TastyTrixie.com

Emailing back and forth with a webwhore/stripper/blogger extraordinaire, I found out she was under the impression that I am a Very Successful Camgirl, or as she put it,

I got a newsletter saying you made a gazillion dollars doing webcam.

This was totally news to me since I’ve never broken the million dollar mark, let alone the gazillion dollar mark. Or course, she wasn’t *directly* quoting from this mysterious newsletter, but now I am very sad to have to burst her bubble by saying that I’ve never been a Very Successful Camgirl. I momentarily did okay with it back in the days when it was much easier and knew I could give up working a regular job and support myself camming (and maintain my exorbitant studio-apartment lifestyle of top-ramen-eating), but I was never ever a top earner, unless it was a week here or a week there on very small independent camsites (NEVER on a big site like iFriends) with very little competition and it only took a small amount to get there. I never logged the kind of hours it would have taken to be rich or started early enough to get on the first wave-of-webcams before all the camsites started giving streams away for free.

I’m not saying I was an UNsuccessful camgirl, I was just never on the “Top Performing Hosts” page at iFriends the way some girls were, a few of them my friends, who actually were in the top ten earners some weeks. IF I remember correctly (and I might not), one of the girls said that amount was around $12,000 one week to be number one. I could be totally wrong, though – I didn’t write it down, that’s just a figure that sticks out in my head (and it was MANY YEARS AGO; I doubt *anyone* could come close to that figure in a week these days). And the number fluctuated every week depending on (obviously) how business was going and how many hours the top webwhores were logging in. Girls didn’t just SIT on the top ten, either — it’s not like they logged in and were guaranteed to make a couple thousand dollars in eight hours of looking pretty. Most of them could work their asses off nonstop for seven days every so often, on TOP of being Very Attractive and extremely personable worker bees with lots of regulars.

Of course, there were always conspiracy theories about how some girls would wind up on the top ten making lots of money. The main one, which was probably true (I never paid attention enough to know for sure or feel like it would change anything if I had this “proof”), is that the camsite would figure out who their golden girls would be and put their feeds on a special server where most of their traffic was delivered. The rest of us wouldn’t get as much exposure, and by virtue of that fact, women we all thought were totally fucking wretched camgirls (but blonde) would rake it in.

One of the girls targeted by this conspiracy theory was Venus Sex Goddess (I don’t actually remember EXACTLY what her screen name was, but it was something like that). Blonde and unbelievably boring, or so we believed:

Many catty, struggling camgirls would try to figure out her secret by visiting her chatroom and there was Nothing Going ON there, so they reasoned that her success was a combination of 1) server placement favoritism, 2) her high per-minute prices, and 3) the allure of her blonde, unsmiling, snobbiness. Camgirl spies reported she booted people out of her chatroom for not entering paid chat within 15 seconds or for asking simple questions/trying to make small talk. Some girls PAID to view her, to try to ascertain her recipe for success, and came out of it mystified because she did nothing, apparently. No hardcore, not even any nudity — just sat there unresponsive and unsmiling. Seriously. THE WOMAN DID NOT SMILE! Maybe the girls didn’t spend enough time spying on her, I don’t know, but they posted stories that became legendary of Venus Sex Goddess’ complete lack of, well, sexiness, customer service, or anything worth paying for (in our expert, not-making-money opinions), yet for a camgirl era lasting for MONTHS or maybe even, like, a YEAR or some other inconceivable stretch of short-attention-span time, she repeatedly held the number one spot for earnings.

Anyway, I am no Venus Sex Goddess. Never was, never will be.

It’s been YEARS since I looked up the top-earners page — wasn’t even sure if they still had it — but I *just* checked as research for this post, and guess what? I AM LISTED AS A TOP CHATHOST! Yes, I am currently occupying the tenth position in the much-ignored category of “Marketing” which has absolutely nothing to do with making money on cam, it’s making money as a webmaster *promoting* the camsite.

I know how much money I made last week doing that and it is a really paltry sum, yet only nine chathosts managed to make more sales than I did. NINE. The really sad part is that making money promoting the site is about a gazillion times easier than making money fucking yourself on cam. And when I use the word “gazillion” in this context, it is NOT an exaggeration. I probably could have spent eight hours logged in as a camgirl and not made as much money as I did for some work I did three years ago that continues to pay off today. “Webmasters” who have penises and have never spent a day in their lives having a fucking clue what camgirls do would piss themselves laughing at the measly amount of money I made last week. The moral of the story? No matter how much money Venus Sex Goddess ever made in her whole fucking life as a camgirl, it will never hold a flickering CANDLE to the amount of money the top webmaster/promoters of camsites have made. I could write a book about the inequity of it, but the truth is that it’s kind of our own damned faults.

I don’t know what it is in our makeup, but when I look at that top ten chart, I suffer from that flaw that defies logic because while I *do* feel a surge of competitiveness, I don’t immediately think, “oooh! It would be so easy for me to be #1 in the marketing category!” No. I wonder longingly if *I* could ever hold a position among today’s Venus Sex Goddesses. If I just put my mind to it! Even if I never get on the “magic” server! What would it FEEL like to be so golden? It beats the hell out of me how that desire to earn a small amount of money as a whore continues to be more appealing than earning a large amount of money as a no-name nerd, but that seems to be the way most women operate.

Anyway, I have no idea where this newsletter originated claiming I was “the highest earning camgirl ever or something like that.” And it said I “made a big number that year or that month.” Maybe a case of mistaken identity? I don’t know, but now I kind of feel like the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz has been revealed. I’ve always related to that dude even though I’d never intentionally deceive someone, at least not without issuing a disclaimer first informing people that what they’re about to experience is pure fantasy. It’s thrilling to imagine my colleagues admiring my earning potential and to think of the name “TastyTrixie” being written in the annals of camgirl fame, but alas, I do not deserve a place there.

God I am having fucking camgirl withdrawals right now. But I simply can’t allow myself to sacrifice the BETTER money I make as a webmaster to the now-extremely-crappy and unreliable amount of money one MIGHT make camming. Not right now, anyway. Isn’t it fucking crazy that part of why I want to pay off our debts and make better money is so I can *afford* to be a camgirl again?

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