MIAMI — XBIZ Miami’s first full day kicked off with the debut of XBIZ Miami’s “models only” speed networking session, providing a friendly way for models to meet each other, planting seeds for success in taking their game to the next level.
Other market segments also benefited from speed networking, one of the event series’ most perennially popular sessions, here executed with a tropical twist, where gentle breezes led to fresh leads from new contacts. By carefully limiting participation to only one representative per company, attendees enjoyed the maximum number of new introductions — while minimizing redundancy from overly aggressive marketers that may mar copycat events at other venues.
Once everyone had a chance to meet and mingle, it was time to get learning, with NETbilling-sponsored seminars covering today’s web/tech scene.
Up first and greeted by a standing room only crowd was one of the most raucous sessions in XBIZ show history, as a group of influential adult billing experts and cryptocurrency evangelists joined XBIZ’s Stephen Yagielowicz for the “Billing Battle: Credit Card vs. Crypto” debate that covered a lot of ground — and left many attendees with as many questions as answers — from this wide-ranging discussion of the pros and cons, challenges and opportunities for adult business operators seeking payment for their products and services in 2018 and beyond.
The lineup of panelists included the fresh perspective of Janice Griffith of SpankChain; intimate.io’s Lukas Taylor; and Stuart Duncan from Vice Token; along with traditional billing gurus such as CCBill’s Ron Cadwell; Epoch’s Frank Gannon; OrbitalPay’s Karen Campbell; SegPay’s Cathy Beardsley; Matt Mund from MobiusPay; NETbilling’s Wendy Nelson — and providing a double-dose of insight, ImLive’s Shay Efron, representing PumaPay — who brings vast experience as both a merchant employing and providing crypto services.
Contentious at times, the debate between billing’s old and new guard was as lively as any ever witnessed, and was one of those “this alone made the trip worthwhile” sessions.
As hot as it was at this session, the heat was even higher outside, as XBIZ Miami’s popular poolside networking attracted eye-candy galore, against a summery backdrop well-suited for casual meetings, cocktails and conversations, in what was a truly relaxed and super sexy atmosphere, rife with relationship building and refreshing dips in the cool water.
Balancing work and play is the hallmark of XBIZ Miami — and this is especially true for the many models and content artists in attendance, with a special educational track devoted to their unique needs.
First up came a debate over the pros and cons of content trades — a time-honored foundation of amateur production and practice that helped many independent models build their fan bases, long before the new generation of network services came to be — with models swapping content and often shooting new material while getting together at industry events.
Moderated by XBIZ's Melissa Santana, successful cam performers including Bonnie Bruise, Goddess Brandon, Vicky Vixxx and Dave Slick discussed the merits of DIY production sharing and the impact of technology such as better smartphone cameras, as well as the role that increasing competition and the need for exclusivity is playing in today’s equation.
Vixxx underscored, “There’s no handbook, or specific way to do something. Everyone will benefit from things differently. There’s an element of trial and error and there’s a difference between ‘content trade’ and ‘content share.’ Content trade means working with other people and shooting individual clips for each person. Content share is about selling the same clip via multiple people. I recommend doing different content for each person, a la content trade.”
As for Brandon, who Vixxx playfully described as her "dom wife," she emphasized the community aspect of selling clips. “When it comes to social media, I think everyone should be sharing each other, promoting each other,” she noted. “I know that when I shoot Vicky, she’s going to sell. I know for a fact that I’m going to sell.” Then, she bluntly admitted, “More often than not, unfortunately, I have not gotten what I’ve given in return, and if I’m shooting a new model, I don’t know if she’ll have the charisma to result in sales.” Hence, the need to be selective in professional liaisons."
Bruise, who works closely with Cam Castle Productions, recommended cam models partner with tube sites rather than resisting the reality of market dynamics. “There is a lot of benefit in using tube sites, because it’s going to end up there anyways," she said. "So it might as well be placed there by you, making money off of it, rather than benefiting someone else.”
Slick explored how, even though many of his clips occur from spontaneously planned performances — given the costly flaking potential of trying to schedule an indie shoot in advance and flying people out — caution is still advised.
“The reason I do a lot of spontaneous things, is because people flake and it fucking sucks and I’ve lost a lot of money because people haven’t fulfilled their end,” he shared. “If you just want to get laid or fucked, you’re in the wrong industry. It’s a lucrative business and people want to be valued for their talents and social media. Being looked at like an object is something we do for a living. Being treated like one? That’s not right. For all the people I’ve asked, there’s many people who’ve just said 'no thanks,' and it’s fine.”
Next up came a valuable discussion of relevance to all cam models, as the topic of “Camming Trolls: Tackling Cyber Bullies,” took the spotlight, with Alex Lecomte and lustful luminaries including Lena Spanks, Vera Sky, Ginger Banks, Blonde Rider and Housewife Swag, all offering helpful ways to cope with negativity and problematic “fans,” emotionally and practically — keys to keeping your head in the game while keeping bad actors at bay.
Spanks underlined the significance of data protection. “Somebody hacked my information, got my daughter’s name, put my information on the dark web and I started getting threats,” she said. “If you’re going to a restaurant, post the restaurant pics after you leave. Make your passwords complicated and change them often. Things can get so bad, so fast, if you’re not careful. I had to spend Christmas Eve in a police department. I am a little thankful for that experience, though, because I was able to get up and move.”
Housewife Swag has primarily dealt with body-shaming commentary. “Being a BBW is difficult, that’s pretty much what I’ve dealt with," she confessed. "I’m fat in camming and fat in real-life. Coming to terms with ‘this is who I am,’ has helped tremendously.”
On her end, Sky has experienced more racially charged harassment. “The thing I focus on moreso is bullying based off of discrimination,” she emphasized. “The ‘people of color’ community is pretty small, and I think that’s the number one thing. I’m a mix of Italian, Colombian and African-American, and the number of comments I’ve gotten from having larger features is awful. However, if someone is being racist, it’s going to hurt and it’s going to suck, but you can’t let somebody that dumb get to you. We’re all the same skeleton beneath it all.”
Chiming in with a quip, moderator Lecomte said, “I think it’s all the same skeleton, but ours ... is very sexy.” Laughter broke up, amidst several whoops.
When it comes to social media antagonism, be it from cam model rivals or straight up trolls, Rider promoted the power of positive energy and proactive choice. “If you try to act and not react, and you meditate, it helps,” she said. “Sometimes people are the way they are, and some people are just dramatic. If someone says something and your skin is just like, ouch that hurt, you have to take the high road.”
Banks brought up a good point, in that reacting to negative commentary often benefits the troll, by either giving them the attention they so desperately crave or upping their follower count. “You know how frustrating it is when you quote-tweet a hater, and you see their follower count go up?" she mused. "Like wow, you were just so mean to me and I gave you 100 followers. Don’t feed the trolls.”
More keys to camming success were revealed in “Camming Strategies & Tech: A 2018 Snapshot,” featuring Flirt4Free’s Jamie Rodriguez, Chaturbate’s Shirley Lara, ImLive’s Shay Efron, Steve Hamilton from Cams.com, CAM4’s Ellisa Kamula, Streamate’s Liz Rekevics, StripChat’s Rick Morales and Jasmin’s Gabor Gaspar, along with cam studio kingpins Mugur Cosmin Frunzetti of Studio20 and MGroup’s Diego Hernandez, with AVSecure’s Stephen Winyard guiding the discussion of the newest tools and techniques shaping the market and its future.
The panel began by noting the highly personal nature of camming.
“This is not a real estate business, it is a business about people,” Frunzetti told the audience. “Each model is an individual.”
For his part, Morales believes that what is really important is the model’s attitude. Indeed, many observers agree that attitude, creativity and commitment surpass any notion of beauty — which is in the eye of the beholder — when it comes to serious camming success.
Kamula brought up the importance of outreach, saying, “One of the things we try to do at CAM4 is to support the models.”
This simple statement belies the complexity and depth of support offered by leading networks and studios, which goes far beyond telling models to smile, to include social services and emotional security, technical training, language and “finishing school” style classes, advice on financial management, promotional help and more. It also includes business advice about which performance approaches — free chat for tips or exclusivity per minute, for example, or a combination thereof, are best suited to their personality and skills.
“When you work with a lot of models,” Hernandez said, “you need to learn which site is the best fit for them. There is a platform for everyone. In reality, most work with a few sites.”
As for the different ways in which cams are offered and monetized, the panelists universally agreed that straying from your core competency is a mistake.
“Our heart is in it,” Gaspar said. “If you jump from one sector to another it can hurt your business.”
Speaking from hard-won experience, Lara confided, “We tried Camgasm, which was the direct opposite of Chaturbate, but it didn’t work well for our traffic, models and affiliates.”
Other players took a more incremental approach, and rather than launching new programs, created new verticals within existing sites.
“When we saw the interest in tipping models, we added party chats,” Rodriguez revealed. “It’s been a better balance for us and the models who do the best are those able to do both.”
As expected from such a dynamic market segment, the future looks bright for cam models, networks, studios and fans, with a raft of enhancements and innovations being rolled out — and challenges arising along the way.
Lara pointed to the high-profile debut of Chaturbate’s “Hentai Live” channel that combined an animated model with a human chat agent — a serious artistic and technological coup that points to an AI-driven future, accompanied by protests from some performers, along with the platform’s concern that whoever operates such a channel is of legal age. Pushing its technological edge, Lara noted the company’s use of open broadcaster software (OBS) to power its feeds and empower its models.
“OBS allows people to build their own plugins, such as using a drone as a webcam,” Lara explains. “I love the creativity behind it!”
In addition to boosting creativity and appealing to new markets, today’s top players strive to enhance the user experience.
“We’ve mostly been focused on the technology to deliver a better product for users and models alike,” Rekevics said, underscoring the bottom line of customer satisfaction.
The session ended on yet another eye-raising note.
“We’re working on foundational stuff and working to integrate camming and gaming,” Hamilton teased. “We’re working on a platform for these industries that we can connect and monetize.”
One highlight of XBIZ’s events are the semi-annual State of the Industry sessions, considered by many professionals as a “must attend” session that details the current challenges, opportunities and trends for the near-to-mid-term.
Chaturbate’s Shirley Lara; James Power from iWantEmpire; AVSecure’s Stephen Winyard; Megan Stokes of NMG Management; Studio 20’s Mugur Cosmin Frunzetti; Andy Wullmer from Sex Goes Mobile; CCBill’s Ron Cadwell; Eric Leue from the Free Speech Coalition; Neil from Clips4Sale; and SegPay’s Cathy Beardsley, formed an amazing brain trust powering an insightful and inspiring overview of the industry’s road ahead.
Wullmer kicked off the discussion by noting the profound changes faced by mobile companies and how the industry is responding.
“We made a lot of money but now the market is regulated. When the pay flow becomes more regulated you need a better product,” Wullmer said. “Mobile is still a big market and you can make money worldwide. Work on your product and mobile is still king.”
Neil agreed, saying mobile is “a big thing” for the clip market and noted the importance of tailoring the technology to consumer taste.
“Streaming is there,” Neil said, “but customers still want to download clips.”
In addition to the need to satisfy customers, the creators themselves want the benefits that mobile access and technology brings.
“Our fully responsive mobile layout contributes to the growth of mobile traffic on our platform,” Power explained. “We are gearing our company and future application to the mobile space [because] we cater to the needs of artists.”
The rapid advancement of mobile tech and apps is fueling a raunchy renaissance of content creators, especially among the newest generation of mobile tech-savvy performers. This is fueling tremendous growth within the industry — including on the supply side — where competition is rapidly increasing and the name of the game is changing.
“Clips4Sale receives 200-300 new artist signups per week,” Neil revealed, “which causes friction for established artists.”
“We used to have bigger production companies but there’s been a shift to amateur and the ‘share’ economy,” Lara told the rapt audience, revealing a key ingredient to Chaturbate’s success: “You don’t have to spend money on our site to have a positive user experience.”
Although networks and studios continue to enjoy success, DIY entrepreneurs are increasingly branching out on their own, building their own brands and taking control over their careers.
“We’re starting to see a transition where girls don’t want to pay 50 percent to platforms,” Cadwell said. “They would rather use their social media to push their offers.”
For his part, Frunzetti is very focused on the personal experience that camming delivers.
“Live cams are becoming a very vertical industry,” Frunzetti explained. “We provide a relationship for those who are unable to do otherwise.”
Moving beyond the world of camming and clip creation, Beardsley said 2018 is the year of regulations, noting challenges on the payments and privacy compliance fronts.
“We need to know who we are paying. Who the owners of the company are,” Beardsley explained. “GDPR is a big deal but only 30 percent of companies are compliant.”
For some audience members, Stokes’ revelation was surprising. “Believe it or not, I still make money on DVDs,” Stokes said, explaining, “It’s about getting content to the user the way they want it.” She also pointed to a profound shift in customer demand. “I no longer get asked for brands,” Stokes revealed. “I get asked for genres.”
Shifting from brands to banking, Leue highlighted the ongoing challenges legitimate operators and performers face in today’s ever restrictive banking world, where corporate policies are as damaging as governmental regulations.
“For individuals, we recommend going with a local credit union where better personal relationships can be built,” Leue advised, noting another area of concern for 2018: “We’re also going to see other countries adopting the U.K. model for age verification.”
Age verification expert Winyard agreed, noting that despite the challenges, these initiatives are moving forward.
“A lot of negative press was written about U.K. consumer fears, such as fears of having an Ashley Madison-style hack,” Winyard explained. “The regulators got a lot of consultation and now all AV companies will have to undergo a review process. It’s absolutely vital that people’s privacy is protected.”
Back to the specific needs of models and managers, the next session for creators was focused on the “Director’s Chair: Camera Techniques & Video Editing,” hosted by cam personalities Mel Kush and Catjira, who detailed ways models can make their photos and videos look their best, using practical techniques for creating more polished productions. It was the kind of session that can make a huge difference in the quality — and revenue potential — of independent creations.
A few of the easy-to-implement strategies Kush recommended were, “Have originals and duplicates available for your content, in case you mess up during editing. I like to make the whites the whitest and the blacks the blackest. For the vibrance, I can give it a punch, but we don’t want to go too far, or it’ll remove all the color.” She also lauded the healing brush tool as pivotal, and demonstrated how to apply a watermark, pointing out how Photoshop is all about layers.
Catjira pushed the value of researching endlessly and being self-taught. “After I wake up in the morning, I’m listening to ‘how-to’ videos and royalty-free music, to see if there’s anything that inspires me. I make videos that are video game-y, so I put weird things like buttons that pop up, which I can do in FinalCut. I use duct tape, hair ties, stuffed animals under the camera, that you never see.” She also mimics outdoor scenes with tricks like taking sheets and dunking them in mud, then zooming in on them as a background, or splashing fake blood on a cheap sheet for a horror-themed vid.
Providing the perfect segue between work and play, the popular Mix & Meet Happy Hour got underway, where attendees got a close-up look at the latest products and services that can expand their businesses. Taking over the Mondrian’s Main Lobby Ballroom, the first-ever “New Tech on the Block” showcase revealed the cutting edge of adult’s newest technology and more. Including an alphabet soup of interactivity with the expected focus on AR/MR/VR and beyond, a new range of business services was also on deck.
This included the discreet appearance of a mainstream tech firm that has developed a minimal latency end-to-end video delivery system ideal for live camming on a massive scale (and future VR applications) that vastly outperforms current cam solutions in use by the industry.
One less secretive solution on display came from PVR (GetPVR.com), which demoed its Iris integrated VR headset, whose promoter said is optimized for the peculiar needs of content playback over more gaming-oriented headsets. This lightweight all-in-one headset offered great image quality and a compelling user experience. The company also revealed its sleek pro model VR camera system as well as a small dual-lens VR camera prototype it expects to mass market at a competitive price point targeting independent cam models.
As professionalism within the adult industry continues to rise, new tech is no longer exclusively about tools but encompasses a new generation of training and resources as well.
Such is the case with Total Lip Service, “the World’s First Phone Sex Academy” (TotalLipService.org), which promises to guide new entrants to the worlds of phone sex and camming, teaching them the ropes so that they find success faster. These ladies were so effective at presenting their brand in such a positive way that prospects could be confident of a worthwhile educational experience.
Another intriguing new service is BizCasting (BizCasting.com), which is seeking to redefine the ways in which talent and producers connect, providing a variety of tools that put the power of a self-serve talent agency into performer’s hands — echoing and furthering the trend of models seeking more self-control over their careers.
Another bustling segment of XBIZ Miami was Vendo’s invite-only Paysite Meetup, an exclusive one-day event for established paysite pros, uniting this group of insiders for an in-depth learning and networking experience, with a laser focus on important topics affecting paysite sales and promotions in 2018.
All work and no play is not the XBIZ Miami way, and nowhere is this more evident than at the annual XBIZ Miami Bikini + Mankini Contest, where participants strut their stuff for the judge’s scorecard and attendees’ applause. This is always one of the most popular events and this year’s competition took it a step further as it rolled into the debut of the XBIZ Miami Topless Pool Party, where the cool shade of the cabana-lined pool pavilion provided no shield from the poolside heat as South Beach’s most bodacious bods paraded on display.
Adding to the excitement was a special live performance by certified "platinum" recording artist Chingy, known for such hits as “Right Thurr,” “Pullin’ Me Back” and “Holidae Inn” (with a surprise opening act from TruStori3z) along with a poolside screening of the new Evil Angel documentary starring Ginger Banks and Jenny Blighe, delivering a glimpse behind the scenes of one of adult’s most-storied studio brands.
Capping this action-packed evening, Jasmin and Studio 20 presented the XBIZ Miami Yacht Party, the event’s inaugural “Sunset Social” that offered attendees a cruise on a luxury yacht, with stunning views of Miami’s evening skyline. Departing from the Sea Isle Marina, this sexy get-together gave participants a taste of the good life — South Beach style.
Stay tuned to XBIZ.com this week, for more XBIZ Miami coverage. To check out photo galleries from the event, click here.
