When you go to check out Chaturbate (the big kahuna of cam sites), you know what you’re there for. Find the right chat room, and there’s a great show to be had; one which, on a free-to-watch cam site such as that one, you don’t even have to pay for if you don’t want to.
ATTENTION, PEOPLE: There seems to be some confusion about how Chaturbate tokens are valued, and what they cost to purchase (the price). I will be explaining everything you need to know before you lay down your money.
But while taking in the sights, you might wonder about these “tokens” you see flying around. They’re clearly used for tipping, so there must be real money behind them. In other words, they’re Chaturbate currency, but what do they actually mean in dollars and cents?
When a webcam model smiles brightly and issues a profuse “thank you!” over a 500-token tip, did she just make some real money, or is she simply being polite to someone who just gave her SOMEthing?
How Token-Based Cam Sites Like Chaturbate Work
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of all that, let’s be sure we understand how these sites work. Under the free-to-watch cam site business model, which is the one followed by Chaturbate, there’s no serious attempt made to put up a pay wall between you and even the most hardcore sexual content. Some earlier cam sites tried to do this, such as by making you fork over the cash before you could see any nudity, for example.
But while this was a standard industry practice in the past, and you even still see a few (although increasingly rare) sites doing it today, it was never the most lucrative idea. The realities of the internet are such that pictures and video of naked women doing just about anything you can imagine are readily available for free.
Getting guys to pay for that kind of content is by no means impossible, but it’s an uphill battle from the word “go,” and you generally have to offer at least something beyond female flesh by itself.
In 2006, MyFreeCams had the idea – and a brilliant one, I must say, clearly born of an intimate understanding of the market – to simply allow you to tip the models (and optionally buy additional content from them, but the show was free).
Because viewers tend to become attached to their favorite cam girls and are interested in getting to know them, this system caught on, since it allowed guys both to help someone they care for make a living and simultaneously endear themselves in her eyes.
The way that this tipping and further purchasing was facilitated was through tokens: Fork over some real-world cash up front, and your money would be converted into Chaturbate currency (or that of whichever cam site you prefer) at a rate specified beforehand.
Needless to say, Chaturbate token cost is not the same thing as Chaturbate token value. That’s because the site is going to take its share of any money spent on tokens, before giving any of it to the cam models for whom the tokens are being purchased. Chaturbate’s share is about 50%, meaning that spending $100 on tokens will result in your being able to tip models $50. It does vary, however, because how much Chaturbate tokens cost in real cash varies. You’re allowed to buy in bulk to realize savings.
Chaturbate Token Price & Value Details
Let’s get into specific numbers. According to Chaturbate’s current prices (as of the writing of this post), you can get 100 tokens by paying $10.99. For $20.99, it’s 200 tokens – a savings of 99 cents versus 100 tokens x2. If you continue to do the math, you’ll see that the savings grow from there: 500 tokens cost $44.99, 750 tokens cost $62.99, and 1000 tokens cost $79.99. If you were to simply buy 100 tokens ten times, at $10.99 per pop, you’d spend $109.90; by springing for the 1000-token bundle, you save about 30 bucks.
Chaturbate token value for the models (as, again, opposed to Chaturbate token cost for the members) is fixed, since the cam site takes its cut at the time of purchase.
The formula is simple: To a model, 1 token is worth 5 cents. Therefore: 20 tokens gets her $1, 100 tokens is $5, 1,000 tokens is $50, 10,000 tokens is $500, and so on. So in our earlier example, our hypothetical girl who was tipped 50 tokens was making $2.50, about what you might tip a pizza delivery driver. Not a whole lot, but if she has a cohort of regulars throwing that kind of change at her regularly, it can start to add up.
Now, it might interest you to know that there’s a way to get your Chaturbate token cost down to $0 – in other words, free tokens. This is possible because Chaturbate runs an affiliate program for model and member referrals, which is basically a fancy way of saying they’ll pay you (in site tokens) for bringing them people either as performers (broadcasters) or as customers (viewer/members).
Just sign up for the program, and you’ll be given a unique “affiliate link” that you can post (Twitter is excellent for this). Whenever someone clicks that link and goes on to become a producing cam model or sign up for a membership, you get credit. It’s 500 tokens when you refer a model, and 10 tokens for a member; the disparity is because the member only has to get a free account, while the model must first generate at least $20 worth of revenue for the site before you receive your bounty.
Chaturbate is really an amazing cam site, and one could spend hours there without boredom ever becoming the faintest issue. Believe me, it feels like I’ve spent the better part of my adulthood surfing the cams on Chaturbate, buying tokens, tipping models, being a tyrannical room mod, and generally making an ass of myself in the various chat rooms.
The variety on this site is unmatched. There are other good cam sites, but many of them choose to restrict themselves only to female models. Chaturbate, on the other hand, welcomes not only women but men, couples, and trans people; basically, wherever your particular tastes run, you can almost certainly find someone on Chaturbate to cater to them.
Then there’s the quality of Chaturbate models, which is top-notch. This site easily attracts the most beautiful performers in the industry. That’s from around the world, but Chaturbate also has a high proportion of North American, English-speaking models. Other sites tend to struggle to attract this demographic, instead having large numbers of models from Eastern Europe, Asia, or South America.
Nothing wrong with that, of course; it’s just that people from those places are far less likely to speak fluent English. That’s a problem if you (as an English-speaker, which I assume you are since you’re reading this blog) value communication and interaction with a cam girl or guy. And, one quickly learns that getting to know the performers is where the real fun lies.
Chaturbate also has plenty of bots and apps to help the cam models run their channels. And that’s not just great for the performers: It allows them to host games to crown the chat room’s highest tipper, or track how many tokens they’ve earned toward a particular show they’re promising. It can be lots of fun for the members.
So yeah, definitely give Chaturbate a good checking out if you’re looking for a fun place to cavort with sexy people on cam.