Allergies know no season, and some kinda crud seems to be being passed around basically at all times.
In an industry where your voice is crucial — webcam, clip creation and especially phone sex! — it can become S-C-A-R-Y when your voice is out. The worry of bringing in the money when your voice is out is a year-round concern, and sure — ASMR is a thing, but it isn’t every potential client’s bag.
How can you effectively create a sensual scene when you can barely whisper? Well, here are some ideas!
The Best Offense Is A Great Defense
First, you need to protect your voice where you can.
Be sure to do vocal warm-ups before long cam sessions, recording session or preparing for a shift taking calls. Drinking plenty of water is absolutely essential and even more so if you believe you are in fact getting sick — which leads to the recommendation of getting to know your body. Being in tune with your body means you will know when you are coming down with something. Take your temperature daily, and get to know your own personal norms.
When things start feeling off, start planning to work a bit easier for a few days. Create content that you can market without having to deal directly with clients (videos, photo sets and mp3s). For those who plan for this in advance, dip into your rainy day library of content that has not been released yet. This will allow you to rest your voice, continue generating income and — more importantly — not stress out about how you will be able to replace the income that you may soon be losing.
Consider telling your customers in advance that you feel yourself coming down with something and that now is the time order any sort of custom content or doing a live interaction before you disappear for a bit. Scarcity is a powerful motivator and knowing that your favorite performer may be out of commission for a while can even drive up your prices temporarily as demand also goes up.
Truth: nothing heals a sore throat like a cup of chicken noodle soup and a full bank account!
The Plague Has Taken Over… What Now?
Grab your medicines, arm yourself with tissue and pull that bag of cough drops out for the illness has taken over!
Luckily, with the preparation from above, your income should not take as sharp of a hit. During this time, if you are feeling up to it, social media will become your best friend. Create and post GIFs of previous videos, make previews of your audio clips to post on SoundCloud and engage with others who may or may not be suffering from the same disease as yourself.
This is also a great time to release compilation packages of your previous content. Have a group of best selling clips from last year? Place those bad boys together and give a 15 percent limited time discount. Create content that doesn’t require you to be dolled up or even use your voice. Try some clips of your feet while you try on socks or even just a clip from the waist down while you bathe in a tub. Use your voice only? If whispering doesn’t strain your vocal chords, you may consider doing an mp3 that is just two to five minutes long talking about how you are sick but still very much a dirty girl!
Take this moment to also tell your fans that you are feeling sick. Everyone can relate to it, and you may find some sympathetic super fans willing to donate to you during this time. You can also offer extra goodies for all customs bought during this time or for large orders of clips/audio for a limited time as well. Many webcam viewers and phone sex callers will understand if your voice doesn’t sound “perfect” if you tell them that you, in fact, are sick. Hell, some callers even prefer the raspy voice that comes a roughed up vocal box! If it doesn’t push you too far, capitalize off it.
When you are not promoting or creating bundled deals, this is also the perfect time to look over your goals, business plans, ideas for upcoming content and the general future of your business. When prevented from being able to do something active within your business to push the bottom line, it is often advantageous to take stock of where your business is and where you may want to go.
Especially as sex workers, it is often easy to get wrapped up in the production side of our business. These little pauses do not have to be a negative but a great time to take a “rest” from our business and see if we are on a path we really want to be on.
Through Sickness and In Health
Even when you are driven and motivated, unexpected hurdles can really set you back. Preparing for these situations can stop a lot of undue stress and anxiety in the future. You can confidently take time off that you will need.
Self-care is something that we sex workers forget from time to time, and just a little bit of preparation for those sick days is a way to save ourselves from some future headaches.
My new laptop is here thanks to Ms Weazel aka my favorite pet. pic.twitter.com/T4uYVjGXup
— Amberly Rothfield (@AmberlyPSO) March 26, 2019
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Amberly Rothfield is a veteran of the phone sex industry. Author of the book How I Made 10k A Month As A Phone Sex Operator, Rothfield’s passion is teaching others how to make a profitable adult business with a heavy focus on marketing. She has created free video tutorials and infographics available at amberlyrothfield.com. Contact her via amberly@ynotcam.com.
Great suggestions, and appreciated from a fellow allergy sufferer!
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