MFC Cam Alternative with Higher Payout

[mirvine2387]

So let me first start off by introducing myself. My name is Michael Irvine II and I am from Chicago, IL. What I would like to do is help webcam models get more cash without having to do extra work. I am working on making a website which has everything you will need to not only perform well, but also make more money. Right now I do not know what the payout rate for MFC is, but I would assume it is either 50/50 or 60/40. This is in favor to the models. I am trying to find a way to both allow for higher payout with less cost to the company.

Some ideals I have are:

• 
  one to many public cams
  one on one private cams
  group cams
  skype calls using our VPN network (hide your real information)
  80/20 model payment (models get 80 cents per dollar earned)

I would ask for your help in making it better.
I will be available to talk with you. There's a phone number for fast contact (models only)
Zero-Tolerance Policy (just like MFC)
Models have input on what is going on.
Models have a chance to buy shares in the company
I'm talking with some legal and CPA for tax reasons, but I would like to make it easier on the models.

If you have any other questions then feel free to email me, michael@happywebcams.com or reply here.

Please note that the website is still not complete, but are working diligently on it.

Thank you for your input, and I hope all goes well.

 

[Shaun__]

Skype is not very reliable. You get what you pay for, and Skype is free.

 

[Jessi]

Please research and explore your competitors. Familiarize yourself with how their premium user experience is as well as their contracts

http://wiki.myfreecams.com/wiki/Main_Page

Streammate, Chaturbate, IMLive, etc.

 

[mirvine2387]

Skype is not very reliable. You get what you pay for, and Skype is free.

Let me clarify some more, the skype VPN will allow a model to have her own private chat with a client, and not give out her real IP address. This will protect both the model and the client. The webcams on the main site all will be using media server clusters that are hosted at a data center. The system will have redundancy so that outages will be as minimal as possible. This will prevent the models PC from becoming loaded, and push most of the load onto our servers. I have consulted with some users and we feel that we can get about 10,000 live streams on one box, this means that if 10 models have 1000 users each, then the next model will go onto another machine. This is all done on our side.

Please research and explore your competitors. Familiarize yourself with how their premium user experience is as well as their contracts

http://wiki.myfreecams.com/wiki/Main_Page

Streammate, Chaturbate, IMLive, etc.

I will look into it

 

[RoseCavilla]

Welcome to the forums!

This site sounds like a great idea and reading your post is such a relief from the usual studio scammy posts we see here. :lol: I'd love to see you get it up and running! Let us know when it's functioning.

 

[CharlotteLace]

I think the most important aspect you need to consider is traffic. It's wonderful that you're trying to be more considerate of models, offering higher pay rates and VPNs, but if nobody goes to your site, neither you or the model will profit.

I was looking at a new site the other day, and it had six models online. Six. I was the only guest in most of the rooms. (Kinda bummed, because I heard reviews about it being a great new site). The appeal of the biggest sites is that there's such variety in models, a customer can find hundreds with the body type/look/personality/etc. they're looking for.

How do you plan on advertising? How do you plan on spinning your site's image to give it an edge over the competition? How will your site appeal to members more than MFC, Streamate, or Chaturbate?

Every site has cons, but with those 3 especially, their huge amount of traffic makes up for their pitfalls. Maybe research those sites and see what models/members complain about most, and see if your site can offer better solutions. Could you have awesome technical/customer service? An amazing user interface? Fan clubs? What can you offer to members that will drive them to your site in droves?

(I hope this doesn't come across in a negative way, as that's not how intended it. Just posing a lot of questions that can help you develop a super new site that hopefully ends up successful. )

I just want to thank you for posting this in such a respectful and considerate manner. We get lots of people who come and post similar threads, but end up not wanting advice or suggestions. You seem like you genuinely care about the models' side of camming, and that's really refreshing.

Good luck to you!

 

[Sevrin]

I'm surprised that someone would start publicizing a venture like this in spite of having done so little research. I hope you realize that some visitors to your site might expect nudity.

 

[mirvine2387]

I just want to thank you for posting this in such a respectful and considerate manner. We get lots of people who come and post similar threads, but end up not wanting advice or suggestions. You seem like you genuinely care about the models' side of camming, and that's really refreshing.
Good luck to you!

I want to work with the models, and give them and users the experience they need. Model and user input will give the site what it needs. My theory is simple, I can only bring in so much traffic, models can help with advertising to their users.

Also, I want the models to have investment options, they know that the site is for them. I'm just the middle man in the data center watching over and protecting them the best I can.

i'll give my 110%, and you give 110%, it will be a great site. The first month or two will be slow. I know that, so I'm preparing for it.

i will make a page that you can request a feature and vote on it

Thank you,
michael Irvine

 

[IsabellaSnow]

Well, your heart seems in the right place. But well, as much as making the perfect site seems like an easy thing to do, it's not. It's pretty much impossible. Higher payout means very little without traffic.

My advice.... Well, pretty much the only thing I could see really working would be to form a relationship with some top Myfreecams models. And I mean invest in tipping them enough to get their attention so you can talk to them about this without it being forced upon them suddenly.

A top myfreecams model has zero reason to work on your site. She'll already be making a fuck load of money from a place she trusts. She'll be able to make her own website etc. She's probably earning a hell of a lot of money as it is. Pretty much you want her traffic. You'd need to be offering her a flat rate (which'd have to be high) on top of her 80% to work a few hours on your site and help hype it up a bit. Basically a model who's living paycheque to paycheque usually cannot afford to take risks like that. Personally I cannot risk moving to a new site, working a few hours and earning bugger all or being scammed. I cannot afford losing those few hours work when I could work on Mfc and earn money. It's not worth it to me. I also do not have a big enough following to bring traffic to the site. Some traffic, but not a lot.

Think of it like companies hiring a celebrity. Well top cam models are the celebrities of this world. They'll have hundreds, thousands watching religiously every time they're online. You'd want to have a few models like that along side other models and hopefully some of those members would be like "wow, this is a really cool site!" and come back again and again. I would keep quiet how much you're paying the "celebrity models", and I'd also pay less well known models a flat rate to begin with, if they come on myfreecams I would base their flat rate around what their camscore is (meaning how much they earn per hour on myfreecams) meaning they would not lose money. Girls getting less of a base pay would benefit anyway from more popular models bringing regulars. Now fuck knows if you'd ever manage it, but if you could, well, that'd be the way. Having a higher payout system if you put in a tip system though might encourage big tippers to tip models that way so the model gets a bigger cut. Just something to think about.

You would lose money to begin with. You would have to be certain this site is going to work, that it's flawless. It's all very easy for someone to botch together a site and put camgirls up there when it's the girls incomes that are at risk, but essentially I feel with brand new sites it should be the site who puts their money and income at risk, not the model. I also feel that seeing as if just me alone worked on this site and managed to make as much as I do on myfreecams your website would earn around $1000 a month off me then I would hope you would actually put some financial investment into the site. There is a lot of money to be made through sites, but that money will not be made from a couple of grand investment. If you're serious I think more like 50k+ is needed.

Essentially your site could be the best site in the world, but without decent models and traffic it is pointless and will fail. Currently the competition is fierce. There's not much by way of niche's in the market. If respected and known girls start working on your site and say how amazing it is and how well treated they've been then you will cause a stir and start to be trusted. Until then... you're just another guy playing the nice guy card.

Good luck anyway, and please do your research!!! Finding out myfreecams payout is ridiculously easy! You did actually get it right but you should have been certain on it!

 

[mirvine2387]

Thanks for all the advice. I will keep that in mind, @Isabella_deLThe finance part has already been figured out. Were not going to be an overnight company. Before I came on here, I started to do some research. I have experience in servers, coding, security, and running multiple sites.

Thank you for all the feedback.

 

[theRileyDaniels]

I am in support of this. I am not a fan of mfc because of its camscore system. I feel that without support no one can succeed. Keep me posted on your site!

 

[Sevrin]

I have experience in servers, coding, security, and running multiple sites.

You don't need to know *anything* about servers, coding, security or running multiple sites. I know someone who has been making a living running camsites for years, and he doesn't know how to do any of that. You can hire people for that. Running a successful camsite is about providing a superior experience for pervs. If you can do that, and generate traffic, models will come.

Why would a perv want to come to your site rather than LJ, SM, Camcontacts, or MFC?

 

[mirvine2387]

I have experience in servers, coding, security, and running multiple sites.

You don't need to know *anything* about servers, coding, security or running multiple sites. I know someone who has been making a living running camsites for years, and he doesn't know how to do any of that. You can hire people for that. Running a successful camsite is about providing a superior experience for pervs. If you can do that, and generate traffic, models will come.

Why would a perv want to come to your site rather than LJ, SM, Camcontacts, or MFC?

Top Line Support. Fan Support. Model Input on features. greater filtering based on many different attributes. Fully customisable profiles. and many more. The reason behind me knowing about servers, coding and security is to help cut down on cost, and give more money to models.

 

[Sevrin]

You need to provide a good general experience before you think making your name by providing good support. My own experiences have been mostly indifferent to satisfactory, but from the sound of a lot of what I have read, if MFC lived or died primarily by its support, we would not be speaking of an "MFC alternative" right now.

As far as filtering, I would not put too much weight on it. First of all, you have to have quite a few models online in order for filtering to have any point. What's more, whether a model speaks or types, speaks English *well-enough* or doesn't, plays techno music or doesn't, is a studio worker or independent, smart or dumb, is big or small-breasted, wears make-up or doesn't, greets visitors or doesn't, has a good cam or doesn't, will be deciding factors as least as important as whether she is blonde or brunette, and most of those nuances are a lot harder to filter.

Then there's the fact that people do not know what we are looking for. There have been studies where people would be asked what kind of potential mate they think they would be attracted to. The people those subjects then found themselves actually attracted to turned out to often have little in common with those preconceptions. What's more, models are human, and won't necessarily present the same persona from one day to the next. With that said, I would not suggest including "PMSing today" as a filter option, no matter how useful pervs might find it.

You would be much better off putting the emphasis on serendipity, like MFC does with the Lounge and the "Next" button, than on filters that have been done to death, and which are pretty useless for anyone who doesn't have specific, non-negotiable fetishes.

 

[Greggory]

I applaud you in your efforts, and hope your site gets a good foothold in this market. It would be nice to see an 80% payout

A few things I would like to suggest (from a users perspective):

Protecting a model's videos, to often do videos go online and it seems as though it is the models who have to deal with it. It would be nice if your site put a small watermark over a corner of the streams and then when videos get posted online, your models could just send you links to the offending video site and it should be easier to remove (as the watermark is visible, and should be easily identifiable as being recorded illegally off your site)

Private show archives like those of MFC. It would be nice if the chat logs also went along with the private, as it is nice watching back conversations sometimes.

With the last point said, it would be nice if there were a slightly lower rate for a non-erotic show. One where you could just talk to a model.

Tipping is nice, like MFC...however the one downside in MFC's style is if you tip anonymously by accident (I never have but other guys have), it would be nice if you had an option to confirm you were the anonymous tipper to the model.

A separate room for model friends...it would be nice if in a model's room you could have something like a "friends" tab, where only friends of models can view and chat. That way when a models room gets to thousands, she and her friends can still read each others posts without thousands of spam/less important messages.

While the filters on your site allow for a lot of refining, personally I see some of them as a determent. Having to many options can make finding a particular one more time consuming and from experiencing this from other sites, filters do not work well because not all models update their profile every time they change their hair color, gain weight or others like that.



Again I wish you the best of luck. I am a bit weary of the 80% payout, as will quality eventually have to suffer to provide such a service (I heard credit cards can take up to 5% of a transaction), so with operating costs I wonder how sustainable it would be. If 80% is sustainable then that is great, it would be nice spending money with knowing a large % is being passed off to the model.

 

[NataliaGrey]

Too many filters would be a negative thing, in my opinion. It's not something you should even worry about for now, though, because you won't have very many models to filter through in the first place when you start up.

One thing I like that some sites do is a scaling payrate. The more money you earn the site, the more of a percentage of your earnings you get to keep. This might help you, because honestly 80% is a LOT for you to give away and a new site might go under from that. It might motivate girls to stick around and bring in traffic if they have a potential to earn more if they reach a certain goal. Once they're earning you enough to justify 80%, then it won't hurt you to give them that much, but if a girl is only making $15 an hour, you might be taking a loss after her cut.

I also like the ability to choose how much a show should cost. I think the model should be able to adjust it. I like Streamate's set up for this, where you can make it so that a block show, where they agree to pay upfront for a certain amount of time, costs less.

Having a "store" for each model to sell her videos in would be very cool. Imagine putting a tab for a Clips4Sale on your MyFreeCams profile, but it's all one site.

 

[mirvine2387]

One thing I like that some sites do is a scaling payrate.

I do very much like that idea. I can set up a tier rate. So someone just at the pay mark will earn 65-70%, and a person with at lets say $15,000 will get 80%. Keeps the model wanting to do more .

@Greggory: Thank you for that wonderful feedback. and with the watermark, that was one of the plans as well as the models username. This way I can have a robot do a reverse image search for videos on sites that have our logo and warn us. For the anonymous tipping. I really do not want that. The model should know who tipped. Just have a different color so she knows it is anonymous.

The technology is here. With all the ideas I have, it may take longer, so I'm just looking for the base before I build the house. Don't want to launch with too little features as well.

 

[Jessi]

This way I can have a robot do a reverse image search for videos on sites that have our logo and warn us.

Good idea! just remember that many prominent cappers crop out or cover the watermark.

 

[mirvine2387]

This way I can have a robot do a reverse image search for videos on sites that have our logo and warn us.

Good idea! just remember that many prominent cappers crop out or cover the watermark.

The only against that is to then make a whole cam image, but that would be a bad idea.

 

[Sevrin]

A scaling pay rate works. Some studios do that, as well. And yeah, as mentioned above, 80% sounds unsustainably high to me. Bringing traffic to a site will be your biggest expense other than model payouts and it will be your biggest expense overall initially. Pic'N'Vid sites used to be good places to advertise and/or partner with, but most of them have their own white-branded cam businesses going now.

One thought that brought to mind was whether it might be worth offering higher rates for public-show tips than privates. MFC is better known for what goes on in public shows than privates, and this would motivate models to engage members in public, and thereby make the site worth visiting for people who only visit public shows. Models will could still decide to go private with members, but public shows make the site attractive to models who like to entertain larger groups in public and pervs still deciding whether they want to spend their own money.

The only practical reason to watermark a video or image anymore would be to let people know at what site they can find the model, should they want to see more of her and interact with her on that site. Copyright obsession is a lost cause in online entertainment. Almost every adult site that produces (or has paid for) original material has given up fighting the tube sites, and joined them, instead. Copyrighting cam shows is about as productive as copyrighting street musician performances.

 

[AmberCutie]

For the anonymous tipping. I really do not want that. The model should know who tipped. Just have a different color so she knows it is anonymous.

I hate anonymous tipping. Hidden tipping, however, should be an option since some people may not want ALL the viewers knowing they tipped. But the model should always know who it is.

Anonymous tips actually drive me bonkers.

 

[IsabellaSnow]

For the anonymous tipping. I really do not want that. The model should know who tipped. Just have a different color so she knows it is anonymous.

I hate anonymous tipping. Hidden tipping, however, should be an option since some people may not want ALL the viewers knowing they tipped. But the model should always know who it is.

Anonymous tips actually drive me bonkers.

And me. Especially when someone anon tips for a video. I mean seriously, why?! You actually have to consciously tip the "anon" button. Why would you do it for a vid?!
On a slightly separate subject from the original topic is it just for me but when I used to look at members tip history it would show any anon tips, now it doesn't show them. It is literally the most irritating thing as being able to calculate that was really good. Plus some of my highest tips have all been anon so now I can't work out how many tokens regulars have tipped as they don't count. Very annoying.

 

[SoTxBob]

Well ... I will go against the grain then... I love annon tipping. If I am wandering around and find a model that's not doing so good or has few in her room... if she's at least making an effort, I will tip her to give her a bit of 'hope' if you will..... the annon prevents her from adding me to her "list" so I can leave my pm function open to all.

I also agree that while I'm all for the models reaping all the benefits financially, you have to get the pervs in the site and spending to make that happen. A good "Perv Interface" is very necessary. It may be a small item but emotes for chats need to have a way to search them or a sensible way to find them. MFC is a pretty good model whereas Chaturbate isn't.

In all the years of perving I've done, I've used filters maybe a few dozen times over the years. Don't even use the MFC region filters. To me part of the fun is discovery, however a way to hide individual members or models would have some benefit.

I'm sure you will have reams of item suggestions as there are lots of well experienced pervs around here .... :-D

 

[LilyEvans]

A separate room for model friends...it would be nice if in a model's room you could have something like a "friends" tab, where only friends of models can view and chat. That way when a models room gets to thousands, she and her friends can still read each others posts without thousands of spam/less important messages.

As a model, this a terrible idea. If we had to tab back and forth between our "friends" chat room and the "general" chat room, chaos would likely ensue. The friends, of course, would be expecting preferential treatment and get upset if their room was being ignored; however if we spent all our time in that tab, no one outside of our friends list would want to come into the room because they would be left out of the conversation and could only see the model's side of the dialogue.

It's hard enough keeping up with PM tabs! Perhaps, though, you could come up with a happy medium-- friends messages could be highlighted, or bolded, or made to stand out from other premium users in some way. This would still be difficult because it would have to be user-specific; not everyone on your friends list will be on the model's list, and not everyone on hers will be on yours.

 

[JerryBoBerry]

Well ... I will go against the grain then... I love annon tipping. If I am wandering around and find a model that's not doing so good or has few in her room... if she's at least making an effort, I will tip her to give her a bit of 'hope' if you will..... the annon prevents her from adding me to her "list" so I can leave my pm function open to all.

I like the anon option too. It actually makes sense for a variety of reasons, but they would probably start arguments here. So I'll just leave it at that.

 

[Greggory]

A separate room for model friends...it would be nice if in a model's room you could have something like a "friends" tab, where only friends of models can view and chat. That way when a models room gets to thousands, she and her friends can still read each others posts without thousands of spam/less important messages.

As a model, this a terrible idea. If we had to tab back and forth between our "friends" chat room and the "general" chat room, chaos would likely ensue. The friends, of course, would be expecting preferential treatment and get upset if their room was being ignored; however if we spent all our time in that tab, no one outside of our friends list would want to come into the room because they would be left out of the conversation and could only see the model's side of the dialogue.

It's hard enough keeping up with PM tabs! Perhaps, though, you could come up with a happy medium-- friends messages could be highlighted, or bolded, or made to stand out from other premium users in some way. This would still be difficult because it would have to be user-specific; not everyone on your friends list will be on the model's list, and not everyone on hers will be on yours.

Yea, as long as there is some way to easily see the friends chat...sometimes I feel it is almost better to PM rather than chat in a busy room, as messages can move so fast or if you don't want the basics/guests knowing what your talking about. Although it does clog up tabs.


Mirvine a few other suggestiosn:
Uploaded images have their exif data stripped, to protect the location the pictures were taken.
Models have the ability to upload videos and set a selling price on their profile.

Anyways good luck with your site Mirvine

 

[Prosluts]

Don't mean to call you out, but you're just trying to promote your own site with this thread.


But anyways, @CharlotteLace is absolutely correct.

The most important thing for a cam model is traffic, and all the branded sites have it already. That's part of the reason they take a cut of what models make.

I promote MFC and Streamate as an affiliate, and have method for a model to make more $$$ by bouncing the traffic back and forth between the sites.. Will post it eventually.

 

[Just Me]

All great ideas but paying out 80% is unrealistic. Its good that you have experience in servers, coding, security and running multiple sites. Where is your finance, marketing and customer support going to come from? Where are your servers going to be physically located? There are only so many hours in a day that one person can dedicate to something like this. If you are independently wealthy and money is not an issue you might be able to handle the losses until a threshold of members and models is met. If this is some side project you are working on while working another job, well, I will wish you good luck with your hobby.

Anytime I see another alternative idea to MFC or other camsites and the selling point is extra ordinarily higher payouts to the models, I feel it is doomed to fail. In a saturated market, there needs to be something game changing, either technological or social to break into that market. Higher payouts are great and I certainly feel that models deserve higher payouts but I have to go with my gut feeling that if it was viable it would already have been done.

 

[DudeExtreme]

For the anonymous tipping. I really do not want that. The model should know who tipped. Just have a different color so she knows it is anonymous.

I hate anonymous tipping. Hidden tipping, however, should be an option since some people may not want ALL the viewers knowing they tipped. But the model should always know who it is.

Anonymous tips actually drive me bonkers.

And me. Especially when someone anon tips for a video. I mean seriously, why?! You actually have to consciously tip the "anon" button. Why would you do it for a vid?!
On a slightly separate subject from the original topic is it just for me but when I used to look at members tip history it would show any anon tips, now it doesn't show them. It is literally the most irritating thing as being able to calculate that was really good. Plus some of my highest tips have all been anon so now I can't work out how many tokens regulars have tipped as they don't count. Very annoying.

For me, I have to look at the options very closely each time. One time, I anon tip for something I meant to do a hidden tip for. I was lucky that I was talking about the same amount with Megan seconds before so she knew it was from me. The anon button confuses me sometimes. Offline tipping is probably best for me if I'm trying to hide a tip.

 

[theRileyDaniels]

Don't mean to call you out, but you're just trying to promote your own site with this thread.


But anyways, @CharlotteLace is absolutely correct.

The most important thing for a cam model is traffic, and all the branded sites have it already. That's part of the reason they take a cut of what models make.

I promote MFC and Streamate as an affiliate, and have method for a model to make more $$$ by bouncing the traffic back and forth between the sites.. Will post it eventually.

Dont mean to call you out, but we are technically not suppose to bounce customers from site to site...and your user name is prosluts...very trustworthy. :twocents-02cents: