Amber

Amber watched herself in the camera feed on her computer, adjusting the it slightly. She winked, and then cringed as she saw herself -- a short, brown-haired, 18-year-old girl with mild but lovely curves -- wink back with a short delay. She wondered if she could go through with this.

She'd been told that she was very pretty many times, but never thought anything of it. She was used to receiving attention from people in bars, but had never acted on it. She was too shy and prudish to act on the solicitation, and while she was proud of this modesty, she was curious about what might have happened.

It was certainly more uncomfortable than scary, but if her friend was right and she could be earning three figures in a single night with not much work, then maybe she can put aside her decency for a few nights. Apparently, all she had to do is chat to some strangers in a nice outfit. Maybe a few cute dances.

She was fully aware that she could go further; Amber spent some time browsing the website and certainly knew how far women would go on the site, but it’s a bit much for her. In a way, Amber was excited to find her own boundaries from this website - nobody knows what they’d do for the right money until the situation presents itself, and this was just the opportunity to test herself.

The goal was to cover rent and food costs while she studied her degree, not to make a career out of it, so she felt prepared.

Amber spent an hour dressing herself up for an imaginary date and found herself with her finger over the “go live” button on her laptop. She took a moment to tidy her hair and check herself out using the preview and clicked it. She was live.

• Category: Play
• Tips: Unlimited
• Time: No schedule

She sat and listened to music for the evening as her viewer count bounced between 0 and 1 and her chat remained empty. Her friend did warn her that it would be slow at first but she expected that somebody would at least say something.

After a week of evenings like this, Amber started to get frustrated. She had received some messages in the latter half of the week but nothing she’d be comfortable reading out loud. She had only earned about $17 dollars for 4 evenings of work.

She asked her friend what she was doing wrong and was told:

“It was always going to be slow to build up an audience - maybe try interacting with them and saying hi when the numbers move, and be patient! There’s a lot of competition with other people on the website so you need to stand out to your viewers if you want to keep their attention. Also, check out your competition!”

"Stand out," she reflected to herself as she idly browsed the site, wondering how to do just that.

However, something caught her eye. Most of the cams with the most viewers had a little icon on the corner labelled “interactive.” She wondered what that could mean, and whether it’s something she could do, so she clicked it.