AmberCutie's Forum
An adult community for cam models and members to discuss all the things!

How do YOU keep track of your time and earnings?

  • ** WARNING - ACF CONTAINS ADULT CONTENT **
    Only persons aged 18 or over may read or post to the forums, without regard to whether an adult actually owns the registration or parental/guardian permission. AmberCutie's Forum (ACF) is for use by adults only and contains adult content. By continuing to use this site you are confirming that you are at least 18 years of age.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Mar 24, 2017
402
296
123
Southeastern USA
I recently had a wonderful chat with a model, in a private, that made me more aware(more so than before) of the issues models have with keeping track of their time so as to maintain some semblance of earnings versus effort spent.

I know from the many posts I've seen here on this forum that quite a few models maintain spreadsheets and whatnot to monitor what is more successful for them in terms of what they do during their actual "logged in" time while on a site like CB. But during this chat I had with this model she started talking about how many hours outside of the site that she spent actually preparing for her shows on CB, such as makeup, producing and uploading new content for her bio page...etc. Then she started talking about how much time she spent on creating and uploading content to 3rd party clip sites, as well as the time spent updating her social sites like Snap, Twitter and others. She told me that she treats her income from the clip sites differently and uses that income to offset her preparation time for making the clips and uploading them, as well as any time spent updating her social site(s) activity. She indicated that of the 6-8 hours she actually spends on CB, there is an additional 2-4 hours of time spent doing all of the stuff outside of her actual "logged in" time on CB. She said when she first started she basically only kept track of her actual "online time" while broadcasting on CB as a means to come up with a "dollar per hour" type of figure, but after a while she started noticing the demands that preparation time and all of her other activities actually had on her bottom line earnings. She said she even went down the rabbit hole for a bit, and started treating offline tips and video/pic sales from her CB bio page as "bonuses" that she could use to make herself feel better when she had a bad day online, but soon realized the folly of this and decided to keep track of ALL of her time spent in support of her earnings so as to not have to resort to such mental gymnastics.

The thing that surprised me, is that she is a studio model and not an independent model, and this is the thing that actually opened my eyes a bit, as all of her time spent outside of CB actually requires her to have a laptop, decent camera and internet connection for support of her non-CB activities.

Basically, before this chat, I viewed a model's activities while online at CB as pretty much run of the mill, in that if she was online on CB for 6 hours and made X amount of tokens, then she could easily say she earned X amount per hour. But after this chat....wow....I had no idea the amount of effort and time that went into this line of work. Now I question if I actually tip a model enough, in the grand scheme of things. o_O

So I guess I wanted to ask the models who visit this site, how do you treat your time as it pertains to the support of ALL of your work activities? Do you keep track of your time for each different aspect of your work? Do most models just simply hop onto CB for X number of hours in the hopes they earn X amount of tokens? I realize there is a huge range of responses possible here based on what each and everyone of you do, so I guess I'm wondering how each of you treat your time as it pertains to the overall support of your earnings?
 
I don't keep track. A lot of time spent on makeup, shopping for items, editing videos, communicating with buyers and encouraging them to be more specific regarding their custom desires, shopping for toys, outfits and fetish items. Cleaning said items daily, or multiple times a day. I stream, and if it's too slow, or I overheat or something, I take time to edit, film, script new clips. Some days I work 10-12 hours, other days I work no hours. I go by how I feel. But even if I were just to stream live for 15 mins, 2 hours of work went into that (getting ready w professional makeup, styling long hair, setting up lights, washing toys etc). I also have the yearly expenses of the type of technology required (cameras, new laptop every year, as I burn through them WAY fast, new HD camera every year...). Yesterday I didn't stream at all, or do much marketing, however I worked 8 hours on only 2 clips. Admittedly that was a bit unusual, and a lot of things went wrong, which usually don't. For 1 twelve minute clip, I had to do about 30 takes, stitch 16 different pieces of film together, and then upload to 4 different sites. The other ten minute clip I did was easier, but still involved 3 takes, and roughly about 90 mins of editing, stiching and uploading.

On an average day, I spend 2 hours getting ready. 2 hours live streaming and filming for clips, then about an hour cleaning up room, and removing makeup properly. Following this about 3 hours of editing, uploading, scripting and description writing for new clips. So sounds like about 8 hours all in, for 2 hours and 30 mins of footage altogether (time actually streaming, and running time of actual clips produced).

I'm also extremely anal on pretty much everything I do, however a lot of my regular followers seem to like that. I don't know how to be any other way, and I don't really want to be any other way, because it gives me a lot of pride and satisfaction.

ETA; I won't even bother including gym, shaving and tanning time hehe. I doubt I would tan or worry about body hair much, if it were not for my job. I would prob still go to the gym though. Oh and fucking nails, I repaint my nails almost daily, and my toes weekly or so. I spend so much fucking time on that! I definitely would not do that, if this were not my job. My fingernails drive me fucking nuts!! Sorry, small venting moment there :)
 
Last edited:
  • Helpful!
Reactions: Lucid1
I didn't keep track for years, then one day I decided to start tracking my time just to see how much I was making per hour if I average it over a month. I found a simple app that would track it. I could just click a button to sign in, and then click it to sign out, and it would add everything up for the day/week/month.

I tracked anytime that I was doing anything related to my job on the computer and anything related to filming videos. I didn't track the time spent getting ready since it's the same routine that I normally do if I'm not working, and if I was working for an employer, they wouldn't pay me to shower and put on make up. ;)(I am not currently doing any live shows so I didn't have those to count). I was actually surprised by the results. When I was tracking my time, I found myself staying more focused since I knew it was going to be counted as my time. In the end of my month, my hourly earnings were better than I expected!

Now, if I was somehow able to track the previous month without my knowledge at the time, my hourly earnings might have been a lot more disappointing due to the fact that I wasn't as focused.

I only tried this for a month, but I might consider doing it on a regular basis.
 
I just wanna add, I would not style my hair the way I do, nor do professional makeup for a regular vanilla job, and never did for any of my non SW jobs. I also would not wear nail polish at all, or at least very infrequently.

I blow dry, then straighten and style my hair (sometimes adding extensions). If I worked a non SW job, where I wasn't on film, I would just comb it wet, and tie it up. I would also spend about 3 minutes doing makeup, instead of the half hour plus I spend for sex work (just on makeup, seperate from hair). I don't like how my everyday look, shows up under the strong lights which I have, and I can't stand shine on my skin, which only happens under the lights. On non filming days, I get ready in about 20 - 30 minutes, compared to the 2 hours of filming days.
 
I just wanna add, I would not style my hair the way I do, nor do professional makeup for a regular vanilla job, and never did for any of my non SW jobs. I also would not wear nail polish at all, or at least very infrequently.
Honestly, if I weren't a model, I'd wear no makeup at all 🤣 I just don't want to look like I'm dead on cam. I look differently in real life (not as dead without makeup as camera makes me look).
That daily routine with putting my makeup on is the most irritating part of preparation.
Maybe that's just me, though.
 
Honestly, if I weren't a model, I'd wear no makeup at all 🤣 I just don't want to look like I'm dead on cam. I look differently in real life (not as dead without makeup as camera makes me look).
That daily routine with putting my makeup on is the most irritating part of preparation.
Maybe that's just me, though.
Any possibility to change that playing around with colour/lighting and camera settings?
 
  • Like
Reactions: MarieElise
My story is pretty similar to @KylieJacobs ! I have an app that is made for self employed people to track hours. I have categories for each thing that I do. I *do* track prepping my cam space, but I don't track getting ready (as Kylie said, an employer wouldn't pay for your getting ready time).

My categories are:

Computer Work (this is answering emails, mfc mail, onlyfans messages, etc.)

Packages/Mailing

Video/Photoset making

Travel (rarely travel, but sometimes I do for photo sets!)

Snapchat

And then I have categories for each of the sites that I work on for work that's specifically related to those sites or live streaming hours

---

It is hard to figure out a true $ per hour for some things. For example, my computer work encompasses multiple sites. But overall, I like to track just for myself to know how many hours/week I truly work, and I can get a vague $/hour for each site to see where my time is best spent working!
 
Any possibility to change that playing around with colour/lighting and camera settings?
There's a choice between "less dead" and "more dead" 🤣
Also, I look very young, I've been told about it even with my make up on so I really don't want to get banned.
That's my burden and I'm almost okay with it. I just wanted to let OP know that there may be common unpleasant moments and personal pet peeves in preparation so some models count time spent on it too.
 
It is hard to figure out a true $ per hour for some things. For example, my computer work encompasses multiple sites. But overall, I like to track just for myself to know how many hours/week I truly work, and I can get a vague $/hour for each site to see where my time is best spent working!

Does accounting for your time, in the manner you stated, give you thoughts or ideas about actually changing sites, or maybe trying something new on your current active sites? Like upping your per minute rate or charging more for your videos/pic sets..etc? You listed a bunch of items that you keep track of time-wise, so is it more of a situation where you put a lot of "hooks in the water" and see where you get bites, or is your "time spent" actually increasing your returns for those activities?
 
Last edited:
That's my burden and I'm almost okay with it. I just wanted to let OP know that there may be common unpleasant moments and personal pet peeves in preparation so some models count time spent on it too.

I was wondering if it was model specific, and it seems that it is. I totally get not keeping track of make-up time for a normal job, but it would seem that once the preparation time goes beyond an hour or more, then most models would track it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.