How to communicate with users visiting your room
Camgirls looking to thrive in this industry need to analyze and understand the underlying dynamics that shape the relationships between members and models.
Successful models are able to manipulate members into spending money on them, without the need of ever saying this out loud.
‘Let’s go private’ or ‘tip me’ are the most destructive sentences a model can utter. They’re a massive turnoff, they’re counterproductive, they’re disappointing.
Let’s get the elephant out of the room
The majority of users will not spend a single dime on you if all you can parrot is ‘let’s go private’!
But even if you’re a great conversationalist, you should avoid using these sentences altogether.
Let’s not kid ourselves: each and every single performer wants to make money.
But this is something you cannot communicate openly, because it shatters the illusion users have constructed in their own minds.
Visitors of the site are primarily seeking companionship, and generally, people aren’t keen on paying for companionship.
Or at the very least, they don’t want to be reminded at every turn that they have to pay for your company.
So the aim is to make them spend money on you by controlling the dialogue.
So how do you go about that? That’s one of the topics we’re discussing in this guide!
Note: in this guide we’re going to refer to the potential customers visiting your room either as “members”, “users”, “visitors” or “guests”. They’re essentially the same thing, so don’t get confused.
Pay attention to how you carry yourself on camera
Users visit your room to let some steam off, to have a good time, to relax and feel welcomed. Webcam models are entertainers after all!
Smiling, interacting with users, engaging in small talk are very important.
As long as you’re able to maintain a good vibe in your room, members will try to interact with you.
How to maintain a good vibe
Maintaining a good vibe consists of many things:
- smiling
- engaging in casual talk with users visiting your room
- engaging in casual talk with imaginary users when there’s no visitors in your room (we will explain this a little later)
- dancing, teasing, moving around casually
We cannot stress enough the importance of the first impression you make when users visit your room. The first impression is like a handshake: when you shake someone’s hand while looking them in the eye, you immediately get an impression of the other person. This person looks interesting, that person looks confident…this other person looks like someone you can have great conversations with, and so on.
Truth is, while first impressions are important, they rarely paint an accurate picture of someone’s personality.
But it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that people will treat you based on the first impression you make when they meet you!
Smiling
When you smile, you make the impression of being approachable. If you appear approachable, users will want to interact with you. If they start interacting with you, it can lead to great conversations. Great conversations will lead to users wanting to see/hear more of you under more intimate circumstances.
Casual talk with users
Engaging in small talk with users is another key element in achieving success. Small talk can serve as the basis for deeper, more meaningful conversations in a future private session. Small talk signals to users that you’re a person worth spending time with. We’re not saying that you have to talk all the time, but it’s crucial to try and start conversations with users visiting your room. Ask them about their day, crack a joke, make funny remarks, break the ice!
If you’re in control of the flow of conversation in your room, then not only will you maximize your chances of users spending money on you, but you will successfully evade a potentially damaging powerplay situation developing in your room.
We will discuss basic powerplay mechanics later in this guide!
Spoken communication is not a necessity, but models who speak English fluently are generally more likely to become successful cam models than those who don’t.
Casual talk with yourself
This one might sound a little silly at first, but it’s actually a very effective technique for attracting users. On slower days, or during slower time periods when there’s little interaction in your room, you might feel a natural inclination to fall into the habit of slacking.
This is the worst thing a cam model can do!
When it’s slow, here’s what you should do instead: start having a conversation with an imaginary visitor. Pretend that you’re having a conversation with someone!
This creates the illusion that you are busy. And busy is good! If you are busy, or look busy, it communicates to viewers that you are worth their time. And that’s a good thing, because the majority of people will want what other people want.
If you look busy (even if you’re faking it), you will attract attention, you will pique the curiosity of others. You can play out entire conversations like this, but make sure you don’t become repetitive doing it.
Greet the imaginary user, call his name, ask him questions, react to the imaginary answers.
Depending on how social you are, this may feel a little exhausting and weird at first.
But you will get the hang of it very soon. And it will greatly increase your chances of being noticed by valued members of the site!
We would advise you to practice this offline first, before your first day online.
Teasing, dancing
Moving around in a sensual, erotic manner is yet another good way of attracting attention.
No need to overdo it, but here are two scenarios when you definitely should resort to teasing:
- when there’s a good amount of members in your room, but there’s little to no interaction (not a lot of tips coming in etc.)
- when there’s barely anybody in your room
Even if you don’t know how to dance, you sure do know how to move your body in a sensual way!
One of the things you should NEVER do for longer periods of time is to sit around on your bed/sofa with a bored face moving left and right! This is a major turnoff, and it’s one of the telltale signs of an unsuccessful model.
Openly displaying signs of boredom, frustration, depression, anger, lack of creativity or desperation will only serve to attract the worst kinds of users to your room!
If you’re experiencing any of the above, it’s best if you take a break, take some time out for yourself. We all have our good days and bad days!
When you look depressed, anxious, frustrated or bored, some people will assume that you’re willing to do things for free. Either for free, or for very little money. And they will try to exploit the situation in many different ways. People will think that you’re cheap, and this is something that can affect your sense of self worth, self esteem in the long run.
E-begging, openly playing for sympathy are a couple of other things you should NEVER engage in as a camgirl!
As I’ve said before, users come to you to relax, to chill out, to have fun.
Occasionally announce your promos, content to the users
Some of your visitors will want to see more of you, and not just in the context of private shows. So it’s very important to upload content regularly.
These can be photos, photo sets, videos of all kind. Creating and uploading your content is one thing, naming, tagging, writing descriptions for your content is another.
But probably the most important thing of all is promoting your content. You can approach this in many different ways, undoubtedly the most effective one is utilizing social media for this purpose.
Beyond that, there’s your live chat room. From time to time you should announce your content during your live shows! That means both in free chat, or at the end of/after a private show.
Make sure you’re not doing it too frequently though!
Say you just did a terrific private show, your guest is satisfied, he’s all over you, he proceeds and writes a raving review about you. This is a great occasion to direct him towards your content!
Big tippers
Let’s say there’s a big tipper in your room, who obviously enjoys your company, your personality, your energy. Tell him to go through your content, or direct him to a specific piece of content you think he would enjoy.
For instance, you’re doing a foot show. You can tell your guest is having the time of his life spending time with you. When the show is over, it occurs to you that you have a couple of foot fetish videos in your video gallery. Let him know!
Same goes for your promos. If you have a promo running, announce it to your viewers from time to time.
When it comes to your promos, be creative and reasonable. Try to approach this from the users’ perspective.
If you’re a new, up-and-coming model, the rule of thumb is not to charge too much for your content, promos or your private shows.
Same goes for tip goals, but this is something we’re gonna discuss later in this guide.
Know how to manage stressful situations, how to handle hostility
One thing every cam model will experience during their career is the presence of abusive users. From time to time, these users will show up in your room, and start wreaking havoc.
They will call you names, will try to insult you in different ways with the aim of provoking a response. This can happen during private shows too, but it’s way more likely to happen in free chat.
Rather than engaging in any kind of fight with these users, models are advised to either ignore or ban them. Alternatively, you can give them a level-headed response, and then leave it at that.
We know it can be hard sometimes, but at no point can you afford to lose your cool and start fighting these people.
You have to understand that abusive and overly judgmental people are mentally ill with no exception, so there’s no point in fighting or arguing with them. You can’t win such a fight, on the other hand, responding in kind can be damaging to your own mental health.
It’s exactly what they want. Do not ever let these people drag you down, don’t let their insults, opinions have any effect on your life.
No point in trying to reason with them either, it’s pretty much like pouring your life essence into a black hole. It’s not worth your time, or your energy.
Disputes
Should some sort of dispute develop between you and a user (about something you did or did not do for instance), treat the user with respect, and don’t be defensive even if the user loses it and goes on the offense.
If you’re not receptive to the abuse, the abuser will likely give up after a while, and leave you be.
Should the opposite happen, please contact our support rather than trying to take matters into your own hands!
Don’t deceive users
Some users will want you to do things on camera you’re not comfortable doing. That’s alright, we all have our boundaries. Just tell the user outright that you’re not comfortable doing what he’s requesting (or offer the user alternatives, more on this in the powerplay section).
What you should NEVER do is bait users into thinking that you will do something in the hopes of getting away with not doing it in the end.
Such decisions will almost always come back on you in some form or another, most likely in the form of the show being refunded to the user.
But even if the show does not get refunded, the user can still write a bad review about you, and that’s something you should be mindful of!
Powerplay
Powerplay is a huge topic, but since it’s mostly situational, we’re only gonna go through the more general aspects of it in this guide.
In case you don’t know what it is about, it’s basically a dynamic in human interaction where the parties are trying to assert some sort of dominance over the other party, in order to achieve a goal.
The parties do this by trying to exploit perceived or real weaknesses, vulnerabilities of the other party.
MOST of your guests will not engage in any kind of powerplay when they visit your room!
But those who will, they probably do this on a daily basis, so you should be prepared to deal with these attempts.
The goals
In the context of webcamming, there’s the model’s goals, and there’s the user’s goals.
The model’s main goal is to make the most money possible in the least amount of time and with the least amount of effort, without sacrificing integrity.
On the other hand, many (but not all!) user’s main goal is to spend the least amount of money for the best quality, and/or the most content (and by content, we’re not only referring to your videos and photos, but your private shows as well).
You can see that these goals are contradictory to each other, so the parties (the model and the user) have to find some kind of compromise, and most of the time, they do find a middle ground.
Whether a user engages in powerplay or not is in no small part determined by how you carry yourself on camera.
It just works
If you adhere to the guidelines we have outlined earlier, then you can evade a large portion of these attempts. Smile, interact, appear busy at all times!
But if you fall into the habit of slacking, sitting around with a bored face without interacting, you lose. And it’s extremely hard to climb back from that, webcamming being the highly competitive business it is these days.
Not only will you not attract valuable users, but eventually you will start attracting the type of people that are out there to scam you, or damage your self esteem.
If you look desperate, they will assume that you are willing to do stuff for free, or for very little money. We’re talking about stuff a cam model would normally do in a private session, or for tips.
These assumptions will hurt you, because they affect your sense of self worth, your self esteem.
On cutting deals
We’re not saying that you shouldn’t consider cutting deals with users every once in a while, but there’s an enormous difference in cutting a sensible deal with a user that’s treating you with respect, and being disrespected with laughable “offers” at every turn.
Occasionally, a user will try to get under your skin no matter how you carry yourself. If you decide to respond, make sure your response is short and confident. Do not be indecisive, don’t hesitate, don’t get offended! Indecision, hesitation or taking offense are seen as weaknesses.
Powerplay scenarios can develop even during a seemingly ordinary private session, they’re not exclusive to pre-show communication.
Example: You have agreed with the user pre-show that you’re not comfortable doing what he’s asking you to do. The user seemingly accepts it, and takes you private. It’s going well, the user appears to be satisfied.
The ice is breaking, you’re starting to feel comfortable and relaxed, seeing the user’s responses to whatever you’re doing/saying. And then he slowly starts to pressure you into doing the one thing you said you’re not comfortable doing before the show.
Vulnerability
In a situation like that, you’re even more vulnerable than usual, because you have already established a relationship of trust with the user, and it’s generally harder to say no to someone you’re on good terms with, without feeling bad about it afterwards.
So if you say no, it’s you who’s gonna feel bad, even though it was the user who tried to pressure you into doing something you said you wouldn’t do!
Should this happen, just remember that it’s a game, and it’s the user who’s trying to play you. Don’t beat yourself up over it!
Just tell the user that you can’t do what he’s asking you to do, and remind him that you two have agreed on this before he took you private. Don’t make excuses, don’t try to overexplain things. Be very brief.
Offer alternatives
But there’s another, more creative way of handling this. Assuming the user doesn’t leave your show, you should try taking the initiative, and offer him alternatives instead.
Obviously the alternative needs to be something you feel comfortable doing, and something that satisfies the user to some degree. Coming up with something like that can be challenging, especially when you’re pressed for time.
For this reason, you should prepare for this in advance as best you can. Write down all the things you’re not comfortable doing on camera, and for every one thing you write down, come up with two alternatives that you can offer to users!
You will get the hang of it
We see no point in delving deeper into the topic of powerplay mechanics, it being such an extensive and situational topic. The more time you spend online, the more likely you will find yourself in a situation where you will have to engage in some sort of powerplay.
Don’t worry, if you adhere to these guidelines, you will get the hang of it very quickly!
This concludes part I of our ‘Camgirls’ series, make sure you read part II:
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