According to the 45th Statistical Report on China’s Internet Development, as of March 2020, live-streaming show in China, which attracted 207 million users, has become an important economic industry. Previous studies often employed concept of emotional labor to investigate how live-streaming platforms alienated and exploited the practitioners. However, on the one hand, this approach largely ignored the live-streamers’ subjective experience; on the other hand, the use of emotional labor also showed limitations in explaining the live-streamers’ working practice. Therefore, based on a 12-month digital ethnography, this study combines “relational labor” and “platformization” to examine how live-streamers negotiate the economic and intimate relationships with their audiences inside/outside the live-streaming platform, and concludes three strategies of “pricing”, “differentiation” and “boundary”. The study also makes a further theoretical reflection on relational labor, platformization and the subjectivity of live-streamers.