined my first name Ivana with Hyde (from Dr. Jekyll and Hyde). Now people have been pointing out that if you say it with an accent it sounds like “I wanna hide”, as my viewers love to see me play horror games, it’s quite convenient haha.

My passion with gaming started due to my dad introducing me, I also was bullied a lot when I was in school and gaming gave me an escape to a different reality and has helped me through a lot of difficult times.

What’s your backstory and how did you get into streaming?

Due to lockdown, and me having more time, at home I decided to start streaming my games. I do it in my free time anyway so why not stream it and share the fun experience? Another big inspiration to start streaming was due to my past. Like I said I’ve been bullied a lot and streamers helped me feel welcome in their community and it lifted me up. I am now a very happy bean and would love to share the positivity with other people who might go through something difficult, make them feel welcome and hope to make them feel better. If I can make someone laugh and it makes their day, then my goal is reached.

I had no experience with streaming but am quite handy when it comes to computers, if I didn’t know how to set something up or change it, I’d just look it up on YouTube and tadaa I was all set and ready to go. I’ve been self-employed since I was 21, got out of school with a business degree and able to use that to make my hobby (modeling) into a full-time job. I do everything myself, finances, bookings, my work schedule, etc, so I just decided to put some more time and effort into streaming and adjust my schedule to that and got no financial loss from it, mainly only gained due to expanding.

Tell us about your channel and community

I believe to have the most wholesome community, I think every streamer probably says that about their community. People get along so well in the chat and always welcome new viewers into the community as long as they are respectful to them and also towards me of course. Luckily I have a team of amazing moderators who make sure everything stays wholesome and respectful. I love it when I see people come back to the stream on a regular basis.

I am a variety streamer. I love RPGs, shooters, open world, horror and story line games. Whenever we finish a game I make a poll for my viewers to vote what to stream next, I list 5 games that I would like to play and let them vote. Even without streaming I would still play those games in my own time. Apart from the games, I do viewer games twice a month with the community and it’s always a lot of fun, everyone gets to participate, you don’t need to be subscribed but of course it does give you a first place in the queue.

Tell us about your brand and how you’ve been able to obtain success

I am myself on stream. I want people to like me for who I am instead of who I pretend to be. Due to my past of not really having any friends I pretended to be who they wanted me to be, but it made me very unhappy to not just be myself. I am older and wiser now, so yeah what you see on my streams is who I really am. I know some people really play a character that goes really well with their stream and I do understand that, but I have decided to just stay myself.

I really don’t know nor have any methods/tips that might help apart from being yourself, I only started streaming 24th October 2020 and am almost at 9K followers and just made Partner in January 2021. I am just incredibly grateful to my community for growing so fast and being there with me every step of the way. I believe that it’s possible to make this a valid and full-time job, not just for me but to everyone who puts the work and energy in it. It definitely is difficult at the beginning as you have to start from zero and for some it goes faster than for others, but I don’t believe that it’s impossible.

How do you balance streaming and life in general?

I stream 6 days a week (Monday through Saturday) for about 6/8 hours. My day starts when I wake up at 9:30, have breakfast whilst answering all my emails for work, go off to the gym, get ready for the day whilst eating lunch, do some work, have a few hours to myself to then make dinner and start my stream at 6pm till about 12/1am.

Sunday is my day off and apart from answering some emails I don’t do anything online. I spend the whole day off with my boyfriend and we usually play games together or watch some series/movies.

I’m a very open and easy going person so I don’t mind interacting with people who I can’t see face to face, it sometimes makes things a lot easier. I’m very outgoing with my IRL friends but a shy bean when it comes to meeting new people, so it’s perfect how it is.

My family is used to quite a lot of things with me due to my modeling and the levels I go to, which they fully support. When I told them I decided to start streaming they were very supportive of that as well and always ask me how it’s going, in the beginning they didn’t fully understand what it was but I explained it all to them and they are very excited to see where this will bring me. I would love to make streaming my main source of income but would not stop with modeling, of course you can only do that for x amount of time, but streaming I can definitely see myself do on a long term and I work hard to reach that goal.

Tell us what tools you use for your stream

I use OBS and StreamElements OBS Live. All my donations go through StreamElements. I created a separate Twitch account for that so I could create a custom bot name which also runs through StreamElements.

I also have a Discord channel but it's currently subscriber only. People automatically get an invite when their Discord/Twitch is connected with each other.

All the overlays I have created myself, but my “stream starting soon” animation is done by pixelchrissy and my emotes are done by curlystagart.

The extensions I use for Twitch is the Sound Alert board, which people love to use when I play horror games to make me jumpscare. I also have the Streamlabs stream schedule, that way people can see what days/times I stream and the countdown to my next stream, it automatically gets set to their timezone as well. Lastly is the StreamElements Leaderboard for subscribers/gifters.

I do look at my analytics as well to see what games do well and which do not, but don’t let it influence me too much.

What are your top 3 streaming tools? 

1. The banhammer is a very important tool, whenever a troll comes in or someone who is inappropriate they get banned. I then have a custom made hammer, with my Twitch name carved into it, which I slam down on a book and tell them they have been yeeted and deleted, my viewers love when this happens.
2. My webcam, I still use the Logitech c922 1080P and the quality is amazing, I always get a lot of compliments from people saying how nice and clear it is.
3. My PC, without her I wouldn’t be able to stream. I built it myself a few years ago, bought all the components and put it together, I recently gave her a full upgrade and everything runs so incredibly smooth now.

What advice would you give to small channels trying to reach Partner? 

It’s very important to be consistent with your schedule. If you want to gain followers, set a schedule for yourself and make sure that you will be there on time, people take time out of their day to come and watch you. Treat it like a job even though it might not be your full time job right now. You wouldn’t be late/want to be late for your daytime job, so why slack with your stream schedule?

Also it's very important to spend quality time with your viewers. I always start my streams with some “Just Chatting”, ask how everyone's day has been, what they have been up to etc. I try and remember as many people and stories as I can and ask them about it, “ohhh btw (username) how is the job hunt going?”, I genuinely am interested in my viewers and what they do, so for me it’s easy to remember things.

Don’t let trolls discourage you, you can’t please everyone, spend your time on the people who are there for you, in the end of the day it’s just a random person hiding behind a keyboard trying to ruin your day, don’t let them, they’re not worth your time and focus on the good things.

Don’t feel like you need to spend hundreds of pounds on streaming equipment, a good working pc and mic is needed, but don’t go all out of things. You as a person is more important and is what keeps people in your stream and why they would like to follow you/comeback, not because you got a £300 mic or keyboard.

If you could change one thing about Twitch, what would it be? 

Not really anything I can think of, I love that they now recommend you channels that are similar to the content you watch, that way it’s easier for smaller streamers to get recognized, I’ve experienced it myself and it’s a nice feature that they have introduced. 

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