Building A Website For A Webcam Model (Easy and Free!)
Web Development For Camgirls and Adult Stars
There’s many reasons why an adult performer would want to operate their own website. Running a website is a great promotional tool. It enables performers to tap into valuable search engine traffic. It’s also the main hub where models can list all their services, social media profiles, clip stores, camming sites and so on. This works as the main marketing hub for everything.
The website is also it’s own revenue stream. A model site can be monetized by a number of means; pay site subscriptions, clip sales, live camming and other store items. Plus it can generate affiliate commissions from other networks.
Best of all, this can be done 100% free and with minimal technical knowledge. Here’s everything you need to know about building a website.
Table Of Contents:
- What Building A Website Costs
- How Easy Is Building A Website?
- Making Money From Your Website
- Using The Website For Promotion
- Site Building Platforms For Models
- Pay Sites Vs Fan Club Platforms
- Registering A Website Name
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Add Camming Chatroom To Website
How Much Building A Website Costs
There are a couple website building platforms for performers that are 100% free. They work on a revshare model, very similarly to how the clip sites and camming sites operate. If you’re starting out with a basic website that you’re hosting yourself, there will be some overhead. A website name only costs about $20 per year. Shared hosting will work at the start and only costs about $5 per month. If you scale up to a dedicated server, it gets more expensive.
But if you don’t want to put up any initial investment, you really don’t need to. All the free / revshare website building platforms are very solid and feature-rich platforms as well. Plus, they’re insanely easy to use and have great support channels.
How Difficult Is It To Build A Website
The honest answer: It depends. If you go with one of the website building platforms for models, it’s very inuitive and the company handles all the technical stuff. There’s also very good support as well as a performer community. If you’re hosting and building your own site? Then you’ll need to know a little bit about hosting and HTML. If you’re doing some complicated things, it might get a little more technical.
So really, it’s as complicated as you want to make it. It’s possible to get starting without any knowledge of hosting or HTML at all. Everything has visual editors and easy-to-use dashboards. If you want to build your own site? It does get more complicated. Especially if you’re implementing a payment processor.
How To Make Money From The Website
Running a website can be very profitable. There’s also many different ways that you can make money from the website. This ranges from membership subscriptions to live camming. Here are some of the main ways you can monetize the website.
Membership Subscriptions
One of the primary ways to monetize your website is membership subscriptions. Many of the website builders make it really easy to do this. Otherwise, you’ll have to implement the members area and payment processing.
Membership subscriptions are great because of the monthly rebills. If a die-hard fan subscribes and never unsubscribes, you’ll be generating revenue from those rebills for quite a while. The more loyal subscribers you get, the greater this residual income becomes.
In order to keep people subscribed, there needs to be consistent fresh content being published. Either that or so much archived content that it’s worth subscribing to access it all. Being active in other ways (blogging, camming, messaging, ect) also helps.
Clips and Store Items
Selling clips, galleries and other store items is another way to make money from the website. With store items, it’s possible to sell just about anything. Could be content, signed prints, Snapchat subscriptions and a wide range of other things. Many of the website building platforms make it easy to sell content and store items on your website.
Live Webcam Shows
Live camming is another way to generate revenue from the website. There’s multiple ways to go about doing this. Some performers cam in the members only area. It might just be shows for subscribers or it might be token-based shows. The website building platforms make it easy to cam from the website. There’s other platforms and services that can get integrated into the website as well.
Affiliate / Referral Commissions
This is a source of revenue that a lot of performers don’t really think about. Most of the camming sites and a decent amount of the clip sites have referral or affiliate programs. With these programs, you can earn a commission off new customers referral to the network.
By linking to your camming site and clip stores using affiliate links, you’re not only promoting your other networks, but you’re creating an entire new revenue-stream out of it! A residual one at that. If you’re getting a revenue-share on all new customer spending, and you refer a really good customer, that can be some very good money!
Using The Website For Promoting Other Sites / Services
The website is also a very valuable promotional tool for a performers other networks and services. In-fact, there’s plenty of performers out there running basic WordPress sites purely for promotion. These sites might not sell any actual services, but they can be used for listing out the clip stores, camming profile, social media accounts and other profiles.
There are some camming site and clip stores that do not allow models to link to competing sites. Many allow models to link to their personal website though. This is one way to enable surfers from one network to find your content / services on other networks.
Some networks also only allow you to link to a single web property. Do you link to the camming site? Clip store? If you link to the website, the visitors will be able to find all your clip stores, camming site and other profiles by visiting the website.
By learning the basics of “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO), which we’ll discuss below, it’s also possible to tap into search engine traffic. Once you’ve got the site ranked for search results, this brings in a steady flow of really good traffic. Running a website is the most effective way to tap into this form of traffic.
Website Building Platforms For Adult Performers
There are many different ways to build a website and tons of tools to help build it. There’s different pros and cons to each platform, and none of their features are completely alike. Depending on what you’re looking for in a website, some platforms might be a better fit than others. Here is what’s available.
ModelCentro: Easily Create Your Own Membership Website For Free!
ModelCentro is a free and easy to use website builder that allows models to make their own paysites. ModelCentro is perfect for amateur porn producers who want to build a residual income from monthly subscription fees. In addition to working as a membership fanclub site, models are also able to stream live over ModelCentro.
ModelCentro integrates with Streamate, SkyPrivate and VerifiedCall. This allows models to broadcast on both ModelCentro and Streamate simultaneously, sell Skype shows and offer phone sex, all from the site. ModelCentro also offers some marketing tools, such as integration with various directories and review sites, being able to run your own affiliate program and more. ModelCentro handles all the hosting and will even purchase your own website name free of charge.
More Info: ModelCentro – Free Website Builder For Camgirls / Porn Producers
AdultMemberSites: Free Online Store Builder For Adult Models
AdultMemberSites makes it incredibly easy to start your own website and offer a wide range of services. Make money selling clips, content and other store items directly from your website. Also get paid from live camming. AdultMemberSites is handles all the hosting, will purchase a domain name for you and offers an easy to use visual website builder. Customize the pages, menu items and more.
Learn More: AdultMemberSites – Website Builder For Pornstars
WordPress: Easy To Use Platform For Building Websites
WordPress is a the most popular CMS on the planet. More sites are powered by WordPress than any other platform. WordPress is highly customizable and easy to use. There’s also tons of products that can be integrated into WordPress, such as Camazee. With WordPress (and other CMS) you get more control over your site, as you’ve got access to the actual code. There is overhead associated with it though. You’ll need to get a hosting plan and domain name, which is relatively cheap and completely worthwhile. Some insanely powerful WordPress sites can be created.
Learn More: Building Adult Performer Websites Using WordPress
xMember: Membership Pay Sites For The Adult Industry
xMember is an advanced script developed by Adent. It enables models, studios and other webmasters to easily deploy powerful paysites. With xMarketplace, you get full control over the code, meaning that you can customize it as you wish. Because it’s meant for adult pay sites, you don’t have to configure a vanilla CMS to make it function the way it needs to.
Learn More: xMember – Build Premium Adult Pay Sites
Membership Sites Vs Adult Fanclub Platforms
An alternative to running a membership site (or something to do in addition to running a membership site) is running a premium fanclub on one of the fanclub platforms. Fanclub platforms work very similarly to membership sites, in the sense that users must pay a monthly subscription fee to access the content. The difference is that fanclub accounts are much easier to setup (doesn’t require the website) and the sites already have tons of traffic that models and producers can tap into.
Here’s the top fanclub platforms on the market:
OnlyFans – When it comes to fanclub platforms, OnlyFans is by far the leader. OnlyFans pays a whopping 80% revshare to performers. In addition to fanclub subscriptions, OF creators can also send locked content, receive tips and stream live on the platform. OnlyFans also supports features such as discounts and deals and a referral program.
JustForFans – JustForFans is another popular fanclub platform. Due to being founded by gay pornstar Dominic Ford, the site is very gay-oriented and perfect for male performers. In addition to fanclub subscriptions, JustForFans models and producers can also sell clips, custom store items and offer sexting.
IsMyGirl – IsMyGirl is another solid fanclub platform. In addition to IsMyGirl, there’s also IsMyGuy and a couple other niche sites within the same company. In addition to fanclub subscriptions, IsMyGirl models can also make money from clip sales, premium social media subscriptions, custom content and sending locked content.
FanCentro – FanCentro is primarily a network for selling premium social media subscriptions. FanCentro also has a feature called The Feed, which works as an adult fanclub. FanCentro influencers can also receive tips from their fans and opt into affiliate promotion from CentroProfits. CentroProfits provides insane amounts of traffic for performers.
More Resources / Information For Webmasters
Here’s some more general information and tips for webmasters
Registering A Website (Domain) Name
Some of the site building platforms provide a free sub-domain on their site. A few even provide free domain names (website names). Even if you have to come out of pocket for the domain name, they’re incredibly cheap. A .com with WHOIS protection (YOU WANT WHOIS PROTECTION!) is only around $20 per year. Definitely worth it. There are tons of “Registrars” out there. A registrar is a company that you can register the domain through. To see what’s available, just Google “Registrars”. They’re all fairly comparable.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is definitely something you’ll want to learn. It sounds really complicated, but really isn’t that bad. The great thing about SEO is that you can either get really involved with it, or stick to the simple “Onsite Optimization” best practices and let everything else fall into place.
Search engine traffic is some of the most valuable traffic out there. And once a website is ranked, it’s a steady non-stop stream of traffic. SEO is a huge topic. So big that we’re not even going to go into it beyond explaining how important it is. There’s a full post on the topic linked-to below.
Learn More: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) For Adult Performers
Adding A Camming Chatroom To The Website
There are many ways to add a chatroom to your website. Some platforms have that functionality already included. If you’re building the website on something that doesn’t come with that feature right out-of-the-box, that’s alright. There’s tons of tools at your disposal. In-fact, your camming site might even offer an embed code that can be added directly to the website. With this, your full chatroom will appear on the website, as well as the camming site.
Learn More: Adding A Chatroom To Your Website
