Phone vs. Cam

When chatting with industry folk at shows about pay-per-minute phonechat services, I am sometimes told that “phone is so yesterday”, or words to that effect.

In response to this, I have begun to retort with “Wrong. Cams are so yesterday”, my rationale being that visual streams on the web are nothing new, whereas the opportunities afforded by next generation VoIP voice services are.

But then the doubts started to creep in. Maybe the doubters were right? After all, Phonesex was my entry ticket into this industry, long before the advent of the web.
Perhaps I was a little too old school…

To allay such doubts, I posted a straw poll on GFY posing the question ‘Is Phonesex dead?’. Of the 44 respondees, 14 thought that it was, 10 did not know or care, but the majority agreed with me that there will ‘always be a demand for aural sex’. Which put my mind at rest.

I then started researching the industry that I proposed revisiting, and quickly learnt that it is dominated by a company called Niteflirt, in which I was somewhat surprised to learn that AT&T, Microsoft, and Ebay had a commercial interest.

Further investigations went on to reveal that many ‘flirts’ who used their platform were not happy with it. And a track-record in secrecy probably accounts for their noticeable absence on industry forums. You can even follow @niteflirtsucks on twitter.

This simply reinforced the decision to ‘go back to my roots’. But being a one man show, I was finding the technical challenges associated in launching such a platform somewhat overwhelming. So I decided to team up www.myphonesite.co.uk (MPS) which blew me away when I first saw it. MPS is a US company, and I will be helping develop their business in Europe, with a focus on the UK market where I am located.

As part of my market research, I then turned my attention to the cam networks. Whilst most of these offered voice chat in conjunction with cam over the web, most of them did not offer phone. And of those that did, the outpayments on offer to models seemed unfair.

So, what of the operator experience? Well, for starters, relative to cam, the phone is actually a great liberator, allowing them to start making money away from all that internet clutter, with no need to undress. By routing calls to their cell phones, they can start to make money wherever they are.

Furthermore, they can log in an out of the system using their smartphones, away from the constraints of the fixed-line internet.

For models with a following, this need not be marketed as a phonesex service, but more of a ‘connect with me’ one. Fans will be all too happy to pay for the buzz of being able to reach out to their heroines this way. And talent will be grateful for the extra income that this value-added service generates.

Such services can and should deploy the ‘double blind’ system, whereby the caller never sees the model’s real number, nor they theirs. Callers do not dial a number: rather, they enter theirs into the operator’s website and the system then calls both parties back.

Since there are no phone companies involved with the billing, operators can charge what they like per minute. Outpayments vary, but from what I can see MPS the most competitive - paying a generous 70%, with half of what’s left earmarked for affiliates.

But talent that sign up with MPS expecting the phone to ring without any marketing efforts on their part will be disappointed. MPS has deliberately avoided the usual ‘walled garden’ approach, allowing models to easily deploy this technology on any website or blog without customers having to leave the model’s site.

Furthermore, models that do not have a website and want to remain independent of other programs can now do so – each website created using MPS can be used to sell both digital and tangible goods. Unlimited backlinks to Amazon wish lists and so forth are fine, and models can use MPS to ask for and receive tips as well.

Combining phone with cam is relatively straightforward: models provide a visual feed for free (e.g.: Skype on mute), but in order to interact, customers must pay. This way, the phone becomes a microphone, loudspeaker and money machine bundled into one.

Whilst it is true that men are usually driven by visuals, the telephone still delivers a more intimate form of communication which the web does not deliver. Furthermore, every woman knows that there are cycles in the month where a cam show might not be appropriate.

In the cam gold rush, the ubiquitous phone has often been overlooked. By deploying the latest VoIP technologies, adult talent can now easily offer both.