Hi Sexy —
2018 is here! The start of the new year is an excellent time for a performance review. Just because you are your own boss doesn’t mean you can’t ask—and answer—the question of how well camming is working for you. Let’s try some simple assessment, and then discuss some ways to make it even better in the new year.
Time Management
One of the very best things about camming is getting to set your own hours. Flexibility can cut both ways, however. We can either find ourselves not working enough or with no time left for anything else.
Here’s what I suggest: take twenty minutes, sit down in a quiet place with a piece of paper and write out your answers to these questions.
- Does camming take up too much of your time?
- Do you feel guilty that you aren’t putting enough hours in?
- Are there gaps between your intentions and your actions, like posting you’ll be online during certain time windows, then not logging on?
Be honest—don’t pull any punches about how the job makes you feel. Now, try framing the specifics of any challenges you’re facing as a story you might tell a friend:
- “I keep saying I’ll be on cam right at 11 a.m. every day, but I’m always at least a half our late.”
- “One of my best fans said yesterday that I’m never around anymore.”
- “I promised myself I’d look into taking art classes again, but haven’t gotten around to it.”
What would you say if your friend told you this? What kinds of solutions could you offer, such as breaking up longer shifts, planning your work calendar out a month in advance, or coming up with a juicy reward for when you meet your weekly quota?
Sometimes all we need is to hear our problems articulated out loud to realize we’ve had the answer all along. Or if you need some inspiration outside of yourself, talk to your camming buddies for advice on managing the work/life balance. The important thing is to tackle these issues head on, rather than ignoring them and letting yourself get burnt out.
Efficiency
Perhaps this is the year to streamline your operation. Promotion can be an enormous time sink: video clips, social media, emails. Those annoying questions about your hours and specialties you get asked again and again? Create a list of standard smart-and-sassy responses to cut-and-paste rather than typing the same thing again and again. Spending too many hours posting to social media? Free or low-cost social media management tools like Hootsuite or SocialOomph allow you to step away from your screens and still have an active online presence.
Many cammers appear on more than one site, which can make sense in theory—reach more fans, make more money. If this has been your strategy for six months or more, the new year is prime time to determine whether the effort is worth it. Run this simple test: for the next two weeks, devote all of your time to one platform. Then for two weeks after that, appear only on your second platform. Compare your stats to your average results, and adjust your efforts accordingly. It’s good to grow and expand, but not at the expense of spreading yourself too thin.
Another plan to consider is passive income. One thing top cammers have in common is they always have fresh supplies of clips and pics for sale, and earning money while you sleep is the sweetest cash there is. If an online store isn’t part of your camming portfolio yet, perhaps this is the year to diversify.
Satisfaction
No job is fun all the time, but you have every right to identify what you like about camming and to seek out more of it in the new year. What do you enjoy about the work? How would you rate your fan base? What milestones would you like to achieve?
Here are a few simple visualization exercises to help focus your mind. Take a piece of paper and devote a paragraph to each:
- Word association: how does camming make you feel? How would you like it to make you feel?
- Target numbers: What are your goals—a certain number of fans, a certain steady paycheck, a certain number of hours?
- #Lifegoals: What do you want your cam life to look like a year from now?
Making camming into your dream job is a worthwhile objective, and clearly stating your aims is the first step towards reaching them. I’ll have a lot more to say about setting and achieving goals in my next article.
Until next time, be sweet to yourself.
Lola D.
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Lola Davina is a longtime veteran of the sex industry and author of Thriving in Sex Work: Heartfelt Advice for Staying Sane in the Sex Industry, a self-help book for sex workers now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes and wherever else ebooks are sold. Contact her at Lola.Davina@ynotcam.com and visit her on Twitter at @Lola_Davina, on Facebook and on Tumblr.
Image of Lola Davina courtesy Pat Mazzera.
