A few things first in case you are wondering why you would even try to make money with Snapchat. Snapchat is probably the fastest growing social media and recently went public…so it probably won’t go anywhere anytime soon. As an adult performer or if you have an adult website, you probably STILL have a Twitter account. After 10 years of existence, Twitter is pretty much “dead”. I know, it seems like Twitter is adult friendly, although it’s not, and so easy, and you got used to it over the years. Remember 10 years ago when Twitter came around and you probably had the exact same reaction you have now about Snapchat. What is this? Why would I use it? How? What for? etc…

One of the reason why Twitter is doing absolutely nothing for you right now is because it got overflooded over the years by marketers trying to sell you something, creating fake accounts, bots…to a point where now the actual core of your followers is either very small, or bots, or they already moved on to something new…like Instagram…or Snapchat.

The good thing about Snapchat is that you know exactly who sees what you post. Unlike Twitter where after posting something it totally disappears of anybody’s radar and you might even have to repost it again.

Marketing vs Sales

One of the problem for a lot of people with social media is to get confused between Marketing and Sales. Twitter was often used for selling stuff. Marketers found a way to be lazy and try to get sales by creating bots and fake accounts to bump the number of followers and retweets…but in reality, social media is all about marketing. If you try to sell, sell, sell, it might work, for a while but eventually your brand will suffer. Whether you are a camgirl, a pornstar or own an adult website if the only thing people read from you is how they should click here to buy this or click there to subscribe to that…soon enough they’ll be tired of it and move on.

Social media is first and foremost to build your brand, engage with your audience and build brand equity. Eventually, people will buy whatever it is you have to offer because you engage with them, you participate actively to conversation or they just get a sense of who you are as a person and a brand and relate to it enough to buy anything you have to sell.

Of course this is not something that can be achieved with some kind of automation some marketers are trying to sell you. I don’t know about you but reading Twitter timeline and reading for the 10 billion times how someone signed up to your Onlyfans, is rather annoying. FYI it does absolutely nothing for you. At best Onlyfans gets some advertising so another model signs up and redirect her fans to sign up as well. It’s 2017 people! You don’t need to remind people all day long how much you have to sell everywhere. If they want to buy your content, they will or they won’t…on their own term.

But’s let’s move to Snapchat. I suggest reading an interesting infographic about Snapchat to get an idea of what we’re talking about here. Besides, by now you are probably on Snapchat as well or plan to do so since you see a lot of girls on it. Your main problem is that you don’t really know where to start and what to do. I won’t go into details on how to use Snapchat, I found a good video tutorial on youtube instead😉 Check it out if you need the basics.

Build your audience

When you sign up, you won’t have any friend at all. And unlike other social network, Snapchat does not have a discover feature that let people search for you. Snapchat will ask you to put your phone number and even ask you to go through your contact to see if anybody already have Snapchat so you can add them. For obvious reasons, I highly suggest you do NOT do that. Your family might figure out you have a Snapchat account, your vanilla friends as well. If you are in the closet as an adult performer, it’s probably not a good idea to share your personal info;)

1. Share your Snapcode

You will notice that there’s a QR code as your profile. This is how people can take a picture of the code and automatically add you. Share that code everywhere you can. If you have a Twitter account still, I suggest people to change your profile picture for your Snapcode. That immediately tells people that you do have Snapchat and if they follow you on Twitter, they might follow you on Snapchat as well. You can do the same on Instagram, Facebook if you have, etc…

That alone should give you a few followers to start up with. Although you will realize how many people actually are active on Twitter and realizing that your profile picture changed and they should also follow your Snapchat. So what’s next?

2. SFS

A good idea to build an even larger audience is to build a network. Don’t necessarily try to recreate the same community you already have on Twitter, Instagram, etc, but try to build a new one. After all, not everybody uses every single social network and don’t miss the opportunity to get new fans from different sources.

Start following your fellow models, pornstars, camgirls, favotite sites…and see what’s going on. More often than not you will see other people Snapcodes and “SFS”…aka “shoutout for shoutout” or “share for share” depending on who you are talking to. Basically, you are doing the equivalent of a link exchange, sharing your Snapcode with another account and post on each other story. That should give you a few new followers every day. The more you do the more it can give you BUT it can be annoying for your audience, so keep it to a minimum. Don’t be too greedy with how many followers you think you should have. A constant increase is better than a lot right away that slows down eventually because you only post other people Snapcodes.

So how do you find people to share with if you have nobody? It’s easy, do a Google search, a Twitter search and an Instagram search and search for snapchat takeover or sfs, there’s a few accounts out there. Grab their codes, add them and look at their story. When you see them post someone else account, screenshot, add, repeat. After a while you will know how to make the difference between a good and a bad account meaning, accounts that are real person, not just advertising accounts etc…yes there’s also fake and scammers on Snapchat but they are easy to spot. Trust your gut and try to create a network or good people that help each other grow your following.

3. Takeovers

They are a lot of accounts out there called “takeover” accounts. They are pretty much someone that let you connect to their account and post while promoting yourself. Don’t be fooled by these, they are often controlled by guys that might just want to have free naked pics of girls, or trying to make money growing their account incrementally. The main problem everybody has being content, takeovers only have to find girls, they are the ones who create the content for them. So just be careful again. Avoid the ones asking you for nudes in exchange or anything like that. It should be YOUR rules! If you are not comfortable, don’t do it. And don’t you let ANYBODY access your account either. YOU takeover someone else’s account, don’t get tricked into giving access so someone else that would steal your content or worse disappear.

Make sure you ask a few questions before doing a takeover. How many views do you have? Is there any rule? are probably the most important questions to ask. This will take time from your own story so it has to worth it. At the beginning it’s ok to do just about anything but eventually you will grow your followers and will want to do takeovers that has at least the same amount of views or more.

If you follow these steps you could grow your followers about a few hundreds each day…and this number will grow exponentially as you get more views yourself. That’s basic math here, this will work ONLY if you follow the next step.

Create Great Content

In everything you do, content is key. If you want people to follow you, like you…you need to give great content. Don’t get me wrong, content doesn’t mean free nudes. Whether you are a camgirl and make your living on cam, or a pornstar making movies, this is the content you are selling. Social media is about everything else. You don’t monetize your social media content, you use social media to help you monetize your actual content. I’m not gonna get into this too much as you probably already use other social network to share your lunch, dinner, parties, trips, etc.

One of the big difference with Snapchat is that it’s a story telling network, meaning to create stories, duh! In each story there’s a beginning, a middle and an end. Try to keep that format. Be creative and entertaining. You can post pictures, videos, apply filters,…just have fun.

I suggest posting as much as you can so people who follow you realize that this was a good idea to do so and don’t miss any of your content. Don’t fall for trying to sell something right off the bat or trying to sell something on each of your Snap, that will be annoying very quickly for your audience. Make then feel like you are simply having fun. Once you built a solid following, now it’s time to monetize it. Don’t be too impatient, build your audience and create great content that everybody is talking about. Now it’s time for next step.

Make Money With Your Snapchat

Now that you have thousands of views, that your stories are fun and entertaining…and a lot of tease, it’s time to try to get paid “members” You probably already saw models selling their “premium”. This is not a Snapchat feature by the way, it’s something you’ll have to create. Remember that Snapchat terms and conditions are very much AGAINST any adult material so try to keep your stories and anything you post as PG as you can. Or you WILL lose your account.

1. Create a Premium account

I don’t suggest to do a Premium membership with your main account. If you lose your account everything is gone. Simply create a new account and make it private meaning nobody can see it unless you add them. That way you have less risk to get reported and lose your account.

2. Create membership options

That part is up to you. You will see in general models do a “lifetime” options which means you pay once and that’s it. The main reason they do that is because monthly or even daily is very complicated to handle. Like I said, Snapchat does not have a feature that let you control members, when they pay etc…so you would have to have an excel spreadsheet that you update everytime someone pays or renew. If you don’t want to handle that yourself, Snapcentro is a good option. You can create any membership you want, it will handle the active members, when they renew or not and most importantly they will handle payments.

3. Payment options

When it comes to payment options, there are plethora, BUT none of those are adult friendly, meaning eventually you will lose those accounts: Paypal, Google Waller, Circle Pay, Venmo…Amazon. After seeing all those small transactions with comments about Snapchat, they will terminate your account and in Paypal’s case hold your money for 6 months before releasing it. So if you chose that route, know that you are taking a risk. Worse case, make sure  you withdraw your money regularly!

4. Even More Content…

Now that you have not one but two accounts, you have to put free content to attract new users and now you have to create “Premium” content for your paid users. So way more work. Try to make a schedule for yourself. For example, you log in in the morning, post a few Snaps, may be do a takeover or two, then move to your Premium, post uncensored content, then switch back to your regular account, do a few SFS…repeat.

Realistically, you can make a few $100s each day if you follow those steps and stay consistent. Consistency is the key to be successful on Snapchat and potentially make a living out of it. Don’t hesitate to try new things, experiment…Remember that a story stays 24 hours and disappear. I suggest you automatically save your stories to your camera roll on your phone so in case you lose your account, you kept everything. I also suggest to create another public account at one point as a backup. You don’t have to worry too much at the beginning but as your grow your audience you will get more risk to get reported especially if you are always border line R rated in your snaps. No need to do that from the get go, but as soon as you hit 3-4k views, plan a backup account and ask people to follow it. In the case you lose your account and chances are you will at some point you can get back on your feet.

Let me know what you think and if you have ideas, comments….