View Full Version : Raise the Indy Rates Challenge
loveshooks
04-01-2015, 09:54 PM
I bumped up my rates for everything but my 10min shows...I pushed back the ceiling at which I discount from $3/min, and I don't discount as far anymore. The real freaking issue for me is that I haven't been getting any indy shows lately. I have to re-think my promotion that I am currently doing, because it isn't bringing me the return I want.
a question to think about is, are your regs returning at their normal levels? New client ebbs and flows can vary dramatically when you're first starting out so in the short term your regular clients can be an effective gauge for assessing the outcome of a rates increase.
Okay Im Just gonna say it..... I'm not in the challenge... I'm new to Indy and I'm finally getting a good chunk of my shows from Indy sites...I'm I a sweet spot and I'm too scared to do it ....maybe next time I'll participate when I feel more secure with my regulars and Indy game
Good luck to everyone else!
thanks so much for posting, I was hoping at least one person not participating in the challenge would feel comfortable speaking up. If you're earning what you want to earn, if you feel you're being compensated fairly for your time then do it :) There's nothing wrong with recognizing your sweet spot and sticking to it.
Something I want to say though; I hope you pay attention to your sweet spot as your business grows. The larger your presence and client base, the more power you have in choosing your clients rather them choosing you. If you up your promo time, factor the time-cost of that in as well. 5 years ago I was right where you were and it served me well (although I'll never know different, in retrospect I suspect I could have charged more), but once I really gained momentum I should have changed my rates to reflect that. Instead I neglected the most salient aspect of my business for years and only came to due to a much-needed kick by MH. All I'm saying is don't be me, pay attention to this ish as your business grows.
edited in because I took a phone call before hitting submit:
Alright--I made a baby step just now. I half-way raised my rates.
New rate structure:
5 - 20 minutes = $3 per minute (used to be 5-10 was $3/minute)
21-45 minutes = $2.75 per minute (used to be 11-20 was $2.75/minute)
46+ minutes = $2.50 per minute (used to be 21-40 was $2.50/minute)
Discounts for longer shows are given at my discretion (used to occur at around the 40-45 minute mark, will now be at the one hour mark)
If it works, I think I'll up everything by another $.50/minute period. Getting to $4/minute on the bottom of my sliding scale eventually is the goal.
so awesome that you did it! as the weeks progress please update as much as you feel comfortable doing so
in a few days I'll post again about average earnings amongst challenge participants, I don't want to space those too close together as 48 hours isn't enough time to assess results in any meaningful way. so far the numbers look good though
hope everyone is having a wicked night :goodvibes
Cam_Model_Jess
04-02-2015, 08:47 AM
I've only had one customer since the challenge started. He's a new "regular" & he actually saw my new rates without me mentioning it. He seemed fine with it. So I've only made an extra $10 so far, but there's time left :)
Bootsie
04-02-2015, 10:25 AM
a question to think about is, are your regs returning at their normal levels? New client ebbs and flows can vary dramatically when you're first starting out so in the short term your regular clients can be an effective gauge for assessing the outcome of a rates increase.
Well, I have had a problem cultivating long-term regs. Part of this is because my regs seem to skew young, and they stick around and do 5-6 shows, then start bitching about not getting a discount for being sooooo long term. One of my older guys lost his job and his wife left him. That was a big hit for me, because he would do 60 min shows every week or so. I have a new guy doing 2-5 shows per week with me, but he is a 10 min guy, knows what he wants, I am sloooooowly trying to get him to last longer, but 8 min is my current record. I am struggling on big box sites right now and I was hoping I could amp up indy, but so far it isn't working for me. Today I actually seriously considered dropping my prices on CMD to $2/min and bidding for placement to try to cope. It's not a good time for me right now.
Issabelle
04-02-2015, 04:27 PM
Up sold a one hour block to a regular. Didn't bat an eyelash at the fact it was an extra $15 ($125 --> $140). Victory! Can't wait to pop it up to at least $180 for an hour.
loveshooks
04-05-2015, 07:54 AM
Well, I have had a problem cultivating long-term regs. Part of this is because my regs seem to skew young, and they stick around and do 5-6 shows, then start bitching about not getting a discount for being sooooo long term. One of my older guys lost his job and his wife left him. That was a big hit for me, because he would do 60 min shows every week or so. I have a new guy doing 2-5 shows per week with me, but he is a 10 min guy, knows what he wants, I am sloooooowly trying to get him to last longer, but 8 min is my current record. I am struggling on big box sites right now and I was hoping I could amp up indy, but so far it isn't working for me. Today I actually seriously considered dropping my prices on CMD to $2/min and bidding for placement to try to cope. It's not a good time for me right now.
long term success in indy is really about building a stable of regulars over time, for that reason it's pretty normal for chicas in their first or second year to have income levels vary dramatically, that evens out as time goes by and the number of regulars rises.
age of client base is another factor, some younger regs are wicked but overall I find the same as you, the younger the guy the more likely he is to stick to shorter show durations. There are a ton of exceptions of course but overall I find the same pattern as you.
traffic sources can definitely impact on the age of prospective clients, another factor is the niches within which you promote yourself. I'm going to send you a PM with some ideas but as to the challenge, if it's not an ideal time for you there's nothing wrong with re-evaluating your pricing structure. the whole point of the challenge is to get chicas thinking about what they charge and why, it's an intensely individual process and there's no 'one size fits all' answer.
Up sold a one hour block to a regular. Didn't bat an eyelash at the fact it was an extra $15 ($125 --> $140). Victory! Can't wait to pop it up to at least $180 for an hour.
that's awesome :) I've found the same as you, as of yet not a single client has commented on my rates.
in terms of LCMS patterns as of yet no one who has raised their rates has experienced a statistically meaningful drop in income, and several participants are earning at significantly higher levels. it's still really early on so it's not possible yet to assess long term outcomes, but so far it's looking good.
Magical_Hoohah
04-17-2015, 10:30 PM
I want to come back and report in this thread, but I'm having trouble collecting my thoughts about the challenge.
One thing I have learned for sure is that I am not very good at keeping meaningful records. I'm very good at using spreadsheets, but in this case I'm just not sure what information I should be gathering in order to start seeing trends. Do you just keep details of each individual show, or do you somehow group them along with data about that whole day? I feel like it's best to have the show information in context, for example how long you worked that day and what times, but that's where things fall apart for me records wise.
Would any ladies be willing to share some insights about your record keeping methods?
Issabelle
04-17-2015, 10:42 PM
Would any ladies be willing to share some insights about your record keeping methods?
As soon as I'm off cam for the night, I'll be right back with options for you girl!
Issabelle
04-17-2015, 11:38 PM
Okay, I've fallen off the band wagon a bit with records keeping for what you're looking at, but when I was being a good girl I had several spread sheets. I'll go through my current set up too.
The excel book starts with my vanilla job records, since restaurants involve hourly wage, reported tips, tip out, etc., to figure out pay checks and give to my accountant. This is Sheet #1 for me.
Sheet #2 is the same as #1, but tracks the earnings, by day, for each cam/pso/texting site I do. If I ever get into clips, those will go here too. It totals my daily earnings automatically, as well as my monthly running earnings both by site (I like seeing what sites get me the most money each month) and overall.
Sheet #3 is my monthly goals tracker. I have a 'calendar' style set up with each day of the month listed out, then under each is a column for work, tips, and cam work. The column is programmed to total the amount I made for the day at the bottom, then the cell below tallies my weekly running earnings. Beneath the entire month's calendar is a function that tracks my total earnings for the month to date. On this same sheet (which I really should separate someday) is my pending payouts by date (i.e. 'SM' '$132.57' 'received by 13th' or something) to help me track my bill money. This third sheet is very redundant, since sheets #1 and #2 break this all down in detail, but I keep it because it's a simple 'master' sheet to see all my income for the month across all sources. I update it at the end of each day after doing sheets #1 and #2.
Sheet #4 is where I get into my analysis that you're interested in girl. Again, I have a 'calendar' of sorts. And I'm not gonna lie, it's not a simplified sheet the way the others are. The best way to do it is to set up a day planner looking sheet for each site you work and update for every hour you work with your hourly. If you split sites, I recommend leaving notes that list the individual site earnings (for later analysis if you need). This allows you to look back on the month and see if you're getting times that are consistently earners. With indy, I think it's important to note $0 hours as well if you're actively accepting shows. This sheet is complicated, so I built a random one and here's the screen shot:
41435
In this sheet, I calculate the average hourly I make each day and (forgot to add it, but you can do it yourself) average hourly I make in a given time slot (say, 6:00 p.m.) each month. You can do all sorts of things, but they get kind of hard to read the more you add.
Hope that helps!
DancesWithSloths
04-18-2015, 09:44 AM
^^This is spreadsheet gold, Issa. *dies of spreadsheet joy*
Issabelle
04-18-2015, 04:14 PM
^^This is spreadsheet gold, Issa. *dies of spreadsheet joy*
Well, when my father asks if I'm ever going to actually use all the college degrees I've collected, I suppose I can always show him the epic spread sheet skills college taught me. lol
Magical_Hoohah
04-18-2015, 04:51 PM
Thank you so much for this Issabelle! I have a lot of the same spreadsheets as you (goals, amount earned per day on each site, who's paying me how much when), but this is really amazing. Also, I've never used the average function on a spreadsheet, so that's new for me!
I will probably make one of these for indy. I know it's blasphemy, but I'm finding hard to care about my free chat site statistics. My average is more or less always the same, and I'm so much more interested in upping my indy game.
For keeping track of individual indy sessions, The statistics I've been trying to keep are: date, day, approximate time, client name (skype id), where they found me, site they paid on (usually the same, but not always), length of session, amount paid for session, listed rate of the session, and any miscellaneous notes that seem important. Can anyone think of any other info that is good to have for these sorts of records?
loveshooks
04-18-2015, 07:08 PM
^^This is spreadsheet gold, Issa. *dies of spreadsheet joy*
true say. that spreadsheet is awesome, thank you!
I will probably make one of these for indy. I know it's blasphemy, but I'm finding hard to care about my free chat site statistics. My average is more or less always the same, and I'm so much more interested in upping my indy game.
to me that makes perfect sense on a practical level. you have far more control over every aspect of your business with indy than you do on free chat sites, it's the perfect testing ground for figuring out what works for you and what doesn't
For keeping track of individual indy sessions, The statistics I've been trying to keep are: date, day, approximate time, client name (skype id), where they found me, site they paid on (usually the same, but not always), length of session, amount paid for session, listed rate of the session, and any miscellaneous notes that seem important. Can anyone think of any other info that is good to have for these sorts of records?
a big one for me is frequency of visits amongst regs. I have a lot of clients that have parred with me for years (today I saw two guys who have being seeing me for 5 and 6 years respectively) and I can state with authority that choices we make heavily impact the frequency with which our best guys visit us long term. factor that element in when assessing overall success, our best regs are by far the best barometer of the long term success of our strategies because assessing that control factor eliminates ebbs and flows of new traffic that can skew the assessment of overall earnings.
Issabelle
04-18-2015, 09:29 PM
If anyone needs spreadsheet help, feel free to PM me. It's pretty easy for me to do and I'm happy to help you lovely ladies out. The nerd in me actually enjoys building them.
Bonus points: I make charts too. Mwhahaha! Pie charts!
Magical_Hoohah
04-18-2015, 11:12 PM
Ok, I'm going to have a hard cider, wind down, and try to discuss this a bit. First of all, this challenge came at a time that was both good and bad for me. I went through a major life change at the beginning of the month **which I'd prefer not to discuss in CC, please** and I think it threw me off a little in terms of my actual on cam performance. Especially during March and the very beginning of April, I was just off. On the other hand, the same thing really gave me the drive and ability to work on camming a lot more than I have before. I also had some minor travel plans during the second week, so I wasn't able to cam as much as I would have liked.
Because I wasn't doing a good job of record keeping before, and don't feel very confident about my challenge record keeping, I can't comment for sure about changes in my earnings. I do know that most of my earnings for the time period came from sites other than LCMS (so LH probably doesn't have much data for me either). I raised my rates on all my sites, and my lowest rates are on LCMS, so that wasn't the problem. I think it was just a weird fluke.
A couple of my regs commented on the change, but none of them changed their buying patterns as far as I can tell. The only one that even wanted to discuss it was a very old and trusted reg who has always been on a personalized pricing plan, and he was just confused as to whether our arrangement would change (he isn't really getting a significant discount; we just have a system that allows us to be more flexible with the show lengths - I prefer it that way due to the nature of his shows).
I have continued to get new customers, and none of them have made any complaint about pricing. I've also had a rather odd increase in guys that have paid for shows before contacting me or making arrangements. That was kind of alarming at first, but thankfully all of them have been completely lovely, and they have been willing to wait if I couldn't see them right away (or even that day).
I haven't had any noticeable increase in non-customer pricing complaints. The one thing that I noticed is that the "you're too expensive" comments stung a little more after raising my rates. I think that's just because I was worried about lots of pricing complaints, and getting them was the fulfillment of my worries. I know that it had nothing to do with my raised prices, though. They were generally saying stuff like "I'd really like $2/min" (which has always been below my rates) or "What can I get for $10" (for which the answer has always been "nothing," except for one amusing guy who offered $10 for 1 minute of zero effort on my part, and of course I did that out of curiosity.) But I do find myself much more inclined to snap at them about how much guys happily pay me on SM.
As far as the effect of putting my price breaks at certain strategic show lengths, IvyBunny was right. I had a couple guys that upsold to a 25 minute show because that was where they could get a discount. I also got at least one 45 minute show (my second price break point), even though I almost never get 45 minute shows for some reason.
However...
The biggest thing that happened as a result of the challenge is that it motivated me to improve a lot. I felt like I needed to do more to earn the higher rates. I made overhauls on my LCMS profile. I did upgrades to my own website. I thought about strategy a shitload. I got my ass in gear and implemented two new marketing efforts. And most importantly, for the first time in my camming career, I made and posted a schedule and really solidified my goals. I started small and am making incremental increases. I think that even if raising my rates costs me some business, in the long term, a better sense of dedication, organization, and effort will far outweigh any negatives.
I will be continuing the challenge until the end of May. I think that will give me a much better idea of how much I can ask of myself, and along with the rate changes, how my income might be affected.
Magical_Hoohah
04-18-2015, 11:31 PM
Also, Issa, I made one modification to your spreadsheet that I thought might be handy. I started the day at the time I wake up instead of starting at midnight. So Sunday runs from 9am Sunday to 8:59am Monday. That way my daily average reflects the stuff that happened between the time I woke up and went to bed, rather than stuff that happened between midnight and midnight, which seemed kind of arbitrary. For example, if I routinely take off Wednesdays, but also tend to work past midnight on Tuesdays, I want all that income to show up on my data for what I earn on Tuesday. Technically, it doesn't make a difference, but I would feel weird seeing an average hourly statistic for a day that I think of as my day off. YKWIM?
The spreadsheet is so awesome and very easy to use, especially for indy, since I don't have to worry about free chat interrupting my spreadsheet minute after each show. :goodvibes:
DancesWithSloths
04-19-2015, 02:17 AM
For keeping track of individual indy sessions, The statistics I've been trying to keep are: date, day, approximate time, client name (skype id), where they found me, site they paid on (usually the same, but not always), length of session, amount paid for session, listed rate of the session, and any miscellaneous notes that seem important. Can anyone think of any other info that is good to have for these sorts of records?
I've only just started in indy like 5 minutes ago, so the usefulness of this hasn't been time-tested, but for each client I'm recording time they got in touch as well as time of the actual session, plus I have a counter for number of sessions they've booked. I'm convinced that I could be recording useful qualitative data as well as the bare numbers, but not sure what yet.
My rule of thumb with camming as with other research is, collect the data just in case, figure out what to do with them when the time comes.
Issabelle
04-19-2015, 01:36 PM
Thank you so much for this Issabelle! I have a lot of the same spreadsheets as you (goals, amount earned per day on each site, who's paying me how much when), but this is really amazing. Also, I've never used the average function on a spreadsheet, so that's new for me!
I will probably make one of these for indy. I know it's blasphemy, but I'm finding hard to care about my free chat site statistics. My average is more or less always the same, and I'm so much more interested in upping my indy game.
For keeping track of individual indy sessions, The statistics I've been trying to keep are: date, day, approximate time, client name (skype id), where they found me, site they paid on (usually the same, but not always), length of session, amount paid for session, listed rate of the session, and any miscellaneous notes that seem important. Can anyone think of any other info that is good to have for these sorts of records?
Any time girl. And I totally hear what you're saying about free chat sites. Much like you, my average tends to be more or less the same. That said, I do notice that when I force myself to track hourly earnings for them, I tend to work them more. So there's that...
As for indy session information, well, that's where it gets interesting. Rule #1 of book keeping is that you have to know what you're tracking. You can keep the most detailed records on earth, but it those numbers aren't be used for a set purpose then they're worthless. If you're trying to track the effect of a price increase on customer spending, then you need to look at both long term regulars (how spending patterns change) and at new conversions (rate of conversion versus rate of inquiry). You're also going to want to look at overall earnings, but that requires factoring in hours worked (hence why I like the average hourly function, because that's got the built in comparison factor of per hour.