Last night, while I scrolled through my Tumblr dashboard and my Twitter timeline, I noticed something that a lot of camgirls are doing.  Posting monetary goals – and the progress on them – seems to be popular lately.  It varies from “I need $800 by tomorrow to pay my rent or I’ll be evicted” to “help me save up the $800 to buy a new laptop” and other sorts of things.  I’m all for setting goals, I think to myself, as I glance at the Post-Its covering the borders of my monitors, with goals scrawled on them.  In the past – we’re talking years ago, when I started this – I would also post monetary goals, but the reaction I got to them was a bit unsettling.  You’re either making too little progress on them, and guys start giving you “tips” on how to make more money.  ”Oh, I see you haven’t really made any progress at all on your goal this week; you know, if you got naked, you’d make more money.”  As annoying as that is, I think most camgirls learn to tune out bad advice from strangers pretty quickly.  Even worse, though, is the regular customer who decides you’ve outgrown him, or something equally stupid.  ”Oh wow, you’re working through that goal pretty fast, I guess you don’t need me around to help you since so many other people are.”  After that they disappear.  This often occurs with guys who think giving you anywhere from $2-$200 per month is sufficient to be your sole supporter.  Occasionally, other girls will get involved.  Most of the time we’re a supportive group, but when you find out that someone is making an exponentially larger income than you are, you can get a little prickly.  These are all reasons I stopped posting regular monetary goals.

I do like letting you guys know when I’ve achieved something thanks to the support (aka, money) given to me.  When I paid off my student loans, I made sure to make a post on tumblr thanking everyone for their support.  When I was working toward paying off the last of my debt, I would tweet what percentage of completion we were at (50%…. 65%…. 90%…).  I avoided posting actual amounts, because, as I’ve mentioned, people get weird about it.  Perhaps I’m just unlucky with attracting the easily-offended type, because I’m seeing other camgirls post “we’re at $600 of my $2,000 goal” with no repercussions.

Taking these thoughts to Twitter, I started tweeting about this last night, and was surprised to have so many people respond.  Here is what the conversation looked like:

Do you guys like it when camgirls have goals for you to reach together? ie, pay off debt, buy a whatever, etc? or do you find that odd?  Like to me it’s weird when a camgirl is like “help me pay rent!” every month, because duh, this is a job, it’s supposed to pay your rent, but I think it’s kind of cool when a girl has a goal (like I did with my student debt) and posts updates on how it’s going (%, not $ amount, because people get weird when they discover your income, whether it’s higher or lower than they expected).  Thoughts?

Jessie Minx said that she posts the progress in dollar amounts every time she has a goal, and she’s never had a problem with it.  She said there’s no way to really tell what a camgirl makes on average, so it keeps us at friendly competition and focused on us.  Jessie also pointed out that if camming can’t cover your basic bills, you should get a new job.

Jessie brings up a good point, because sure, maybe you’ve made $6k this month, but you decide to open up a new savings account with most of it, so your goal only gets a few bucks thrown at it.  You can’t really make assumptions on a girl’s income based off of her goal progress.  I also have to agree on changing jobs if you can’t pay your expenses.  A job should be providing you with the income to support yourself – especially this job.  If you aren’t able to pay your own internet bill, or you’re constantly in a panic that you can’t afford to pay rent and will be evicted, you might need to take some time to re-evaluate your future as a camgirl.  Some people just aren’t cut out for the job.

Harley Qute says she doesn’t talk about her bills, unless a guy tells her he wants to take over paying her rent.

Emma Ink says talking about your bills just makes it look like you are struggling, and people want what’s “in demand”.  If someone can’t pay basic life expenses with camming, it probably isn’t their ideal line of work.

If you’re asking for help to pay your rent, or your internet bill, or whatever, it can sometimes come across like you aren’t capable of doing it yourself.  This isn’t always the case, but it can make it look that way.

Kaitlin Richards (aka, Mrs Improper) said it’s one thing if you have “adopt a bill” for guys to take over payments of a bill, but basic living expenses should not be goals.  Goals should be something like shopping, cars, travel, moving, bigger stuff.  Basics aren’t goals.  

This… this bothers me.  Incessantly.  Basic expenses, as I mentioned above, should be achievable with cam income if you are doing this full time.  (If you’re doing this part time and have another job, well, between the two of them you should be making enough to support yourself).

Mistress Lillith says she does vacation goals, and will post the progress as a percentage.  She also has guys choose an outing to cover (for example, when in Vegas, someone can pay for a limo ride for her).  She is not a huge fan of posting her income information.  She does offer the “adopt a bill” service, but it’s not because she can’t pay them herself; they’re just little extras that she doesn’t have to worry about.  Mistress Lillith says that when you do post the dollar amount, and you’re doing well on it, it can make some men feel emasculated because of the income levels; it’s financial jealousy.

If you’ve ever been a member of MyGirlFund, you know that there are certain people whose sole hustle is “ohmygosh emergency, help!!” and every week or month it’s a new crisis.  I think it’s hard to tell the difference between girls who can’t make their car payments and girls who are completely willing to let someone else pay their car payments if they so desire.  I, for one, am perfectly happy to tell you how much my internet bill is, if you want to send me that money every month.  That doesn’t mean I can’t pay it.  Hell, I pay my internet bill before I buy groceries (#YouKnowYouAreACamgirlWhen).  She may be on to something about financial jealousy.

Demonika Devour said she posted her progress as a dollar amount once, and people said “You don’t need me to buy videos then”.  Most assholes don’t realize that a lot of income is based off a few good paying tippers/buyers.  

Ahh, here is something that not many guys realize!  Sure, we have the sporadic sales from strangers; five dollars here, fifteen there, fifty here… we hope they’ll be repeat customers, but chances are they’re looking for something specific, grabbed what you had to offer, and went on to the next girl.  In my case, at least, most of my income comes from regulars.  I’d say about 80%.  I have a pretty good conversion rate of “random stranger” to “regular”, too.  I think that’s important to remember, for both camgirls AND our customers.  It may look like we’ve made really good progress on our goals, but keep in mind it’s probably a really supportive handful of people, rather than hundreds of guys with $1.

Miss Vikki Lynn says she thinks goals are good but she doesn’t share money talk with the public.  She personally doesn’t think it’s a good thing to share, but things work out differently for every girl.  

Sexy Texan said that every time she’s tried posting progress as a percentage, she has people asking what’s the goal… and she tells them “the goal is… not met yet!”  Now, if she has a goal, she just works more and tries to reach it without talking about it to her fans.  

I think it’s important for camgirls to have goals, as it helps ward off burnout.  They’re also pretty good motivational tools.  If you’re working toward something, it makes it easier to work harder.  As Miss Vikki Lynn says, things work out differently for every girl, so although posting goals doesn’t work well for some, it could be (and most likely is) working well for other girls.

I was getting great feedback from camgirls, but guys weren’t too eager to jump in until I really pressed for more male opinion!

xx-Joker-xx said “I would imagine bad ruins the illusion you are there for more than money these poor bastards have”.

Soirbh had the opposite opinion, stating that he found reality to be a turn-on.  However, he thinks that it’s better to hide your income from public view, simply from a business standpoint.

PussyLover says that cams are to make money, and most people realize that, so why not post your goal?  He also wishes good luck to the girls working towards something.

Shay Thiede says if he has the money to spend, he’s more than willing to help out with a goal.

Greg M says he has no problems with girls who post goals.

James Marsh says he only sees it as a turn off is if the lady never gets on cam for whatever excuse, and then spends the three days she is on cam getting mad because her followers don’t give her enough money to pay all her bills.  He says he doesn’t see an issue with consistently having large goals because then the girls put the work in.

It seems that for the most part, guys aren’t too bothered one way or the other.  Maybe avoid posting dollar amounts and stick to percentages to keep things a bit private, but generally they seem to be fine with girls posting goals and working toward them.  Bringing fantasy into the conversation raises an important point.  Is it a turn-off to know that your favourite camgirl can’t pay her rent and will be evicted?  Is it unattractive to have her discuss money?

Guest21841 on Twitter thinks so.  He said “Of course its obnoxious to say ur making 6 figures a month for diddling urself 10 hrs a wk on cam”.  Excuse the poor grammar and spelling, as he seems to be a real mouthbreather when you read through the rest of his timeline.  He also said that “masturbating, editing vids of u masturbating, posting links, blogging, tweeting is not a real job”.  He then told me to please take his money away and make myself wealthier.  That last statement actually has no bearing on this discussion, but I found it amusing.

What do you think?  Is it a turn-off when a camgirl discusses monetary goals?  Does it matter whether the goal is a frantic “I might be evicted, help help” every month, or something out of the ordinary, like saving up for a new house?  Are goals meant to be something cam customers work towards, or should the model be putting in extra time to reach her goal as well?