How To Make Subscriber Badges For Twitch

Want to reward subscribers to your stream? Want to offer something more interesting than the default star icon for subs? This tutorial will show you how to create subscriber badges for Twitch or find others to create them for you.

Twitch offers the chance for us to watch our favorite games and gamers do what they do best. If you’re one of the talented few who can stream and entertain a very finicky crowd, you’re one of the lucky ones. If you can do that while attracting subscribers, more power to you!

One of the small but important advantages of being a Twitch subscriber is the little icon you get. It makes you stand out and marks you as someone different. It’s a small thing but in the realm of gamification, which Twitch subscribes to, that element of differentiation can have serious psychological impact.

We all know how wearing premium or hard to find skins in games makes us feel elite. The subscriber badge does something similar. Offering a unique badge to your own subscribers can make a world of difference to how many you attract.

Subscriber badges in Twitch

Subscriber badges in Twitch have to follow a few guidelines. They must be created in three sizes, 18px x 18px, 36px x 36px, and 72px x 72px. They must be in PNG format. They must have a transparent background and they should be less than 25kb in size.

There are also rules around nudity, obscene, suggestive, explicit and other image content which you can read on the link above. As most of us are above that kind of thing, the rules in the first paragraph are the only ones you need to worry about.

You will need four different badges, each in those three sizes. A base subscriber badge, a three month badge, six month badge and a 12 month badge. In an ideal world, you would make each one cooler than the previous to encourage subscribers to stick with you. They won’t keep them subscribing on their own but every little helps!

You will need an image editor capable of working with transparent backgrounds. Not all of them do but GIMP, Microsoft Paint, Photoshop, Illustrator and others do.

As I’m testing Photoshop for another article, I’ll use that in this example.

1. Open Photoshop and select File and then New.
2. Select Background Contents and select Transparent.
3. Select OK.
4. Continue with your design.

You can also design your badge using a white background and make the background disappear once complete. It is entirely up to you.

The basic process to make subscriber badges for Twitch goes like this:

1. Come up with four simple graphics that work well in miniature.
2. Make the background of each of them transparent and save as PNG to retain that transparency.
3. Resize each of your four images into the three required sizes, 18px x 18px, 36px x 36px, and 72px x 72px.
4. Log into Twitch and navigate to the Affiliate / Partner Settings tab.
5. Select Subscriptions and Loyalty Badges.
6. Upload the corresponding badges in their three sizes.
7. Select Save Changes to set them as your default subscriber badges.

The badges will become available immediately. Existing subscriber badges will be switched to the new ones automatically too.

Acquire new subscriber badges for Twitch

If you’re not the creative type, you can still offer subscriber badges. You just need to buy them instead of making them. There are a number of places to buy badges created specifically for this use. They include Own3D.tv, Fiverr, Etsy and Behance to name a few.

The upside is that many of these badges are created by very talented graphic artists. The downsides are that you have to pay for them and they won’t be completely unique. Any badge you see for sale online will likely have multiple purchases. That may not mean a great deal given the number of channels on Discord but it may reduce the appeal of the badge in the eyes of your subs.

If you have the money to spare, you could always hire a graphic designer to create some unique badges but they would work out quite expensive. You may want to wait until you’re making money on Twitch to help pay for this but it would be a fantastic investment if you become truly popular.

Twitch subscribers are mainly there for your stream but offering a unique badge plays into the psychology of gamification nicely. Allowing subscribers to show off a little is a good way to keep them on side and attract new subs who also want to stand out. It’s a little thing but if it makes you more money on Twitch, why would you not go for it?