Tag Archives: Internet

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

Community, Fetish Model, Internet, Sex Work, Webcam

Dealing with Trolls While Camming – Part 2

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If you haven’t read the first part of this little series, we covered some basic survival tips on how to keep your sanity when encountering scumbags, jerks and generally rude people when you cam. For the second part, I sent out some interview questions to a few chathosts that I think are interesting, fun and most importantly, good at what they do. I wanted to share their perspective on dodging the trolls. (I asked each host the same questions, and chose snippets from their answers. I encourage you to read each host’s full detailed response to ALL the questions by visiting the link after their quote for some REALLY good advice from seasoned pros.)

And now I’d like to introduce you to our fabulous interviewees!

 

The lovely Ava Doll, who cams for Streamate:

Ava Doll“It’s all about finding your own way to deal with people in your chat room who are rude or mean. I make it clear in my room, for instance, that I will tolerate people saying anything to me or about me in free chat (if I don’t cry or get upset and either laugh or talk dirty back to a troller, they either get bored and leave or buy one of my shows) but no one is allowed to criticize or judge another person’s fantasy in my chat. I secretly like when a new person comes into my room, calls me a whore and I either fire right back and say, “Good morning, asshole” or “Mmmmm…. god daddy, I love when you call me a whore” and more times than not, I have a new paying fan. I think I’m lucky when it comes to trolls because I already am a dirty talking, filthy cum whore who loves to beg for it, so it’s just natural for me.
If someone is making nasty comments about you, I like to remind them that this is the internet, there is something out there for everyone. If I’m not it, then I wish them all the best in finding whoever is.”

Read Ava Doll’s entire interview here:

 

The ever-handsome Boyhous, who currently cams for Cam4:

“You pretty much covered all the bases and I agree with the entire article. The analogy of a chat room being similar to a call center is dead on. It’s the same “customer service” principles but different environments. Call center Boyhousreps try to “turn the difficult ones around” or even think that “difficult people aren’t challenges..they’re opportunities”. Great! But that doesn’t usually work in a cam chat room. Best defense as stated is to ignore, block, and ban….or all the above reasons already mentioned.
… I don’t put up with ANY bullshit. Zero tolerance. No second chances. NONE. And the same applies for any disrespect to myself OR my fans during a show. I want a positive environment for everyone..a place to have fun and be comfortable. That means no annoyances. No distractions. When possible I’ll always try to have a room moderator to kick, silence, block, or ban those that can’t play fair. Unfortunately these idiots will always be there… and it’s impossible to rid them all. How can any broadcaster try to control them AND give a show at the same time? It’s impossible. It’s like playing Tetris trying to keep up with the amount of assholes. Room mods are GOLD for this reason. Then you’re able to focus your attention and energy where it should go.”

Read Boyhous’ entire interview here.

 

And the gorgeous Diamond James, another fantastic Streamate host:

Diamond James“… It depends on my mood whether I ban with no comment or choose to joke with the room about the troll. Either way, I always keep a smile on my face.  🙂
Trolls and rude people in general come with the territory of putting yourself out there on the internet. You just have to accept it and move past it. Being a cam girl or any other public figure requires a thick skin. If you don’t have a thick skin, camming may not be the best job for you. You must have inner self confidence and a good sense of self to be in this business. You must emotionally separate your persona from the real you, even if they are almost the same. The trolls will never go away but the more you ignore them, the less they will try and bother you.”

Read Diamond James’ entire interview here.

 

I was chatting with my favorite super sexy creature of the night, Jenn Vegas on twitter and she had this to say. (I didn’t officially interview her but her view was so fiery that I just had to include her quote!)

JenniferVegas“I have no shame in booting someone if they disrespect me and especially if they disrespect regulars. You will show me respect or you will see the door. That’s my suggestion just ban them with a smile on your face and move on.”
(She also noted that she has over 100 people on her banned list and says that she has no tolerance for bullshit in her room. Working as a Domme and a fetish provider on Streamate, she absolutely demands respect from her subjects, and she gets it!)

 

 

 

I loved getting feedback from other people that deal with the same kind of interesting folk that I do each day, it really solidified what I already felt to be true: that a good foundation of self confidence and self respect is key for anyone to be successful in this business and to dodge the trolls along the way. Whether you’re a camhost, phone sex operator, Domme or pornstar; know who you are and your worth, set boundaries (and stick to them) and do what feels right and feels good. You can’t go wrong with that, in my book.

I’d love to hear about your tips and tricks for dealing with cam trolls, leave ’em in the comments!

 

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