Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2013. The figures are from then: 2,500 openings on SexyJobs.com “last month”, earnings of 2,000 euros a night or 70,000 euros a month, and LiveJasmin at number 59 in the Alexa ranking (Alexa was retired in 2022). The traffic comparison with the world’s three biggest news outlets is unsourced.
There’s no need to explain what a “camgirl” is. Basically, she’s a woman who fulfils some of her users’ spicier wishes through her webcam, from her own home. In the wake of the economic crisis, the number of women turning to this as a way to earn extra money has grown considerably. Many of them, though, never expected that what started as extra income would turn into earnings that can, in some cases, reach €2,000 in a single night, or €70,000 for two or three weeks of work over a month.
At first, the camgirl business was aimed at well-known porn stars, whose income had shrunk because of online piracy. But customers aren’t that drawn to those stars. They prefer “non-professionals”: women passing through, doing this while they finish their degrees, or housewives who have turned to it to cushion the effects of the crisis. Either way, the business already moves billions.
Sean Phillips, vice president of marketing at SexyJobs.com, a job board specializing in this sector, says job offers for camgirls are growing by leaps and bounds. Last month the site had a total of 2,500 openings for women.
The other figure comes from the number one camgirl site, LiveJasmin, which sits at number 59 in the Alexa ranking. Put another way, it gets more visits than the world’s three most important news outlets combined. That figure shows how much demand there is in this sector, making it one of the most profitable businesses around today.
Even so, people running businesses in the sector insist it’s like any other business, and that not everyone will find it easy to earn that kind of money: more than looks, you need personal charm to win customers over. In some cases a woman can have tens of thousands of users connected at the same time, while another rarely reaches 100.
Ross Love, owner of Best Kept, an agency that promotes what it calls “Secret Talent”, says he has models who make $2,000 to $3,000 a night, and they’ve set themselves an earnings cap of $10,000 a month. As soon as they hit it, they stop working until the following month. Other women have built an excellent reputation and are now in what’s considered the “high end”, able to make $100,000 in a month.
Some men have been willing to pay as much as $10,000 to a university student for a couple of hours in private, away from the public chat. Another woman earned $10,000 for celebrating her cyber-birthday with her fans, and there have been cases where the affection between users and a camgirl ran so deep that she received hundreds of gifts from her admirers on particular dates.
The curious thing is that most of these women have no plans to become stars of the industry; they’re just passing through. Today’s camgirl could be your doctor, your lawyer or a TV presenter tomorrow, or whoever you’d least expect, and that’s exactly why their value is soaring.
The ethical and moral debate
You could debate whether this practice is ethical or moral. Most of these women hope to be forgotten one day and get on with normal lives. They feel at ease because they can’t be considered prostitutes, since they have no physical contact with their “admirers”, although I’m sure very few of them have reckoned with the internet’s memory and how this past could come back to haunt them one day.
These are questions many of them never get around to asking themselves, because the problem is eclipsed by the large sums of money they receive. Still, they insist that what some people call easy money isn’t so easy.
Featured image: Peter Placzek, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
