When I first started in porn back in September 2006, I remember shooting almost every day of the week, for almost every director and photographer around. No two days were, or ever have been, the same in porn.
That statement is even more true today.
We see A-list porn stars creating clips for $12.99 by day, and taking home coveted awards by night.
One day, I might be shooting content for the week for my OnlyFans account, sending out the first batch in a mass text to all my followers and flirting individually with all who choose to bite, whereas the next day I may be involved in an intimate one-on-one conversation via my webcam that lasts nearly an hour and has me wondering if this guy’s ever going to ask me to take my clothes off.
Today, my fans pay my bills. Yesterday, producers did.
I can’t say I prefer it one way or another, seeing as one of the more difficult decisions I’ve ever faced is whether or not to fully turn my back on traditional porn acting and focus instead on building a successful brand as a fan favorite. Heck, the last time I stepped away from porn shoots to get a college degree, I felt nostalgia so alluring that I abandoned my academic pursuits just to feel that rush of XXX stardom once again.
I can be very indecisive, sometimes getting overwhelmed with the opportunities this modern age has to offer to a promiscuous, curious young woman, but this past year or so, I’ve realized the struggle may not need to be so hard.
After all, the porn performer we see today is less and less of a traditional porn actress and is consistently evolving into a hybrid of sorts. We see A-list porn stars creating clips for $12.99 by day, and taking home coveted awards by night. We see the untouchable elite finally reaching out to fans on a first-name basis hustling for tokens and tips. We question whether this structure may lessen the brands of our favorite stars and yet, if a porn star is only as great as her fan base, then how could it?
I myself wrestled with this for a bit. I rather enjoyed being called a “legend” in interviews and hailed by industry critics, and feared losing any such status by turning away from traditional shoots to focus on digital do-it-yourself media. But then I asked myself, “If those flattering words are true, shouldn’t I be able to cash that stardom in?” Though my image may change a bit, this evolution would also reinforce my stardom in a new way. The fans want their favorite porn stars. And the closer they can get to us, the more loyal they become to us.
Nowadays, everything is far more crystal-clear for me. I absolutely want the ability to interact with my fans directly and, luckily for me, I love camming and taking naughty selfies for my OnlyFans page. I find it to be simple and enjoyable, with a strong payoff for my effort.
Personally, my hybrid identity goes far beyond my choices of revenue streams, but the ever-changing nature of the business seems to nonetheless satisfy all of my needs as a professional. It offers creative, intellectual, technical, financial, social and sexual pursuits to an extent that can satisfy all (or almost all) such needs on a professional level, especially if a performer can figure out their specific needs and desires and have them fit within their financial goals.
When XBIZ named me Web Star of the Year in January at the 2019 XBIZ Awards, I was very excited to receive this title as my first award, because I felt it encompassed the various characteristics of my identity as a performer. It helped define my hybrid identity to me, in my own eyes. Being part porn actress, part cam model and part website creator/content producer, I felt very proud to receive the honor. The ambiguity in the title reflects the ambiguity of that which it awards. I’m no longer just a porn star. I’m a blend of all the identities my stardom has given birth to.
I believe that in this day and age, no matter how we as performers choose to organize our professional brands, we need to seize the power of social media if we’re going to reach our highest potential. I feel like this power goes beyond just making sales. It establishes, clarifies and reaffirms our brands multiple times per day to hundreds of thousands, and upwards of millions of fans around the world.
The use of social media is indispensable in the landscape of competitive adult entertainment, in my opinion. I personally use Twitter not only as a way to promote whatever I’m selling that day (cam schedule, new OnlyFans post, new scene alert) but also to communicate with my fans and deliver intimate (though widespread) messages. It also allows them the unique exclusivity of seeing us for who we really are, answering more and more questions each day about what their favorite porn stars are like.
When it comes to tweeting, I find that my most powerful posts are short and sweet. I use popular hashtags at the end of my tweets and I post two pictures (not one, three or four) as this keeps the post relatively short and doesn’t give the follower too much to get distracted by. Consider all the tweets you can scroll through with one thumb swipe of your phone’s screen, and consider how easy it is to disregard a tweet when it’s not legible due to every other term being blue or starting with a symbol. When the legibility is high, people will spend a moment to check it out.
Obviously, we all know that photos and videos drastically increase your audience’s engagement with your tweets. Text is great, but it can never come close to what the same text plus pictures can accomplish for you in terms of engagement — how many times people did something with your tweet, which makes you a higher priority on people’s timelines and gets you more followers.
A lot can be said about the power of social media or about the new hybrid identity of the performer and how these two empower each other. It has helped me remain in the top 100 of Pornhub-ranked stars, hit No. 1 on FreeOnes throughout the year and amass thousands of likes on each of my tweets, within a few hours, day in and day out. It has ensured that independently produced content and live camming eclipse my earnings from traditional porn shoots, while also driving up the demand for my scene work with big-name studios when I visit L.A. every few months to shoot. But I find the most intriguing part of all to be the journey itself, the one that reveals new details about our specific identities as people and as performers.
