I needed money to get me through university, but I never guessed where my webcam would lead me

EXCLUSIVE | 3 MIN READ | WARNING: ADULT CONTENT and very STRONG LANGUAGE

I’d never thought of webcamming - getting paid to take my clothes off online - as a feasible thing. Knowing my luck, I thought, I’d be that guy who was scammed, stalked or outed. Surely, it was only Hollywood gays who broke into the adult entertainment world and made a fortune? But a webcamming opportunity fell into my lap, so to speak.

I was on a student night out with friends, guzzling £1 neon drinks by the bar when I stumbled across a copy of a regional LGBT magazine. Make money broadcasting live to other men, the advert for an adult webcam service said. I read through it with interest and thought of my dreaded supermarket job.

Whilst my friends were busy planning nights out over our upcoming half term, I was facing a long train trip back to my rural hometown to pull double shifts and last-minute cover on the checkout.

But with webcamming, I could set my own schedule. I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone online if I didn’t want to, just strip off. I could even chat to men online whilst fully clothed and earn money per minute.

Taking the plunge

Instead of working my tail off for £7.80 an hour whilst the supermarket banked millions, I could earn money for me from the comfort of my bedroom. I didn’t know how much webcamming might make, or if anyone would be interested in seeing me gratify the sexual desires of strangers online, but showing my body anonymously from the comfort of my bedroom in exchange for cash felt easy. A steal, almost.

Throwing caution to the wind, I chose a username and signed up. I stumbled like a newly-walking Bambi through the deluge of requests from men on the chat box, which appeared next to a live video stream of me, as well as private messages to my profile.

Do you like kissing?

Show me your d**k

Let’s see you bend over

Can you p**s in a jar?

Do you send dirty underwear?

Are you into scat [sexual activity involving feaces]

It was exactly what I’d expected from an adult site. Others simply wanted to chat about everyday life, paying £40 for five minutes of my time in a private chat room.

Customer service became a part of my new gig as I remembered to smile as the suggestions, mostly unpaid, came in. I logged on for four hours a night and over the first, month earned hundreds of pounds. But it wasn’t as easy to make money as I’d imagined.

Being a cam boy was like waiting tables with no hourly wage. Everyone could sit at the table, but you were only paid in tips. That’s how the site worked. I persevered as it was a way to earn money whilst uni classes were on, so I could earn cash on top of my dreaded supermarket job in the holidays.

Sometimes, a couple of hours camming earned a fiver, whilst other sessions could yield hundreds of pounds from keen tippers and private one-to-one viewers. I was offered package deals to spend a paid-for night in a luxury hotel with an upscale dinner, travel paid, and a £1000 for my time. Tempting - but I refused, drawing a line at meeting in real life.

The circle of regular men who joined my digital shows grew and turned into a confessional of sorts for older, married men. I asked them about their day, and it became quickly clear that I was often a release of sorts for men in religious households - sexually frustrated Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, and more. 

blurred lines

I had gone into camming blind of the realities. What I’d found was a gay community unlike any you’d find in bars or anywhere in real life. In the webcamming world existed a grey zone; a less-sinister Dark Web, where a man from Dubai tipped you a fiver to listen to him talk about his ex-wife whilst watching you slap your ass cheeks. My private shows, when users would pay-per-minute, were the goal, which, I sometimes achieved - an easy £500 from a man who didn’t even want to see me climax.

Some thought it was my kink to stream my live, solo sex shows and got off on asking. A glorified, digital form of ‘do you like that?’ I didn’t mind. It was better than the alternative of boring supermarket customer small-talk about red wine at the till.

Camming also meant I didn’t have to deal with daily customer complaints that wore down my mental health, and I could readily tell demanding viewers to fuck off. 

My anonymity and digital presence were a blanket of safety. Anyone who made me uncomfortable, couldn’t actually physically hurt me, though I still pulled the blinds and locked the door in my eighth floor dorm room for mental reassurance. 

I also evaded the ‘lifters’ - bots that record or capture high-rating webcam shows and post them to porn channels - because my sessions wouldn’t reach high enough views to be lifted by the automatic software that trawls the Most Viewed categories on webcam sites like the one I used. I also regularly Googled my username to check none of my live shows had been lifted.

Called out

There were nerve wracking moments when the identikit backdrop of my campus bedroom outed me to recent graduates of my university. I know that light fixture, a guy typed in the chat box, one night. He’d physically seen me around campus just months earlier and recognised my face online. Luckily, there was nothing to differentiate my room from the thousands nearby.  

Moments like that were offset by the money I made as a cam boy. I earned around £3000 in the first couple of months and used the cash to help my family out, as well as fly to the Canary Islands and San Francisco. I blew all I’d earned within weeks but the trips gave me epic life experiences. 

Private viewings of me simply wearing clean socks brought in hundreds of pounds a night. My regulars all had a vice and were desperate to meet in person. They had already heard my voice, seen my face - and the rest - but only on a screen.

My refusal to meet or give anyone my contact details raised the stakes and set their pulses racing, leaving viewers offering more and more to entice me to do it. I never did.

Others offered me hundreds to send them my worn underwear or socks. I considered it, but ultimately said no; the idea of posting my DNA to a kinky stranger felt sordid. I settled mostly for the third option: payouts of £50-100 for a 20 second clip of my orgasms with my face visible.

The webcam platform took 10% of everything I earned, and I was paid in US Dollars - able to withdraw my cash whenever my pot reached a minimum of $100.

I became adept at making men believe I loved being watched on the site and wanted them. I was mindful that my facial expressions made me look willing and ‘into it’, so my sexual acts onscreen were gratifying for viewers, even though I was acutely aware that masturbating and showing my most intimate body parts were way too private for the internet.

Regulars

Still, it did the job. I had a frothing throng of cam regulars, even a few older men who self-designated themselves as my ‘guardians’, booting-out users asking insulting, spam or inappropriate questions, such as if I enjoyed drinking my own urine.

Viewers often wanted me move to a ‘private w**k’ on Skype so they could pay me via PayPal and avoid the camming website’s fees. I wouldn’t leave the relative safety of the platform.

After seven months of juggling uni and webcamming, my smiles for the camera and patience for viewers began to dwindle. More non-paying members than ever digitally shouted obscene requests. Sq***t for us, you wh**e, was a common digital heckle.

My time away from the supermarket checkout gave me fresh perspective and I no longer felt desperate to avoid my shifts there. I was ready to give up webcamming and trudged through my final shows with dwindling numbers.

It turned out being shiny and new was the main draw for regular users. After that, unless you have chiselled abs sat atop a 12” long you-know-what, you’ll likely fade into the background. I ended up flashing my nipples and blowing kisses for a few pence at a time by late summer 2019 and the regulars who had paid me for private clips vanished without a trace.

Seeking normality

My nightly viewers dropped because my enthusiasm waned irrecoverably. My ‘guardians’ seldom visited and never paid when they did. I made some money over that time, but it wasn’t sustainable. And, after months of worry that irretrievable, potentially career-ruining footage of me was being stashed on hard drives around the world, and strange requests involving bodily fluids or kitchen objects, I returned home for three months during the uni summer break.

The lack of privacy in my childhood home, coupled with my familiar and dependable supermarket pay check, plus my newfound gratitude for the till job I’d once hated, nailed my webcamming coffin firmly shut.

I don’t regret camming for cash as it was a bit of an adventure and served its purpose, but I’m glad that chapter of my life is over. Now, I’ve graduated and have a full time job doing something I love, in an industry I have always dreamt of working in. I feel incredibly lucky.

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