Nikki Night's Tips on Turning Casual Cam Work Into a Career

This article originally ran in AVN magazine. My name is Nikki Night, and I am a full-time webcam performer turned performer coach for Cam4. I was well into my third year of performing when I got the opportunity to become the head of performer training and development at Cam4’s head office. My job is to help performers gain more viewers and make more money—I do two live performers-only coaching shows every Wednesday and work one on one with new performers on the site every Tuesday. I absolutely love my job because I myself started like most of us, with no guidance or training, so I am very dedicated to helping others reach their goals. The first step to success is changing how you think about your online presence. You are an internet personality, live and unscripted in front of your audience. Lose your inhibitions and have a good sense of humor about the things that will happen on cam. After that, you need to start implementing some key business tactics in order to start seeing the results you want and understanding where to look to see the measurable metrics you can use to track your success. If you are like me then perhaps you are thinking of doing this because you love camming and want to really dive into the lifestyle. You wake up when you want, do as you like, and get to experience an incredible freedom and confidence that no other job can give you. Or maybe you just hate your other job. Either way, I’ll share some tips on how to make the transition to internet personality. 1. Schedule Your TransitionIf camming is your only gig and you are ready to take it more seriously, then this first step may not apply to you. If you are working another job, it’s a good idea to slowly move toward just camming. You never want to put your back against the wall financially. A stressed performer makes no money—not a plan for success. I can relate from personal experience that working another job while camming is tough. I was so tired from my day job that I couldn’t be online as much. And when I was there, it took so much longer for me to get into the right headspace for performing. It started to feel like I was living a double life and it was exhausting. My viewer count dropped significantly because I wasn’t online as often. It started to feel like a waste of time to have two jobs because in the end, they both suffered. 2. Do the WorkTrying to be successful with no knowledge of what works is taking a giant stab in the dark. Research will help you hit the ground running. Topics to look at: Do you have a stable Internet connection? Do you have enough upload speed? Do you have full knowledge of your site tools? Are all the settings in your account correct? Do you have an interesting bio that talks about you and your show? Are you using social media? Do you have a personal blog? Are you sharing these with your fans? Do you know what it’s like to be a viewer? Have you taken the time to watch other performers on your site? What caught your attention? Why? (Find more performer training articles here and here.)3. Determine What Success IsThe camming lifestyle is fantastic, but what about your bills? Having a clear view of what you need to make in order to have the stress-free experience we all want is very important. To do this you need to add up all your expenses in order to live month by month; then ask yourself, “What do I WANT to make?” That number will give you a starting point in deciding what you want to charge for videos, private shows, show goals, etc…For example:You decide on $2,000 a month$2,000/30 days = $67 a dayTaking two days off the week so you can rest and recharge leaves you at roughly $100 a day. I recommend using these numbers as your goal for public shows and considering the private shows you do after your public show as bonus money. This way if you have a few days where you don’t make your public goal, you still have some wiggle room to make your goal at the end of the week. Don’t get stressed if you have up and downs in your earnings from day-to-day or even month-to-month. This is normal in every business experiences this. Take down time to reinvent your show, try new things and stay positive. (For more information, click here.) 4. Managing Your SuccessYour shows are going well and you’re active on social media, but how do you know exactly what you are doing that’s working? Sites like Twitter and image posting sites like Imgur offer you powerful tracking tools that show you everything from where your Twitter fan base is located to what time of day you should be camming. What does this really mean? Example. You see on Twitter that you have a large fan base in Los Angeles. Take a pic of yourself wearing an L.A. sports team jersey and tweet it using relevant #’s. Do a show during peak hours for that time zone (10 p.m. to midnight Pacific Time). (Learn more about Twitter analytics here and using imgur here.) Ask an Expert!On the Internet you are always two clicks away from finding a community of people who are just like you. As the head of performer training and development at Cam4, it’s my job to coach others on how to get more viewers and make more money. Cam4 models can attend my coaching classes every Wednesday at 1 and 3 p.m. EST (New York time). Or ask me questions by emailing nikki@cam4.com or sending a DM on Twitter: @nikki_night. You can always contact me regarding questions on performing as well. I’d be happy to help! Nikki Night is the Head Coach for Cam4.com and an all-around camgirl guru. She wrote and developed the Performer Training Area on Cam4 that is filled with training articles and videos based on her experience as a performer herself. Nikki has been featured in Forbes, Cosmopolitan, and on the show Real Future, which is hosted on Fusion Network. Interested people can join her free live coaching every Wednesday on Cam4.com/cam4coach_en.