For the past year I have been selling content rather than doing live camshows.  It’s possible to make this “passive income” your main income source IF you put in the effort and manage your clip store well.

How do you do it?

First, pick a site.  Clips4Sale is the biggest; Kinkbomb is great as well (although mainly femdom-oriented).  There are many others, but these two are (in my opinion) the best.  I have been on both of these clip sites since June 2012.  You can check out my clips4sale store and my kinkbomb store to get an idea of how customizable both clip sites can be (if you put in the time!)

Kinkbomb Start-up

Your username and email should be your cam names!  Under “personal information” it asks for your first and last name; this is where you put your real information.  Studio name is, obviously, what you want your studio to be called.  Your url will reflect this choice – my studio name is just HellenRoxx, so my store url is hellenroxx.kinkbomb.com.  There is a “referred by” section there as well, so if you’re just starting a kinkbomb studio now, go ahead and put “HellenRoxx” into that spot…  Fill out your address information next; I never put my real address on anything because I’m a pretty paranoid person, so I use my mailing address (a post box).

I don’t want to focus too much on the how-tos of Kinkbomb – that can be an entire blog post on its own – so I’ll quickly run through adding a video before moving on.  On the left sidebar, there is a button that says “My Products”.  When you click it, a new page loads with a “Upload Files” button on the top right corner.  Click there to browse through your computer and upload files.  You can select multiple files to upload at a time.  Once they’ve finished, click the “Add Product” button in the top right corner.  Enter the product name and a description, a url will be generated (unless someone else has already created an item with the same name, in which case you’ll have to alter the url). Click “disable preview generation” unless you want guys to jerk off to your previews.  Select your file by clicking “Browse” and scrolling through the files you’ve uploaded.  Enter a price.  Leave “global discounts” checked if you ever plan on offering a sale.  Upload a cover image, click “apply changes”, and you’re done!  Whew, told you we’d run through that quickly.

Now that you’ve got your first video released, go back to “My Products”.  You can alter the price and the order here.  The higher the order number, the closer to the front of your store it’ll show up.  Listing it as “1″ will mean it is the clip furthest back in your store page when you add more videos.

Remember that left sidebar?  Click “Design My Studio”.  This is always the fun part for me because I like playing with these things, but it’s really not too scary if you don’t know what you’re doing.  Add some text with your studio name, list your Twitter username and your email, and you’re good to go.  These are the absolute basic necessities, in my opinion – you want people to be able to follow you on Twitter for updates, and email you for custom content!

Next, go to “Tools” from the left sidebar.  The two that I love are “Twitter Integration” and “Studio Search Widget”.  The auto-tweet tool will automatically post to your twitter account whenever you add a new product or edit an existing one.  Link your Twitter account and add a little text for new and updated products, and you’re done!  The search widget is just as easy.  Copy the code listed there, and then go back to the “Design My Studio” page.  Look through the buttons in the editor until you see “html” – click that, and then paste the search widget code at the bottom.  Save it, and you’re done!  Check how your store displays to ensure it looks the way you want it to look.

You’ll also want to take advantage of the banner option; Kinkbomb features rectangular banners on the bottom of their home pages, and square banners on the side of their “Top Lists” page.  Send these off to Kinkbomb support (which has always been *the best support ever* to me) and they’ll add them to the rotation!

Clips4Sale Start-up

Before you open a store on clips4sale, make sure you have at least ten unique clips to release.  Different formats of the same clip (ie, .wmv, .mp4) do not count.  Once you have ten, you’re ready to open a clips4sale store.  As far as I’m aware, nobody ever sees your username, so if someone has already taken your cam name (as was the case with “HellenRoxx”, oddly enough) it doesn’t really matter.  Your email does matter.  Make it your cam email.  Customers will see this.  Your contact name and address information (for your 2257) should be your real information.

Use the “Gizmo FTP” to upload files.  Make sure the “Clips” option is selected in your dropdown menu, otherwise you won’t be able to access your files later.  Do not use spaces or characters like # @ ! in your file names, and do not upload the same filename twice.  Clips should be at least 320×240 and at least two minutes long; note that there is a maximum filesize of 1.2 gb

After uploading, click on the “Clip Store” button along the top menu bar.  It automatically takes you to the Add Clips page.  Enter a title, description, and the main category your video fits.  Select any other categories and enter keywords.  Choose your clip from the dropdown menu.  After it is selected, you can choose a clip price.  C4S automatically sets your videos to being priced at $1/minute.  Upload a cover image (jpeg only).  Choose either yes or no for “contains nudity”.  Set the display order if you want your clips to display differently than by release date.  Choose either “active” if you want your clip released now, or “future activation” if you want to release it later.  Clips4Sale will tweet your new release on their twitter account if you select that option as well.

Once you have ten unique files, email support and let them know.  They will enable your store to accept all payment methods.

Now you’ll want to make your store a bit prettier than the default settings.  Go to “Edit Clip Site” and enter a title and description.  Make sure “Preview Clips” is set to “disabled”, or you’ll get cheapass losers jerking off to your 5-10 second preview without paying you.  Yuck.  You can play around with the colours and html of your store here too.  Down at the bottom you can choose the category that best describes your store; this is the category that will display your store link.  Set the clip display order to whichever option suits you best.  Submit, and you’re all finished!  View your clips store to make sure it looks appealing.

Click over to the “Gizmo FTP” page again.  Select “Images” from the dropdown menu.  Upload a banner for your store that is 468 x 72 – make sure the file is named banner.jpg.  It will be put into the site’s banner rotation, and will be scheduled to display on every category you have updated.  (If you’ve released a video in Striptease, Ass Fetish, Lingerie, and Foot Fetish, your banner will be displayed on all of these pages; check “Banner Schedule” to see when yours will be posted).

There, easy, right?  Both sites seem a bit intimidating when you start, but they really aren’t.  Hopefully this helps a few of you start off on the right foot!  There is really no point to making a clip store anywhere unless you are going to make an effort, so get your files uploaded and make banners!  It’s easy to get discouraged when the sales don’t instantly start coming in, so making sure you’ve created a visually-appealing store and banner ads is very important.  Both sites have tumblr accounts for promotion as well; watermark a few photos with your name (and store number, for c4s), and send them off to Kinkbomb support / Clips4sale’s social media email (social@clips4sale.com I believe).  Good luck!!