Advice needed for new decentralized Cam Site that wants to put models in control

[cam_dev]

Hi,

I'm a web/app developer. Together with some friends started playing with the idea of a new Cam Site, that would offer the following features:

- financially decentralized using cryptocurrencies as payment option, (so models don't need a bank account)
- near to 0% fees,
- mobile ready (could perform using their mobile device only)
- social features like "followers" and real time notification of customers upon a new life show
- many more ...

Basically it would be an Instagram like app, where models build their own follower / user base / business freely, without interference of any admin.

I am wondering if near to 0% fees and low entry barriers could attract models and if we could get a place in the Adult Cam landscape as a newcomer.

Thanks!

 

[AudriTwo]

I don't think it's smart to get paid with an unregulated currency.

 

[Mila_]

Hi,

I'm a web/app developer. Together with some friends started playing with the idea of a new Cam Site, that would offer the following features:

- financially decentralized using cryptocurrencies as payment option, (so models don't need a bank account)
- near to 0% fees,
- mobile ready (could perform using their mobile device only)
- social features like "followers" and real time notification of customers upon a new life show
- many more ...

Basically it would be an Instagram like app, where models build their own follower / user base / business freely, without interference of any admin.

I am wondering if near to 0% fees and low entry barriers could attract models and if we could get a place in the Adult Cam landscape as a newcomer.

Thanks!

How will you front the costs of running this with a 0% cut? And that is what you would get if people do transactions with bitcoin. It doesn't sound realistic to me.

 

[Wolf_3_5_9]

Fees is only one piece of a larger puzzle. That might attract some models, but to keep them, you'll have to attract viewers as well. What is your plan for that? Without viewers, 0 fees isn't an incentive if you have less income to begin with.

Also, the problem with apps is that Apple doesn't allow adult content in their App Store. This cuts out a large population (and by many metrics, a population that is willing to spend money) on iPhones and iPads. This means you'll need to have a mobile site, not just an app. And at that point, you're competing directly with CB, MFC, and others who already have mobile sites. So what's your plan to attract a viewer away from those sites to yours? Especially if those other sites basically provides the same features while having many more models.

 

[melezouriou]

Seeing the cryptocurrency bubble is still ballooning and people are more keen to hoard it than spend it, wouldn't it make more sense for users to use more stable and established currency to pay for camsites as 1 cryptocurrency-du-jour's worth of boobs might be worth many, many, more boobs next day. Solely relying on crypto seems like it might reduce your market alot. Would be nice to find out tho.

 

[AudriTwo]

These crypto brahs have been trying to get porn on board. it's nice another option to purchase site tokens/currency, but time is important. let's be real, porn is mainly purchased by impulse. when you add 10-20 mins for a transaction, you are probably gonna lose that sell. that guy can use that time to find OTHER porn that is easier to obtain and cancel his order.

 

[cam_dev]

Fees is only one piece of a larger puzzle. That might attract some models, but to keep them, you'll have to attract viewers as well. What is your plan for that? Without viewers, 0 fees isn't an incentive if you have less income to begin with.

Also, the problem with apps is that Apple doesn't allow adult content in their App Store. This cuts out a large population (and by many metrics, a population that is willing to spend money) on iPhones and iPads. This means you'll need to have a mobile site, not just an app. And at that point, you're competing directly with CB, MFC, and others who already have mobile sites. So what's your plan to attract a viewer away from those sites to yours? Especially if those other sites basically provides the same features while having many more models.

Regarding the first question, we could do some online advertising. But models could help as well, if they help us with spreading the word, we in turn can help them with a platform that better serves and respects its community.

We don't really plan launching native apps (that's "yesterdays" stuff), for last couple years we were focusing on building PWAs (Progressive Web Applications), a technology used and developed by Google, basically its a framework which offers native functionality trough the browser (offline functionality, notification, caching, etc...).

 

[cam_dev]

How will you front the costs of running this with a 0% cut? And that is what you would get if people do transactions with bitcoin. It doesn't sound realistic to me.

We were thinking about a transaction fee of around 3%. As I mentioned, we are developers with a few good years behind in us, we own all the infrastructures already, so running this project wouldn't be a problem along the others.

 

[cam_dev]

I don't think it's smart to get paid with an unregulated currency.

The rising value of crypto currencies is just one benefit, but the ease of use, transparency of transactions, privacy features and decentralised nature makes it more appropriate in my opinion where visitors may prefer anonymity and the models a more frictionless platform.

 

[cam_dev]

Seeing the cryptocurrency bubble is still ballooning and people are more keen to hoard it than spend it, wouldn't it make more sense for users to use more stable and established currency to pay for camsites as 1 cryptocurrency-du-jour's worth of boobs might be worth many, many, more boobs next day. Solely relying on crypto seems like it might reduce your market alot. Would be nice to find out tho.

Crypto is rising, indeed, but this make it more valuable for the models. On the user side, we would enable alternative currencies as well, which are more stable and are already being used in other niches like online marketplaces, but most importantly with the adoption of crypto we could pave the way for a platform that has a sure place in tomorrows economy.

 

[cam_dev]

These crypto brahs have been trying to get porn on board. it's nice another option to purchase site tokens/currency, but time is important. let's be real, porn is mainly purchased by impulse. when you add 10-20 mins for a transaction, you are probably gonna lose that sell. that guy can use that time to find OTHER porn that is easier to obtain and cancel his order.

Probably we wouldn't use Bitcoin until the Lighting network is ready (however this month it started in beta with working instant payments), there is Ethereum or Neo for instance which handles transactions bellow 3 minuntes (both have instant payment protocols in the works).

 

[Mila_]

Will you provide traffic or are models going to bring their own traffic to your platform? If it's the latter, why would a model choose to use your service over, say.. her own Snapchat or Skype? She can charge through BTC on her own

 

[cam_dev]

Will you provide traffic or are models going to bring their own traffic to your platform? If it's the latter, why would a model choose to use your service over, say.. her own Snapchat or Skype? She can charge through BTC on her own

I wish it could be that easy, but it isn't. Firstly I don't think skype could handle the traffic and it lacks the necessary tools, not to mention privacy, a visitor could kinda easily figure out the models location by their IP address. Than theres the lack of global visibility, etc., I could continue the list of cons if you wish...

 

[Just_A_Guy]

Hi, I'm not a web dev and camming is not my business, but it sounds to me like you want models to do the job for you. What you are basically asking to all these well eshtablished/successful models here is to drive their own traffic/fan base to your site and paying them with - I don't know how to call it, lets say "funny money".

Plus

Crypto is rising

May I ask you if you actually have some sort of proved and professional qualification/skills to talk about trading and currencies? Just curious. Anyway good luck.

 

[cam_dev]

Hi, I'm not a web dev and camming is not my business, but it sounds to me like you want models to do the job for you. What you are basically asking to all these well eshtablished/successful models here is to drive their own traffic/fan base and paying them with - I don't know how to call them, lets say "funny money".

Plus
May I ask you if you actually have some sort of proved and professional qualification/skills to talk about trading and currencies? Just curious. Anyway good luck.

Models won't do the job for me, they would do it for them. Actually, with a 40% cut on their earnings on current sites it seems more like slavery to me than a partnership, even if they r paid with "real" money (fiat money is just another illusion of a stable store of value, think Greece for instance, anyway...). I'm not about competing, or building an empire, just noticed some problems and thought about a few possible solutions.

 

[JickyJuly]

I wouldn't be comfortable working on a site that only took 3%. A 3% cut means they're not putting money into their side of things, likely not employing people who will check ids with care, not covering charge backs for sure. How invested can you be in your business if your take is 3%? A 60/40 split in favor of the person doing the work is pretty standard. It's what you shoot for as a hairdresser if you choose commission over booth rental. To call that slavery is ridiculous (at best).

 

[cam_dev]

I wouldn't be comfortable working on a site that only took 3%. A 3% cut means they're not putting money into their side of things, likely not employing people who will check ids with care, not covering charge backs for sure. How invested can you be in your business if your take is 3%? A 60/40 split in favor of the person doing the work is pretty standard. It's what you shoot for as a hairdresser if you choose commission over booth rental. To call that slavery is ridiculous (at best).

All those issues can be done really well even with a fraction of that 40%...anyway, this is your view, and you r welcome to keep your current provider, but I am sure there would be others in grate numbers who would listen to their right mind and not paying those thefty fees.

 

[JickyJuly]

They always ask for advice, pretend to have more respect for performers than other sites and then crack and show their true colors once they don't get enthusiastic applause for their imagined business success.
Cliche and almost humorous.
Please. Report back on your grate success.

 

[Mila_]

Models won't do the job for me, they would do it for them. Actually, with a 40% cut on their earnings on current sites it seems more like slavery to me than a partnership, even if they r paid with "real" money (fiat money is just another illusion of a stable store of value, think Greece for instance, anyway...). I'm not about competing, or building an empire, just noticed some problems and thought about a few possible solutions.

I don’t intend to sound mean so I apologize in advance if it sounds harsh but I think you should know the terrain at least a little before embarking on an adventure that will likely be a waste of your time.

Models use camsites for 2 main reasons:
1) Traffic. They provide the customers.
2) Payment processing. They can process credit cards which is hard to do for a model on her own because most processors like PayPal ban adult work from their platforms.

Providing traffic is expensive, each pair of eyeballs watching is bandwidth that the site pays for. Not to mention processors like CCBill and Epoch already take a cut of about 15% from every transaction so models understand the 50% cut the site takes to run their business. If they have good paying traffic they can take 50% and we still make good money.

Your app however would provide neither. No traffic and no payment options other than what already is available to models. And you haven’t even explained how you plan to pay for bandwidth if models do indeed bring their own customers to your platform. So in my opinion this is not going to work and you haven’t worked out the details of this project yet other than the technical aspects.

If what you have to offer is simply “better features”, true, there are models who work independently because they have built their own traffic on social media and they already charge through things like Venmo. There are a million apps to cam from for them.. Periscope, Skype, FaceTime and apps like Snapchat where you aren’t streaming live but almost. There simply isn’t an incentive to choose an up and coming app over established ones.

 

[cam_dev]

I don’t intend to sound mean so I apologize in advance if it sounds harsh but I think you should know the terrain at least a little before embarking on an adventure that will likely be a waste of your time.

Models use camsites for 2 main reasons:
1) Traffic. They provide the customers.
2) Payment processing. They can process credit cards which is hard to do for a model on her own because most processors like PayPal ban adult work from their platforms.

Providing traffic is expensive, each pair of eyeballs watching is bandwidth that the site pays for. Not to mention processors like CCBill and Epoch already take a cut of about 15% from every transaction so models understand the 50% cut the site takes to run their business. If they have good paying traffic they can take 50% and we still make good money.

Your app however would provide neither. No traffic and no payment options other than what already is available to models. And you haven’t even explained how you plan to pay for bandwidth if models do indeed bring their own customers to your platform. So in my opinion this is not going to work and you haven’t worked out the details of this project yet other than the technical aspects.

If what you have to offer is simply “better features”, true, there are models who work independently because they have built their own traffic on social media and they already charge through things like Venmo. There are a million apps to cam from for them.. Periscope, Skype, FaceTime and apps like Snapchat where you aren’t streaming live but almost. There simply isn’t an incentive to choose an up and coming app over established ones.

Thanks for the details, I wasn't avare of those high fees on the payment processor's side. In this regard, cryptocurrencies could definitely solve a huge issue.

Its interesting to hear all opinions, thanks.

 

[Just_A_Guy]

Models won't do the job for me, they would do it for them. Actually, with a 40% cut on their earnings on current sites it seems more like slavery to me than a partnership, even if they r paid with "real" money (fiat money is just another illusion of a stable store of value, think Greece for instance, anyway...). I'm not about competing, or building an empire, just noticed some problems and thought about a few possible solutions.

You said you have a job, right? Now, how is your salary paid? In crypto? Why don't you ask your boss to be paid entirely in crypto? Don't want to derail the thread. Good luck anyway.

 

[Mila_]

Thanks for the details, I wasn't avare of those high fees on the payment processor's side. In this regard, cryptocurrencies could definitely solve a huge issue.

Its interesting to hear all opinions, thanks.

Cryptocurrencies will not solve it until people adopt them en masse to pay for regular things. It is very hard to bring paying traffic to any website as the percentage of paying to non paying viewers is already about 1 to 100. And these paying customers are paying using methods they know, trust and are easy to use. How many of those paying customers are also familiar with BTC, I won’t even discuss more obscure ones, and are comfortable enough with it to pay for services through BTC? Ask any indie models how many customers choose to pay trough BTC over Google Wallet, Venmo or Amazon gift cards. Try convincing a 60 year old construction worker from a small town in Idaho to use them. Not only will you have to convince them to spend but now you also have to convince them that buying BTC is a good idea.

 

[ThePrincessLuxy]

Cryptocurrencies will not solve it until people adopt them en masse to pay for regular things. It is very hard to bring paying traffic to any website as the percentage of paying to non paying viewers is already about 1 to 100. And these paying customers are paying using methods they know, trust and are easy to use. How many of those paying customers are also familiar with BTC, I won’t even discuss more obscure ones, and are comfortable enough with it to pay for services through BTC? Ask any indie models how many customers choose to pay trough BTC over Google Wallet, Venmo or Amazon gift cards. Try convincing a 60 year old construction worker from a small town in Idaho to use them. Not only will you have to convince them to spend but now you also have to convince them that buying BTC is a good idea.

I advertise on Reddit and accept credit card, bitcoin and amazon marked up 35%. If I were to guesstimate, per 100 transactions I take only about 2-3 are in bitcoin, 10-20 are in Amazon even with the hefty fee, and the rest in cc. Even most redditors don't know how btc works. Of the ones that used it with me many had no idea how it worked or were first time users.

Outside of even redditors not being familiar with btc, I have to agree with kitsune. As an indie model I drive my own traffic and have my own wallet and have my platforms established. Why would I give up another 3% of my hard earned btc to you if you're not going to give me more traffic? I'd rather just keep using Skype and keep my 100%.

 

[Lintilla]

If you've done five minutes of research, you must already be aware of Livestars, SpankChain and Vice Token, right? Among others?

 

[Lelo1]

As a customer, I can go on CB, view a huge selection of models, and tip with any currency I want. That includes bitcoin. So why would I want to use a site that's much smaller, And limits my paying to bitcoins?

There are already pay per minute bitcoin video services like streamium.io. Which takes a 0% cut. and is completely decentralized.

 

[Lightfishcanada]

As a cam model, web designer, and crypto enthusiast, I've actually thought about the logistics of something like this for a while. Blockchain and the like can certainly solve a lot of existing problems related to camming, but it's also extremely hard to gain traction as a new cam site. That being said, I do think this is the future of the industry. Considering your competition, however (Live Stars, Spankchain, Fantasy Market, Cam X, Sqrt, etc.), you might be a little late to the party. That's okay though, because blockchain is also evolving rapidly and may give new opportunities to enter the market as it matures.

It's also unlikely that any of these sites will be able to take the reigns from Chaturbate, Streamate, MFC without the perfect mix of models, marketing, UX, and tech. Even if you manage to have a completely decentralized, anonymous, instant, secure, and convenient payment system in place, you're still going to need a way to attract enough models and viewers before any already established cam sites can implement similar tech. If you can manage that, you're going to need to design a platform good enough to keep these people from straying when the tech becomes normalized. I see a lot of new cam sites assuming that low fees or model incentives alone will be enough to convert users, but that just isn't the case. Furthermore, you're going to be looking at a number of regulatory issues that will only get more complicated when the feds inevitably crack down on crypto.

In other words, this can get pretty complicated.

 

[des]

As a customer, I can go on CB, view a huge selection of models, and tip with any currency I want. That includes bitcoin. So why would I want to use a site that's much smaller, And limits my paying to bitcoins?

There are already pay per minute bitcoin video services like streamium.io. Which takes a 0% cut. and is completely decentralized.

CB accepts bitcoin?!

 

[AudriTwo]

CB accepts bitcoin?!

Yes they have for about two years now.

 

[Dan Epstein]

I can carefully say (after being sought after by a few Bitcoin companies lately), that perhaps you should know who are your crowds, when you try to pitch them.
Most web cam models I know, have families, corporate jobs, and commitments that are not solely met with crypto-currency. With regards to the ideology of decentralizing powers that be, cam models may not be looking for participating in a revolution that will not be televised, but for a safe, non fluctuating manner to increase their profit.
Just my two cents about it

 

[des]

I can carefully say (after being sought after by a few Bitcoin companies lately), that perhaps you should know who are your crowds, when you try to pitch them.
Most web cam models I know, have families, corporate jobs, and commitments that are not solely met with crypto-currency. With regards to the ideology of decentralizing powers that be, cam models may not be looking for participating in a revolution that will not be televised, but for a safe, non fluctuating manner to increase their profit.
Just my two cents about it

Appreciate your two cents. Thanks so much!