When I joined Twitch in the summer of 2019, it was a ghost town for DJs. At that time it was strictly a community for gamers, and I only joined because I saw a way to repurpose it for my needs. I played a lot of outdoor b-boy shows, and friends of mine around the world wanted to watch the breakers breaking and hear the MCs MC’ing. I searched for the best way to livestream the shows, and Twitch struck me as the best bet. At that point, I was an anomaly: a DJ on Twitch? Then the pandemic hit, and suddenly you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Twitch DJ.

For DJs, Tik Tok today is what Twitch was in 2019: uncharted territory. Unlike Twitch, where you are competing with DJs who have a two year head start on you and have built up large and loyal audiences, Tik Tok has far fewer DJs at work. If you can get in now, you can get in a lot closer to the ground floor, and build the audience, and income, that comes with garnering large viewer counts.

So what’s the catch? There’s always a catch, right? In the case of Tik Tok, it turns out there is, and it’s a rather notable one. Unlike Twitch, and most other streaming platforms, not everyone can jump into the deep end from the get-go on Tik Tok. While anyone can create an account and share videos, only users with at least 1,000 followers can livestream. Gaining that many followers is no easy feat, unless of course you look good in a wet t-shirt. If that’s the case, skip the rest of this article, post one video, and you’ll hit 1,000 followers in the time it takes everyone else to finish reading.

Assuming you aren’t a sex symbol, you’re going to have to work to get those followers, and as is the case with most social media platforms, there is no short cut. You will have to create and share quality content on a regular basis. Tik Tok, more than any other platform, is about quantity almost as much as it is about quality. You certainly need high quality content, but one video won’t cut it. To get followers, you need to post something worth watching on a near daily basis. If you can do that, you should be able to build an audience over time, until you hit the magic number. And then you can join what is currently a very small community– that of the livestreaming Tik Tok DJ.

Now get out of here and get started with your new career as a celebrity Tik Tok DJ!