Disclaimer: I start and direct cam sites since 10+ years. And I do talk with some cam site owners and so what I am writing it comes from actual sites financials, of course not going to tell who or details.
Code and design is not the real issue or cost of starting a cam site. Unless you hire the wrong developers that will eat $100,000's producing bugged unusable code (it happened to some), you can have functional custom cam sites setup with few $10k's at most. But then, it may be a dead cute empty site no one cares at.
The $1 million you (and others) stated, it is still required anyway, because of "traffic and cam girls at the same time". Models and studios will care to you only if you pay tyhem bonus and fixed fees at start, no way they sit in empty site for more than 3 days. Same with affiliates, you need to give $5 per free user or $150 PPS or such - really don't rely in affiliates, most cam sites rely 80%+ in simple direct traffic purchase, media buys, so cash counts, that's it.
Cam site is not like prerecorded member area or tube content: this is much like facebook or skype, if you code a perfect copy of fb or skype with no users, no one cares to that, even if you can code the same 100% - and sure you can't fill with recordings. Whoever launched cam sites after 2009 or so, it failed unless invested (had loss of) no less than $50k per month in first 6-12 months, and still you can waste such money and make the cam site fail if you're not a smart media buyer and got the wrong "friends" who really waste your cash.
About the % think, no, no one can make profit in a cam site giving 65%, it is just to look cool but the owners normally have other money source, that's not their job to run a cam site... that's why streamate gives 30%, that's a real cam site which is a real job for its owners
