Models feedback needed, new service to promote rooms

there are a few reasons that immediately come to mind as to why I, and likely other cam models, would be hesitant to participate. Firstly tube sites have a ridiculously high amount of traffic, but the people who frequent them are generally of the mindset that there's no need to pay for porn, so we'd likely see an increase in freeloaders but only a small percentage would have the potential to be switched into actual customers. Secondly, there are a lot of models who don't want the world to know what they do.. With the high traffic of tube sites your chances of being seen are much higher, so a lot of girls stay far away from them.
also, there are models who do upload some of their videos to tube sites for advertising already.. those who do usually link either to an affiliate link or straight to their twitter (on which they let everyone know the times they're online- standard practice in cam world.) Is the 'online now' icon the only difference you're offering?
most of the girls who don't do this either prefer the level of anonymity they currently enjoy, or hate the idea of giving out their work for free with no guarantee it'll make any money: cam girls aren't like porn stars, we don't get paid hundreds for every video on shoot day! we film, edit, promote, and hustle to earn money for the time we put into our work so the idea of putting it up on a tube site kind of stings a bit. In fact, a lot of girls spend a lot of hours dmca'ing videos put up on those sites! :twocents-02cents:

Honestly one of my biggest issues right off the bat is that instead of getting to use my own affiliate link on content I'm already posting for free, your affiliate link would be posted, netting you the extra money, while I handle all the extra freeloaders buggering up my room, as MissScarlet noted. I'm not sure the traffic to revenue ratio is worth it, while I could post content to a tube site myself with my affiliate link and get paid the extra money for both the new paying customers and the extra percentage from using my affiliate link.

So, in the instance that your affiliate link is provided, you get a LOT more earning potential out of that than the model might, for a lot less work. (Dealing with people saying 'tits bb' or demanding random things in front of a live audience is already enough work without all the people from tubesites probably assuming it's a free-for-all when we're live) I just see it being a really high volume of extra work for what may very well be very little payoff. And if they use your affiliate link, they could spend that money on another model instead of me, so again, a lot more earning potential for you than the model.

While it's true that tubesites are obviously profitable, I have to wonder how much of that is really paying traffic versus ad-revenue.

I can watermark my own videos, that's sort of an industry standard, so I'm not sure what benefit I'd get from someone else's watermark.

As for a DMCA service...maybe? Though if you're working on most any camsite they already send DMCAs for you.

These are just my opinions, but to other models it may very well be an attractive option.

what I'm getting now is that you'll help models dmca videos of us that are put onto tube sites.. while asking models to upload 5-10 of their videos onto tube sites..

as Juniper pointed out in this thread https://www.ambercutie.com/forums/viewt ... 28&t=19840 you seem to be missing the fact that the majority of cam models don't want their videos up on these sites.

there totally are some models who don't mind the traffic that these sites offer, but these are not the models who would be requesting dmcas. Any model who welcomes the exposure from tube sites would watermark her videos already and likely wouldn't bother to have them taken down

I definitely wouldn't do this.
NOT because of my videos being up on Tube sites (as a model on Streamate, this comes with the territory), but because you're basically asking me to do work for you, in order for you to make money that might never trickle down to me.

Say I upload a video to your website, and Joe clicks through to my camroom from your affiliate link after watching my teaser. He doesn't buy a show from me, but he buys a show from the girl two spots over from me. Now you get that affiliate money, and I see none of it despite him clicking through because of my video.

Now say I upload this teaser somewhere else, with my own affiliate link. Not only will I get paid for any money Joe spends on other models, but I get a gigantic cut of whatever he also decides to spend on me. Practically double what my normal cut is.

Where is the benefit for me? I would be much better suited spending the time spreading my own affiliate link.

xtraffic said:

NoelleBright said:

Where is the benefit for me? I would be much better suited spending the time spreading my own affiliate link.

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In theory, leveraging technology we should be able to:

• Drive many more users to your videos when you're online, leading to higher conversions
• Notify you when your video is trending to allow you to profit from all those eyeballs
• Uploading/scheduling content across many different tubes can be very time consuming and hard to do on a regular basis. We could potentially even sync through to a dropbox or similar reducing effort to a minimum

From what I'm seeing the main issue is the affiliate income, perhaps we need to review this decision internally and come up with a formula whereby it's split between the models also.

Thoughts anyone?

Thanks once again for the overall tone of the thread, I know it's a touch subject and as a community you guys have been very helpful and generally awesome!

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This isn't anything that Streamate doesn't already do though, it's part of how they advertise.
And knowing when my video is "trending" is useless. I've already got a room count built into my interface that shows me the exact number of registered & unregistered users currently viewing my feed so I'm already aware of how many eyeballs are on me.
The only difference you're bringing to me is that now I have to upload the video myself, and I'm not seeing much benefit.

If I could attach my own affiliate link, for sure I would do it. But you're really offering me nothing. Like I said, this is already exactly how Streamate advertises to begin with.

xtraffic said:

Thanks for your reply NoelleBright, I think I'm not explaining myself clearly enough, let me try again:

NoelleBright said:

And knowing when my video is "trending" is useless. I've already got a room count built into my interface that shows me the exact number of registered & unregistered users currently viewing my feed so I'm already aware of how many eyeballs are on me.

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The idea is that if you're video goes live on a tube you are aware so you can jump online and leverage that. Some videos get over 1 million views in the first 24h and generally 80-90% of the views on a video occur during that period, meaning there's a "narrow" window of opportunity for maximum exposure. We feel it's useful to receive that notification so you can maximise the number of people that will click through to your room.

NoelleBright said:

The only difference you're bringing to me is that now I have to upload the video myself, and I'm not seeing much benefit.

If I could attach my own affiliate link, for sure I would do it. But you're really offering me nothing. Like I said, this is already exactly how Streamate advertises to begin with.

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Streamate places an IM Live ad/popunder/banner with a random models feed. We believe that by notifying a user that the actual model from the video they are watching is MUCH more valuable and MUCH more likely to convert. We also notify them when a model from a video they've previously watched is online (for example: "Space_Barbie from the video "Hot Solo action" you watched 3 days ago is online, click here to watch!"). Again we feel this is much more valuable/useful/likely to convert than some random model feed.

The other thing that could be useful that popped up on this thread is that we may partner with a company specialised in DMCA takedowns (I know Streamate does some stuff in this area, but I'm pretty confident these guys could absolutely outperform). The goal here is to get to a point where the only videos available on tubes link back to your room and all other sources for the video (fileuploads, forums, torrents, etc.) get taken down. These guys are also really good at getting stuff removed from Google. Imagine typing your username into the search engine and those top 10 results are all stuff that point back to your profile, therefore increasing your chances to monetize?

Does this make more sense?

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Ohhhhhh so this is one of those things where we should be grateful to be paid in exposure. :roll:

xtraffic said:

Thanks for your reply NoelleBright, I think I'm not explaining myself clearly enough, let me try again:

NoelleBright said:

And knowing when my video is "trending" is useless. I've already got a room count built into my interface that shows me the exact number of registered & unregistered users currently viewing my feed so I'm already aware of how many eyeballs are on me.

Click to expand...

The idea is that if you're video goes live on a tube you are aware so you can jump online and leverage that. Some videos get over 1 million views in the first 24h and generally 80-90% of the views on a video occur during that period, meaning there's a "narrow" window of opportunity for maximum exposure. We feel it's useful to receive that notification so you can maximise the number of people that will click through to your room.

NoelleBright said:

The only difference you're bringing to me is that now I have to upload the video myself, and I'm not seeing much benefit.

If I could attach my own affiliate link, for sure I would do it. But you're really offering me nothing. Like I said, this is already exactly how Streamate advertises to begin with.

Click to expand...

Streamate places an IM Live ad/popunder/banner with a random models feed. We believe that by notifying a user that the actual model from the video they are watching is MUCH more valuable and MUCH more likely to convert. We also notify them when a model from a video they've previously watched is online (for example: "Space_Barbie from the video "Hot Solo action" you watched 3 days ago is online, click here to watch!"). Again we feel this is much more valuable/useful/likely to convert than some random model feed.

The other thing that could be useful that popped up on this thread is that we may partner with a company specialised in DMCA takedowns (I know Streamate does some stuff in this area, but I'm pretty confident these guys could absolutely outperform). The goal here is to get to a point where the only videos available on tubes link back to your room and all other sources for the video (fileuploads, forums, torrents, etc.) get taken down. These guys are also really good at getting stuff removed from Google. Imagine typing your username into the search engine and those top 10 results are all stuff that point back to your profile, therefore increasing your chances to monetize?

Does this make more sense?

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Now that you've better explained it, I can see where you're setting yourself apart.
However, as a camgirl with 3 years of experience I can say you're going to be hard pressed to find girls who will participate in this if it's not her very own affiliate link that is being used.

A lot of people come around trying to get a cut of the camgirl pie, and I don't exactly like giving that away any more than I have to. I would rather spend the time, bake it from scratch, and get the whole thing to myself if ya know what I'm saying.

I would be 100% down to give this a try if I could use my own affiliate links.

I feel models really need more gain/incentive to participate, especially as the first to try this. Without models involved, it doesn't really work, and we need a bit more back for our risk/effort to be willing to give this a try. Wouldn't it be worth it to let at least some models at the beginning of this project try it out with their links to try to get this off the ground and see how it works? If the traffic alone is significant enough, I would be game to do this, but I would need to see it in action first hand before I'm really convinced. I think some reassurance of benefits would be necessary.

I think there could be something cool here.

KayleePond said:

I would be 100% down to give this a try if I could use my own affiliate links.

I feel models really need more gain/incentive to participate, especially as the first to try this. Without models involved, it doesn't really work, and we need a bit more back for our risk/effort to be willing to give this a try. Wouldn't it be worth it to let at least some models at the beginning of this project try it out with their links to try to get this off the ground and see how it works? If the traffic alone is significant enough, I would be game to do this, but I would need to see it in action first hand before I'm really convinced. I think some reassurance of benefits would be necessary.

I think there could be something cool here.

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I agree.

My opinion (from a business standpoint, nobody kill me plz) is that you're not going to have any moderate-high earners jumping on this because there is no incentive for them. They're already doing well, why participate in something that might maybe earn them just a few more bucks? The gain to be had would be a drop in the bucket for them.
I already hit my goals, I already have good traffic, what else do you have to offer me?

The only performers who have something to gain are ones who have low traffic/low earnings, but how much will lower earning models net you in affiliate money anyway?
:confusion-shrug:

Here is a very high level overview of the Requirements Gathering process: http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/requireme ... hering.php

Notice that Rule 1 for successful Requirements Gathering is: Don't assume you know what the customer wants, ask.
Rule 2: Involve the users from the start.

I can't tell you how many times someone has come to ACF declaring that they have just created something that will be the best thing cam girls have ever seen. What baffles me is that many of them have no clue how camming works and/or have ever spoken to a cam model. By the time they come here they have sunk a lot of time into a project that doesn't meet all/most/any of our needs and they feel like they're being attacked when we say their idea sucks or could be improved. OP, thanks for being receptive to our comments and for involving us, but I wish you would have done it sooner.

That being said, I'm going to echo what Noelle has said and add that success is measured differently for every model. There isn't a one size fits all or most when it comes to what we want and need in order to feel successful at camming. Some girls may want to make a certain amount of money each month and don't care how many hours on (and off) cam it takes to make it and some girls are happy working 50 hours a month and making less. Some girls are happy being just cam girls and others want to be on the cover of Penthouse (Congrats Aspen! ). I would suggest that before you go any further with this project you spend some time talking with cam girls to know what their motivation and goals are in order to understand how to meet their needs. Then, and only then, would I suggest spending any more time on a project designed to help cam models.

Best wishes!

I wouldn't use this service just because I'm not a big fan of posting my videos, but can I offer a suggestion?

In the screenshot you posted, the link is quite small and honestly just looks like typical tubesite spam! Maybe you could change it so it looks a bit more integrated? If I saw it, I'd assume it was just another one of those "horny moms in your area" or whatever type of links.

I'm not sure how you could do it, maybe with a little profile or even a photo of the girl to show that it actually is the same girl from the video? Just something a bit more personal might help!!

Good luck :hello2:

I feel the service we provide is valuable, in theory we'll be sending a bunch of existing fans that may not have even realised the had the chance to speak to the models in these videos on the tubes (where most of the traffic is). It's just a case of agreeing the split between models/cam providers/tubes/us

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An "existing fan" would presumably know which girls they are a fan of. Simply googling their name would lead to tons more videos, social networking and camsites. This is why many camgirls watermark our feeds and content. This also applies to the casual porn user who stumbles across a camgirl rip while browsing for mainstream porn.

If they're looking for stolen camgirl videos on tubesites specifically, they are probably already aware of camming and that they can use paid services to interact with models and they don't want to do that. Or they dont want to be paying customers, which is why they're watching stolen videos on xtube or whatever; and which is why they aren't desirable traffic for us.

Personally speaking, I also don't want Joe Public to get the impression that because I have a teaser/advertisement video uploaded to a tubesite that it means Im ok with my paid videos or shows being uploaded there. I have been surprised by how many members I have encountered who didn't realize that all my content is homemade and that I only earn money when someone buys something directly from me.

Camgirls don't want our hard work being given away, especially if a third party is making money off it.

If you can find a way to make the people who consume pirated camgirl porn or show rips into spending members, then I think you would have something useful.

xtraffic said:

TallulaBlythe said:

Ohhhhhh so this is one of those things where we should be grateful to be paid in exposure. :roll:

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Thanks for the feedback TallulaBlythe. As bizarre as this may sound it's actually really useful for us to gauge how you guys feel about this. We're definitely going to go back to the drawing board in regards to our value proposition/affiliate revenue split.

#eternaloptimist

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Wow, my originally post probably came off as really rude, my apologies!

Regarding exposure, it doesn't always help gain new tippers. While these aren't massive rooms on MFC, there are times where I have 100-150 people in a room and don't have any tippers because most people are hanging out in hopes that someone else pays for a show.

The problem is, the people who watch free videos on a tube site are usually not interested in paying for porn, or for participating in the culture of camsites, they're vastly different environments.

On MFC in particular, there are three tiers of members: premiums (people who have spent at least $20 at one point), basics (people who have created accounts and have never spent money), and guests (people who have no account). At any given time, there are always far more guests than basics, more basics than premiums. And many of us have to block guests and basics because many of them are rude, and usually it's because they demand free stuff because of the free porn mentality derived from the many tube sites all over the internet. Camgirls get stuff like this a lot: "well this other model is doing this for free, why aren't YOU" or "well I can go watch porn for free, so you should show your pussy bb" straight down to "I don't believe in paying for porn."

This is a sharp contrast from people who like talking to the girls, taking them for a private show, tipping for a video, tipping just to see them smile, or to see their breasts in particular, not just any boobs (because boobs and much more can be found for free of course).

If a porn studio is okay with their clips being uploaded, they've probably already sold content elsewhere, they've already compensated their workers, whether it's actors, anyone filming or editing, and so on. But for camgirls, this is the exact opposite. If we upload a video somewhere, that is our work being given away for free (even just a teaser, sometimes that's all someone needs to get off) and I am willing to bet that very few will be interested in seeing more if they have to pay for it.

The kind of traffic coming in from a free site is going to be the kind of traffic that we're blocking. I have guests and basics blocked because of the amount of rudeness and demands, and I feel bad saying this, but that isn't worth allowing the small number of nice people to talk in my room (really I have nothing against them!). This sort of behavior pisses off people who regularly tip us or buy our videos, and excessive rudeness from a person can kill the mood of a room. Sometimes I experiment around and allow basics to talk, hoping to give them a chance, and usually within an hour I have to mute them again, or I get a tip note from a premium asking me to mute basics again. A lot of premiums have said that they won't even go into a model's room if she doesn't have guests and basics muted, so there goes a huge chuck of people who would be supporting our work.

I think most of us end up getting better traffic when we market ourselves on places where our content is already sold (where people are paying for content) or on places like twitter and tumblr where we can interact and shine with our personalities and where we can personally advertise our content since it helps mimic the cam environment.

If a porn studio is okay with their clips being uploaded, they've probably already sold content elsewhere, they've already compensated their workers, whether it's actors, anyone filming or editing, and so on. But for camgirls, this is the exact opposite. If we upload a video somewhere, that is our work being given away for free (even just a teaser, sometimes that's all someone needs to get off) and I am willing to bet that very few will be interested in seeing more if they have to pay for it.

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^^THIS^^^

It usually takes up my entire day to set up, get ready, film, edit, render and upload a feature video. Im doing it all by myself and I dont get paid unless someone buys it from me. And usually, when a member buys my video, its because he specifically wants content of me, the girl he got to know on cam. This is also why a porn DVD or site membership may cost less than a single camgirl video.

Pirating camgirl shows/porn VS mainstream porn is like the difference between stealing a 2$ jar of brand name jam from Walmart, or stealing 8$ jam from a family-run farmers market booth. Everyone involved in the production of the brand name jam has been paid already, whereas the people at the farmers market have not been. Furthermore, a few dollars loss to Walmart is a drop in the bucket, but its a lot more dear to the folks brewing up jelly in their kitchen. Video sales make up a huge portion of my income.

When someone uploads my video to a tubesite, Im making not seeing a dime on those views, but the site is (presumably from ad revenue). And members won't bother buying it. It also costs me time to deal with the copyright infringement.

Another reason we have a problem with this is that a lot of girls don't want people to know they cam. Less people know about camming and we can geoblock somewhat. But everyone and their dad watches tube sites, so unwanted exposure is a reason besides money/copyright that we don't like our stuff being pirated. Although it happens to most models eventually.

This is just an example. The only way I would want to upload my videos to a tubesite, is if I was making some serious royalties off of it. It would have to be enough to make up for the loss of sales from MFC and my Clipstore (which would become redundant), plus profit. This system also wouldn't be guaranteed to be successful. Just like most Youtubers arent the most popular channel making millions of views a day, most camgirls doing this wouldn't be making enough money to be worth all that work they put in. So theres no point in the youtube style of video distribution when I have plenty of people willing to purchase the video from me or my clipstore.

I think you and your team need to understand that the production and where the money is earned is vastly different between camming and porn, although they may seem like similar businesses on the surface. And that while they do have some overlap, they're different audiences. Sorry for being wordy, but you admitted you knew little about camming and this is a pretty important nuance that you guys should understand.

In the same vein as 'royalties', I'd be far more inclined to do this if there were either some kind of lump sum in addition to the split affiliate revenue, or a portion of the ad revenue. I say this because if I don't get any clicks to my room converted to paying traffic from having my video posted up for free, I would at the very least want some kind of compensation. Especially since at that point I wouldn't be able to sell that video anymore, because it's on xx number of tubesites for free already. Does that make sense? I feel this idea has potential if it's handled correctly.

Further, overall I have to say I really appreciate the way you're handling this thread. As a couple other people have mentioned, you have no idea how many people come in here claiming to have the best thing since the c920 for camgirls. Better yet, they like to think we don't know anything, and they know more about our industry than we do. I think it's lost on a lot of them that we run our own business, so we do understand a hell of a lot more than we're given credit for. I really appreciate your willingness to learn and grow this idea from our feedback.

Edited to add: Regarding mobile traffic - not many camsites have stellar mobile interfaces. Live streaming is SUCH a CPU-intensive operation, and requires a pretty decent connection to get any kind of quality in the feed. At this stage of its development, I don't know that mobile traffic is a huge factor, simply because the technology to support it isn't yet at a conveniently usable level. I could be wrong, but that's been my experience thus far.

Again, we're looking to create "promo" content to drive sales within the session and of the content behind a paywall.

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I understand, I was just using an example to further illustrate the how/why of why camgirls aren't fans of tubesites.

I still believe there's an opportunity in there somewhere, we just have to figure out exactly how it would work and hopefully we'll get lucky and find a few more models that are willing to help us test these theories out *hint hint*

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I would be shocked if tubesites did anything in the way of geoblocking, since it would be extra work for them and all their income comes from page views. If I were a model participating in this I would also expect the tubesite I was working with to SERIOUSLY clamp down on users uploading my videos. The promo clips should be the only ones available, or else its pointless.

The idea being that you "seed" your content and those videos that are truly awesome will leave users wanting more. (So maybe they won't pay for the first 5 views but after 1-2 weeks if it's really that good they'll start looking for more).

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If Im making making super awesome new teaser clips on the regular, or uploading cuts from my best videos on a regular basis thats a lot of extra work/ freebies given away just in the hopes that a fraction of those views click on my cam link. then Im crossing my fingers that a fraction of those viewers start spending. Not to mention that a portion of that revenue from the affiliate link and the pageviews are going toward your service/and or the tubesite. This totally makes sense for a production company to do because they're such a large scale operation. It doesnt work for me at all (see aforementioned differences).

I already get lots of traffic simply by virtue of being on one of the most popular camsites and being located in north america. The service as you're describing it doesnt offer me anything I can't get just by camming more. On MyFreeCams, the promo IS my free webcam, and if users want to see more they can contribute tokens. When I sell my clips on ManyVids, they can see a 9 second preview and then purchase the clip directly from my store to see the rest. I dont have to make promotional materials and then pay another website to advertise for me (in this case your operation/the tubesite), because the sites I work on have provided that for me.

Cam studios, solo site networks etc already upload their own promo material for free. MAYBE you could find a reason they would want to use your service.

I think youd be better off coming up with something no one has done before and that camgirls actually need, and focusing your energy there. But do the market research before you put tons of your time and work into building something.

RE: mobile traffic: Not very useful at this stage. MFCs mobile interface is choppy and its not easy to tip, for example. So It doesnt give us models much benefit.

xtraffic said:

Nothing has been said about mobile, are you guys able to do anything with mobile traffic?

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Mobile is still way behind in usage in cam sites due to the fact that most of them suck on that platform. For example, MFC only started messing around with HLS-based video playback in the last 6 months and so far it still sucks - video lags 30+ seconds behind chat, which makes it almost impossible for mobile users to interact with the models and the room without causing a lot of confusion. Plus, mobile-capable video is only enabled if the model remembers to click on the 'super HD' (or whatever it is called) option in the streamer. Maybe once they make their desktop clients stop using RTMP and move to HLS (or DASH) by default, things will be more interesting for mobile.