IRVINE, Calif. — Chaturbate.com has begun accepting bitcoin as a form of payment.
The Orange County-based, live cam site added the alternative payment solution on March 24, responding to what Chief Operating Officer Shirley Lara said was overwhelming demand for it.
“Even before we added bitcoin, we had done a little survey on the site and we were blown away by the high response,” Lara told XBIZ. “Members said, ‘Yes, yes, yes we want you to do it.’ So there was real demand from members of our community.”
The Chaturbate regulars were so adamant about bitcoin that they got a discussion topic about it all the way onto the first page of Reddit.com.
“So the hype was definitely there,” Lara said. “If this trend continues, which the numbers continue to show that we’re consistently growing with more people paying with bitcoin, we plan to pay out affiliates and models with bitcoin and if they want that option, too.”
Bitcoin is becoming an increasingly viable option for adult site users who want to maintain anonymity when paying for services online. In addition to its anonymity — no name or address is needed when using bitcoin — the digital currency is also a universal payment option that transcends international borders.
“As soon as we had the programming power we jumped on it,” Lara continued. “We wanted to do it earlier but our team was working on other projects that needed to be wrapped up first.”
Less than two weeks in, Lara said so far the response has been “enormous.”
Chaturbate’s growth has been entirely organic since its launch in June 2011, according to Lara, who still remembers the days when her staff would be excited with “two rows of girls online” at the same time.
“Now at any given point there’s 500 girls online broadcasting from all over the U.S. and Canada. The majority of our traffic is U.S. and Canadian,” she noted.
“I think the fact that we have high payouts was really appealing to the models. The hardest part is to balance traffic and models. When we first started I had studio owners hitting me up telling me, ‘I can get you more models tomorrow.’ But I was telling studios, ‘No, if our site doesn’t organically grow, if we get an influx of 100 girls and they don’t make money, they’re not going to stay.’”
Lara deals not only with webmasters and affiliates, she also is hands-on with the models and committed to community outreach. She regularly attends trade and consumer shows and last weekend made the rounds at the annual Phoenix Forum.
“It’s crazy how many times I hear from a girl that ‘Chaturbate has changed my life.’ It feels kind of good to give these girls the opportunity to make money from home without having to show up on a porn set,” Lara said.
