Originally Posted by jayeff

3 or 4 years ago far more "regular" customers were willing to try out the novelty that web cams were then. This made everyone less dependent on the whales and %age was the right route for all.

But nowadays you almost have to land some whales to make any serious money and as Lars himself wrote, there are very few of them. Thus the webmaster sending a modest number of signups is likely to wait a very long time for %age to beat PPS.

Another factor is traffic source. Traffic from within a member area (pay or AVS), or if you have a site that is dedicated to web cams and optimized for the SE's, should do well on %age. If you are sending signups from a free source, such as a TGP, my experience is that PPS works better.

As someone who was a top earner on one of the cam networks in the early days, I'm disappointed with the way that most live cam sponsors have reacted to the increasing level of competition. Back when only a couple of sponsors were in the business, it was surely easier to choose girls who really did know how to tease the surfers. The price for making dozens or hundreds of feeds the standard, is that far too often now you see girls who look totally bored, as if the only thing on their mind is how long before their shift finishes. Unfortunately, many don't liven up a whole lot, even when the $$$ clock is ticking.

And where the feeds and the girls were once considered enough to do the selling, today some of the interfaces are loaded down with alternative links, email boxes, etc. The appearance of warps and consoles on some sites isn't a step forward either.

Finally, there is a remarkable lack of originality. Almost everyone seems to stress the "amateur" angle, which surely isn't the only one with appeal. But presumably to reinforce this theme and despite the huge improvements in live feed quality, the "who's online" pages and bio pictures are dreadful and so similar to each other, it is near impossible to remember which site you are on.

There is still a lot of money in live video. In fact more than so-called reality sites, DVD movies and the rest, IMO live, interactive porn is the way of the future. But to make the most of it, cam sponsors need to develop their product, not just find ways to squeeze more out of the original concept.