How To Start a Webcam Studio
Once a girl has been a webcam model for awhile, has become established, and has had success at it, there’s a major expansion opportunity open to her in running a webcam studio business. This is something that never even occurs to most models, but I’ve seen it pay huge rewards, so it definitely is worthy of consideration. There are two basic kinds of webcam studios, physical and virtual, and I should go over them separately so everyone understands exactly what I’m talking about.
Physical Webcam Studios
First, physical studios, which are exactly what they sound like: actual constructed locations to which cam models commute and from which they can perform on the various cam sites. Typically, these studios are fully-equipped, offering girls a private space to put on their shows, outfits for them to wear, toys to play with, and really whatever else they might need. In exchange, the studio takes a percentage of the model’s earnings (often about 40%, over and above whatever her cam site is already getting).
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The frills and accessories are a plus, but the biggest draw of a physical studio, and the reason many camgirls use them, is for the sake of simple privacy. Most models are young, so a common problem among them is that they still live with their parents or a roommate, either of which can make it very difficult to cam in peace (especially for long hours).
It’s an even bigger problem in poorer regions of the world like South America and Eastern Europe, where large numbers of people living together in relatively small spaces are common. There, physical studios are often a must for camgirls. This type of business can generate good revenue, but it’s a huge risk, because it requires a big investment. You’ll need to rent a location (which is expensive), provide for the girls’ performance tools, pay for internet, and the like.
Virtual Webcam Studios
On the other hand, virtual webcam studios are much simpler and cheaper to run. They’re online businesses with special accounts on cam sites, under which models can broadcast. The studio can’t provide a physical place to visit and work from, so what it offers instead is training and guidance. They teach girls how to behave on camera to please the audience and draw in regulars and whales, entice viewers to buy private shows, and make them want to tip more. Just as importantly, they instruct the models on the power of social media, and help to promote them on sites like Twitter and Instagram.
For these services (but no real-world assistance) the virtual studio takes a smaller percentage than a physical one would, and is usually satisfied with about 20% of a camgirl’s earnings. I should warn you that this kind of webcam studio business has a reputation in some sectors for being a ripoff, taking a girl’s money while in fact offering her little in return. This isn’t a fair judgment, at least against studios that actually care about serving their clients. Any business can be more interested in scamming people than helping them, but if you have integrity and put in the effort to provide value, a virtual studio can be no less than the difference between success and failure for a model.
If yours is one of those, then you deserve your rewards. And when running a virtual webcam studio, those rewards can be great. Properly run, a successful online webcam studio business can generate between $20,000 and $50,000 a month in gross revenue, which is several times what an average well-performing camgirl can bring in (some girls do better than this on cam, but those are the ones at the top, with whales eating out of the palms of their hands). To draw in money like that, though, you need a solid squad of models broadcasting diligently under your studio, so let’s talk about how you get there.
Recruiting Webcam Models
The first thing to understand about running a virtual studio, and really about camming in general, is that most new models suck. They have no idea what they’re doing, they display little or no interest in learning, and worst of all, their attitude is total garbage. They come into the business thinking that because they’ve agreed to endure the “ultimate shame” of adult-industry work, the world owes them a huge income for free while they sit back on their pretty little asses. When they don’t get showered in instant wealth and success, they cry foul and quit. Prissy little prima donnas like this are the reason that making a virtual webcam studio successful is so difficult, because they’ll bail on you the moment things don’t go their way (and they never do for a camgirl, not in the first month or so).
The way to be successful at this is to keep the girls inspired and encouraged. When I’ve seen it done by studio owners, they accomplish it by convincing their models to look at this work as a “long game”, where gratification will be slow to come at first, but great when it finally starts rolling in. This is how camming actually works, but unfortunately, it’s the exact opposite of what a typical new girl expects.
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That’s why it’s so important that you know where to look for models for your studio, and don’t ever try to just draw random girls in en masse. What you’re looking for are signs that a model is taking her camming work seriously and cares about getting better at it, because those are the ones who will be consistent performers and become skilled over time. It’s best to go after the camgirls on Twitter, and scout the prospects from there. The models you want are the ones who have already set up a business e-mail account on Gmail, have established a video store to sell their content to viewers, and hopefully, know enough to have a premium Snapchat account to which they sell access.
When you find girls like this, that’s when it’s time to get really discriminating, because some of them will be seasoned pros and you don’t want to waste anybody’s time going after those. If someone is already fully familiar with the industry and how to succeed in it, you have nothing to offer her. On the other hand, a girl who cares about her success enough to have learned a few basic tricks, but doesn’t have the mastery or the huge fan following to go with it, is someone with whom you can build a long and mutually beneficial working relationship.
Once you’ve found a girl you think falls into the “Goldilocks zone” (not so green she’s about to quit, and not so experienced that you can’t help her, but just right), you need to approach her via Direct Message and offer some friendly advice. Do this for free, to show your good faith and intentions. After you’ve been talking to her for a little while, you can broach the subject of your studio, and suggest the possibility of her coming to work for you.
Your Studio’s Website
Finally, you need to put up a professional-looking website for your cam model recruitment efforts. This will signal to any potential recruits that you’re an established webcam studio that takes the business seriously. As someone who has worked extensively as a webcam model, I can tell you that the camming community is VERY wary of “fly-by-nighters” and other skeezy folks just trying to make a quick buck off of us. If you’ve got a crappy website, or worse, no website at all, that particular red flag is going to go up like Ron Jeremy’s penis at a porn convention.
All you have to do is this. Get yourself a quality webhost that accepts adult content, then install WordPress on it to serve as your site’s content manager. WordPress is a free script that anyone can easily install which will make running your website a breeze. Then, just select a “theme” that will control how your site looks and operates. Once that’s done, all you need to do is put up a few pages of content describing what you offer to models who signup with your studio.
No need to invest time or money in dozens of pages of content — a few simple and “to-the-point” pages will do. Just describe why your studio can help a cam girl looking to step up to the next level, and what your terms are. Make it all look very professional, which is easy to do with WordPress. If you need to use free stock images for your pages, I would go to PixaBay.com, which is a site where you can find tons of quality royalty-free images to use on your site for free.
But as I mentioned, you NEED to make sure you’re using a quality webhost that is okay with adult content. That’s not actually easy to find, and most of the big hosting companies either don’t approve of adult, or are just simply horrible in terms of uptime and overall competence. I would highly recommend you go with HostWinds, which is my webhost for this blog (which I’m running with WordPress, by the way). It’s a great, adult-friendly option that won’t break the bank. Uptime and support for my blog has been absolutely fantastic, I can’t recommend them more highly!
Also, HostWinds makes installing WordPress very easy to do with its “Softaculous” 1-click installer. Just log into your hosting account, select Softaculous, then choose WordPress installation. Name your site, create your login info, and you’re good to go! Great for non-techie people like me. So easy, I love it!
So, that’s about it. I hope you got some value from this post, and if you decide to get into the industry, I wish you the best of luck. This can be a really lucrative business. Give it some serious thought, and jump in if it seems right for you.