After 12 hours of playing and chatting about videogames in front of an online audience, Jamie Brausen could barely move a muscle.

“I woke up the next day with no voice, puffy eyes and my whole body was sore,” said the 29-year-old, who was trying to grow her fan base last year as a live-streamer on the popular app and website Twitch Interactive. She now limits her four broadcasts a week to no more than six hours each.

What...

After 12 hours of playing and chatting about videogames in front of an online audience, Jamie Brausen could barely move a muscle.

It’s always showtime.

“I woke up the next day with no voice, puffy eyes and my whole body was sore,” said the 29-year-old, who was trying to grow her fan base last year as a live-streamer on the popular app and website Twitch Interactive. She now limits her four broadcasts a week to no more than six hours each.

What might seem like a dream job for some—getting paid to entertain strangers by playing videogames or doing just about anything else while people watch on a live stream—isn’t as easy as it looks.

Many streamers say they work when they’re sick, rarely take time off, avoid eating on camera and limit bathroom breaks for fear of losing followers. When they’re not live, they’re often trying to negotiate deals to feature companies’ products during their broadcasts as a way to bolster their incomes.

“I wouldn’t want to do anything else, but there’s more work that goes into it than people might know or see,” said Ms. Brausen, who lives outside of Chicago and streams under the pseudonym Jambo.

Twitch, a unit of Amazon.com Inc., is best known for its live broadcasts of videogame play, but also features musical performances, talk shows, sports and more.

A recent leak of pay data revealed that the overwhelming majority of Twitch’s broadcasters receive annual payouts directly from the platform that are far less than the U.S. median household income of $67,521. The platform paid its more than seven million streamers $889 million this year through September—half of which went to the top 1%, according to the data.

Paul Petroskey streams under the stage name Weird_Paul.

Photo: Niffer Desmond

Before the leak, the gap was unknown because Twitch and its main rivals—YouTube, a unit of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, and Facebook Inc.—don’t disclose live-streamer pay.

“I’ve never missed a stream and I won’t vacation for more than two days at a time,” said Paul Petroskey, a 50-year-old musician in Pittsburgh who uses an analog camera to live-stream himself singing on Twitch about random topics like water heaters and peanut butter. Streaming under the stage name Weird_Paul, he also reads from his childhood journals and shows photos and videos of his youth.

Last month, Mr. Petroskey said he made around $1,200 from Twitch, down from a peak in May of roughly $3,000, a change he attributes to the easing of social-distancing restrictions as Covid-19 vaccines rolled out. “Soon as summer hit, things started to nosedive for me,” he said.

Fans pay from around $5 to $25 a month to subscribe to a Twitch channel. The streamer gets a cut from the platform. Streamers can also make money when viewers send them digital rewards that can be converted into cash.

Chris Carr mostly plays ‘Fortnite’ during his broadcasts.

Photo: Octavia Holiday

“Your income is based on the generosity of people who watch your stream,” said Chris Carr, 32, a part-time Twitch streamer in Lexington, Ky., who calls himself ThatNerdChris and mostly plays “Fortnite” during his broadcasts.

Mr. Carr used to stream as often as 12 hours a day, seven days a week. But two years ago he reached a breaking point. “I got these really bad back problems and I put on so much weight,” he said. He now streams just a handful of hours a week and earns the bulk of his income by creating edited content for ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok and other social media.

Crucially, there’s no way to edit out a mistake during a live-stream.

“I turn into a ball of anxiety every night before my show,” said Ericka Bozeman of Los Angeles, who is 29 and discusses true-crime stories for four hours on Monday nights on Twitch in its popular Just Chatting category.

Ericka Bozeman says she has received racist taunts.

Photo: Ericka Bozeman

Ms. Bozeman, who is Black, said she has received racist taunts in the chat box where viewers type out messages and has been harassed by overly affectionate fans. “It’s hard to talk about because you don’t want to give those people power,” she said. “You have to accept that you no longer have control of your image.”

A Twitch spokeswoman said that the company prioritizes the safety and mental health of its streamers and that harassment is prohibited by its community guidelines. She said Twitch offers resources and workshops to help streamers deal with issues such as burnout, boundary-setting and other pressures that come with a career in online content creation.

Ms. Bozeman, who calls herself Big Boss Boz on Twitch, said she receives payouts from the platform that average between $5,000 and $8,000 a month. She also generates income from posting content on YouTube, Facebook and TikTok, and pays seven people an hourly wage to help her with research, editing and administrative tasks.

Ms. Brausen, the Chicago-area streamer known as Jambo, isn’t an expert gamer. “I’m not very good at videogames and I’ll be the first to say it, but that’s part of the fun,” she said. “We get to laugh at the things I mess up.”

She has also embarrassed herself on a few occasions. Once she tried stepping away from her camera while still tethered to her headset, falling flat on her back. Another time she unknowingly went live and around 40 viewers saw her scarfing down a meal from Taco Bell.

Streamer Jamie Brausen made nearly $80,000 last year.

Photo: Jamie Brausen

But Ms. Brausen thinks her quirky personality and outspokenness about living with diabetes and depression is what keeps people coming back to see her stream for up to six hours at a time, four days a week.

Her parents occasionally join her streams and text chat on screen with her viewers, who refer to them affectionately as mommajambo and jambodaddio. “I’m like a little celebrity on her channel,” said her 64-year-old mother, Denise Daleo.

Now almost five years into live streaming on Twitch, Ms. Brausen is in a groove. Last year she made just shy of $80,000 pretax and was able to pay off $26,000 in debt. She spends about $7,000 annually on health insurance and has invested more than $5,000 in high-quality streaming equipment.

“Even though it can be difficult at times, I plan on sticking with it for the foreseeable future,” she said.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com