Become an Independent Web Cam Model

One of the affective ways to promote your site is commenting on other blogs. To leave a comment you need to fill out your nickname, email and web site URL. Then when your comment appears in blog post your nickname is linked to your web site. This way you are getting a link which can drive traffic to your website. Search engines will consider this link as well in ranking your site.

I’ve noticed that many cam girls make one big mistake when they leave comments on other blogs. For example look at my last post comments:

As you can see none of cam girls comments have avatar picture (although mine has he-he). And the same happens on other blogs you comment on. It should be clear that without your avatar image your comment won’t be that attractive. Look how these comments would look if you have an avatar image:

When a horny guy sees the avatar picture like this he would most likely visit your website (by clicking your nickname). This is very affective marketing tactic. You can comment on non-adult blogs where you know your potential clients hang out and get fresh traffic to your site.

It’s very easy to make so that your avatar picture shows up on all blogs you comment (well most of them). All you need to do is go to gravatar.com and register there. The email address you specify during registration should be the one you use to comment on blogs. Then you should upload your avatar image and that’s it – it will show on most of your comments.

You need to have avatar image attached to your blog comments for the same reason you have it on Twitter or Facebook profile, i.e. to attract potential customers. Set it up once and you’ll start getting additional traffic to your site.

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I’ve made a mistake that many beginner cam models do. I’ve trusted part of my business to 3rd party service and it has suspended my account for no reason. Here is what happened:

Last week my account at AWeber got banned due to violation of their Terms of Service. In particular they found my blog’s content as pornography and sex-related. WTF?! If you don’t know what AWeber is, it’s the best email marketing solution that allows building mailing list  and then send mass emails to all subscribers. If you have already subscribed to my newsletter (through subscribe to my newsletter popup form) you may have noticed that every time I publish new posts on my blog you get an email about this. I could do all this without AWeber but AWeber has very high deliverablity rate (so your email doesn’t end up in spam folder) and many more cool features.

So my AWeber account got suspended for the non-sense reason mentioned above, I’ve lost 89 email addresses that I’ve collected so far, my blog doesn’t have that nice popup subscribe box, I don’t have access to very useful reports about my subscribers, and so forth.

Now how it all relates to the title of this post. Many cam models fall exactly into the same trap. You may have opened account on MySpace or Facebook for example. Spend hours and hours building your fan base by shooting content (pictures and videos) and publishing it. Then suddenly random moderator finds your content pornography and sex-related and just closes your account due to violation of their Terms of Service. Or some of your fans reported. Or may be your competitor reported. The point is it could be multiple reasons your account will be closed and all efforts are gone.

That’s why you need to have your own site – your home on the internet. If you host it on adult friendly hosting there is no way it could by shut down (unless you publish content that violates the law). So spend all your efforts on your site. Publish pics and video to it and then use other sites to announce what you’ve published. If your account gets closed on these sites you lose nothing but some source of traffic.

Blog is the most easy to setup and very affective type of site for adult models. So start your blog today if you don’t have one yet.

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I’ve recently encountered this video where successful cam model AaliyahLove is interviewed by AllPornModels. I thought that this video will be interesting to those beginner girls who would like to become cam models but are terrified to make first steps.

Aaliyah was making $7/hour before she started her web cam modeling career 5 years ago. She found an ad in news paper and started working 1.5 hours a day in web cam studio. At her 1st day studio owner tought her to smile all the time, spank her ass and use sex toys in private. And she was really scared to use sex toys.

And now after 5 years in business Aaliyah runs her own membership site, she is 2009 and 2010 XBIZ Awards Nominee, is featured on front cover of popular magazines and enjoying her life.

So don’t be afraid to make first steps, act now! And if you have your own success story, please share it in comments.

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Dear Cam Models,

Just wanted to wish you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I wish you this new year to be a blast for your webcam modeling business and much more profitable than the old one. And of course I wish good health for you and your family.

I want to thank all my loyal readers. I’m glad you found my blog useful. Thanks for all your nice comments, questions and suggestions. I promise to keep my blog even more interesting and useful in the new year.

Also big “thank you” to those successful models who contributed into my blog with their tips and advices for the beginner cam models: Aaliyahlove, Ashley Steel, Bella Bellini, Abbie and many more   I’m getting a lot of ‘thank you’ emails that I should really pass to you.

In this new year I’m planning to complete two projects. The first one will be an eBook that explains how to market yourself to get more traffic to your site and make money with it.  The second will be the membership area on my blog where I will be posting video tutorials on how to set up and run your own web site. So stay tuned.

Have fun these holiday season. Drink much but not too much LOL.

With best wishes
Alex Shwarz

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If you don’t use mailing list on your site or blog you are losing money. The longer you don’t have it the more money you lose. Collecting email addresses of visitors who are interested in your content makes you really independent cam model. Let me show you why.

Here is how it works:

1. You put web form somewhere on your site (in free area) that collects names and email addresses from visitors. You can see such a form on my blog to the right (it says “Subscribe to Newsletter”). Sure not every visitor leaves his email address but those who do most likely are interested in your content.
2. Once visitor fills out the form and clicks the “Submit” button he receives confirmation email that asks to confirm his email address by clicking the link inside.
3. Once visitor clicks the link he’s taken to the “Thank you” page. At this point you are getting email subscriber who is interested in your site/blog since he filled out his info (name and email address) and confirmed his email address.

If you haven’t subscribed to my blog yet you can use the subscribe form on to the right (close to the top) to go through the whole process see how it works. Plus you’ll receive my newsletter

So if you update your site or blog regularly your mailing list will start to grow. In 3-4 months you may have hundreds of email addresses. And it will be growing every day. I know guys who have up to 250,000 email addresses collected this way.

And this is how you can use this mailing list to make money:

1. Set up so that once you publish new article on your blog the automatic email gets sent to all your email subscribers. This email could include a little snippet from the article and link back to your blog to read full article. This way you’ll be getting instant traffic spikes to your blogs when you publish new articles. And more traffic means more money, right?
2. You can announce your cam shows this way. For example once a week you can send out an email about your upcoming show with some teasing pictures, etc. This way you’ll be getting instant buyers of your show. No need to waste yur time in free chats. And if you changed your cam network you can let your fans know about this via email as well.
3. If you sell your picture sets, calendars, lingerie, etc you can email announcements about new stuff for sale.

These are just a couple of ways how you can earn money from mailing list. There are many more, just use your imagination. This is called email marketing. The point is that you have backward communication channel with your fans. You can reach them whenever you want. Email is the most reliable way to reach people. Most people check their emails every day, more regularly than checking their Facebook or Twitter pages.

So if you have your site or blog running and don’t have mailing list set up yet, do so now. It’s not hard to set it up at all and you can easily do it by yourself. There are many services out there that help you manage and grow your mailing list. If you can afford to spend $20 a month I would definitely recommend AWeber. This is the best email subscribers management solution on the market. It provides all you need: customizable web forms, interface to send broadcast emails to your subscribers, integration with your blog, documentation and video tutorials, etc. I use it myself and very happy. And the first month is just $1 so why not to try it?

Update: AWeber is not adult friendly. See my other post for more details.

Have you ever thought about using mailing list for you site or blog?

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I was chatting the other day with one of my cam model friends Ashley Steel and she made the following statement:

“… I will also tell you I have run my own affiliate programs and I think it is best to use the sites and let them bring you traffic. You get higher commissions on your own traffic so self promo is still a great idea but a girl just on her own is NOT going to make any money, trust me. They SHOULD be on the sites using THEIR traffic. I ran my own programs cause I never wanted to pay anyone 50% or more for sites. After 5 yrs and $45,000 lost I would be HAPPY to go back and give them 50% — 50% of $6000 is a hell of a lot more than 100% of nada. Not to mention when you can make $100 an hour on a network, or spend 6 hours making $30 on your own site why on earth wouldn’t you just use their stuff? Also they keep their members cause they have a lot more girls. If you’re not on someone else’s site, and you take a day off you could lose valuable customers you spent weeks earning…”

I’m getting a lot of complains from beginner cam girls who are not happy with cam networks (cam sites) because of the high commission they charge (up to 70%). What Ashley means is if you know how to promote yourself, i.e. get your own traffic, you can get a lot more from cam networks. Some cam networks would pay you up to 40% in addition to what you’re getting if you sign up a new member to buy your show.

For example you may have your own blog where you publish short articles with teasing pictures. This blog is going to attract some traffic from search engines. Once you see that number of visitors to your blog grows you can start announcing your webcam shows linking to cam site you working on. Now let’s say one of your blog fans is eager for the private show with you. He clicks a link in your announcement, gets to the cam site, registers and pays for the show. So, now you are going to get your usual 30% plus additional 40% because you brought a new member to the cam site.

Cam networks pay you such a big commission for bringing a new member because they know that if he’s already spent money for your cam show most likely he will spend money on other models too.

The point of all this is that you need to know how to get your own traffic. Once you have it you can get money for your traffic. Ashley Steel described one of the ways how you can profit from your own traffic. Anyone wants to share other ways they use?

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Every webcam site offers a unique environment to work in and it’s important you find one that suits your personality.  Sites like WebCams.com have large model databases, so if you’re alluringly cute, you could be quite successful on that site.  However, if you enjoy chatting to clients and can sell yourself (or want to learn how to),  LiveJasmin could be a good option for you as it has a free chat program for surfers to increase your exposure and build up your client list. Once you have a base site to work from, you can often work among other webcam sites at the same time to bring in more money.

Having multiple chat programs open simultaneously is the best way to get as many shows into your online time as possible. Many models run 1-3 free chat sites and have 1-3 offline sites open at the same time to earn faster. Using this method of performing, you will do better with some sites some days than others and will get a lot more paid opportunities than if you’d been signed to just one site.

While it’s nice to think of monetizing your time this way, be aware that many sites prohibit their models working with other sites. Check the ToS (Term of Services) agreement with each site. Some ToS agreements don’t allow you to use other sites so to stop having your account closed with them, you may need to be careful and either only use them or not use them during your multiple site sessions. LiveJasmin is the best webcam site to be signed up in if you’re looking to have multiple webcam sites streaming at the same time as it does not prohibit working on other sites. You can juggle more than one chat site by leaving a standard message for the other sites when you go into private chat. Make sure site administrators don’t view this message as it may breach their ToS and you may get your account closed.

Make sure you’re organized before each cam session so you don’t get flustered and remember your priority should be on paying customers rather than the free customers and you will learn over time that many free-goers are there to see what they can get from you for free (not all, but many). Teasing is the best way to get their cards out rather than giving the prize before they buy.

What is your experience with working on multiple webcam sites?

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This review was kindly performed by Bella Bellini in response to my previous post about IPEVO Point 2 View USB webcam. You can watch video review in 2 parts at the  bottom of the post or read the text version below.

I’ve gone through four different webcams and I can tell you that nothing ruins my day online more than dealing with cam problems. The last thing I want is to get frustrated during a show because people will pick up on that and start leaving my chat room, which means less money for me.

From my experience, I need a webcam to do the following things in order for me to enjoy using it and not smash it under my heels in frustration!

1.    It needs to be compatible with my computer and OS (I’m using a Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard)

2.    I need to look fabulous! That means it should work with the lighting set up that I have, which at the moment isn’t as professional as I would like. So I need to look good even under low light conditions.

3.    It needs to be able capture me in different positions without too much fiddling. My shows should seem effortless and nothing disrupts the mood more than stopping everything to fuss over getting the right angle.

4.    I must be able to use it to shoot webcam photos for my profile and promotional material.

5.    It must be able to record videos so that I can make custom videos for members of my site, as well as promotional videos so that I can increase traffic to my chat room.

Up until now, one of my biggest issues was finding a webcam that is compatible with my Mac computer. The built in webcam in my macbook pro doesn’t have the high quality video image that I need to do shows. I’ve tried using a video camera on a tripod, but my mobility was very limited because it  wasn’t able to pan/tilt. I’ve been using the Logitech Pro 9000 for the past few months and it is a very good webcam. Unfortunately, its software isn’t compatible with Mac OS. I can still use it, but I can’t adjust the settings to improve the video quality or use it to take webcam photos. So I’ve been jumping back and forth between using in on the Mac OS and running it in windows XP through boot camp. I can use the software in windows, but I don’t like using windows and it wastes time to switch to boot camp. If I use it in the Mac OS then my skin tone looks very washed out, which doesn’t exactly put a smile on my face.

So I was very excited when I was asked to review the IPEVO Point 2 View USB webcam because I read on the website that it was compatible with Mac OS. I also loved that I had the option of using it on a flexible, compact tripod or clipped to my laptop screen. I’m definitely not a technology expert, but it was very easy to install the software and figure out how to use the cam.

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Zombaio is a third party processing service that is easy to use for anyone hoping to branch out and work with their own webcam services or pay site. Just like most services in the adult industry, there are pros and cons that can determine if they are the right service or product for you.

Pros

1. You don’t need a business license if you are an independent worker and will only be required to register your Social Insurance (or Social Security) number with Zombaio to get access to their service.
2. Setting up the system can be quite easy when using the non-recurring payment structure, as you only need to copy and paste the html code into your signup page to get it started. Once your paperwork is in order, you can be set up and operational within one business day, meaning secured payments can start streaming through in next to no time (some third party processors can take up to several weeks before being fully useable)
3. You can opt in for email notifications about payments made to you, supplying you with the username and email of your client, providing an easy and fast reference of payment confirmation at the beginning of each cam show
4. Setting up the system where clients can purchase credits for webcam shows can be difficult and would require extra experience or assistance from a knowledgeable friend to set this up. Zombaio has a preset value for price per credit for clients use which is not changeable, however the preset value is reasonable so you can leave it as is if you want

Cons

1. While Zombaio is overall relatively easy and fast to set up, there are aspects of it that may require a further technical knowledge including setting up your own website, understanding how to use FTP and editing html code. This can be hard to impossible for a model that doesn’t have any experience with these parts of an online business however there are usually techs available to assist with a lot of the set up if you need.
2. Setting up a virtual wallet to enable revolving credit, which is ideal for webcam shows is much more difficult than sticking to the simple one time payment method (which lets your client send you money before the cam show) which can be useful but not quite as convenient
3. If you don’t have much computer experience, it’s best to choose the non-recurring payment structure because it is very easy to set up, however this can cause some confusion between your client and yourself if he pays ahead of time or pays too much/too little for the session. It’s best to contact the client first and arrange a booked appointment time before he pays to save problems

As a whole, the service that Zombaio provides is much better than a lot of the other competitors out there and the only major problems you may find will depend on your level of experience with website building, html and technical set-up.

Have you had any experience with Zombaio? If so, please share.

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