This is something that I am literally saying all the time when working with models, only I’m never actually saying it. It’s that thing that I know is going on, but am not that great at communicating to our models. It’s the answer to a lot of problems but no one ever seems to understand it as clearly as I do.

That thing is this: It’s always going to suck being a part time webcam model.

To be fair, I’ve seen the scenario play out 1,000s of times. So it’s like a second language to me these days. With any individual model they’re only going through it once, so it’s all new and easy to miss.

So I’m finally putting it in writing, hoping it will make more sense, to more models ☺.

The best case scenario for a part time model is that they’ll be good. Which doesn’t sound bad, but it is bad! In my opinion, good is the antithesis of great. A good basketball player never makes it to the NBA. You have to become great to reap the highest rewards in any endeavor.

Webcam modeling is not an exception. The coolest difference is that the differences are often very subtle and the changes can occur over the course of hours/days rather than years. It’s much more fluid.

I see a lot of good models, that consistently make $20 an hour and think, “this is an OK gig”. And I guess they may be right. But a lot of those, if they made the choice to be great, would double or triple their hourly earnings.

It’s mostly about effort and here’s where I’m talking about part time models. Someone that works 10-20 hours per week is never going to realize their potential. Where-as someone that works 30-40 hours per week will realize it almost instantly.

But the situation is always the case that 2x the effort = 4-6x the results. If a model works 10 hours per week and makes $20/hr, and then magically decides to become great and works 40 hours per week and this new level increases their hourly rate to $50 per hour. Then their paycheck after 2 weeks instead of being $400 ($200 per week x 2) is actually $4,000 ($2,000/week x 2). We are talking about $9,600 per year versus $96,000. Determined entirely by effort.

Why does it work this way? A long time ago it was a mystery to me, then I spent a few 100 hours thinking about it, and here’s what I’ve discovered.

#1. The biggest spending customers don’t want sex shows, they want a real relationship.

This is the most obviously true part and it leads to an interesting scenario. Most customers won’t spend $500 on you in a night, unless they are very very confident that they’ll be able to spend that on you night after night for as long as they want.

Because of this, the “part timers” get the shaft, because they just aren’t providing enough supply to meet the demand, and as a result, the demand is dying.

#2. We’re selling luxury.

This is a point a lot of people miss. The best models don’t compete on price. All they have to do is make sure their price is just shy of “downright offensive” and they’ll be fine. Customers don’t go to a Maybach dealership to complain about the price. They go because they want the absolute best, without compromise.

We are conditioned to rank things based on price and apparent demand. We think the highest priced items are better than low priced items and even if they’re not inherently better the status symbol of having a luxury item that other people will be jealous of is enough.

A great model is positioned as the ultra luxury option on our site. They get to this position by being ranked higher than everyone else. This rank is determined by power score (total sales in the last 7 days). Great models are great power score manipulators. They’ll work 60-80 hours in a week to get to top rankings, and then coast on those rankings for the next few weeks. When they slip or take some time off they’ll come back with another aggressive work week and push themselves back into the top.

Working at the top is pretty easy. Your room will always be busy, anytime of the day. Customers will see you as being extremely in demand (and this perception will translate instantly into reality) and will thus be more apt to “not waste your time” and instead spend more money.

#3. Everyone wants to be on the winning team.

This is something I’ve just started noticing. A lot of the top models have a very real “team atmosphere” especially on the guys side. With the model essentially being the team captain. Helping their favorite model win contests, reach goals, and succeed brings a real sense of accomplishment to customers.

Every time we see a model start setting goals and making them public we see more people start to line up to support them. Every time! But it’s important to note that real champions work really hard. The hard work you do on our site is extremely visible. As is the hard work you don’t do. If you talk about wanting to hit X goal, but you don’t put in the work, you’ll become one of those people that “talk a lot but don’t back it up” and everyone hates those people.

Instead I advise talking a lot and backing it up! It seems to work out well.

It doesn’t have to be winning site contests (as these are fiercely competitive and a lot of actually great models are already winning them all the time) instead it could be something you entirely manufacture on your own, “I want to make X credits in the next 30 minutes”. If you add to it a “why” you’ll have a much more compelling story.

#4. Success Breeds Success

Getting someone to spend money, that has never spent money, is HARD. Really Really Hard. However, getting someone that spends some money to spend “a little more money” is painfully easy. So once you have cultivated a fan base that collectively spends $5,000-$10,000 every 2 weeks on you there are immediately a ton of cool “opportunities” to make little efforts go a long ways. Getting a dozen of the people that spent $20 to spend $40 can be done with about 5 minutes of effort usually. Getting the ones that spent $500 to spend $800 takes about the same amount of effort.

And the simple fact that your group of fans are willing to spend that amount of money on you proves the concept entirely, “you’re a webcam model that is extremely in demand”. That fact will create a whole new level of demand, where those customers that don’t mind spending $5,000-$10,000 in a night if they’re “in the mood” will notice you and want you.

This all sounds very theoretical, and hard to quantify but it’s not. I’ve worked through this routine with every great model Pandora has ever had in one way or another.

Not every piece connects every time, but the underlying premise is constant. The difference in pay for a great model vs a good model is stupid. The same person doing enough work to be “good” would achieve orders of magnitude better results by deciding to be great.

Being Great Is A Decision.

Great = Top 1% power score or higher
Great = 50,000+ credits per pay period
Great = 30+ hours per week on cam.

All of this applies under the assumption that you just “have it”. Not everyone can be a great model, but we try not to hire people that we don’t think have that potential. We categorically don’t hire anyone that we don’t think can make 50,000 credits in a pay period. And we’re pretty good at judging this looks/talent wise. But we’ve never been able to judge effort in advance.

Great in this definition is subjective. It doesn’t mean being the #1 model on the site. Not at all. The 3 things I listed are achievable without being #1 and are achievable by a lot of models that probably could never be #1.

It’s about effort. It’s about making camming a top priority, not the thing you get around to sometime.

It’s sort of like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZg_ALxEz0

Thank you for reading,

Jordan Laubaugh
Google +
Snapchat: JordanLaubaugh

P.S If you absolutely loved this post, it would mean a whole heck of a lot to me if you would scroll down and press the Recommend button. If you just kind of liked it, no pressure!