Aella
Jan 25, 2025
Long before Onlyfans existed, I met its future owner in a hot tub in a penthouse at a camgirl afterparty at a porn convention in Las Vegas. He was a sweet, quiet guy everyone called Leo. He ran MyFreeCams, the platform that my friends and I used to do livestreaming sex work. I remember we all thought it was interesting that he didn’t seem to be sleeping with any of the girls.
At that time, probably around 2013 or so - if you were a girl who wanted to make money getting naked online, your best bet was to sign up for a livestreaming camsite. My friends and I, all in our early 20’s, lived in camhouses, traveled to conventions to camgirl live, used camgirl merch, discussed strategies in camgirl-specific forums. Of all the camsites, MyFreeCams was the biggest.
Most camsites worked like this: You, a hopefully attractive girl, turn on your webcam and livestream for an audience. The audience is all in a chat room, very similar to Twitch. They can chat live with you, and also with each other.
You get money through two main methods - either live tips to the room, typically witnessed by all the other members of the chat,
or you can get taken private, a one-on-one pay-flat-rate-per-minute show.
Different camsites focused on varying points on the spectrum between these two methods. But everyone knew the serious money was in the live tipping. Privates capped you at around ~$3/minute, but tip-based income could average up to $20/min
The (oversimplified) psychology behind high earners for livestreaming went something like this: You, the aforementioned hot girl, have an established audience of regulars in your audience. Each man can see the other men talking to you and giving you money. The men are implicitly ranked by dominance, which is determined by how much attention you pay to them, which is in turn determined by how much money they give you...