Category Archives: Internet

Clips, Internet, Marketing, Sex Work

4 easy ways to increase your clip sales

Everyone wants a lot of sales when they make clips. Be they straight ahead porn or doing what I do, selling fetish clips and mp3s. It’s always a happy day when a clip suddenly skyrockets and you begin seeing some serious pay off for all your hard front end work. Make no mistake about it, the front end work on selling clips is voluminous. There’s lots to do, filming editing, marketing promoting and when you’re just starting out it can be overwhelming at times. I know when I was first starting there was a lot of trial and error until I finally found my clip making groove. I was lucky enough to have some solid advice from a few ladies who really knew what they were doing. They steered me right and i’m thankful for that, it saved me time and in this business time is almost always money.  Not every one has a porn goddess willing to share a little of the wealth of clips making knowledge in their back pocket so heres a few tips that should help increase your sales straight off. Different tactics work for different sites so give them a shot, massage then to suite your niche and your style. The key point here is you gotta try stuff and then monitor the reactions.

1. Write good clips descriptions

Seems simple enough but even someone like me who writes for a living in the mainstream world had to figure out that a good description will sell even a mediocre clip. Doest matter if it’s in a first person style or third person, give it a little life. Don’t just say “Me sucking cock”  and hope it gets bought. Say something more like ” I love the feel of a long hard cock slipping down my eager waiting greedy cock-whore mouth so much, let me show you how much!”  Also think keywords, when writing your descriptions. Think about how potential customers would  search for the kinda clip your presenting and incorporate those terms into your descriptions. Then watch your sales increase.

2. Create your own animated gifs to upload

Lots of sites will auto generate animated gifs for your uploaded clips.  Do not use that function!  It’s never flattering and it rarely presents you in a good light. They are random pulls of stills from your clip and most of the time they get you mid blink! Create your own animated gif and upload that. You can decide whats enticing, whats flattering and present the clip in its best light. Some sites (one my favorites too) don’t give you the ability to upload your own animated gifs so you don’t have the option. In that case cross your fingers and hope for a good presentation. You can also do what I do, lobby them to make that option/function available to you. Sometimes sites will take your thoughts and requests into consideration when adding functions, especially if you can show them how it would make more money for you both.

3. Upload often

Upload, upload, upload! The more content you make, the more you can upload, the more you will be seen as someone who always has something new to offer, the more often people will visit your store.  This is the best way to increase sales, be prolific and create as much content as you can. That being said I know It’s not always easy to make a lot of content, lots of things get in they way, from not feeling inspired, to having a bad hair day. One trick is making your clips available in different formats. Create several different formats of of the same clip and viola!  One clip turns into 3 and you can have something to upload two extra days. Some clip stores will let you schedule your clips to go live in advance, take advantage that function and schedule your clips. Try it out at different times and see when you make more sales. Are you popular mornings? Late nights? I once had clips upload once an hour for 24 hours to test out when I got the most traffic. I learned a lot that day.

4. Keep your clip store designs clean and readable

Just because there are 10 different design functions available to you doest mean you should use all 10! Sometimes less is more. Keep your backgrounds clean so you can read the text on top of them. When good is amazing, mind blowing clip descriptions going to do for you if no one can read them because you have a busy background in 12 different rainbow colors making it impossible to read. Not everyone is a designer and its easy to get carried away, try to keep  it neat and clean and simple. Sometimes one sizzling hot photo at the top of your store is enough to make them scroll to see what you have to offer. Don’t forget to add an email address, a twitter if you have one (and if you don’t get one!)  and if you make custom clips mention that in your studio description. Customs clips are a great way to increase your bottom line, if you don’t make them, think about adding it to your repertoire

 Jenny DeMilo: Dominatrix, GFE Escort, Fetish Clip Producer, Phone Sex Operator and Hypno-Domme.

 

Internet, Marketing, Money Management, Sex Work

Work Smarter – The Marketing Edition

Marketing is probably the most time consuming aspect of success in the adult industry. Actually, I should correct that statement to encompass all industries, not just the adult industry. Because there is no one sure fire way to be successful at marketing, it involves a lot of trial and error. Sometimes you’ll find that one venue of marketing works amazingly, but then six months later maybe it’s a completely different venue. This royal pain in the ass also happens to be your best friend in the path towards success. Be careful though, it sometimes feels like an uphill battle. In stilettos. Since marketing is an ongoing trial and error process, your first instinct may be to advertise one month on one website and then the next month switch to another website. This can definitely have its ups, but an ad needs to be seen at least 3 times for the audience to make a decision on the product or service. Assuming someone goes to a website once a week, your ad would have to be guaranteed to show up each time they visit that website for them to remember you. That seems like it would be easy, until you factor in that you are not the only advertiser on a website. Most websites use banners that either change every 5-7 seconds or that change each time you click to a new page within the website. Give your ad on the site a 3 month trial period. If you haven’t gotten at least a 10-20% return on your investment, it is definitely time to look elsewhere.

When you’re paying for advertising, be smart about where you spend your money. A fellow producer friend of mine decided to invest by advertising on a popular fetish based tube site, which seems like a great idea except he advertised on a niche fetish tube site and his site doesn’t cater to that specific niche! Of course he was really disappointed by the results since he didn’t get a return on his investment, but he made the mistake of not investing intelligently! Make educated decisions on where and how you spend your advertising budget (do your research!!) so that you don’t end up making the same mistake.

If instead of paying for advertising, you’re doing your own advertisement, consider where and how you’ll be doing it. Are you sticking primarily to forums and interaction with potential customers to drive traffic your way? Maybe you’re running a blog or twitter? Consider this for a moment: what is your hourly rate for a cam show or session? Are your efforts at marketing bringing you that rate for each hour devoted to the cause? If you’re spending 3 hours a day tweeting, and your hourly session rate is $250, that’s $750 worth of work. Did you make that money up? Did you book a session during those 3 hours directly off twitter? No matter how you are advertising, you need to expect a return on your investment, which means not only did you make back the time and money spent, but your earnings go above and beyond that.

If you are advertising by your own means rather than a third party site, use tools that are readily available such as Google Analytics, keywords/search terms, social media sites, and forums (where you are allowed to market yourself. Check the forums TOS before posting ads!). Remember that time is money, and if you’re spending all of your time posting ads and trying to drive up traffic there needs to be a return. Perhaps you spend 10 minutes writing a blog post, be sure to add keywords to make finding you easier. Or maybe you’re tweeting, spend 30 minutes scheduling your tweets to post at popular tweeting hours. See if people you know are willing to do a banner exchange to help drive traffic to each others’ sites or blogs.

There is a lot that can be done to advertise on the internet, and taking advantage of all the avenues is one of the best thing you can do. Whether you decide to pay for advertising or do it yourself, make sure that you’re smart about it. Don’t present yourself or your brand in a bad light, choose the right venues for advertising, and make sure that your ad or banner catches the eye and is memorable!

Follow Sydney Screams on Twitter @sydneyscreams4u

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

Internet, Marketing, Sex Work

Think Before You Tweet

Over sharing is an epidemic on the Internet. All kinds of people share way too much about themselves and their daily activities. From pictures of their lunch ad nauseum to tweeting live during a bad date without their new companion knowing the horrible things they are saying about them behind their back. For a sex worker how much personal info to share with the world can be difficult waters to navigate. Lots of our business be you escort or adult film star comes from personality. People think they know you as a result they buy your films, clips, web-cam time or book an in person session and that’s a good thing. You want them to feel like they know you or at least know your “persona” but there’s a line to walk between the personal and the over personal.  For example, you don’t want to fucking tweet about your gonorrhea! For the love of god learn the line between sharing and OVER sharing.

When you’re feeling depressed that might be a good time to get off line and not tweet or blog a long sad woe is me blog. When the money isn’t flowing do not tweet about it, no one wants to eat in an empty restaurant. Instead plan some new ways to bring in cash, do not write a long emo style I cant make any money in this business dissertation about how no one likes you, in hopes that the anonymous masses will come rescue you. They wont and you will probably attract trolls and then you have a whole new problem.  When you get knocked up by a client ( we all know what “uninhibited experience” or whatever jargon is being used means) do not tweet about it and then go on to tweet  every move you make from getting Plan B, to its subsequent failure, to your trip to get your abortion.  No your protected tweets wont stop everyone from knowing, your over sharing will only get passed around in email. It might be alright for Amanda Palmer to sing about the abortion she got in college, shes an artist trying to make a point. Your a sex worker and that kinda sharing isn’t going to gain you money, clients or respect among your peers. I would even go so far as to say it wont bring you the sympathetic words, thoughts and deeds from the Internet you are hoping it will bring you.

Yes, we all have bad days. Yes, we all make mistakes, but do not forget that when you are a sex worker your brand is who you are. You wouldn’t see “Coke” tweeting about how they are being sued by a customer over their product making people fat, or  big Tobacco writing long blogs about people saying mean things about them and accusing them of giving people cancer in hopes that the Internet would feel sorry for them. No, they keep that shit under wraps. Why? Because info like that could hurt their brand and subsequently their pocketbooks. Big Tobacco doesn’t want people thinking cancer when they think cigarettes and you don’t want potential customers to think pathetic, unsafe, crazy, or stupid when they think of you. You want to manage the bad info not increase it nor do you want to shine a bight shinny light on it. If you get an STI, go to the doctor and do whatever you need to do to fix that problem. Don’t tweet pictures of yourself in the stirrups at the gyno getting your PAP with a caption “My STI and Me” #ImUnsafe. If you are having a bad day and feel sad, take it off line and talk to a friend about it. They care about you they will take the time to prop you up when you feel sad or down or are having a bad day. When you get knocked up and have to cancel a tour, say it’s because you have a family emergency not because you raw dogged a client and now have to “get rid of your little problem” don’t attention seek from the Internet. You will only turn potential money off and the goal here is to make more money, not less money. Learn how to ride the line of the personal and too personal because you want potential customers to feel like they know you, with out giving too much about yourself away. It takes time to master and we all stumble but think before you tweet, blog, or act out on the tubes. Will this temper tantrum hurt my business, will this tweet come back to haunt my bottom line? Will this blog/tweet/post help my wallet or a the very least not hurt it.

Jenny DeMilo: Dominatrix, GFE Escort, Fetish Clip Producer, Phone Sex Operator and Hypno-Domme.

Fetish Model, Internet, Marketing, Sex Work, Webcam

Being a BBW Means You’re Fat

It’s a very rare thought process to wake up one morning and think to yourself “my goal for the next 6 months is to gain 25-50 lbs of pure fat.”  Gaining weight isn’t looked at fondly by “society.”  The thing is, there is an entire population of porn and fetish watchers who are into big women (and men for that matter!), and that population watches a LOT of porn.

Being a BBW/BHM is awesome. As you’ll find in any niche porn, once you’ve got fans, they are fans for life and they are loyal fans. Find what works for you as a BBW/BHM and stick to it. You could stick to the fetish side such as feeder/feedee, domination, or belly play, all of which are extremely popular for BBW/BHM since they feed directly into the larger than life fantasy. Or maybe more on the porn side with straight up hardcore sex. Even as escorts, there is a huge demand for larger than life people, and not a lot of people to fill that demand. I would give the same advice to anyone though—finding your niche is vital and can make or break you.

Being a BBW or BHM means that you’re going to encounter a lot of ridicule. There is no easy way around that fact. Here’s the thing though: the acronym “BBW” and “BHM” are not there to demean you or make you feel ugly. Both use words that are positive reinforcements of your attractiveness. Big beautiful women and big handsome men have just as much insecurity as men and women of average weight. However, the ridicule coming from an anonymous population of people you don’t know can be much easier to handle than the ridicule that comes from your biggest enemy: yourself. Looking in the mirror may not be an easy task, but it may be a lot easier than standing on a scale in the morning wishing that you dropped a pound or two. Confidence radiates just as much as insecurity radiates, so learn to conquer your self-loathing. There is something to be said about a person of any size or shape that radiates confidence! When I first started as a cam girl, I weighed 135 at 5’2” and I was 19 years old. Even then, I was “too fat” for the people who liked skinny girls and constantly had people telling me to loose weight. I’m now 24, and at 5’3” I weigh just below 200lbs. The fat comments haven’t stopped, but the compliments have increased. One of my favorite ways of dealing with fat comments is to point out that whomever is making them is a real genius at pointing out the obvious. Until my youtube channel got shut down, I had a video I would refer people to, about 30 seconds in length of me saying something along the lines of “Saying that I’m fat is like pointing out that dogs have hair. DUH!” and laughing. I got more positive feedback for that 30 seconds than I’ve gotten for anything else, and the people calling me fat ate their words as they sat behind their anonymous youtube profile playing keyboard warrior.

As always, be safe. There IS work out there for BBW/BHM and a lot of money to be made. Do your research on the company you’re working for, or if you’re working for yourself, research BBW porn or fetishism and understand it so you can best cater to it.Don’t be afraid of your body—insecurity shows, even on camera. Learn to laugh at the people putting you down and calling you names.

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

Internet, Marketing, Sex Work

Making Twitter Your Bitch

In the last 12 months, I have made over $4000 just based on connections I made through Twitter. I don’t mean residual income from selling videos or photos, I mean $4000+ worth of paid shoots straight off Twitter. If you wanted to add in the income from selling videos and photos from content exchange shoots, that number could easily double. Twitter can very easily be your best friend, but only if you use it to your advantage. Here are some tips on how to make Twitter your bitch:
1. Don’t have an ego so big that you miss important connections. Yea, I get it. We all think we’re the most awesome bitches on this planet, and damnit we deserve to be treated that way! Forget that thought process on Twitter. Having an ego on Twitter is quite possibly worse than having an ego in real life. Nobody cares about your 10k+ followers or that you made $1000 in a day off your clips. People care that you’re a cool person. These days, half of the jobs you’ll get are based off your personality rather than your looks or popularity. Have a sourpuss attitude? That’s a damn shame since there are dozens of others who don’t. It’s way easier to be nice and humble than it is to pull the bitch card.

2. Interact with (almost) everyone. You never know who is a potential client or someone looking to hire you. Obviously the people tweeting comments about how they want to do all sorts of things to you can be ignored or simply just thanked for their support. However, new producers flock to Twitter to find talent, and just because someone doesn’t have a default photo yet might not mean that they aren’t legit trying to get the ball rolling. I’ve been lucky with having some amazing fans pop up from Twitter, as well as meeting new producers and clients. There are jerkoffs on there trying to get freebies or troll you, but in 140 characters it’s quite easy to tell the difference between someone serious and a fanboy or troll. If someone is asking you for photos or videos, send them a link back to your site in response!

3. Autotweets are your friend. Ok, yes, it’s time consuming to get them set up, but the pay off is amazing. The rule of marketing is that people have to see an ad at LEAST 3 times before they consider it. Ideally, you want someone to see the ad 7-12 times. Nobody has that kind of time to sit and update Twitter with the same post over and over and over again. If you do, I highly recommend spending time hustling elsewhere. Sign up for a service like HootSuite which lets you schedule tweets in advance, and don’t be stingy with your tweets. Schedule each tweet to post at least twice a day, during peak business hours (look at your sales or sign ups, what time do they happen most frequently? Use that as a guide for when to schedule tweets). HootSuite is free, although they have a paid version which lets you upload Excel files to make scheduling even easier. Spend an hour a week scheduling tweets for the week advertising your site, your blog, your upcoming travel, any exciting new videos/photosets on your site or store, etc.

4. Don’t retweet everything everyone @’s you. Seriously. We get it. You’re hot. You’ve got a great ass. That dude wants to be your slave. That other dude wants to bury his manjunk so far up inside of you that you feel it deep in your belly. Retweet the genuinely awesome ones, such as a producer advertising you on their sites or getting a rave review from someone you just worked with.  Being popular is great, but again with the ego. Don’t go waving it around in everyone’s face. They can just search @[your twitter handle] and see what everyone is saying without it clogging up their timeline.

5. Be careful who you do business with on Twitter, especially escorts and anyone else who privately sessions. Don’t tweet about your location, don’t tweet about making money with a client, don’t conduct business with anyone who refuses to take the conversation off twitter and fill out your screening services questionnaire. I don’t have statistics about whether police use Twitter to do crackdowns, but I imagine it’d be a pretty easy place to get info. Who is this person you’re talking to that’s only had a Twitter profile for 2 days and is only following you? Probably not somebody you actually want to be talking to and scheduling private sessions with.

6. Use photos to drive more traffic to wherever. Advertising a new clip? Use a still photo from the clip (with your watermark and store/site info on it) in the tweet! People like teasers, so get a really great still photo and use it. This is also helpful when you’re scheduling your autotweets! Nothing says “come buy what I’m selling” quite like an enticing photo. (edit note: be careful about nudes, read the TOS for picture hosting sites many don’t allow them)

7. Hashtags aren’t always necessary. Nobody cares if you hashtag #thingsIforgottodolastnight, but look at popular hashtags and use them! They’re popular for a reason! #fml #whitegirlproblems #toetuesday are all short and simple, and popularly used. Posting a photo of something specific? Use hashtags to describe it (#feet #XXX #ass). This is also a great tool with both autotweets and photos.

8. Don’t carry on lengthy conversations on Twitter. Take the conversation elsewhere, be it Skype or email, 140 characters is annoying and you rarely get the full message across. Don’t be rude about asking someone to email you though—explain that Twitter makes it difficult to follow conversations and that email is your preferred method of ongoing contact.

9. Your tweets don’t show in Google search, but your profile does. Use keywords to describe yourself! Are you a pornstar based in NYC? Put that in your profile! Do you have a website? Put that in your profile (there’s even a place for that!!). What defines your job? List that!

10. Don’t air out your dirty laundry on Twitter. I cannot stress this enough. If you have bad blood on Twitter, be the bigger person and don’t mention it, don’t tweet about it, don’t respond to it. People read your tweets, and if they see that your timeline is full of drama, shit talking, or nasty subtweets, they’re going to move on even if it isn’t about them. Yes, we all have bad days and drama, but keep it off Twitter unless it’s a must. This also applies to your own dirty laundry: if you’re depressed or angry or desperate, it shows on Twitter and can scare off potential companies to see that your life isn’t together.

11. You’ll eventually get tired of me saying this, but do your research!! If it is a new producer, ask them for references. If it’s a potential client, make sure they are properly screened. Make sure the company you are working for is legitimate. Do they have a website listed? Do they interact with others in the industry (both colleagues and people that they hire)?

Follow Sydney Screams on Twitter @sydneyscreams4u

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