Category Archives: Fetish Model

Creating Your Own Demand

Rule_34We all know about Rule 34: There is a fetish for everything. Everything has potential to turn someone on. It’s one of the best things about being a sex worker. You get to create your own niche to the extreme. But how exactly do you build demand once you’ve created your niche? The good news is that it is essentially really easy. The bad news is that it is time consuming. But nobody is going to be successful doing nothing, so I’m just going to assume that you’re not lazy and that you want to fucking work. First off, get your ass on social media. You can’t avoid social media anymore when you’re creating your demand. Hashtags are your best friend on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. But it’s so much more than that!! You have to also network. The sex worker community on Tumblr is one of my absolute favorites. People constantly build each other up, dish out hate on creepers, and reblog advertisements. Just remember that you’re expected to do the same! Use watermarked photos of yourself to advertise your services, whether you’re a pro-Domme, cammer, PSO or escort. Don’t just post the photo though, include your website(s) in the description!

Do a bit of research. Who are the people who have similar interests and where do they hang out? There are forums for just about every kink these days, and forums are a great place to start conversations with potential clients/customers.

Own what you do. Are you a POC into cosplay? Show off your geek knowledge along side your cosplaying photos. You have a personality (even if it’s a made up one), use it to your advantage. By making yourself a relatable individual, people will feel connected to you and more likely to support your services. This can be a problem when you’re a FemDom, as there is a fine balance between being too accessible and not enough. Find that balance! Do something different from everyone else. Nobody likes a copycat. Don’t copy other people!! It’s in poor taste. Standing out from the crowd will make you stand out in peoples’ minds.

Don’t wait for other people. You own you. You control what you do. You cannot expect to sit around and wait for others to make you successful. That’s not how this industry works. Find what you want to do and do it. Don’t wait for companies to hire you. Don’t wait for approval from anyone. Just fucking do it.

Nobody cares about your success more than you, so why on earth are you not doing anything about it? 

Sydney Screams: Fetish Model, Clip Producer, Adult Actress, Radio Talk Show Host

Orange IS the new black

Nix the BlackWhat should one wear to shoot porn or fetish smut in? I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t black (or busy patterns). Why not black? Well, the truth of the matter is people aren’t buying your porn or fetish smut for the artist value or breathtaking cinematography. Your videos (or cam shows) are purchased for the simple fact that someone out there wants to fap or schlick to you. They want to see your body!! You only have a small gif, preview or thumbnail to catch their attention, and you want to stand out. Bright colors draw people in, as well as making it easier to see your body. Black does hide flaws and make your body appear more slender, which is great when you’re going to a job interview or out on a date, but when someone is watching you online, they want to see you, and every inch, curve, scar, or tattoo that you have. The way black is picked up on camera makes it very hard to see curves, which in turn makes it hard for your client to appreciate every aspect of you. Even with clients seeking domination, they want to see your body. You can be dominant and kinky in any color; black and red aren’t a required uniform. Your personality should be dominant enough to make it so you can do your job in the brightest of colors.

As with every rule, there are exceptions. There are a few wardrobe staples that you need to own in black (depending on what you’re doing, exactly):

  1. High heels
  2. Pencil Skirt
  3. Bra & Panty set
  4. Gloves
  5. Shiny/metallic/glittery black anything (the light hits it differently than a flat black and makes seeing your body easier!!)
  6. Black pantyhose or stockings

If you ever pay attention to anything on TV, you’ll rarely see actors wearing black except for formal occasions or work. Start to pay attention how their figures look when they wear black as opposed to a bright color (red, blue, green, whatever). You get a better idea of what someone’s body type is when they wear colors, which is exactly what you want to give your buyers.

Sydney Screams: Fetish Model, Clip Producer, Adult Actress, Radio Talk Show Host

Before You Get Naked On The Internet…

imageOnline based sex work, such as fetish clips and webcamming, is attractive for a lot of reasons. It can be done with just a webcam and an internet connection. You can do it in the comfort of your own home. And you can have as much or as little contact with clients as you want.

But that doesn’t mean it’s all lying around in cozy lingerie and watching the sales emails roll in. It’s WORK.

In the past couple years I’ve helped a lot of people set up their first fetish clips studios. More accurately – I’ve given a lot of people the lessons & tools to do so, complete with filming their first clips. But I’ve also gone out of my way to help people who haven’t done their homework. And that’s not cool. It’s a waste of my time and theirs. This is a guide I rather accidentally compiled from emails I’ve sent to people asking the same questions.

These are the things you need to do BEFORE you open your studio and BEFORE you come to me or Sydney to help you get up and running. We’ve talked a lot about making money filming clips. But we’ve been catering to people already in sex work or perform as fetish models in some capacity. This is more basic. These are the things you need to do FIRST.

1. Choose a hooker name. Don’t even talk to me about filming until you know what you want to call you on camera and the name of your store. Take your time, because you’re kind of stuck with it, but figure it out.

This is also a good place to start developing your Hooker Persona. For a lot of people it’s a fairly organic process, but it’s worth putting some thought into. Are you an evil cunt who lives to cause pain? Sexual being of pure energy whose kink transcends gender? A deliberately generic horny slut who likes getting off on camera. A lot of this will be determined by how your clients perceive you, and will evolve over time, but having a basic idea of how you want to present yourself is helpful.

2. What do you want to do? What are you willing to do? Live webcamming? Filming porn? Filming fetish porn? Check out the major sites –  www.streamate.comwww.niteflirt.com, and of course, www.clips4sale.com. See what it takes and what it looks like. Browse the categories. See what sells. See where you might fit in. Then think about what you want to do in greater detail, and perhaps just as importantly, what you DON’T want to do.

I can’t emphasize boundaries enough. They will be pushed consistently and often unexpectedly. Common requests include: nudity, masturbation, anal play/sex, sex toys, tickling, sucking of toes, domination, submission, gay humiliation, racial humiliation, peeing, filming/camming with other people, and some things you never would have imagined. It’s much easier to navigate if you have set your personal boundaries ahead of time.

The #1 priority is to take care of yourself – which will be more emotionally centered with solitary digital based work. Pushing your boundaries out of desperation can lead to extremely dangerous situations. That’s a totally privileged position and there’s a lot of political shit inherent in saying that, but highly applicable to the majority our audience here. Don’t put up with shit you’re not ok with just because you might make a few bucks off of it.

3. Do the paperwork. If you’re not ok with sites like the aforementioned having your legal information or records of your income, stop now. Otherwise, get yourself to a scanner or fax machine. Fill out their forms. Scan your IDs. Send in your tax forms. Whatever else it takes to get approved (it’s been a while… I don’t remember the specifics.) It usually takes a couple days to get approved, but you can keep working to be ready for launch while you wait!

4. How out are you ok being? Are you ok showing your face? Are you ok with your parents, friends, co-workers, future lovers, or future employers finding out? Or at least prepared for that possibility? Once your image hits the internet, especially in a sexy porny context, you can pretty much consider it immortalized. There’s no going back. You can get a lot of distance and erase as much as possible… but the internet has a long memory.

5. Know the Deal. In my experience the money I make from online based sex work is directly proportional to the time and effort I put into it. This is a slow burn kind of field. Each clip you sell will earn you about $3-$5 on average, but that can start to really add up over time. You may have 4 shitty hours on cam and then have an hour long private that rains tips on you. And either way you usually won’t see that money immediately unless you’re working independently, which I know too little about to give good advice on.

Payouts for clips sites generally happen monthly. Cam sites generally pay either weekly or bi-weekly. Are you able to sustain yourself on that? And both will take a significant percentage of your total sales. Look up how much and set your prices accordingly.

It takes both hard work and a bit of patience. It takes a while to build a customer base, especially in a niche market. You won’t make a boat load of money quickly. But you can lay the foundation for sustainable and relatively passive income down the line.

Congratulations! You made it this far! You’ve set up your studio/cam profile and are ready to start earning those sweet paychecks! Now get your sexy butt/feet/mouth on camera!

And while you’re editing / updating come back here and read these:

4 Easy Ways To Increase Your Clip Sales

Dealing With Rolls While Camming Part 1

Make More Money From Fetish Clips

Consistency Is Key

Lauren Kiley: Webcam Girl, Fetish Performer, Fetish Clip Producer, Former Escort, Activist, Dirty Girl Next Door.

You Can’t Do It All At Once

A lot of my model and pro domme friends jokingly tell me I do too much, which is probably true, but at the same time it isn’t. I’m one of those girls who not only maintains a full time, 9-5 vanilla day job, gets at least 8 hours of sleep a night and works as a model full time, which involves everything from marketing to booking to shooting to editing. It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally learned how to manage my time to best adapt to my busy lifestyle. So here are a few times for successfully managing your time:

  1. Know Your Limits. I don’t mean what you will and will not do, I mean what you can and cannot do both mentally and physically. I stress out easily if I do not live within my limits, which can be anything from not getting enough sleep to overbooking myself. I make a point of going to bed around the same time each night so that I can get at least 8 hours of sleep. I also make a point of having at least one day a week that is My day; no friends, no modeling work, nothing except what I choose to do. Working outside my limits has caused me to lose jobs because I’m too stressed out to do them.
  2. Keep a written calendar. Sure, your phone and computer have calendars built in, but the physical aspect of writing something down is bound to help you remember. For me, once it is written down, it is committed to memory. If someone asks me if I’m free to work on a specific date, I tend to know without having to look it up whether I’m available or not.
  3. Set a schedule. I work a 9-5 day job, so my day job schedule is set. I also schedule when I shoot and how long I’ll be shooting for. For example, maybe Tuesday is my filming day for myself. I know that every single Tuesday from 7-8 or 7-9, I will be shooting clips. Since I’ve planned that in advance, I come up with ideas in advance. Or maybe as a webcam model, you know your busiest hours are from 7pm-midnight, so that’s when you work. If you keep the same schedule as a cam model, people will know when to expect you, which pays off big time once you have regulars.
  4. Plan things out. Are you a traveling sex worker? Plan in advance to not only save you time but also money. Book work in advance! Don’t wait for the last minute and hope that something comes up. I hate to tell you this, but just because you work on a “I’ll wait until last minute” or a spontaneous schedule, doesn’t mean the rest of the world does too.
  5. Don’t get distracted. If you plan on webcamming from 7-10pm, do it. If you plan on shooting clips for 2 hours, do it. Don’t let emails or the interwebs or tv distract you. I’ll let you in on a secret…They will still be there when you’re done.

There is no easy way to figure out how to best manage your time. I had a huge anxiety attack over how stressed out I was before I really figured out how to manage my time. It paid off though. Since then, I haven’t been stressed out over my time, I get things done and I still have free time for me. Nobody is going to manage their time the same, but once you figure out what works for you, stick to it!

Sydney Screams: Fetish Model, Clip Producer, Adult Actress, Radio Talk Show Host

So You Want to Quit Your Day Job

So you want to quit your day job…

Ok, first thing? Don’t.
Not right away, anyway. You’ve got some serious planning to do first, sugarbritches! It took me nearly a year to get everything ready to go from working in this industry part-time to making it my full-time job and my sole means of income. If this is a choice that you have the luxury of making in advance, make the most of the time you have to make the move as painless as possible.

Are you making at least the same amount of money whoring part-time that you are while working full-time at the day job? If the answer is no, stop reading this article and start honing your skills in your chosen field and come back after the answer is yes. When you’re getting your footing while moving into being your own boss all the time, you’re going to need to take time figuring out a new rhythm, a new schedule, a new well… everything. This could very well eat into your planned “work week” at the beginning and allowing yourself enough time to adjust will save you some serious gray hairs. Especially since there really aren’t any guaranteed paychecks in this biz, bogging yourself down with “holy shit I have to whore for 60 hours to make this week’s bills.” will kill you. KILL YOU. So yes, make sure you are comfortably making your current pay with part-time effort right out of the gate. it will make your transition that much easier. There will be booming times and lean times, be prepared.

Are you prepared to no longer have a mainstream job as an answer when someone asks you what you do for a living? Do you plan on being “out”? To whom? These are questions that you may not have had to think about when this was just a part-time gig but once you are all-in, be prepared to be asked about this “great new job you’ve started” and you should have an answer ready, (whatever it may be) for people that matter to you. Obviously, not everyone needs to know your business but be prepared to be asked, and be asked often. This is also a good time to remind you that at some point in time you could possibly be recognized or god forbid, outted.

Have a hefty amount in savings put away before you give your notice. I hope you’ve been saving your whore money while you’ve been slaving away at your day job because you really never know what adjustments you’re going to need to make once you make your ho job your only job. I saved 6 months worth of expenses because my husband had been laid off the year before and that showed me how important a safety net was, especially with a mortgage.

Let’s talk health insurance. Because let’s be real, this is a giant issue for us all and if you’re leaving a job without health insurance, you better have a plan to replace it. Many of us go without, on a hope and a prayer and lord knows that shit ain’t smart. (I was lucky enough to only have to wait a few months until open enrollment for my husband’s plan through his employer. I know how lucky I was to have had that option.) Paying out of pocket for every last bit of health insurance you’ll need can get CRAZY expensive, and hopefully the Affordable Healthcare Act will help lessen some of the burden in the future. Regardless, it’s always a good idea to do your research and plan for what decisions you’ll need to make.

So yes, if Sex Work is the job you love (or love to hate) and the career path you’re choosing, please don’t jump in hastily. Plan ahead, save your money and come to terms with whatever social hangups others will have about your profession before making the leap.
It’ll serve you well in the long run.

 

Savannah Darling: Fetish Specialist, Webcam Mistress, Phone Sex Operator, Professional Domina