Academy 11 - Potential 4 - Cam Girl
What is it?
Most of you will already be well aware of this but a Cam Girl is someone who broadcasts herself online, frequently in erotic situations.
What a lot of people aren’t aware of is that a lot of performers would argue that sex isn’t the main offering for a Cam Girl. From a business perspective, you want people to want to spend time with you and the way to do this isn’t too dissimilar to how you do it in real life. You’re friendly and approachable and you chat with people and listen to them. So you’re selling a form of friendship, it just sometimes happens to involve them jerking off to you as you perform on camera!
The two main sources of money for a Cam Girl are tips from people watching you perform publicly and people paying for private cam sessions with you. So hopefully you realise that you want them to spend as much time as possible watching you and this is easier to do when they consider you as something more than a hole.
Preparation & Equipment
You’ll get a chance to try camming for yourself in a few letters time but to begin with, watch other Cam Girls!
Watch the very popular ones and see what they do, watch new ones and see what they do, watch unpopular ones and see what they do. Take notes of dos and don’ts or even just things you want to try.
You will need a space where you’re going to cam from. Once you start watching cams you’ll get an idea of what they usually look like, but it should be somewhere with enough space for you to move around in and show what you want too on screen without having to constantly reposition the camera.
Obviously, you’ll need a camera! This can be just a phone when you’re getting started (you’ll probably want a tripod for it), a laptop (a laptop is the better choice, if only because you’ll be able to type a lot easier on it) or a desktop PC with a webcam.
Once you get a little more into camming, you can look to upgrade your setup with a better camera, a microphone, lights and so on but the key with a lot of these careers is that you can start and dip your toe in without having to spend too much money.
Clothes, makeup, toys etc are also either required or highly recommended but you should have at least some of these already.
Getting started
You’ll almost certainly need to prove your ID before you can cam on most popular sites, this is to prove you’re old enough to be on camera and once this is done, set up the site and make sure the tech side of things is all in order. Is your camera working ok? Is the sound getting picked up? Is the lighting where you’re planning to cam from good (or at least usable)? 
Once that’s all dealt with, decide on your outfit and makeup, get ready and you’re away!
Don’t worry if you’re terrible to begin with, most people are, just stick with it and try things. Some of what works for others won’t work for you so don’t take it as a sign of doom if something you saw on a popular channel doesn’t have the same, or any, impact when you do it.
Remember that you’re building relationships with the people watching you and a big part of that is finding your identity and focusing on it. We’ll talk about this more below but it won’t all happen overnight.
Improving
YOU WILL GET BETTER! It can take some time to find your sweet spot and even more to turn that into an appreciable amount of money. When you’re just starting out, do a review after each session and think about what worked and what didn’t so you can change things for next time. If you think something is good, but you didn’t quite get it right, then try it again!
There are a lot of different ways to cam, some girls do the public sessions as purely flirtatious fun and then have the sex in private ones, one Dom I know would just describe what they’ve done to subs on their public sessions and then give one on one sessions to anyone who paid for them where they could get much more personal and descriptive.
Don’t be too concerned if you change your (for want of a better word) gimmick a few times when you’re getting started or even if you go back to one you’ve previously discarded. When you’re working to build an audience it’s not entirely about you and it’s not entirely about them, it’s finding the point between the two that works for everyone involved.
Some of the sites will have features that will help you with this side of it, but remember that not everyone watching you is equal! Make sure you focus on where the money is. Camming is a lot of fun but if you’re doing it as a job then the people who have money are where your attention should be.
You can even involve others in your sessions. Friends, partners etc can make appearances (assuming they’ve agreed to beforehand) and you might even find other cam girls in your area, make friends with them and then you’re able to do joint sessions.
Downsides
The main issue with camming is that it’s a slow build. It takes time to find your camming self and then time to build a following and when you’re new, it might just feel like a new form of social media.
However, the time you spend forming relationships with people when you’re camming is an investment on your part because these are the people who will become your fans and regulars. They’ll turn up when you begin a new session and start chatting with you or tipping.
Another thing to consider is where you are in the world. The US time zone is the main one for Cam Girls because that’s where most of the people who are willing to pay are (and it’s also why spoken English is highly recommended). This is something you can experiment with, if you’re not in the US what’s your local timezone like? Try it for a while and then you can try other times and see if they’re better or worse.
And even more on time! Camming simply takes a lot of it and you can feel like you are constantly on call.
A cam session can easily last a few hours and even though it can just be like hanging out with a group of friends, for you it’s still “work” and you should keep that in mind and treat it as such.
You will get a feel for when you’re likely to be busy, but if someone wants a private session with you, you won’t want to be too far from your camera. This can mean your days are scheduled like a regular job and organised entirely around your cam schedule and you need to be strict with yourself but if you reach this point then it’s a good sign you’ve found success!
Homework
As I said, you’ll be able to get a taste of camming for yourself in a few letters time but for now, just go and watch some Cam Girls. No one is saying you have to follow this career but it’s good for you to get an idea of what’s involved and maybe think about if it appeals to you.
At the time of writing, Chaturbate(affiliate link, when you earn, we earn😊) is the most popular site so start there. Look at the top stars and the bottom ones and think about them from a business perspective. Now you know some of the “behind the scenes'' details, you can watch them and work out how their success (or lack thereof) is built. It’s easy to say “well, she’s superhot so…” but plenty of hot women fail at camming and plenty of “plain” women succeed.
Now go and do your homework, next time we’ll look at a different career option.
