If you know me then you have heard me say a thousand times “First you create the demand and then you supply the demand.” I see models using this flawlessly across their social media in regards to a new video coming out or a new product they are offering for sale, yet I rarely see this when it comes to performing live camshows. Especially when it’s in regards to starting on a new site like MyFreeCams. I’m not sure why I constantly see models who kill it on their video sales and then for some reason when it comes to starting a new cam site (or making a return debut) this mentality falls to the wayside.
Now, I could spend all my time trying to explain to you what exactly to do to make this happen but instead of trying to tell you how to market your own brand, I’m going to give you a guideline of what worked for me, specifically in regards to token sites (If you want to get real particular Myfreecams, although this would work on any site that you wanted to create a buzz about)
When I first started my cam career almost 3 years ago (god, it feels like way longer) I spent a lot of time watching the models across all sites, as I’m sure most of us did, seeing what worked and what didn’t. One thing that I noticed was that models were spending all of their time on their cam sites and more often than not they weren’t spending time on building their own fanbase and brand outside of that site. What I mean by that is, they would log on and depend on their site to bring all of their traffic. That’s great, but I saw a lot of lost potential.
I decided to focus the bulk of my time when I wasn’t physically on cam (I was on Streamate at the time) devoted to social media and building up my brand loyalty. I’m not going to lie to ya’ll, it’s HARD. There were (and still are) days when I would spend 10 hours engaging and promoting and feel like I was wasting my time because I wasn’t seeing an immediate return. I’d start to think things like “what’s the point if I could be spending that time on cam and making fast money?” Never the less, I persisted. Slowly but surely I started to see more people engaging with my tweets, liking my Instagram posts, following my free snapchat. My numbers started growing. I started to get recognition from companies wanting me to promote their products, I started getting shout outs and fan art from my followers. Still, even through all of this I wasn’t seeing a conversion from 95% of them.
I came to the realization that instead of thinking like a model I needed to think more like a business. This isn’t to say that thinking like a model is a negative- but with what I was trying to cultivate, I had to retrain the way I thought and interacted with my social media followers. I had to stop expecting them to have their wallets open and realize that a social media platform is not a cam site. They aren’t there to spend money. It was up to me to make them a loyal follower by making them feel a connection, so that when I started on MFC they would want to be the ones to support me.
My Three Steps To Becoming An MFC Model
- I began researching social media trends and follow some of the biggest mainstream companies that had a presence. Wendy’s and Taco Bell, for example. What I noticed was that they weren’t constantly tweeting out about their deals and sales. They were making jokes, responding to people who reached out and having a personality that went beyond their brick & mortar brand. Building brand loyalty that would make someone stop when they see them on the street because of the good feelings they have around the interactions that they’ve experienced.
- I stopped worrying about immediate conversions and started spending time engaging, talking- doing contests for free products etc. I built up all of my free platforms and slowly started to see the conversions happen naturally on my paid platforms. After about 2 years (and remember I was starting from ZERO) I felt confident that I had a solid fanbase to make the switch to MFC. Holy hell was I scared. I was terrified and I constantly thought about what would happen if no one showed up and I face planted and failed miserably. Regardless, I kept my goal in sight and figured the worst that would happen was I failed and learned what not to do.
- I picked a start date about 1 month before I was planning on actually making the switch and I started promoting it. I mean… REALLY promoting it. I looked at mainstream products and figured if it worked for the iPhone, in theory it should work on cam. (Create the demand and THEN supply the demand) Every single day I would talk about how nervous/excited I was, always plugging the date and the time. Talked about games and specials I would be having, you name it- I was plugging it. I made video promos, did tons of snapchat takeovers, asked my followers if they had experience with MFC and if they could give me pointers, told everyone how much it would mean to me if they were there to support…you get the idea.
AND THE RESULTS ARE IN
And even though I sat out on this journey with a set plan in mind, I was still shocked with the results. My first night on Myfreecams was on April 7th. I planned to do an easy 4 hour shift to feel it out. What happened next was almost every person I interacted with on my social media profiles showed up. It was mind blowing! People that I was so convinced I’d never see a single cent from, came in and tipped me as a way to welcome me and wish me luck. In fact I even had offline tips coming in before my ID was even approved. Because of my pre-camshow campaign, my followers broke me into the top 800 on MyFreeCams within 4 hours. By the second night I was among the top 300 models on MFC. I cried and I cried for hours after logging off .
Overwhelmed with the amount of support that came through I began to prepare for what’s next. Because I realized that what happened wasn’t something that may occur every night there after. So I stayed the course and continued to show up and so did they. I learned that my fans cared and because I interacted with them on social media, they were happy to make my transition to MFC easy and painless. They bumped me into a place of visibility on the site, so I could cultivate the community in a way I wouldn’t have had I not formed an alliance with them beforehand.
So I guess all in all my point is this. When you’re preparing to transfer over to a new site or to start on a site in general, take some time and cultivate your brand loyalty beforehand. Take 20 minutes a day to do Q&A’s, make jokes, talk about their days. Tell them about how nervous/excited you are and how you can’t wait to share the experience with them! Create the demand for you to be there and then when you supply it, they will be the ones who want to cheer you on and lift you up.
If you’d like to know more about Ivy Adams you can visit her website IvyKnowsBest for updates.
