Can I just point out here that after some considerable research for my thesis, which is based on the experience of female webcam performers; I have found that although the cam sites do retain a considerable amount of each payment they do have considerable overheads. The more I learned about performers experiences and the relationships they have with the cam sites the less I realised I knew about how the sites run and so I did some research; Mainly interviewing executives and consultants that work in the industry and what I discovered is this; In order for sites the operate they need huge amounts of traffic, which is generated in several ways mainly by the sites own affiliates or by independent affiliates. Independent affiliates are paid between 25% and 35% per cent of the income that they generate for the web sites. Cam performers can also act as affiliates but they don't generate nearly as much traffic. Obviously the larger cam sites drive a lot of their own traffic but the payment of affiliates takes a considerable proportion of the money retained by the cam sites. As much as 60% of traffic on smaller sites is generated by independent affiliates.
Payment as a rule does not go directly from customer to the cam site it generally passes through a third party such as CCBill who obviously charge commission , credit card companies also tend to charge larger commissions on adult industry transactions so typically they charge between 7 and 15%.
Then there are other expenses such as employing staff, infrastructure of websites, investments in technologies etc. I estimate that of the money that the sites keep from the money that they retain as profit is between 10 and 20 percent of the typically 40-60% they retain . So for example performer generates 10 dollars , she keeps 3.50 host site keeps between 0.65 and 13.5 and the rest is overheads . This does demonstrate though what a lot of money is generated by the industry because the general estimate is that the profit for the webcam sites this year will be between 2 and 3 billion and which implies that between 20 and 30 billion is actually being generated. This does not take into account the amount of money they make for example from the white label sites and advertising.
Strangely enough this is sort of represented in my research which is revealing that performers main issues with the sites tends to be the way that performers images are used rather than the division of income, although lets be honest no one is thrilled about handing up to 60% of what they customer pays at source.
Hope this helps
Rachel
Payment as a rule does not go directly from customer to the cam site it generally passes through a third party such as CCBill who obviously charge commission , credit card companies also tend to charge larger commissions on adult industry transactions so typically they charge between 7 and 15%.
Then there are other expenses such as employing staff, infrastructure of websites, investments in technologies etc. I estimate that of the money that the sites keep from the money that they retain as profit is between 10 and 20 percent of the typically 40-60% they retain . So for example performer generates 10 dollars , she keeps 3.50 host site keeps between 0.65 and 13.5 and the rest is overheads . This does demonstrate though what a lot of money is generated by the industry because the general estimate is that the profit for the webcam sites this year will be between 2 and 3 billion and which implies that between 20 and 30 billion is actually being generated. This does not take into account the amount of money they make for example from the white label sites and advertising.
Strangely enough this is sort of represented in my research which is revealing that performers main issues with the sites tends to be the way that performers images are used rather than the division of income, although lets be honest no one is thrilled about handing up to 60% of what they customer pays at source.
Hope this helps
Rachel
