My Independent Journey: Part I

[i]Sleeping pills keep me awake, anti-depressants made me depressed, and going along with tips and advice on how to make camming work has amounted to nothing. In a nutshell, I am like the darkest inkspot on the lightest paper. What works for everyone else does not work for me. It is my hope that this article will give some helpful insight into what it is like to always �go against the grain� and also encourage more of you to go indie.[/i] When I first took the thought into my head to enter the sex industry, I was hanging out in a dungeon about an hour away every two weeks and considering becoming a professional dominatrix. However, that desire soon faded when I realized that it was still technically illegal and the last thing I wanted was to end up in jail since I have long-term aspirations such as getting a Ph.D and becoming a well-regarded academic. Plus, graduate schools check your records and prefer those who have next to nothing on them. So I hooked up with someone I had not seen for a year. The kind of guy I like� older, grey-hair, facial hair, and a killer sense of humor that matched my own. He was also a major perv, but we both agree that I trump his perviness after about a year or so of frolicking. I mentioned to him that I was considering becoming a professional dominatrix and he told me about Streamate and how he had an account on there. We watched a great many GOLD shows and it was then that I decided I wanted to try it for myself. There was only one problem� I was watching models who had been doing it for at least 5 years and had a certain look to them, a certain girl-next door appeal. I thought that I could centre my room fusing intellectual discourse and sexuality together... How wrong I was! I was on Streamate quite often and still only managed to have 2-5 people in my room if I was lucky. Gold shows were impossible and I made less money waiting for them to take off than I did waiting for 10 hours (in a 14 hour day, I had back to back privates for the first three hours and waited a record 10 hours for my next one) for private/exclusive. There was also the fact that I attempted to cater to everyone�s needs. I�d do vanilla or kink depending on who asked. Eventually I noticed that the amount of people who added me on favorites were freeloaders and moochers who were content to just lurk and not even say hello. This got on my nerves because I figured (mistakenly) that encompassing a great many requests and being able to do them would make me rise to the top quicker, fulfil my desire to not only stay out of my parents� house as well as obtain a relative sense of financial security, but also I hoped that I would get the large fanbase that still to this day seems so elusive. Again, I was wrong and setting a schedule did nothing to help the money issue or the calibre of person I was attracting. I got tired of the huge cut and the long amount of hours that Streamate took and that I worked on there for each day. It was then that I decided to check out a few independent listings. I checked out one site in particular that seemed really fantastic, but the owner of it was flakey in terms of what exactly the site offered. I asked too many clarifying questions (apparently) and got removed. Then I turned to making my own website in November 2012. I knew nothing about SEO and thought with a �Field of Dreams� process, �If I make it, the customers will come�. I also thought that I could make the site a glimpse into my deliciously twisted mind by fusing my interests with my business. Again, I was wrong. It�s been 6 months and my first website has been taken down, my first camsite abandoned, and my interests have learned to take a backseat to my ultimate goal of attracting submissively minded customers. I�ve learned about SEO in greater depth and understand it a great deal more than I once did, I�ve been teaching myself HTML, and am finally becoming more patient than I used to be. I�ve learned the value of actually using those affiliate links and webmaster/whitelabel links to generate income while I�m not on Skype telling a guy to stuff himself with a big piece of ginger root. Going indie means that you�ll suffer a bit before your hard work pays off, but you will learn skills that are even more usable across many areas than if you stayed with a big box site.