In one week, I can now make as much money camming as I'll make in an entire month of operating my small porn sites.  This makes me quite sad in many ways, and I feel like I'm staring down a precipice and deciding which way forward and how to channel my energy into the most productive outlets.  A theme I noticed during this summer's Desiree Alliance conference in both casual discussion and formal talks was that a lot of sex workers are looking to branch out and diversify right now.  We're all asking where the good money is these days, and there is no one-size-fits-all answer.  Here's my piece of the puzzle when it comes to the indie porn and camming worlds.

First, for those unfamiliar, camming is like being an online peepshow performer.  I log in whenever I like, and on the network I use - iFriends - I set my own per-minute rate.  I get half of the $4-a-minute that I charge, so a 10-minute cam show nets me $20 in profit.  I don't make $120 per hour, though - more than half of my time is spent just waiting around for customers.  I have the option to either a) engage in free chat and beg illiterate, pushy cheapskates to buy private shows from me, or b) only let people see me who are already paying customers.  That latter option is the way to go.  So, I sit there, logged in, looking cute, waiting for someone to decide they like my profile image and description, ready to spring to life when someone picks me.  I've been using the in-between time to keep up on sex worker's rights blogs as I wait around for customers, which strikes me as an excellent system of double-dipping.

As someone who started into porn in 2002, camming has never been a huge thing for me until these last few months.  I began occasionally working on iFriends back in 2005, but found that my time was better spent (in the profit-per-hour sense) maintaining my subscription porn sites.  This summer, I've had a lot of expenses, which made me give iFriends a try again.  I wasn't expecting much, but figured, "What the hell?  I'll log in while I'm sitting here reading my RSS feeds anyway."  With the recession in full swing, and the porn industry practically circling the drain, I was surprised to discover that private, pay-per-minute cam shows are selling well.  I'm making as much or more (per hour logged in) as I was before the recession.

What's the explanation for this?  I emailed five other cam performers who also have experience in the porn side of the adult industry.

Isobel Wren (on CamWorld.com) - new to doing cam shows, but involved in nude/alt modeling since 2005 - said that camming is now 60% of her income. "Honestly I wish I'd discovered it earlier, I enjoy the heck out of camming and I really enjoy that I can make a comparable amount of money without traveling across the country, hell, without traveling from my HOUSE!"  She had used to travel for modeling gigs, but "the majority of the people who booked traveling models were hobbiest photographers.  When the recession hit these guys couldn't afford to pay $100 an hour for a model any more."

Mistress Roxxie (on CamModels.com) said, "I previously made more than enough with my websites, but business hasn't been so good and I need to make up that extra income somewhere.  Modeling isn't worth the time and energy I would need to put into it.  I tried doing more pro-domme work, but that industry is saturated."  A sex worker since 2001, she told me that camming is "100% crucial" to making ends meet now.

Adorable Audrey (on NiteFlirt.com) has been involved in amateur porn sites for around ten years.  "Camming was a little less than half my income before the recession, and about 65% of it since the beginning of this year," when she went back to working a straight full-time job on top of operating her porn sites.

Tasty Trixie (on CamModels.com) got her start with camming in 2000 before going onto starting her first porn site.  She observed that camming might be good because rather than in spite of the economy.  "During a recession or when news in the world is bad, people crave a personal, service-oriented touch to everything, especially something as intimate as sexual pleasure. We saw that with 9/11 - there was never a better time to cam that whole year than in the aftermath of of the towers falling."

Delia DeLions (on CamModels.com) has been in the industry since the early 2000s with her partner Trixie.  "It has been really nice to have the extra income coming in at a time when things have been pretty tight.  With the slumping revenue from our websites it does end up being a larger portion of our overall income."

Everyone was in solid agreement on the growing importance of interactivity with online erotic entertainment.  As Delia said, "With the massive amounts of free porn that are out there on illegal tube sites, bit torrents, forums, etc., I think the value of live entertainment with potential for interaction like cam shows does increase."  Trixie noted, "Once you've established your customer account on a camsite, paying for shows becomes far less intrusive than having to put on a condom for meatworld sex.  You don't even feel or see the money coming out of your pocket; there's no physical exchange of money, you just grab your dick and start jerking."

Trixie suggests an important angle I hadn't thought of: "There might also be less competition from camgirls who aren't serious about making money because of the visibility of naughty-cams all over; it might be more obvious to them that you aren't going to be able to retain any privacy or keep your webwhoring a secret...  In the old days of camming there was more of an illusion of safety/freedom from discovery - maybe people don't have that anymore."  (Although, Audrey suspects the opposite.  "The sites are definitely more competitive these days... and more camgirls than ever, possibly a result of more unemployment overall.")

Keep in mind, the people I spoke with have experience in amateur, niche, fetish, and independent porn, so if they are finding that customers are in search of more personal connections, I can't imagine how the mainstream cookie-cutter porn industry must be feeling.

I understand the strong appeal of interactive entertainment, but I've wondered why clients pick cam shows over other forms of erotic fun.  If you're looking for conversation and personal interaction, why spend $200-400 for an hour for private cam shows when you can find a dominatrix or escort to see you in the flesh?  For my tastes and comfort level, if I had $20 to spend, I'd buy porn, and if I had hundreds to spend, I'd buy an in-person session with a sex worker.  Maybe for most of our cam show customers, though, the first option is too impersonal, and the latter is too personal -  potentially crossing some kind of arbitrary line into "seediness" or "cheating".  I suspect that camming is the ideal neutral zone for clients not yet ready (or who will never be ready) to take the plunge and see sex workers in person, but who still crave individualized experiences.

So, what should small-time pornographers like me do?  What are the pros and cons that I'm looking at right now?  It comes down to both money and my personal satisfaction.

Porn has become an unreliable source of full-time income for me, even though it's still great to have that recurring revenue stream, however much it dwindles.  I'm not going to close my sites and declare failure or anything, but I need to seriously think about how my time and energies are best spent, and make decisive cutbacks to the porn site part of my work.  (I can't help but notice the perfect harmony in the fact that my time spent porning versus camming is now about 1:4 on the profit-per-hour-spent-working ratio, and 1:4 weeks of the month I'm bleeding and can't be on cam anyway.)

Despite its mishmash of incongruous 1997/2010-looking interfaces, animated sparkling GIFs, and truly embrassing insistence on always referring to us chat hosts as "stars" ("I am a star!  A big bright shining star!"), iFriends has never been late paying me.  CCBill, the renowned "most stable" porn site billing processor, has flat-out not sent my checks three times this year.  They claim these checks must have gotten lost in the mail, but in this economy, I'm simply not swallowing it.  CCBill has paid like clockwork for years and never once has a check ever been "lost in the mail" before, nor am I missing any other pieces of mail from other senders.  (And, of course, when these checks mysteriously go "missing in the mail", I have to pay  a $30 fee to re-issue the "lost" check.)

There's also the issue of my enjoyment with what I'm doing.  The vast majority of the work associated with running porn sites is boring.  95% of the job is staring at a computer, not all that different on the surface from what the rest of my white collar friends do.  I love that other 5%, though.  I love the creative process, even if I'm not the most creative person in the world.  I love still photography, and challenging myself to get better at shooting other people as well as myself.

But, I also love interaction with clients on cam - especially submissives and the ones with interesting kinks.  I love getting into a good session with someone who clicks with me, I love the immediate feedback, I love the variety of human sexuality, I love how glowingly happy people often look (when they have their own cam I can watch) when they have a great experience with me.  At the end of 8 hours of camming, I tend to come away feeling more accomplished than I do after 8 hours of resizing photos or trying to explain to technophobic site members to how watch my videos on their WebTV.  (Of course, the price I pay for the ease of camming is giving 50% of my income to iFriends.  In comparison, with my adult sites, between credit card processing, hosting, and affiliates, I'm losing at least 25%, maybe as much as 35%, of my sales price.)

I don't have any grand solutions or "take home point", I'm mostly scheming out loud and hoping to see what other people have to say on the subject.  I like being a pornographer and I like being a cam whore - they each have their ups and downs.  I'm working on finding my own balance in the current financial climate.

In the comments, I'd love to hear from other sex workers who do camming and porn.  I'd also love to see more sex workers in any sector writing on their own blogs about how the recession has changed their business so we can have a conversation about how we're adapting to the economy.  It feels like the elephant in the room, and I'd love to see if we can all help each other by sharing ideas and experiences.  (Let me know if this prompts you to write something, I'll link to it from here.)