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How many of you guys work "vanilla jobs" too?

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Avalyn_

Inactive Cam Model
Jun 30, 2013
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I'm just finishing up my first week on MFC, and.. wow! I can't believe some of the things I've done for 8 dollars an hour! After only a couple of months of lurking and just one week of camming, my attitude towards the service industry is far less positive... and I didn't think that was possible. At this point MFC isn't a reliable enough income for me to quit my job, but I'd sure like to!

How many of you keep regular jobs?

Is quitting a minimum wage job worth it if it means you can dedicate more time to camming?

I find the customer base to be MUCH more considerate and the work far less demeaning than at any other job I've ever had =)
 
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At a camscore of 1000, a model is making around $20 an hour, and your camscore is higher than that. Your camscore would need to be around 400 in order to make $8/hr, which is still above most minimum wages. Of course, you probably can't work as many hours on cam as you can in a traditional job. I used to work about 35 hours a week, making $8 an hour, I ended up coming home with about $500 every other week. You can definitely make more than $250 a week on MFC, based on how you're currently doing and overall averages, and still work less than you did at your current job.

There's other things to consider, like the risk of being caught, future careers, how this will effect your loved ones, etc, but based on money alone? Put in your two weeks. :)
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Edit to add you should put some pictures up! I checked out your twitter and MFC page but know nothing about you!
 
I am in the process of quitting my "vanilla" job to cam full time. My camscore is only 1200 but i average $25+ an hour on mfc and id rather work 3 to 5 hours a day than 8. Also, im sure that my camscore will rise as i am able to spend more time on the site and get more regulars. Im pretty excited to have the freedom to create my own schedule and work for myself!
 
I have a vanilla job but it's for the government so under no circumstance would I quit that to cam full-time but when I begin grad school next month, I will have to because my schedule will not allow for school full-time, internship AND a job. Out of those three, the job is the least prioritized :whistle:
 
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I'm full-time student at the moment, but I haven't had a "vanilla" job in 3 years. :thumbleft: I used to work in customer service and had a lot of really terrible experiences. Society would love for us to believe that sex work is degrading, but honestly almost everything I've done for $10/hr was 100x worse (and far more degrading) than anything I've done as a cam girl or dominatrix.
 
Avalyn_ said:
Is quitting a minimum wage job worth it if it means you can dedicate more time to camming?

Worth giving it a try in my opinion. Worst case scenario you could probably find another minimum wage job. Wouldn't be worth risking if you had a full time career with benefits and paid vacations and shit like that but this seems like a low risk high reward type situation.
 
Avalyn_ said:
I'm just finishing up my first week on MFC, and.. wow! I can't believe some of the things I've done for 8 dollars an hour! After only a couple of months of lurking and just one week of camming, my attitude towards the service industry is far less positive... and I didn't think that was possible. At this point MFC isn't a reliable enough income for me to quit my job, but I'd sure like to!

How many of you keep regular jobs?

Is quitting a minimum wage job worth it if it means you can dedicate more time to camming?

I find the customer base to be MUCH more considerate and the work far less demeaning than at any other job I've ever had =)

If you have a savings to float you in case you get hit with a slow few weeks/months (or get sick or have some emergency), then quitting your job to dedicate more time to camming is totally worth it. If you don't have a savings, take a little time to build some before quitting (maybe an entire paycheck or two from your vanilla job) because camming can be really up and down and it's not so much fun if you have to worry about if you'll make rent that month.

Good luck to you! :)
 
AllisonWilder said:
Avalyn_ said:
I'm just finishing up my first week on MFC, and.. wow! I can't believe some of the things I've done for 8 dollars an hour! After only a couple of months of lurking and just one week of camming, my attitude towards the service industry is far less positive... and I didn't think that was possible. At this point MFC isn't a reliable enough income for me to quit my job, but I'd sure like to!

How many of you keep regular jobs?

Is quitting a minimum wage job worth it if it means you can dedicate more time to camming?

I find the customer base to be MUCH more considerate and the work far less demeaning than at any other job I've ever had =)

If you have a savings to float you in case you get hit with a slow few weeks/months (or get sick or have some emergency), then quitting your job to dedicate more time to camming is totally worth it. If you don't have a savings, take a little time to build some before quitting (maybe an entire paycheck or two from your vanilla job) because camming can be really up and down and it's not so much fun if you have to worry about if you'll make rent that month.

Good luck to you! :)

Excellent advice from Allison. People might see these dollars-per-hour figures and think cha-ching but overlook the fact that people do get sick, have emergencies, need medical insurance, pay taxes. It comes down to this: if you're not working, you're not earning. Maybe a minimum wage job doesn't provide any benefits anyway, so my point is moot. Just think it through thoroughly. And if you do cam, develop a budget and set aside money for taxes, insurances, etc. It's a business. Treat it like one.
 
NataliaGrey said:
At a camscore of 1000, a model is making around $20 an hour, and your camscore is higher than that. Your camscore would need to be around 400 in order to make $8/hr, which is still above most minimum wages.

How do you figure this out?


My camscore is now in the 1700 range but i'm still scared to quit my job :(

Even though, at this point, I'm sure it's costing me money considering it takes away from time I'd be on MFC.. I didn't even cash my last paycheck, and I'm getting paid again tomorrow :p
 
I work a vanilla job, it isn't $8 an hour... it's $14 but it's part time. I wish I had more time to get on cam and actually perform and quit my job but my job is garunteed money where as I've had days on MFC where I've been on for 2 hours and have made nothing.
 
mutantdonut said:
Camscores... I keep hearing how they might matter or don't matter at all. Too many conflicting arguments.

of course they matter.

Camscore is a reflection of an average earning per hour.
They govern to a large extent your traffic on mfc.

If you're in the 500's and on page 3-4 of mfc, you're making very little per hr, and you're also not getting much traffic in your room because most browsing members start with the home page - page one, and all new guests to the site.

It's hard to get tips out of an audience of 0.
 
HisGoddess said:
I work a vanilla job, it isn't $8 an hour... it's $14 but it's part time. I wish I had more time to get on cam and actually perform and quit my job but my job is garunteed money where as I've had days on MFC where I've been on for 2 hours and have made nothing.

^this. I work 32hrs a week at a vanilla job for $14 (which isn't nearly enough to scrape by for the cost of living in my city). It would be way more enticing to quit this for MFC if there were some guarantee of income, but there are many days on MFC where I make $2-3 an hour.

Having a savings safety net is important whether you plan to quit your job or not, though. You never know what could come up, and having a couple months' worth of bill/rent money is soooo important.
 
Hello! I also felt the same as you after my first week! I wanted out of my shitty hotel job SO BAD!

I ended up staying until I could save up a 2-month backup fund. In case something happened to me and I couldn't cam. :) It only took 3 months to save up!

The key was not spending all the extra money I was making. :) It was difficult at first. When I would get that camming check, I'd want to head straight to the mall and blow it all! But you can't do that! :)

I left my regular job in May and haven't looked back. :)
 
mutantdonut said:
Camscores... I keep hearing how they might matter or don't matter at all. Too many conflicting arguments.
Those who say camscore doesn't matter are probably the ones who either:

• Have a low cam score and are frustrated by it, so they brush it off as unimportant to feel less stressed
• Have a high enough score that they make fantastic money every time they are on cam (but they'd care once it drops below their comfort threshold, I'm sure)
• Treat MFC like a hobby or do it as a very part time job on the side of another well-paying job
• Don't understand how MFC works at all

Camscore is important. It is the default way to figure placement on the homepage, so anyone new or browsing as a guest will see the highest camscore girls first. Higher visibility inevitably leads to higher token income. MFC has come up with other ways to sort the homepage and other ways to get lower-camscore girls some visibility, but the default includes camscore first and foremost.
 
In the short term, I'd imagine it's definitely worth it. So long as you can keep your camscore consistent and commit enough hours to camming as you need to in order to make the money you need to make, I'd imagine camming is a much more attractive proposition than a regular, nine to five, five days a week, minimum wage job.

It's probably worth considering the long term as well before committing to anything though. There are many jobs and careers that you might later be excluded from once you have a past as a cam girl (teaching, for example). Also, if you cam full time for say, five years, and you don't want to list "full time cam girl" on your CV, then you're gonna be left with a five year period of inactivity to explain to any prospective employers.

Like anything, there's a whole bunch of pros and cons to consider and it ultimately hinges on your own circumstances.

:twocents-02cents:
 
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I completely quit my 'vanilla' job before I even started camming but it was a pretty risky move on my part. It took me a long time to build my business once I started on MFC but all the time and effort was totally worth it. If I had planned better I would have tried to save some money to tide me over whilst i was getting things going, as it was I literally lived hand to mouth for a good 6 months or more and had a couple of really hairy times when i thought i was going to lose my house. All of this was good experience in terms of toughening me right up lol, but I have to say that starting camming and doing it full time from the start was one of the best decisions I ever made. The rewards in terms of the great people you meet, the freedom to run things the way that you want, the ability to express your sexuality and be appreciated for it as well as for your personality, the money. It's all good. The only thing I would say is that I feel it is wise to make sure that you sign up for more than one camsite. Any self employed person should have more than one revenue stream so that if one site is slow you have alternatives. Maximizing potential revenue is just sensible, and will also stop you from getting too frustrated if it is slow on one site, you can mix it up and keep things interesting.
 
Have any of you tried to get insured yet under the Affordable Health Care law? Is it affordable? Is this going to be a good deal for the self-employed? Sorry if this has already been addressed and I missed it.
 
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I talked with my employer about my desire to phase out with him and dedicate more hours to my own business. I made decent money, but the hours were variable, and I was still beholden to someone else for my paycheck. (Independent contractor -- website management, writing, and video work.) Sometimes I had 20 hours of work a week and sometimes 10. Not knowing how many hours I'd be able to work in a given week was stressful.

With camming, I make about the same hourly wage, but I have complete control of my day, my schedule, how many hours I work, and have way more fun having orgasms. For me, dedicating all my time to sexwork is much better. It probably isn't the right choice for everyone.
 
pg240 said:
Have any of you tried to get insured yet under the Affordable Health Care law? Is it affordable? Is this going to be a good deal for the self-employed? Sorry if this has already been addressed and I missed it.
Crap! I forgot all about enrollment! :p

Thanks for the reminder! :)
 
AmberCutie said:
Camscore is important. It is the default way to figure placement on the homepage, so anyone new or browsing as a guest will see the highest camscore girls first. Higher visibility inevitably leads to higher token income. MFC has come up with other ways to sort the homepage and other ways to get lower-camscore girls some visibility, but the default includes camscore first and foremost.

Thanks Amber

Since i work part time, i only have so many tokens to go around. So i rate and admire the hell out of models as the next best thing (particularly to models who average well under 100 patrons in their room), but was always wondering if that method makes any sort of difference. Eh... I did it anyway as a sign of appreciation.

The key phrase in your statement is 'default way.' I think it was fairly recent that MFC added other methods of viewing the model listings, such as organize by alphabetical, by popularity, by newest, etc. Doesn't that lessen the relevance of camscores? Correct me if i'm wrong here.
 
mutantdonut said:
AmberCutie said:
Camscore is important. It is the default way to figure placement on the homepage, so anyone new or browsing as a guest will see the highest camscore girls first. Higher visibility inevitably leads to higher token income. MFC has come up with other ways to sort the homepage and other ways to get lower-camscore girls some visibility, but the default includes camscore first and foremost.

Thanks Amber

Since i work part time, i only have so many tokens to go around. So i rate and admire the hell out of models as the next best thing (particularly to models who average well under 100 patrons in their room), but was always wondering if that method makes any sort of difference. Eh... I did it anyway as a sign of appreciation.

The key phrase in your statement is 'default way.' I think it was fairly recent that MFC added other methods of viewing the model listings, such as organize by alphabetical, by popularity, by newest, etc. Doesn't that lessen the relevance of camscores? Correct me if i'm wrong here.
We've been able to sort models other than by camscore for at least 3 years, as long as I've been a member.

Rating and admiring does not add to a models ranking. All it does is give other profile visitors an idea of how many have taken an interest in a model or member and visited their profile. Visitors can click rates and admires as much as they like, but only one time counts.
 
I still work my "vanilla" job, I am not confident or have near enough savings to keep me afloat right now. I was very close to getting to that point, but things happened in my personal life that forced me to stay at my job much longer than I really wanted to. I cam when I can now, and still film fetish videos.

I was glad I didn't just quit when I wanted to because life just happens sometimes, and for me personally I need to know that I have a steady income no matter what.. Being a single mom has made me paranoid about not having a hunk of change put away for just in case stuff cause you just never know..
 
Sevrin said:
mutantdonut said:
AmberCutie said:
Camscore is important. It is the default way to figure placement on the homepage, so anyone new or browsing as a guest will see the highest camscore girls first. Higher visibility inevitably leads to higher token income. MFC has come up with other ways to sort the homepage and other ways to get lower-camscore girls some visibility, but the default includes camscore first and foremost.

Thanks Amber

Since i work part time, i only have so many tokens to go around. So i rate and admire the hell out of models as the next best thing (particularly to models who average well under 100 patrons in their room), but was always wondering if that method makes any sort of difference. Eh... I did it anyway as a sign of appreciation.

The key phrase in your statement is 'default way.' I think it was fairly recent that MFC added other methods of viewing the model listings, such as organize by alphabetical, by popularity, by newest, etc. Doesn't that lessen the relevance of camscores? Correct me if i'm wrong here.
We've been able to sort models other than by camscore for at least 3 years, as long as I've been a member.

Rating and admiring does not add to a models ranking. All it does is give other profile visitors an idea of how many have taken an interest in a model or member and visited their profile. Visitors can click rates and admires as much as they like, but only one time counts.


Do cam scores affect how well a model is doing, or how well a model is doing affects the cam score? I guess it's a chicken and the egg question.

Seems like particular brand spankin' new models are instantaneous hits and draw in large numbers right off the bat, while other new models struggle. It's not like the struggling models are any less attractive or have piss poor cam quality either. I'm trying to understand that dynamic.
 
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mutantdonut said:
Do cam scores affect how well a model is doing, or how well a model is doing affects the cam score? I guess it's a chicken and the egg question.

Seems like particular brand spankin' new models are instantaneous hits and draw in large numbers right off the bat, while other new models struggle. It's not like the struggling models are any less attractive or have piss poor cam quality either. I'm trying to understand that dynamic.

A model who does well will see her camscore rise, and a model with a higher camscore has a better chance of being noticed by members.

Some "new" models are actually just switching accounts. That happens most often these days when models leave the studios they started with and their members follow them to their individual accounts. Their members may hold off tipping once they learn the model is leaving her studio, and make up for lost time on the new account. That can have a huge effect. I know two models who went off on their own and had 10k+ camscores within a few days of starting their new accounts. MFC's 60-day averaging also benefits new models in this position.

Some models also just get lucky. The right members happen upon their rooms. It can be as trivial a matter as the light hitting her face just so when a member pops into her room, but it's often more complicated. Of course the better a model prepares her presentation and learns MFC's dynamics and the more dedicated she is, the luckier she will likely be.
 
mutantdonut said:
Do cam scores affect how well a model is doing, or how well a model is doing affects the cam score? I guess it's a chicken and the egg question.

Seems like particular brand spankin' new models are instantaneous hits and draw in large numbers right off the bat, while other new models struggle. It's not like the struggling models are any less attractive or have piss poor cam quality either. I'm trying to understand that dynamic.


To the first question, initially it's the latter, eventually it's both. When new models start, they're not dependent on camscore because they start with the same camscore as every other new model (1000) and also have a "new model" icon above their name. For whatever reason, that "new model" icon attracts members to the model's room that might otherwise not have visited them and gives the model a small window of opportunity to make a few regulars right off the bat. Once the "new model" status expires (I think it expires after ten hours of camming but aren't certain), a model is then dependent on her cam score.

If she's attracted enough tipping members during her time as a "new model", then her camscore will have risen and she'll find herself with a higher placement on the homepage. The closer a model is to the top of the page (ideally the first page), the higher her room count will be by virtue of most members not venturing beyond the first page of models, having accepted the conventional wisdom that the "cream rises to the top" and the best models occupy the top rows of the homepage (even if that's not strictly true and many of the "best" models can be found further on down the page). The higher the room count, the more customers the model has to potentially convert into paying customers, and the more paying customers a model has, the more money she is likely to make.

Conversely, if a model didn't make much money or attract many regulars during her first ten hours of camming, her camscore will have dropped. The lower the camscore, the further down the page the model will find herself. At that point, she will have less traffic and have a harder time making money. That's not to say that she's completely fucked because of her low camscore. Many models have gone from a sub-1000 camscore to a high-thousands camscore (I'm fairly certain some of them post here), but it's an uphill battle. This is why camscore matters.

Rating and admiring is no substitute for tipping and really has no effect outside of maybe making a model feel good about herself if she has a lot of "admires" and a 5* rating. It has no effect on camscore or a model's earnings.

As to why some new models do better than others, there are myriad reasons, yo. The reasons you mention (looks and cam quality) are part of it, but there are so many other variables...

Personality - Is the model happy? Fun? Bubbly? Smart? Enthusiastic? Bitchy? Demanding? Is she a domme? A sub? Competitive? Relaxed? Does she drink? Smoke? Is she high right now? Does she get angry easily? Does she take things personally? How does she deal will trolls?

Vibe - What's the vibe of her room? Is she laid back or manic? Does she have a niche? Is she doing anything that other cam girls aren't? Does she play games? Does she even have a room topic? Does she talk to the room, or just type? Where's she camming from? A colourful bedroom? A dank basement? A studio? Outside? Is she playing music? Is it good music? Terrible music? Is she sat in silence? Are their animals roaming around? Does she have a TV on in the background? Is she paying attention to the TV or the room?

Content - What kinds of shows/services is she offering? Is she nude or non-nude? Are her countdowns realistic? Are they countdowns for things that members want to see? Does she even have a countdown? Is she already naked and hoping members will tip anyway? Does she have videos for sale? Pic sets? Does she offer privates? What does she do in private? Does she have any hard limits? What fetishes does she cater to? Does she sell her panties? Her phone number? Does she run raffles and competitions?

Brand - Does she have an online presence outside of camming? Has she cammed before? Was she working on another site and is now bringing her existing fanbase over to MFC? Has she done porn? Modelling? Does she blog? Is she on Twitter? How many followers does she have? Does she talk to members off cam? Is she accessible? Is she known to many people? Is she a minor celebrity?

Hours - Is she camming enough? Is she camming too much? Is she camming at the right times? Is she camming once a day? Twice a day? Three times a day? Is she camming at the weekends? During the week? Evenings? Mornings? If she's camming outside of America, is she choosing hours that take advantage of the American clientele? Does she need to?

Luck - Is she lucky? Unlucky? Did she have a member walk into her room on day one and decide that she was the model he wants to spend all his tokens on? Did a whale tipper chance upon her room right before her "new model" status expired and single-handedly tip her enough tokens to raise her camscore by 5000 points? Did she do everything right and still not have the right members find her room at the right time? Did she do everything wrong but still chance upon a group of patient and understanding regulars?

The length of this post may or may not be indicative of how bored I currently am :-D
 
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I still work my awesome retail job. I wish so much I could just quit, and cam full time, but there's no way I make enough camming to pay the bills as of now. Possibly if I had the time to cam twice as much as I do now, it could work out... But it's just way too risky. I'm not one to take risks.
If I'm successful enough someday, I would probably have to have a 10,000 cam score and loads of regulars to be comfortable enough to quit my job. here's to dreaming! :p
 
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