I’m going to make two statements that may appear to be conflicting and extremely polarizing. But if you stick with me I promise to explain.
- As a cammodel having a group of regular clients can generally make running your business easier.
- A cammodels worst enemy is burn-out and over exertion while attempting to please regular clients.
Most of the time, these two simple truths rarely contradict each other at all; in fact, you could say that having a small group of regulars can do a lot to minimize burn-out. Although cammodel earnings are unpredictable on a day-to-day basis, when you expect to see Tom, Dick and Harry for their 15-minute dose of sexiness, meanwhile Billy, Willy and Dilly show up every month for a long fetish show, you’re more likely to feel secure in when predicting your income. Not only that, but repeat customers are easier to flirt with and convert than some of the others. Regular cam customers are amazing because you already know that they like you. And because you remember what buttons to push as well as personal preferences, activities like selling a new clip is less like knocking on strangers doors. In this instance it’s more like giving a sexy neighbour a juicy update. In summary, regulars can make our work days go smoother, and cultivating this relationship is an important part of a cammodel’s job.
Sometimes, regulars can cause more harm than the good they bring. You might think that keeping up a relationship with your regular makes good business sense, but it’s actually hurting your bottom line. The habit of firing regulars at the first sign of misbehavior, before they can hurt our business may be one of the most important skills we gain as experienced cammodels.
It may look like a contradiction and a question you may ask yourself.. “If regulars are so great for business, how can it be true that it’s so vitally important to fire them?” However, there’s no contradiction at all. A regular who has started to misbehave can do more harm to your income – and bring you closer to burn-out – than a random troll. Experienced performers may not be surprised by this statement, but if you’re surprised or skeptical, I’d like to convince you with a couple of personal stories. I will give two examples from my own camming career: one time I got things very wrong and hurt my income in the process, and one time I caught the problem on time.
Before we go into specifics, let’s talk about burn-out: it doesn’t arrive out of the blue; before you hit a wall, it builds up gradually, brick by little brick of disappointments, lackluster shows and bad shifts. Long stretches of low-income days are especially dangerous here; although it’s entirely possible for financially successful performers to burn out, being broke travels hand in hand with misery.
Unfortunately for us, the danger is not simply that low income causes misery, but the reverse is also true: bad mood makes it so much harder to make a good income on cam, for a huge range of reasons. When we’re sad, we get physically tired faster, and so can’t stay online as long. Silly or rude remarks in our chat may irritate or hurt us more than usual. It gets harder to see the text in the chat window as coming from individuals, rather than a wall of boring text with aggressive remarks thrown in; we stop trying to sell shows to our chat visitors as individuals; instead they appear interchangeable. Maybe we log on less and less. Maybe we show up for our shifts with grim determination, but we don’t show up mentally. Sure, we can still make some kind of money if we sit in the chatroom glassy-eyed and annoyed; I’ve had those days myself, and logged off with a few coins regardless. However, the “awful harpy” hustle is hard to sustain even for the most dedicated dominatrix. All in all, bad mood kills our income, bad income kills our mood, and so it continues until we’re on the way to burn-out.
Examples Of When Regulars Turn Into Freeloaders
C was not a huge spender, nor very interesting, but he was as reliable as sunrise and sunset, and easy to please to boot. Every Monday morning he popped up in my Streamate chat for his fairly easy foot show. I made around $15 from him every week for 3 or 4 months. Then he started skipping weeks, which is not at all unusual – regulars cool down after a while; their money dries up, their get busted by wives, they find another performer that pleases them more. This is pretty natural, and rarely upsets me any more. I was expecting C to fade out of my life, but instead of simply disappearing, he started misbehaving. One week he’d come into my chat only to say that he was terribly sorry he couldn’t buy a show right away, but would I be around later? No matter whether I said yes or no, I wouldn’t see him again that day. Another week I would log in to find a message from him, sent in the middle of the night, to ask whether I was around for a show right away, despite knowing the precise time difference between us. The following week… he’d get a show, and it would be as though nothing has changed, only for the cycle of nonsense to start again.
It took me literally months to figure out that all these messages between shows were simply bids for my attention at times when he was either unwilling or unable to spend. By this time I’d wasted a huge amount of effort responding to his messages, flirting with him, waiting around for him to “come back later” instead of getting some rest. To block him seemed petty, but the hope-and-disappointment cycle built up to such a huge level of annoyance that I would even find myself avoiding logging on on Mondays. I didn’t block him until one day I noticed it had been 6 months since our last show, but I was still somehow talking to him every week.
J was generous, and he was fun. He bought his shows in blocks: $40-60 in my pocket every time. Some weeks he would drop by just to hang out in my chatroom, tipping for my attention every few minutes; after payday he’d come back for a long session. He made no secret about seeing other models, but as long as I carried on working, he’d find me on whatever site I favoured that season. He easily brought in $2000 in camshows altogether.
Then J Lost His Job.
Suddenly poor in money and rich in time, he was showing up in my chat as before, but he wasn’t contributing at all. During busy shifts this wasn’t a huge problem; I barely noticed that J’s money had dried up. However, sure enough, soon came a slow day. Time dragged, irritations built up, I had about $4 to show for 2 hours of streaming – and here was J, bold as you please, insisting I talk to him about his life with the same good cheer and attention I would show in a paid session. I’m generally slow to anger, but this time I felt it build up to a rage; soon I would start snapping at guys who had done nothing to annoy me. It was time to deal with the true source of my irritation; I paused the chat, did some calming breathing exercises, and with a heavy heart smacked J with a ban. That particular shift was a wash, but I came back to work the following day, and made up for the slow day by the week’s end.
Maybe J found a good job the very next day. Maybe he was going to keep seeing me, and bring in another $1000 before his interest cooled. Or maybe – and this is more likely – he was going to leech on my attention, sour my mood, distract me from seducing new regulars. I can’t be sure how it would have gone, but having played this game with many regulars before him, I’m positive that I could take no risks in order to find out. It would probably take another 6 months to see that $1000 from J, but I could lose out on making that amount by losing my camming mojo for only 2 weeks.
I hope at this point you’re convinced that not even a generous regular will contribute as much money as you can lose out on if you don’t block him on time. Good mood is one of our important assets, and preserving it and calling on it is one of our most important skills. Maybe it’s not enough for one misbehaving regular to send us off onto a road to burn-out, but it’s important not to let things get that far before we cut them off. For more tips on how to manage cammodel burnout visit this article Self Care For Cammodels.
