New site, MyCamGirl - could be good, could be bad?

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Resources

On occasion I get emails from girls in the same situation as I was and they are looking for information on camming, working for yourself, being self employed online and there is one place I always send them, Stripper Web. It's one of the best online communities for girls who have sexy jobs.

There are a few places I always look for advice and info before I send a message to tech or admins:

MyGirlFund thread part one.

MyFreeCams thread about stuff.

Reading those two should tell you about everything you need to know about these popular sites.

New Year, New Plan?

Holy cow, can you believe that my blog has been around for a whole year? How about some history and a quick update are in order before I crack open a bottle of bubbly to celebrate being 1 years old.

So the history first. Last year in November or so I lost my job due to "downsizing" and while I missed my paycheck every two weeks I sure as heck didn't miss that stupid job. At the time I decided to see if I could make a living working for myself and soon after that I started this blog, which has been a big help.

I thought I'd look back on the year and try to put together the top 5 things I learned this year into a list. So;

1. CUSTOMER SERVICE IS HARD. At the heart of anything, camming, chatting, making custom stuff, you are providing a whole lot of customer service. But you have to go into every interaction like it's going to be the best ever. If you let your pessimism get the better of you you will get into a self defeating loop. I learned this because of item number 2.

2. LEARN YOUR CUSTOMERS. Some custies are worthless freeloading losers - cut them loose as fast as possible so you don't waste your valuable time trying to get something from a guy who won't give it up. Some custies are the nicest, most generous people in the world who genuinely care about helping you out.

The hard part is learning to tell the difference. I'm getting better at it, but I still think I spend too much time putting in effort on guys who turn out to be an empty wallet. But it seems like everytime I make a vow to quit, one of these guys that I thought was a deadbeat will surprise me with a huge contribution or a monster tip or a really easy, high dollar purchase.

3. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. Sitting at a computer for an extended period of time no matter if you are camming, chatting, typing, plotting world domination or fingerbanging yourself, is not a healthy thing to do. I know it feels like every minute you aren't in front of your laptop that you are losing money (and you may be) but is that small amount of money with your health? No, no way.

4. DON'T GET ISOLATED. Working at home and for yourself means that you are very much cut off from soem of your social networks - think about how many of your friends you met at work at one job or another, or how many people you hang out with at happy hour. It's a lot. In my case it was almost everyone. When I realized I was becoming a shut in after a few months I hit the Facebook hard and I remembered one thing - just because you don't work at the office doesn't mean you can't hit up Happy Hour! And hey, since you are self employed you can work drunk, have a few and then some money!

%. DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF. Whenever I am worried or feel bad about my situation, I wake up extra early and go to the Starbucks by my house and I watch all the people who are hustling into work and gearing up for their long commutes to their own crappy episode of The Office and it usually makes me feel better because I don't really answer to anybody. No matter how tight money is, as long as the bills are paid and I don't have a boss, I'm winning the game.

My all time favorite song.

Sabotage! Okay it's not really my favorite song. But it did happen to me this week!!

Some fool tried to A. take over control of my blog and B. get my blog deleted. I can't help but wonder who it is. My guess is that it's either some stalker fan that I might have told about my blog (only a few candidates, probably not one of them unless he's a sociopath) or some pissed off site owner who doesn't like me preaching the truth (yep).

So firsties, this wannabe saboteur tried to get control of my Google account. Fortunately for me I have two step authentication set up, which means that if you want to steal my goodies you have to figure out my password, which is nice and long and random and also have access to my phone. So thankfully nothing bad happened.

Second, this bad person flagged my blog as spam and got it suspended for a few days. Fortunately for me in this case, Blogger is very fair about readdressing complaints like this and after a few friendly emails, the people at Blogger tech support realized what happened and restored my precious little rants.

Thanks Blogger and fuck you, thief.

New site - Aleful, Another scam, a free pic hustle or a creepy stalker??

If you post on Tumblr you have probably gotten a message from a guy/site called "Aleful" who is setting up a photo set selling site much like, I guess, Clips4Sale or Extra Lunch Money.

I signed up to be notified of the launch and got an email today which prompted me to do a little research. If you haven't seen the email it's just this:

The time has come! For all you sexy women to start snapping your photos! The first thing I need is proof of age all it has to be is a picture of you holding up your id so that I can verify you are over 18 years of age. This will be only on file on a secure hard drive. Now for the fun part. Follow this how to and submit your pictures to Aleful.net !!!!

Okay, nothing wrong there, some random stranger off Tumblr wants me to send him my real name, address and driver's license number. Seems perfectly logical, I do that all the time anyway, what harm could come of it?? /sarcasm.

I went and checked out the site at aleful.net and there isn't anything there, just a Wordpress install with a free theme attached. Checking the Whois information doesn't provide any additional verification either, which leaves me wondering...who or what is Aleful and why should I send him my driver's license?

Attached to the email was also this image, giving a run down on how the site works:

Seems pretty straightforward, send in a few pics, answer a few questions and get free money right to your PayPal! Nothing wrong there either, we all know how great PayPal is to work with and how much they respect and treat cam girls, models and webmasters/mistresses in the adult entertainment industry, right?? /sarcasm (again.)

I think Mr. Aleful has a little ways to go before his site becomes the next Clips4Sale, so use caution, as always, with new sites that pop up from nowhere.

Anyway, signing off for now, I gotta go take a nice clear picture of my driver's license and send it to a stranger!!

News - MyFreeCams and MyGirlFund. UPDATED.

Interesting but different news from these two sites. We'll go good to bad:

So, the Good News. MyFreeCams is closing its Asian section due to abuse by studios from the Phillipines, in addition all of the Filipino studios will be banned. Now why is this good news? Well if you are Filipina it's not, but if you are an American cam girl who spends time on MFC, less girls = more custies and more custies = more $$$.

And...the Bad News. MyGirlFund has been experiencing outages this week for some reason. As usual the site's owners have been basically silent on the issue, but the worst outage was Wednesday night for several hours, but it's back up today. At some point, however, a large warning appeared, "MGF will be offline for maintence from 3am - 9am est." either this will be a good thing because they are fixing the problem or not. We shall see.

Watch this space!

*** UPDATE ***

So MGF has been pretty rock solid over the last week or so. I'm guessing whatever they were fixing is fixed. Very good news!

Not for the squeamish!

If you have been following my blog you know that I have been all over the map as far as techniques to make a few bucks online. The one thing I have been really searching for among all of these is the ability to make more than average money.

Anyone can sign up to the sites I've mentioned like MyFreeCams, MyGirlFund or others and make a few hundred bucks on the site. That's a good thing: it's a car payment, a big bill, some mad money to treat yourself, a new bag, cellphone or whatever. But the real success is when you are making enough money to live a nicer lifestyle than you currently do or than you could working a regular job.

What's the key to big money? To real money? There are two things you need: loyal fans and repeat customers. That's it. What could be easier? LOL.

Yes, Finding customers is hard as heck but there is one way you can make sure they are loyal, repeat custies: you find them in the fetish world. Bottom line, if you are not easily grossed out and don't mind doing some crazy stuff there is a lot of money to be made. I'm not going to put any other girls business out there but some of the biggest earners on the sites I've mentioned are girls who cater to the fetish guys.

What fetishes? Well I previously mentioned financial domination and that's a valid niche if you are dominant and can find slaves, but money slaves are topically solitary losers. What you want to find are fetishists who have a COMMUNITY. Because if you can find one or two custies and treat them right they will tell all their online perverted fetish pals about you. What fetishes? Well start with the non gross stuff: panties, pantyhose, feet, smoking. Then move on to the hard stuff: peeing, burping, farting, pooping. If you don't mind doing this kind of stuff there is a lot of money available to earn.

Probably the single best aspect of fetish customers is that they genuinely appreciate you catering to their fetish and are willing to pay and pay repeatedly.

So how do you get into the fetish world? For starters do your research and learn as much as you can about it. Each fetish has its own rules and own types of fans. First take a look over Google for your fetish. There will be a few blogs, boards, communities where fans of whatever hang out. You can hop right in and get to know them or you can lurk and spy on them for a bit while you discover the fetish.

Probably my all time favorite fetish site, personally, is FetLife. Get on there, make a profile and do your research, it's kinda touchy about marketing there, so don't cross the line, but it's a great resource.