# How I Make a Living with a Webcam: Pt. 1 **Channel:** Richie West **Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2b_WsTPyZ0 **Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/B2b_WsTPyZ0 ## Chapters - 0:00 — Video Introduction and Topic Overview - 0:53 — Initial Flirt for Free Webcamming Experience - 4:41 — Transition to Chatterbait and College Return - 6:33 — Early Chatterbait Success and Independence - 8:24 — Current Streaming Routine and Client Engagement - 10:51 — Work Ethic, Routines and Income Tips - 15:37 — Diversifying Income with Adult Films Gratitude - 17:59 — Closing Remarks and Viewer Interaction ## Transcript **[0:00]:** Hey, guys. Welcome back to my channel. So I know I said I would be doing a livestream painting session today, but I figured that that would be kind of boring. And I really want to start to put out more content that you guys can get actual value out of. And I think if I were to just do, you know, a live stream with, like, my webcam, that isn't the best quality and the audio just wouldn't be up to par. So I just figured that talking about today's topic would be more enjoyable and you guys would just enjoy watching this video overall more so than painting. So let's hop right into this video, guys. I'm going to be talking about how I make a living off of webcamming or streaming. There's a bunch of different terms for it nowadays, but let's just call it webcamming. **[0:53]:** So a couple years ago, back in 2017, I was living at college and I had recently gotten fired from a job as a cake decorator. Yes, I worked as a cake decorator, and it was actually at Baskin Robbins. And I really enjoyed that job. I had a lot of fun with it, but it really just wasn't worth it for me. And I think that they expected a lot more out of me than I could give to them. And I'm just a perfectionist as well. So whatever I do, I like to make sure that it's done with the utmost effort and to the best of my ability. And I just couldn't do that in that type of work. So, yes, I was fired and I got back to my dorm room. And that day, actually, I started looking online for jobs. And I saw this job opportunity, and it was kind of cryptic in a way. **[1:53]:** It would. I think it said, looking for attractive young people to model online, work from home, make this much money per week. I was like, oh, let me. Let me see what this is about. So I applied to it, and the. The link on the. The ad that I saw took me to this site called Flirt for free. And I noticed pretty quickly that it was a webcamming site. And I had never done any of that kind of work before. But I was really curious and I was like, I've tried pretty much everything else at this point. Why don't I see where this takes me? So I applied to it and I got the job. And it was. It was professional. It was. It didn't feel like kind of like a backdoor kind of job. **[2:47]:** I was. I had a agent that I was talking to, and we would communicate on this website called Slack. And it was just. It was really cool because if I had any questions, I could just go on slack and type in the question, and it would be answered, like, within the hour. So I just felt like, okay, let me. Let me see where this takes me. So I was living in my college dorm room, and this was when I was still a freshman, and I had a roommate, but he was out a lot. He had a girlfriend. So I spent a lot of time by myself in the room because he was also from this area and he. He had friends in the area, and I really didn't. So I tried to get a lot of my entertainment off of the Internet, so he would be gone a lot. **[3:39]:** And I started webcamming in my dorm room, and I had, like, my desk lamp and just a tiny little desk with my bed behind me. And I just started from there. And I wasn't working out at the time, so I didn't have abs. I didn't have, like, any muscle tone. I was living off of college food. So you guys know they say freshman 15. Like, that is so true. So basically, I just did not look anything close to what I look like now. And I started to notice that, like, it's really difficult to make money off of there. I was spending, like, two hours at a time on Flirt for Free, and I wasn't getting any viewers. It just seemed like this is kind of a waste of time. But I did make a couple bucks off there. I think one time I made, like, $160, and I felt like, oh, I'm Jody Highroller, you know? **[4:41]:** So I kind of quit focusing on that so much, and it. It got to be summertime, and I went back to Maryland and I got a regular job in a warehouse. And it was hard work. It was really difficult hours, and it's not something I would ever do again. I was working from like 11 at night to 5 in the morning, and I was just. It was almost impossible to have a regular life with that kind of schedule. I was like a zombie during the day. And by the time I had energy and was ready to, like, hang out with people, everybody was winding down for the night. So that job ended. I came back to Arizona and moved to my own dorm room. And this was my sophomore year of college. And pretty soon after that, I was on Grindr, and I met the ex roommate that I talked about in one of my previous videos, and he actually introduced me to this site called Chatterbait. **[5:49]:** Now, I had heard of Chatterbait when I was doing Flirt for Free, but I figured that somebody was going to catch me if I were to go on there. And it was just really worrying me. And it's just not something I did at the time. But once I met him and started hanging out with him at his apartment, he asked me to do webcam shows with him. And we started doing them and doing really well. And it was completely different than Flirt for Free. There was so much more action. And he showed me the ins and outs of the site and I created my own account and started doing shows in my dorm room. **[6:33]:** And it was really, it was like magical. It was just exponentially more productive than Flirt for Free was. And I was actually making really good money. And I started putting a lot of effort into these live streams and going to buy like toys to use and saving up money for like underwear and stuff like that to wear rather than just like boxers and stuff. So I started making a lot of money on Chatterbait and I was able to save up. And the second semester of my sophomore year came around and I just did not want to live on campus anymore. So I asked the friend who showed me the website if I could move in with him and he said yes. And I started paying rent. It was like $750 a month. And I was just so proud of myself because it was a brand new apartment. **[7:34]:** It was so nice and I just felt like I was making big moves in the world. **[7:49]:** So as you guys may know, me and that roommate did not end up getting along towards the end of the lease and I had to move out early, but with the help of Chatterbait, like, I probably would have never been able to do that if I wasn't making so much money on Chatterbait. So I do feel appreciative that he showed me how to, how to work the website because it's pretty confusing and I don't know if I would have known as much now if he didn't show me back then how to use it. **[8:24]:** Let's get into how I do this and I will. We'll just fast forward to where I'm at now because I still do it a lot. It's my one of my most highest earning income sources. So basically what I do is one to two shows per day, depending on how the first show goes. And it's five times a week, usually Monday through Friday, or if I take a day off throughout the week, I'll pick up a Saturday or Sunday. Just so I always get five days a week on cam and each show is two to three hours long. Depending on how well I'm doing. Because there is slow days and it's not the most dependable line of work. Like you never know how much money you're going to make. It's all about how much effort and time you're willing to give. And I learned that pretty quickly. **[9:21]:** So my main goal is to earn at least $100 per show or close to it. And that's when I can start to decide where to go next from there. **[9:35]:** I will say this, I've earned a lot more than $100 on some shows. It's just you never really know what types of people you're gonna come in contact with, who's gonna like you. There are some days I get on there and I'm like, I just feel so ugly and I feel like nobody's into me because I go into other chat rooms and I see like hundreds and hundreds of viewers. But guys, that it really just happens spontaneously and like it's all a coincidence how sometimes that can happen. I've had like 2700 people in my room at a time just watching me. And I was just sitting here in front of the webcam just talking like this, maybe with like, maybe with like my shirt off or know something. But it's not like you have to just sit there fully exposed constantly and just, you know, show what you're working with. **[10:31]:** It's all about the energy that you give and a lot of times it's the conversation that you give. Because a lot of people that go onto those sites and are willing to spend money, they. They want companionship and they want to see who you are as a person rather than just a pretty face on a computer screen. **[10:51]:** So a couple pointers that I make sure to follow before logging on and starting a stream. I've learned these tips throughout the years of doing this and it really helps me to just be focused and to not be upset or have anything weighing on my mind, to not be tired. Like you guys always see me drinking my Red Bull and I started drinking Red Bull a lot when I first started streaming webcamming because it's like one of the only energy drinks that actually works for me and gives me like long lasting energy. I usually drink the sugar free ones, but they didn't have them when I bought this. So I also think it's really important to make sure that you're not intoxicated in any way, like not drinking because that's just not professional and people can see that on the camera and it's just not a good look, in my opinion, now you will see some people, a lot of people actually, on chatterbait, they look really, like, blazed. **[12:01]:** They look really just gone and just, just not alert and there in the moment. And I think that's really unhealthy and it's really dangerous to get into that cycle of thinking, like, oh, I need to drink before I do this, because I need the energy and I need like the liquid courage and everything like that. It's just. It's not a good practice to do, and it's not something that I do. But I know that there's others that do like to get intoxicated before getting in front of the camera. So that's my main thing. And guys, if you are a young guy and you're thinking about getting into, or any age guy, and you're thinking about getting into the webcamming industry, just know that girls, females will always make more money than us when it comes to this. Because it. I don't know if it just is a fact or not, but it just seems like there's so many more straight males, straight men that are willing to pay the big bucks to see these girls rather than paying to see, you know, the guys. **[13:14]:** And there's a lot of straight guys that do webcamming as well. There's a lot of couples, there's trans people that do it. So it's really just finding your niche and kind of honing in on that and evolving it and staying consistent, hard working and treating it like a job. If you don't treat it like a job, it's not going to treat you like a job. So it's just kind of like that mantra of, you get what you put into it. Now, I do work out five days a week, once a day, and I spend one to two hours at the gym. I make sure not to spend too much more because I don't want to be too wiped out or exhausted from the gym. And I made that mistake a couple times. And it just sucks because you get the best workout in and then you just don't feel like doing anything. **[14:08]:** At least I do. So you just kind of find. You got. You got to find your routine. You got to create a effective and productive routine for yourself. If you're thinking about doing this kind of work. You also should have supplemental income, especially if you're just starting. And this goes for girls as well. Like, you're not gonna just get on there and start making five grand a week, you know, like crazy amounts of money like that. You have to build up your fan base and you have to get more comfortable in front of the camera. You have to be willing to do more and, you know, keeping it new and fun and fresh, or else it's just gonna. It's going to be boring for you, and it's going to be boring for people to watch. So I have supplemental, supplemental income. I didn't when I first started, but luckily I was able to stay diligent and just focused on it, and I got a pretty high following pretty quickly. **[15:13]:** But right now my supplemental income is OnlyFans, which is probably 90% of my income. YouTube, which only as of lately, I've been getting AdSense checks from, which is great. I also do painting sales, which I haven't been doing as often in my new apartment, but I'm planning to get right back into that. **[15:37]:** And I actually have a painting that I finished. Well, I didn't finish it. I'd like to make some changes onto it. And I was going to do that for today's video, but I just figured this would be a better video, so we'll save that for another time. And also adult films. You guys know probably that I've been doing adult films since 2018, and I started doing the adult films after I did Chatterbait. After I started Chatterbait, and with the help of the adult films and Chatterbait, I was able to get out of that toxic living situation without having to get like six jobs or anything crazy like that. And I was able to do it pretty quickly. So overall, I'm very grateful for this experience because not everybody can do webcamming. Not everybody's cut out for it. Not everybody has the look or the attention span for it. **[16:37]:** But just like anything, you know, if you put your mind to it, you can acquire the skills and, you know, acquire whatever it takes to be successful at it. And I've been doing this for a while, and there are hard times. There are some times where I just have to, like, cancel a show because I just don't have the energy. And I just can't bring myself to, you know, like, act fake and like, smiley and everything in front of the camera because it's painful sometimes. And that's a good. That's one of the really big benefits about working for yourself, because, you know, if you're going to be doing webcamming, you're working for yourself, and you have that ability to make your own schedule and to cancel if you absolutely have to, or call out, you know, if you will. So I think those are the main topics of how I make a living off of chatterbait. **[17:40]:** Overall, it's just, it's just staying focused, being a hard working person, having great work ethic, getting rest, being healthy, taking care of yourself. Those are basically all of the things that go into becoming a successful webcammer. **[17:59]:** So I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Let me know if you have any questions about webcamming, because it is a lot different than acting in adult films. And I think my experience webcamming gave me an upper hand when I went to go film my first adult film. So yeah, other than that, guys, thank you for watching this and I will see you on Tuesday. Bye guys. It.