Author - Holly

Webcam on a budget

Even if you’re on a tight budget, it’s still possible to start camming. The basic equipment that you need won’t set you back too much, and then you can slowly upgrade as you start to save. The basics are a computer, a webcam, and high speed internet. If you still have room in your budget after purchasing those, the next things you should get is professional studio lighting and some toys to play with on cam.

When picking out a laptop or desktop computer to cam on, you don’t have to get the latest model, but you do want to get something that will smoothly run the software needed to cam. Some site’s software is more straining on your computer than others. For optimal performance, a computer with a core i7 processor or it’s equivalent and at least 3 GB of RAM is recommended. If you’re unsure if your current computer will run the software, you can always do a quick test. Start your camming software and go online. After that, open your task manager on your computer and check your CPU usage. If it’s at or close to 100%, you’ll need to upgrade. If you don’t, your computer will run very slow, your camera feed with appear laggy and choppy, and there will be a big delay in your room. No one will want to watch you like that, and you won’t be making any money.

Once you have a laptop or desktop that’s good for camming, it’s time to pick out a webcam. The most popular camera right now among cam models is the Logitech C920. It shoots in crystal clear 1080p HD. You can pick one up on Amazon for $60-$75. The price fluctuates occasionally, but right now it’s $59.99. You simply won’t find a cheaper camera that performs as well as this one. Aside from shooting full 1080p HD, it also has dual microphones to ensure natural sound, and a 15 MP camera for capturing still shots.

The final necessity is high speed internet. You want a connection that gets at least 1 Mbps upload speed or higher. This will ensure that your camera feed is smooth and also reduce the delay in your room. You can check your current upload speed on www.speedtest.net. Depending on where you live, a fast enough connection will typically run you $45-$60/month.

If you’ve reached the top of your budget at this point, hold off on professional studio lighting. When you’re just starting out, you can always point a table or floor lamp towards you or place one behind your camera so that it lights you up. Once you save up some money, you can pick up a decent lighting system for about $50 on Amazon. You’ll also want some toys to play with on cam to spice things up a bit! But don’t worry if you can’t afford those right away. You should start a wishlist so your fans can buy them for you! 🙂

Tips For Protecting Your Content

June 1, 2016

Tips for Protecting your Webcam Content

With so many sites out there allowing anyone to submit porn, it’s important to protect your content. Many sites let any user submit porn, without providing proof that they have the rights to distribute it. But there are several things that you can do to either help prevent your content from being shared in the first place, or to make sure that that if it is distributed, the guys watching will at least be able to know who’s starring in it. At least that way, if they like what they see, they may decide to join your website, your cam shows, or purchase some of your videos.

The easiest way to protect your content is by watermarking it. You should watermark every single picture and video that you put on the internet. Even if it’s just a selfie that you’re posting to Twitter, you really should be watermarking it. A watermark could be as simple as a little text that displays your name, website, cam site, etc. Some models get a little more creative with their watermarks, and it becomes a branding thing for them. When guys see their logo watermarked on something, they associate it with them right away. Your watermark logo can also become the main logo on your website. If you’re able to design your own logo to use as a watermark for your content, I definitely suggest doing that right away. Make it bold and unique. You want it to stand out and represent you. If you’re like me and aren’t artistically inclined, you could always commission someone on Fiverr to create a logo or even a caricature for you. Or you could do what I did and use your sexiness as a bargaining chip. 😉 I went on the Draw For Me subreddit and asked if anyone would draw my picture. Two days later I had a guy send me the completed drawing… and I love it! I use it to watermark all of my content and even put it on some business cards that I’ll be handing out at CamCon. I thanked him in my cutest typing voice 😛 and gilded his Reddit post, which only costs $3.99 to do. If the artist is into it, you can even thank them with a fan sign, your Snapchat, etc.

Besides watermarking your premade content, you can also watermark your live cam shows. Most sites allow you to use some kind of external app to run in place of their built-in camming software. Then you can use that program to watermark your cam stream. You can watermark your content with your username, with the logo of the site you’re camming on, or even with a sticker that says you’re DMCA protected. If you aren’t able to watermark your live cam shows on the site you cam on, there is another trick that you can use. This method is by no means foolproof, but I’ve heard some other models mention that they do it and it’s been effective. The trick is to play music in the background of your cam shows. Play popular music off the top 40 list… songs that everyone hears over and over again on the radio. A lot of companies won’t post videos with music in them because of copyright laws.

I mentioned DMCA in that last paragraph. If your content does get pirated and posted on free porn sites without your permission, you can always request a DMCA takedown. I go into more detail about how to go about it in this article. So just keep in mind the importance of something as simple as a watermark on your content. It just may help earn you more sales since your content won’t be all over the internet for free.

Myfreecams Camscore

May 31, 2016

How does Cam Score work on Myfreecams?

Myfreecams is the largest live cam site in the industry with over 15 million registered users. With the site being so popular, you can imagine the high number of models that are camming on the site. To really get noticed and get better placement on the site, you’ll need to improve your camscore. The models with the highest camscores appear first on the site. Members can adjust their setting to show models in a different order, but most don’t and the default is by camscore.

When you first start out on Myfreecams, you get a “new model” tag next to your name. Make sure you take advantage of this! Your new model tag will get you added traffic in your room because a lot of guys look for new model. They want to be the first to meet you and make a good impression for when you hit the big times! 🙂 Your new model tag only lasts for your first ten hours of camming, so be sure to check out the site and figure out how everything works before you start broadcasting. This way you’ll be ready to go and won’t have to waste any time learning the site and features. Your first ten hours on cam is when you really need to focus hard on your camscore. If you don’t get it high enough, you’ll lose a ton of traffic once your tag goes away. But if you raise it to a high enough level to get you in the first few lines of the site, you’ll continue to get exposure and new fans.

Your camscore on MFC is based on the amount of tokens (the currency on the site) that you earn over a certain period of time. Your placement on the site is determined solely by your camscore, so it’s important to keep it up. If your camscore is at a level that you’re comfortable with and is getting you a decent amount of paying customers in your room, it’s important to maintain or improve that score. You can do this by setting goals for yourself and not signing off for the night until you reach them. To keep your camscore at the same level, you’ll need to make sure you’re earning about the same amount of tokens every day or week. For example, if you made $1000 one week and you’re comfortable with where that put your ranking on the site, you’ll need to make sure you earn $1000 or more in the coming weeks to prevent your camscore from dropping.

Myfreecams doesn’t tell their models the period of time in which your current camscore is based off of, but they give you this example: let’s say the time period is 60 days. Well if you had a huge day 61 days ago, you may notice your camscore drop suddenly because now that days earnings isn’t calculated into your current camscore. So don’t take days off just because you have one or two big days. Continue to stick to your normal schedule, otherwise you might lose all of the progress you made.

The default camscore for when you first start out on Myfreecams is 1000. You’ll notice it quickly fluctuating your first few days based on how well you’re doing in regards to earning tokens. The median camscore on the site is 600. That means about half the models on the site have a camscore above 600 and half have a camscore below 600. Your camscore is re-calculated every 4-6 hours, but only if you’ve logged into the site since the last time it was calculated.

As I talk about in this article, MFC might not be the best cam site to start off on because of the camscore rating system. I’d suggest trying out another site first that bases your ranking on other factors besides just the amount of money you earn on the site. That way you’ll feel comfortable on cam and already know what works and doesn’t work for you.

Cam Model’s Guide To Periscope

May 27, 2016

Using Periscope for Webcam Models

If you aren’t using Periscope as a way to promote yourself, you’re really missing out on a lot of potential exposure. Periscope is an app that you can download for Android or iPhone. It allows you to live stream video from anywhere in the world to anyone who follows you. With over 300 million active users, Periscope is a great marketing tool. Nudity and the promotion of adult websites is not allowed on Periscope, but there are ways around everything! 😉

Since Periscope isn’t quite adult friendly, you have to be careful what you broadcast. Wearing lingerie or sexy little outfits is fine as long as your naughty bits are covered. This actually isn’t a bad thing. It’s inevitable that you’re gonna get a ton of guys asking you to “open boobs bb” or “just a quick flash, I won’t tell”. It makes it really easy for you to then transition into letting your followers know that they can find you on your website, cam site, social media, etc. if they want to see more of you. Even though you’re not supposed to advertise adult websites on Periscope either, you can get away with it as long as you don’t mention it every 30 seconds. Bring it up occasionally in your broadcast. Definitely don’t put a website link in the title of your broadcast though. That’s just asking to get reported.

Even if you only get on for 5 or 10 minutes, it’s a good idea to Periscope every day. You can let your followers know what you have planned for the day: like your camming schedule, website updates, or if you plan on shooting new content. You can remind them to follow you on social media, let them know of any raffles you’re holding, contests you’re in, etc. It’s a great platform for making sure your fans are up-to-date on everything you have going on.

While you’re broadcasting, you should encourage your followers to give you hearts and share your broadcast with their followers. To give hearts, all they have to do is tap their screen. Every tap gives you a heart. Hearts don’t really mean anything unless you make it to one of the top hearted profiles, but they’re good for bragging rights if nothing else! Hearts will appear on the bottom right of your screen during your broadcast in all different colors. When you sign-up for Periscope, it links to your Twitter account. When people comment on your broadcast, their Twitter profile picture will show up next to their name and comment. It will be shaded a random color that was assigned to them when they entered your broadcast. That color is also the color that their hearts will be.

To keep your broadcasts fun and to encourage interaction, try to do something fun with your followers. A simple, but fun game to play is to think of a question about yourself. Tell your followers that if someone gets the correct answer, you’ll remove an article of clothing. Sometimes I’ll have them guess the color of my bra or panties and then once I see the correct answer three times, I’ll take off either my shirt or pants and show off my lingerie. Again, this leads to a good segway… you can then let your followers know to find you on cam or your website if they want to see more.

Another feature that Periscope offers are private shows. You can invite specific users to join in on your private scope. You can get away with a lot more in private than you can in public. If you decide to use the private feature, you can mention during your public broadcasts that you sell private time through your website, clip store, etc. If someone’s paying for it, you know they aren’t going to report you.

Since Periscope is on your phone and can work from anywhere, you can even Periscope your daily life. Let your followers in on the stuff you do when you’re not working. Guys love to get a glimpse into your daily routine or join you while you travel, when you’re at a concert, etc. Even if you’re on the go, you can still jump on for a few minutes to say hi to your fans and quickly touch base with them.

Porn Spot Review

May 24, 2016

Site Reviews

Porn Spot Review

Signing up for and getting verified on PornSpot was fast and simple. You pick a username, enter in some personal info, upload a valid ID that shows your face, name, and date of birth, and you’re done! After that, an admin will review your application and typically have you verified within one business day. On Xpage, you can sell premade videos and photosets, do live cam shows, and set up a store to sell tangible goods in. They also have hourly contests for those who cam on the site and tips and tricks for how to become a top cam model.

As far as payment options go on the site, PornSpot offers Dwolla, Payoneer, Paxum, and CMB Paycard in the United States. For international models, they offer Payoneer and Paxum. To get all of your financial information set up, you can email one of the support staff members. Once your account is approved, they’ll send you an email that has the info on how to contact a staff member to get all of that set up. You can also set up your payout information yourself on the site. Payments are sent out weekly. The currency on the site is tokens. Tokens are worth $0.10 each, so 10 tokens equals $1.

On cam, you can do private 1-on-1 shows and also spy shows. The default rate for private shows is $4.99/minute, but you can change it to whatever you want. They have it set at $4.99/minute by default because they’ve found that that’s the rate that on average earns their models the most amount of money. You can adjust your private rate from $1.99 to $9.99/minute. Your spy show rate will always be $2.00/minute less than your private rate. They currently have an hourly contest that gives out prize money to the top 5 models who have the most amount of users in their room every hour. First place gets $15, second place gets $7, and third through fifth place gets $5 each. I briefly checked out the cam feature, and it’s incredibly simple to use. You can even choose to have a walkthrough turned on to help you out. You can cam from your web browser or an external app. The external app allows you to cam in HD.

I found the entire site to be very informative and easy to navigate. Everything is organized very well. It didn’t take me long at all to set up my entire profile. Basically all you have to do is crop a couple pictures for your profile photo and banner picture on your profile, fill out some general information about yourself, and input your social media links.

As I mentioned earlier, you can sell your premade videos on Porn spot. The max file size is 2GB per video, and they allow pretty much every file type. You can set your own price per video anywhere from $1 to $100. You put in your own title and description, a main category for your video, and then any tags that you want. Once the video is done uploading, you can select a cover image from screengrabs of your video or upload your own cover. You can also sell your photosets on the site. Again you can set your price anywhere from $1 to $100 per photoset.

Besides making your videos and photosets available for individual purchase, you can also set up a subscription service. You choose the price per month for your subscription membership and what is included (free videos, paid videos, paid subscription videos, free albums, paid albums, paid subscription albums, and store). Another feature available to models on Pornspot is a storefront. You can sell pretty much anything you want. You set a title, your own price, description, any instructions for the product, and an image.

If you’re concerned about privacy, you can block individual users and also entire regions. Pornspot lets you block by individual state and/or country. You can also change the privacy settings for who can view your profile to everyone, no one (only you), members with a credit card on file, only people on your friends list, only users who enter a password you give them, or only users you add to an “allowed list”. Keep in mind though that if you have it set to only users with a password, those users could possibly share that password with others.

I really like PornSpot and it seems to get a decent amount of traffic. I definitely recommend taking the time to get a profile set up with them and start selling your videos, photosets, and tangible goods. There aren’t a ton of cam models on the site at this time, so that only increases your odds of winning the hourly contest!

The Sex Factor: An xHamster Original Series

May 20, 2016

Webcam Industry

The Sex Factor Series

If you’re looking for an sexy, entertaining new reality show to watch, then you should definitely check out Sex Factor! Sex Factor is an xHamster original series that can be streamed online for free. Season one premieres on Thursday, May 19th at 1pm PST. If you’re looking to spice up your sex life, this show could definitely be fun to watch with your significant other. It’s basically a reality porn show with 16 amateur contestants who have never performed in porn before competing for $1 million and instant porn stardom! This isn’t your average TV show, they don’t leave anything to the imagination!

All of the hardcore action will be judged by five famous adult film stars: Lexi Belle, Tori Black, Asa Akira, Keiran Lee, and Remy LaCroix. Throughout the competition, the 16 contestants will find out just how hard it is to be an adult film star. They will take part in increasingly complex and explicit sexual challenges. Things get emotional at times as the contestants come to realize that the porn industry isn’t all fun and games… it’s actually a lot of hard work… no pun intended! 😉

The five judges not only work as judges, but as mentors and coaches to help the contestants through the different challenges and struggles that they’ll face throughout the competition. All of the judges agree that this is one of the coolest projects they’ve ever been a part of. They take a lot of pride in the fact that their judges, and are all excited to find the next big star in the porn industry. Seeing how much energy and enthusiasm the contestants put into everything, made it very difficult to send all but two of them home. But even though sending people home is never fun, watching the whole experience unfold is definitely entertaining for viewers.

The eight female contestants range from age 21 to 26. And the males are between the ages of 21 and 31. All 16 of them are amateurs. One of the requirements when trying out for the show is that you’ve never been in a formally produced adult movie. Even though season one is just premiering, they already have plans for season two of the show! Season two of Sex Factor kicks off with an open casting call at the AVN Awards in Las Vegas January 18th-21st, 2017.

You can find out a little more about each of the contestants by reading their individual bios. Almost all of them have Twitter accounts. Based off of the amount of Twitter followers each had, I’m pretty sure I already know the male and female winners. But don’t worry, I won’t spoil it for you. Who else is gonna be watching?!

Mygirlfund Review

May 10, 2016

Site Reviews

Mygirlfund Review

Mygirlfund is a website where female models can sell premade videos and pictures, sell custom content, perform webcam shows, and get paid to chat with fans. Below I rate them in several different categories, giving them a score in each category out of 10. Out of 60 possible points, I gave them 56/60, with an average score of 9.33. They lost points for their crappy uploaders, traffic dying down on the site recently, and only offering two forms of cashing out.

How Much Experience Do You Have With The Site?
I’ve been on Mygirlfund for 4 years.

Features 9/10:
Mygirlfund offers a lot of features to models. You can create a profile page which is fully customizable (but no nudity is allowed), upload pre-recorded videos, record videos directly through the site, upload pictures to both a public or private folder, live chat with guys, do live webcam shows, enter contests that are run by both members and MGF staff, they give you an inbox to chat with guys, there is an escrow system, a public blog, a girls only blog and forum, and an offers page where you can post any deals you’re currently running. Most of these features are great and work well, but there are a few flaws in my opinion. The max file size for videos is 1 GB. This means that videos larger than that either need to be broken down into multiple parts, have the quality lowered to reduce the file size, or uploaded to MediaFire (which is one of the only file sharing programs they let you use – Dropbox is no longer allowed). They also only let you upload one video at a time. And when you go to name your video files so you can keep track of them, they have a character limit of only 15 characters. The same goes for photosets. There is a max file size of 3 MB per photo, photos have to be .jpg, and folders also have a character limit of 15. These aren’t terrible issues or anything, but they can definitely get frustrating after awhile.

Profits & Traffic 8/10:
The traffic on Mygirlfund used to be really good. It was my number one site for awhile, and I was making thousands of dollars a year on it. I still make decent money on the site, but nothing like I used to. It seems that the traffic just isn’t there as much anymore. A lot of guys have moved on to sites like ManyVids where they get better video previews, can purchase tangible goods, and can do cam shows on apps like Skype, and not be confined to the cam software that MGF offers. The main reason that I still stay on the site is because of all the contests they hold. I enter as many as I can… both the ones that members hold and the ones that MGF themselves holds. I’ve made quite a bit of money from them, so I definitely feel it’s worth it. I don’t make a lot in selling premade content anymore on the site, but I still get a decent amount of custom video sales.

When you first start off on the site, you keep 65%. For every $5,000 that you make, your percentages goes up 2.5% until you reach the maximum of 90%.

Ease Of Using & Navigating The Site 10/10:
Mygirlfund is incredibly easy to use and navigate. They actually recently made some changes to the layout, but it’s still just as easy to use as it ever was. There are picture tabs at the top of every page that you can hover over to view the category. And then some tabs have sub-categories inside of them. It only takes visiting the site a few times to get used to where everything is.

Payments & Cashouts 9/10:
They currently are only offering two forms of cashing out: a mailed check or Payoneer. There is a $10 fee for a mailed check and they generally take 7-10 business days to get to you. There is a $5 fee for Payoneer. You choose when to cash out, and can do so at any time. The payment will say it’s from MGF, LLC, so it’s pretty discreet.

The My Fund page breaks everything down nicely so you can easily see your current fund amount, recent transactions, how much you’ve made overall on the site, how much you’ve made each quarter of each year you’ve been on the site, escrow orders, and how much you’ve earned through messages, contributions, contests, and webcam shows.

Privacy Protection & Geo-Blocking 10/10:
Mygirlfund is very strict about protecting the privacy of both the models and the fans on the site. Their number one rule is that you cannot share any personal information with another member of the site, or collect any personal information from anyone. This means no sharing your real name, address, phone number, usernames you use on other sites, links to other sites you’re on, social media accounts, or anything that encourages members to find you offsite. If you’re caught breaking this rule, you’ll get your account immediately banned in most cases and your pay withheld. If you upload pictures anywhere on the site, you can only use www.tinypic.com to host them. They have this rule in place because TinyPic is an anonymous file hosting site. If you don’t want to upload all of your content to Mygirlfund, you can use an anonymous file sharing program to send out your content. Dropbox is no longer allowed, but MediaFire is fine.

MGF offers regional blocking on the site. You can block individual US states and territories, Canadian provinces, and entire countries. If you block a certain area, anyone with an IP address from that region will not be able to see your profile. You can also set your profile to private if you want. This will make it so only members of the site who are logged in can view your profile. And it also prevents models who are logged in under their model account from being able to access your profile.

Customer Service & Support 10/10:
The customer service and support team at Mygirlfund is great. I only had an issue with them once when my messages were going into their spam folder, so they took longer than usual to reply. But in that case, I was able to contact them through a DM on Twitter and they found my messages and replied the next day. They’re generally very quick to respond to any questions or issues you’re having. They’re always very knowledgeable and answer everything that you ask.

Overview:

Overall Mygirlfund is a good site for selling content, customs, doing live cam shows, and earning some extra revenue from entering contests. I wouldn’t recommend spending too much time setting up your profile and uploading every piece of content you have to the site, but uploading your most popular videos and offering customs is definitely worth the time. Also checking out the Contests page every couple days can pay off too.

Interview With DirtyLittleHolly

May 8, 2016

Interviews