When MyFreeCams.com was launched in 2004, it was a small mom-and-pop operation that had only a few models. But the website has grown by leaps and bounds since then, and now, MyFreeCams.com is one of the top web cam sites on the adult Internet. MyFreeCams’ president estimates that as many as 100,000 adult models have registered with the site, ranging from the well-known Aria Giovanni to models who are new to the adult entertainment industry. And MyFreeCams.com has remained profitable despite a challenging economy.
“Our website probably has more models online than any other live adult website on the Internet,” the MFC president told XBIZ. “It’s pretty cool to think that in the six years we’ve been around, we went from nothing to being one of the largest webcam sites — if not the largest webcam site — in the industry.”
Piracy hasn’t affected the cam sites in the same way it has affected the video sites
The MFC president attributes the success of MyFreeCams to a variety of things, including a willingness to evolve technologically, generous payouts for models, and the fact that adult webcam sites haven’t been affected by digital piracy to the degree that other adult sites have. Offering more generous payouts for models, he asserted, has enabled MyFreeCams to attract models of a higher caliber.
“One of the things that we wanted to address in the industry when we went live in 2004 was that other webcam sites were paying models a very small percentage of the overall revenue,” the MFC president explained. “Since the site’s inception, our goal has been to pay models as much as possible; whereas other webcam sites pay around 30 percent of total revenue to the model, we have always paid over 60 percent. It has been our mission from the beginning to give models all over the world a really good place to work.”
According to the MFC president, some models have made sixfigure incomes by signing up with MyFreeCams.com. “We have had a great number of success stories,” the MFC president noted. “I would say there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of models that have made $100,000 a year or even more on our site. Some of our top models will make over $200,000 a year — some well over that. One of the most interesting things is that we have had models who were already famous and had a fan base when they signed up — such for models’ live presentations rather than downloadable content, but they also offer photos and videos as a side dish — and MyFreeCams, the MFC president said, has been quite aggressive about going after pirates who steal the non-live parts of the site.
‘Piracy hasn’t affected the cam sites in the same way it has affected the video sites,” the MFC president observed. “With video sites, people are actually pirating the core product — which affects the bottom line directly. But with cam sites, there is no way you can pirate a live interactive experience. So what’s being pirated on cam sites are the still images, screen shots point of evolving and expanding technologically. “When we started,” the MFC president pointed out, “most video was still being streamed in Java — and then, there was the conversion to Flash. The technological capabilities of the Internet and web browsers have evolved, and so has the capability of our web in it. When there is a recession or any kind of credit crisis, it really separates the companies that have a strong balance sheet from those that are just struggling to get by.
“We have been on a solid financial footing from the beginning, and we have increased the amount that we are reinvesting into the site in terms of research and development, hardware and, of course, marketing and advertising. Where other sites have had to delay or cut payouts, we’ve never delayed a payment by even a single day and I think that our models appreciate that. Even through all this economic turmoil, we are still rock-solid.”
