Hi,
I've just spent a long while reading this entire thread and found it so interesting I had to join up. I don't know if I'll stick around after I post this but I have some quite strong thoughts on the issue so I thought it might be worth sharing them (maybe!).
I used to work on MFC and usually ended the month somewhere in the 2000s. The money I took home was about $1200 a month, sometimes around $1000, sometimes a bit higher, up to $1500. So I'd say 10% of the models on the site are making above minimum wage but the rest (90%) are below. I don't know what the average model makes but I'd imagine it's not much. I know when I've seen how many models are online (say 1000) then scrolled down to number 500, her camscore is often not very high.
I actually thought this was quite good, for me, and this is why. I used to have a 'normal' full time job and then due to ill health ended up having quite a few hospital stays. I lost the job. My health is still bad, so working from home at hours I decide is a massively positive thing for me.
For anyone who's making a decent living (and the top girls make a phenomenal amount of money), it really is brilliant.
However... this was the one thing I couldn't not say, and I don't know what the solution is. When you take the average person or the people towards the bottom, with low camscores, the reality can be pretty bad.
I know when I first started I was absolutely desperate for money - and this is what it led to... let me explain. With the top rooms, they're doing well, they have more choice. What I mean is if someone vile comes into their room, they can ban them without a second thought. When you're desperate for money and not doing so well, often it becomes a decision as to whether to tolerate things you really don't want to. To me, this is the darker side of camming and not one I see discussed as much. Of course, it happens in all kinds of jobs all over the world, but when it comes to something sexual, it can feel pretty dark.
Hard for me to write this, but I did a lot of things I was very uncomfortable with. My biggest tipper by a mile used to try to coerce me into things I didn't want to do, and seemed to get a bit of a kick or thrill out of it. Things I didn't want to do but I wanted to pay my electricity bill, etc. Let me stress I'm in a much better situation now but at the time it was bad. I used to get offline and sit in the bath and cry and go to bed and cry because I felt I had defiled myself and pushed things into me I didn't want, to get this money. It felt like I was assaulting myself because I didn't want those things inside me and I said but he wanted me to do it. I honestly feel this is a situation a lot of the girls are in on there if you scroll down to the bottom of the page or look at people especially in studios in certain countries.
I tolerated this man because without him I would've been trying to live on about $500 a month I think and at the time it seemed worth it. I don't feel able to take a normal job because of the large amount of pain I'm in and I didn't feel I had another option really. I know it was my choice to do this.
I feel with MFC it's easy to look at the top 10% and see what a glamourous life they're living, tips flying at them, happy and smiling, and see how well they're doing. But if you scroll down the page you see a different reality. And it's not even that far down the page.