How you run your cam room is crucial to how much money you make. Even if you work on the busiest cam website in the world, a poorly managed chat room will cause you to lose money.
In order to make top dollar cam modeling, us chat hosts have to be strategic when it comes to how we run our business. And always remember, this is a business, so let’s look at ways to make it a more profitable one.
If you are serious about making money as a webcam girl, then here are the top 10 things to avoid directly from a top successful webcam model:
1. Complaining about your life in chat.
If you were taking calls for Verizon Wireless or any company and you had a customer on the line would you freely speak about how bad your day is going and that every other customer before them has been getting on your nerves? Hell no, you’d be fired immediately. Well, there’s no one to fire us as cam girls, so it’s up to us to be smart about our behavior. Your job is to be a fantasy model to the customer. The customers can go to their girlfriends or wives if they want to hear complaints. They’ll probably just go to another girl if your attitude seems lousy or un-attenative.
2. Not knowing your limits.
Here’s what I mean by this. If you put “I love anal” on your profile/bio, you better be prepared to do a lot of anal penetration shows. That doesn’t mean that you are going to get those requests all of the time, but some days you will, so you better know what you are willing to do a lot of.
For example, I can promote deep throat on my profiles because it is one of my specialties. Some days I seem to get only toy sucking requests for hours in a row. This is great for me since it’s so easy to do. Once, when I was gaining too much weight, I decided to use my cam work time as more exercise. I put on my profile that I loved to ride and I highlighted it. Whew! The guys surely picked up on that. I was sweating my ass off by the end of the day. Every customer was saying, “I wanna see you ride it.”
My point is that you need to really think about what you want and don’t want to do in your room. It’s a job, but don’t offer something if you don’t feel okay about it. If you are not comfortable with an activity, like role playing or domination, it’s alright. You don’t have to do everything under the sun. Adjust your profile text to suit you. You’ll avoid burn out this way.
3. Letting free chat guests get you to yell or show anger.
This kind of ties in with #1. Imagine walking into a department store and finding the sales clerk yelling at another customer, telling them to get the hell out and that they suck. You’ll probably just walk away and go to a different sales clerk, or a different store entirely. You only get one chance to make a first impression. The VIP customer with $300 in his account that left your room after seeing your bad side, may never return to see how sexy and sweet you usually are. Never let them see you angry. Unless they ask for it in a show. That’s another reason not to show anger in chat. That’s a fetish for a lot of guys and they may try to get you angry just to get a free domination show.
When guys are rude to me, I usually ban them without even responding. If I do reply, I say, with my sweetest smile, “aw, I’m sorry you’re having a bad day, but it’s all about fun in my chat room so I’m going to ban you now.” Then I say hello to someone else, to show I’ve moved on. Why bother to say something nice? Because it WOWS the guys who are in the chat room. They saw what the jerk wrote and they are probably used to seeing girls lose their cool in that situation. Responding in such a way makes you stand out and it impresses them. The spenders will then be more apt to tip you or take you into private show. Just remember to keep your game face no matter what anyone says in the room. Ban them and be done with it.
4. Not tracking your VIPs.
Some companies give members the title of VIP or Preferred if they spend a certain amount of money on the site. I am not speaking of this. I am talking about my own system of determining which of my own customers are VIPs. If a customer stays in my room longer than 20-30 minutes at a time I consider him a VIP. How you determine whom to identify as a VIP is up to you.
The trick is to find out his name and remember what his kinks and turn-ons are and keep notes, using notepad on computer or actual written notes. You want to make him feel special by greeting him by name the next time you see him in your room. This will keep him coming back. Most models don’t do this, so it will make you stand out in the best way. Keep a pad and pencil near your work area. As soon as the show ends write his member name down with short notes on what he likes. On some sites you can input this info directly into the system and access it with the click of a button whenever he returns to your room.
5. Poor Lighting. – This is the biggest newbie mistake I see.
I wrote this in my other cam girl tips article Setting Up Your Home Webcam Studio, but this is such a common mistake I had to repeat it.
You need 2-3 bright lamps. You don’t necessarily need to go shopping. Just get two lamps from around the house. If you have a table lamp with a shade, remove the shade and put the lamp next to your camera source; about a foot or two away. Keep that lamp pretty much even with your camera, meaning at about the same height.
The other lamp should be directly behind your camera. No special light bulbs are needed; 100 watts works fine. If you have a bright over head/ceiling light that’s a bonus. With the ceiling light you can get away with not having the side lamp, but you really must have a bright one right behind your camera no matter what.
To clarify: you should have 2-3 light sources. The most important one being directly behind your camera. Plus a bright overhead light and/or another parallel lamp a couple of feet from your camera.
Experiment a bit and see the differences in how you look. It almost never works out to put a light behind you.
6. Neglecting Your Body & Health
Picture Making money is awesome, but neglect your health and you will find it difficult to do your job after a while.
If you use toys (and you’ll make more money if you do) use lube to keep from getting sore genitals.
Don’t use anal toys that are too big for you. You don’t want to hurt yourself.
Change which hand you use your mouse with every few days, to avoid carpal tunnel.
Try to stay balanced with all that you do. Meaning if you lean to one side mostly one day, alternate the next day and lean in the other direction more. This will keep you from over-stretching one side of your body.
Take mini breaks to stand and walk in place often when you are camming for more than a few hours; to keep from developing blood clots and other problems. You can always stand and do a little dancing in between shows.
Give your eyes a break from staring at the computer and focus on something in the distance for a few seconds every 10 or 15 minutes. Maybe put a post-it note on your computer to remind you.
7. Having all nude profile photos.
(Your profile consists of your cam bio text –which should highlight what you want to offer– and a few preview photos.)
There’s no mathematical formula for my reasoning on this tip. This is just something that I found to be true over the years. If you have all nude pictures in your profile gallery, you will make less money. Leave something to the imagination.
I do some nude, but not all; not even most. You can show off your best body parts without being nude. Lingerie is great and don’t underestimate the power of a headshot. Psychology teaches us that human faces attract people’s attention more easily than body parts do. Many marketing tests that track people’s eye movements online have also backed this up.
I tend to get better quality traffic when I post a headshot as my main photo. By better quality I mean guys who stay in my room longer and have good manners.
8. Not being in front of your camera when your free chat room is open.
Remember, you have one chance to make a first impression. This is just unprofessional. They come to your live feed and you aren’t even there? Not a good look for business. Just log out if you need to go to the bathroom or something. Of course, this doesn’t apply to you if you’re running some sort of 24hr live voyeur cam.
You don’t want to have to go off camera during a paid private show either. Keep your toys, lube, and some commonly requested sexy outfits (yes, some guys will just want to watch you try things on) within reach. It may be a perfectly innocent mistake, but if you don’t have what you need during a show and you tell a paying customer you’ll be right back to get it, you’ll probably lose the customer–he’ll think you are stalling to squeeze him for more money. Even if he waits, he’s more likely to give you a lower rating or an unfavorable review after the show.
Bonus Tips: If someone requests an item you don’t have, like certain stockings or specific types of panties/knickers, instead of saying “no” tell them you’ll get it next time you go shopping or in a couple of weeks. When you get paid you can invest a few dollars on the things requested most often, including one or two toys if you don’t have any. If you choose not to use toys as a cam girl you should have stockings, heels and lingerie to make up for it; and/or be comfortable with domination. The more you offer the more you will make.
9. Ignoring potential customers.
Most sites give models some indication of whether a customer has money on their account or not. It’s important to remember though, that even if someone is a guest with no money on their account, it only takes a minute or so to sign up with a credit card, and even less time to add money if they already have a card on file. Don’t mistreat the guys with no money on file, they could end up being your next VIP.
10. Giving too much away for free.
Set your goals and work towards them! Members will make request for certain things for you to do all the time. You have to find the balance of what you will offer freely or not. Always set of goal of what you need to earn first before getting soft and giving all viewers a free show.
