CAMGIRL DIRECTORIES

This is just a list of directories and independent cam girl listing sites that I've found, in other words, I don't endorse any of them, neither do I know if they are safe or if they are any good for work. Some of these sites offer you means of taking payment, e.g. a CCBill sub account, some some of them just let girls to make a profile and list their prices, their contact details and upload a picture.

Often sites who offer to take care of billing for you take a little cut of your earnings, on top of the usual processing fees that billing companies take. Just so you know, CCBill and Epoch, the two major billing companies, take roughly 15% of your total earnings.

Always be careful if a site asks for a scan of your ID or other (real life) personal details. To be safe, ask the other girls for their experiences with the site before you register.

I aim to add a new site to this list every time I find one, so check back often.

• AdultWork.co.uk (read review at Cam Sites: AdultWork.co.uk)
• CamGirlsHide.com
• Camsturbate.com
• WebcamLive.co.uk
• Stylish-Vixens.com
• Yahoo-CamGirls.com
• CamGirlStop.com
• LiveCamsUnited.com
• CamWhores.com
• RealCamgirlsOnline.com
• CamgirlFantasy.net

  CHAT ROOMS

Some independent cam girls solely depend on chat rooms for shows, and they can indeed be very profitable, especially if you happen to be the only girl offering shows there. The truth is, many chat rooms are filled with guys looking to have some cyber fun, and it's hard for them to find a girl willing to do that. They will try to get it for free, but when they fail, some of them will happily pay for it. That's where you step in.

Don't expect the chatters to welcome you with open arms though, you will be an annoyance for most of them. They aren't used to seeing this kind of service, guys will say they won't pay for something they can get for free (although most of them can't), and girls will be pissed off they have to share the attention with you. You will be called names, you will get into arguments, but that just shows that they are interested. If no-one was interested, they would simply ignore you.

Just be friendly and open about what you do and why you do it and the rest will take care of itself. Eventually you will get guys asking what your rates are, how they can pay you, and so on.

Unfortunately the guys won't be the only ones who get interested. Girls see what you're doing, and try it out themselves. You will get competition, but don't worry, it's not all bad. When guys see more girls doing this, they start to become more trusting and open to the idea of paying for a cam show.

Not all chat room owners/admins/moderators are happy about cam girls populating their rooms, especially if the rooms are open to underage people, or if they intend to keep the rooms clear from any sex talk etc. Spamming and flooding the rooms is generally forbidden. If you see yourself getting kicked out or banned time after time, it's best to move on, or make your advertising more subtle.

  COMMUNITIES

Popular community sites such as MySpace, Orkut, Facebook, Faceparty, Bebo, Piczo, Hi5 and countless smaller ones are a great way of reaching millions of people interested in making friends and of course... surfing the profiles with their dick in their hands, so to speak. Their problem is that the supply of willing girls is much lower than the demand for them.

Getting business from community sites usually requires the same steps as chat rooms: introducing yourself, taking some abuse and name-calling, making people interested and getting them to realise they can't get it for free so they might aswell pay for it.

The biggest sites have been discovered by other advertisers years ago, but most of them use bots to spam their messages and comments. You have a better chance if you contact people with original and personal messages, make some effort with your profile, keep it updated and participate on chat rooms/message boards on the site. Don't forget video comunities either. The number of YouTube clones grows every day, and so does the number of their users. These sites are usually very strict about adult content, but I'm not suggesting that you upload your shows there. Sure you can make a few teasing clips, but what can make you really popular is video blogging, a.k.a Vlogging. Remember, you're now in the adult industry, and that itself makes you interesting to most guys.

Having something to say doesn't hurt either. You can share your camming experiences, your opinions, your day-to-day life... you decide. Listen to your viewers' comments and talk about what they want to hear, not forgetting to mention what you do and how to contact you. Watermark your videos with your website URL if you have one. Update often to keep them coming back and subscribing to your videos.

  FORUMS

The rest of the adult industry hates porn (sharing) forums, but I say, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. As I mentioned in my Members Area article, these adult forums will usually love it if you start posting on their forum, especially if you occasionally share some sample pictures or videos with them. Forums even compete with the amount of adult performers they can get posting on their forums.

Try not to advertise your camshows too agressively, but make sure as many people as possible know what you do, and how to get in touch with you if they want some. Put your messenger address in your profile, use your signature space, and share your "insider view" with these porn enthusiasts in related topics. They might even give you your own sub forum one day, if you're active enough.

  BLOGS

Starting a blog or two works the same way as video communities, but might suit you better if you're shy about talking on video. I know, being shy about performing on video sounds a bit silly when that's what camming is all about, but it's still a different thing to talk for a few minutes than letting your body talk for itself ;-)

Some escorts have become very well known after starting their own blog. They usually talk about their customers and the strange, fun and even the scary situations they face in their job. This can work for a camgirl too, as "normal" people are generally very curious about what it's like to work in the adult field. You can even reach those who would normally never go to a porn site, as reading a blog doesn't feel so "wrong and naughty" to them.

There are a few popular free blogging sites that will host your blog for you, and their blogging tools are very easy to use. People can usually browse their directory for blogs, and you can get plenty of traffic from there if you give your blog/profile an interesting title. Not to mention countless of other blog directories you can submit your blog to. Most adult directories and search engines now have a blog category, and because these directories are usually flooded with cookie-cutter advertising blogs with no real content, your blog will stand out from the crowd.

These popular free blogging sites I mentioned are sites such as Blogger and LiveJournal. For maximum exposure, use every blogging platform you can find. Of course you don't have to write unique posts to all of them, but rather have multiple clones of the same blog.

Don't forget to post some pictures, but keep them clean if you don't want to get deleted. Also take advantage of their tagging feature if they have one, choose your category well, join related groups and use lots of related keywords such as "camgirl" and "camshow" in your text.

  YOUR MESSENGER CONTACT LIST

After you have been camming for a while, you (hopefully) notice that your messenger contact list is starting to fill up. What you might not know is that you can only add a certain amount of people on your list. To make room for the paying customers, clean up your list every now and then, or even better - only add a customer to your list after they have actually bought a show.

You messenger list is one of the most important tools you can have, when it's full of paying, regular customers. If you don't have a website, your customers' only way of contacting you is your messenger address, so try not to change your address unless you really have to. If you do, inform all the people on your list, and when you abandon your address, put in your new address as your title/message, so people will know. Check back at times to see if someone has missed you ;-)

There are some handy programs and tools to make it easier for you to handle your different messenger programs and even have multiple instances of the same messenger running. Trillian is a chat client that you can use to combine your Yahoo, AIM, ICQ and MSN messengers - all in one! There is also a modification for Windows Live Messenger, called A-Patch , that allows you to sign in on multiple addresses at the same time.

  HAVING YOUR OWN WEBSITE

Even if you don't like the idea of having a full blown website with a members area and all, even having a simple webpage with some pictures and a list of your services and prices can significantly help you with camming and marketing your services. See "Why Get A Website" and my other articles under "Getting A Website" for more information.

  HAVE YOUR SAY

Are you a cam girl and would like to add something to this article or have further questions? Go to AWN Forums to share your experiences, knowledge and to get advice from experts.

  PHONE CHAT

Many girls find phone sex much easier than camming, but equally you might be one of those girls who would rather die than talk dirty with a stranger on the phone, or even have sound on in their camshows. If you're not, give it a go. A sexy voice isn't necessary, although it helps, but what's more important is your imagination. The customer (obviously) can't see you, so it's all about describing what you look like, what you are doing and what it feels like.

There's much more to (good) phone sex than: "So... What you wearing?" If you're shy at first, tell that to the guy. A lot of them actually like the "shy girl" thing, and are happy to lead the conversation. Of course there are also guys who want the girl to be in charge, tell them what to do and so on, but if you're not comfortable doing this, tell him before he pays you. If you've ever had phone sex with someone in your private life, you'll be fine.

Here's a link to a little article for first time phonechatters: First Time Jitters on PSOBoards.com. They also have other related material if you're interested in trying it out, or even if you're not a newbie anymore. There are a few good websites to get started on, one of the most popular being NiteFlirt.com. AdultWork.co.uk also seems to have many girls offering phone sex. Naturally you can do this on your own too, but if you are new or worried about giving out your personal phone number, I recommend checking out the sites I mentioned - at least NiteFlirt.com offers you a toll free 800 number with your own personal extension, so you never have to give out your own number.

  MEMBERS AREA

As you might know, I have already written an in-depth article about setting up a members area, but here I just aim to briefly explain how it works and how profitable it can be.

Most cam girls who also run websites with members areas will agree that it's easy money. Unlike camming, in best cases a members area will continue to earn you money while you're not working. Even if you update several times a week, you still get more money for your time and effort. Just think, if every private camshow you do was a video for your site, how many videos would your members area have in a month? How about in two months? Live camshows are over in a few minutes, but a video on your members area will keep earning for you for the rest of your life, if you wish ;-) Focus on getting new members, but don't forget to take good care of your existing members, because if you do, they will continue to rebill every month, and your member base will keep growing. Let's say you charge $15 for a month's access, you manage to get 5 new members each month, while losing 1 existing member. Each member brings you $15 when they join, and $15 for every month untill they cancel their membership. In just five months you will have an extra $315 coming in - and that amount continues to grow each month, as long as you keep getting new members. Even if you updated your members area with a new video three times a week, you would only have to spend a couple of hours a week on making the videos and publishing them. It's totally up to you how big you want your members area to be, and how you want to run it. However, the most profitable members areas all seem to be relatively big content wise, are updated often and regularly, and have interaction between the model and the members. Interaction can mean live camshows for site members, a message board, or perhaps a chat room. Not to mention that your members area has to have a price that matches its value, i.e. you can't ask $30 for a membership that includes 5 videos and 10 picture sets. Well, you can, but no-one will join ;-)

  CUSTOM MADE VIDEOS

If you don't have the motivation to set up a whole members area and worry about updates and such, a better solution for you could be custom videos. You can probably find people that are interested in ordering custom videos in your existing customer base, just let them know that you are open to making a video just for them, and they can decide exactly what they would like to see.

This type of deal will especially appeal to customers with unusual or rare fantasies and fetishes that they can't find on regular porn sites, or that most cam girls wouldn't perform in a live show. And because custom made videos are often exclusive, you can easily make them very personal - call the customer by his name, for example. Usually guys buy camshows because of the live factor, but also because they are private and personal, so you have a good chance of getting a few customers regularly buying a custom video from you. You don't even necessarily have to have a website for this, if your videos are short-ish and your customer is patient, you can easily send them to him by messenger or e-mail. Having a website helps though, as you can get a safe, low-in-fees billing system for your videos.

  SHOPPING CART SYSTEM

Again, if you don't want something as big as a members area, consider setting up a simple shopping cart system on your website. Depending on the system, it will enable you to sell whatever items you wish, from video downloads to panties or other personal items worn/used by you. Or if you have a few videos or picture sets, you could burn them to CD's/DVD's and mail them to the buyer.

Remember not to set your prices too high, just enough to cover the postage and a little cut for you, otherwise you won't get many buyers apart from your hardcore fans. And whenever someone buys a show from you, mention that they can, for example, buy the panties you just wore in your show from your website. There are a number of free shopping cart scripts available, such as ZenCart. If you aren't comfortable installing a large script like this, I recommend getting a web designer do it for you. Most designers are also willing to customize the look of the shopping cart script to match your site. Depending on the designer it usually won't cost as much as a whole website, as it will be a relatively small job.

  AFFILIATE MARKETING

Affiliate is basically a person who sends potential buyers to a site that sell something, and whenever a person they sent buys a product from that site, the affiliate gets paid. The vast majority of porn sites (and some mainstream sites) is run this way. The system is called an affiliate program, and you can usually find a link to a site's affiliate program at the bottom of the page(s), and it will say something like "affiliates", "webmasters", "make money" or just "$$$". To promote a site or a product you need to have a plan. Who would you promote it to? I.e. do you have a website that gets lots of visitors, a members area with lots of members, or a large camming customer base? Then you need to think how you would promote the site/product to these people. Would you place adverts on your site or inside your members area, or would you just personally recommend it to your customers? And lastly, would they buy the product/sign up to the site you're promoting to them?

It's crucial that you choose a site/product that you think they would like, and therefore buy/sign up for. There is no point selling gay porn memberships to your straight customers, for example. Or non-nude site memberships to your members if they have joined your hardcore site. If you do live camshows and/or have a members area with some solo stuff, I would suggest promoting webcam sites or solo girl sites. More information on how to get started and what sites to promote in the Webmasters section.

  ESCORTING

I'm listing escorting because some cam girls seem to be doing this along with camshows, more or less regularly. Let me just say that even though you might get asked this a lot by customers, they are just trying their luck, and you should not think that if you're a cam girl, you might aswell escort.

Doing camshows and escorting are two completely different things, and if you are interested in becoming and escort on the side, you should do your home work and be absolutely sure that you are ready before you take the first step and start advertising your services. I'm sure you know what an escort is and what she does, so I'm not going to go into great detail - partly because I'm no expert. But if you would like to ask questions from girls who do escorting, about the reality of the job, how much you can earn and so on, I suggest contacting some of the independent escorts on AdultWork.co.uk. There is also an escort listing website called PuntingZone that has excellent and very busy forums you can use to get insider advice.

To me AdultWork.co.uk seems like the perfect place for an independent escort to get listed on. From reading a customer's feedback, given by other escorts, you can determine if he'll be safe/pleasant to work with.

  HAVE YOUR SAY

Are you a cam girl and would like to add something to this article or have further questions? Go to AWN Forums to share your experiences, knowledge and to get advice from experts.