Everyone has — at least once — seen ads featuring various cam girls pulling all sorts of sexy stunts. It’s enough to make one ask, What is a cam girl, and why are they so popular?

Today, we’ll give these femme fatales the spotlight they were born for.

What Are Cam Girls and What Do They Do?

As you might imagine, a cam girl is an online adult entertainer who performs on a live stream — typically from a webcam studio. The term is often used interchangeably with cam model, but since the latter also includes cam guys, we prefer the former.

Your usual cam show involves the girl teasing her audience and playing with herself via various sex toys. The camming rabbit hole goes deep, though, and the more you dig, the harder it becomes to pinpoint exactly what a cam girl is.

Some barely touch themselves, dominantly posing in latex while barking orders at their eager-to-please viewers. Others chill in lingerie and play video games as remotely-controlled sex toys inside them buzz away, and so on.

Most feature a menu, letting viewers pay in exchange for certain on-screen actions, including private shows.

That way, each performer can build a catalog listing only what they’re comfortable with, and make good money without having to physically interact with anyone.

If you’re interested in this line of work, you’ll find plenty of use for our guide on becoming a cam girl.

Where Do Cam Girls Work?

To no one’s surprise, cam girls make their living on cam sites. These streaming platforms are similar to Twitch, with added functionality to support their specific business model.

We’re primarily referring to the token system. Namely, because directly paying a sex performer may be illegal based on where you live, cam sites use tokens to put a rubber on that issue.

Viewers buy tokens, pay models with them, then models convert those tokens into real-world money, and finally withdraw it.

This is a profitable line of work for both cam girls and business owners. If you see yourself as the latter, you may want to check our guide for starting a webcam business.

There are countless cam sites out there, but the following three are the industry’s big dick daddies:

Any of them would be a great choice for an aspiring cam girl, and underdogs like Babestation are a good choice too. If Chaturbate’s got your fancy, though, you’ll want to check our comprehensive guide for making it big there.

How Much Do Cam Girls Make?

Cam girls’ earnings are like dick sizes — everyone is different. Numbers don’t lie, though, so let’s whip out some sexy facts taken from Ready Set Cam:

  • The average cam girl earns $58.77 per hour
  • If we assume a 40-hour work week, the average American cam girl makes around $136,500 per year
  • The highest-paid cam girls make about $315.00 per hour, while C-listers go down to $4.70 per hour

That’s not everything, though. Models who manage to grow a sizable fan base can always branch out, take their existing audience to OnlyFans, and live like actual queens.

If and when you feel ready for such a leap, our detailed guide will be right here.

Conclusion

You now know everything you need to enjoy the many charms of cam performers, or perhaps even join the industry. And if it’s not your thing, that’s fine — at the very least, your days of wondering what is a cam girl are over.