I have a few observations:
-when I first started to cam on SM I was using my old macbook pro from 6 years ago (a dual core with something like 2 gb of ram), a logitech webcam C900 or something like that, and I had an upload speed of say .5 mbps. I was working the same amount of hours I do now, except for my rates were like $2.69/$3.99 and I was making on average $400/wk less then what I make now. I think I was sitting somewhere around page 5.
-One day I decided to go out and purchase a new laptop, a macbook pro quad core i5 with 4gb of ram. The same week I got sick with my internet company and switched over to cable. Got the top package. Decided my HD webcam built in to my mac was good enough for the job. Almost immediately my placement increased to the 2nd page. When I used the C900 I noticed things stayed roughly the same, so I am not so sure the cam quality had much to do with this. I think the upgraded computer and internet had more to do with it.
-upon upgrading my ram to 8gb my CPU usage drastically dropped. Went from being 70-80% before to being something like 20-30%. Around this time I purchased my Sony Evi D100. My placement literally increased overnight. I also increased my price at this time as I thought my new stream was so much better. I even test this "theory" of mine now and again by logging in with either my C900 or my built in HD face time. My placement plummets when I log in with these. As soon as I log in with my Evi I go straight back up to first page.
-I was up in the top rows for quite some time back in January/Feb. Now my placement is down to around bottom of page 1, and I think this is mainly because I took something like 4 weeks off because I got sick of SM. And my upload is only 2.00 mbps, not much I can change about that without doing something illegal to the cable box/lines. That and I typically only work around 20 hrs a week.
-I recently saw a top model 'testing' a different camera (from the looks of it she was using a laptop with a built in webcam) and her placement dropped from 1 st row down to the bottom of page 1 (with the HD icon still beside her name). She was telling her room "I am just testing something". I have seen her posting on some other forums advising girls to use camcorders instead of webcams.
All this got me to thinking that technology pretty much has as much to do with placement and traffic, as customer ratings and time in private do. Do I think a girl starting out today with a top of the line computer/cam/internet is instantly going to be on the top of page 1? No, but I do think this best prepares her to be there in the near future. As I have said before having 100+ people in your chat room means shit all if they are not paying customers. But in the same respect I think that you have a better chance of actually selling a private with say 100+ people in your room then say 5.



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