By Peter Berton

CYPRUS – Interactive content no longer is an optional component of online entertainment. With the explosive growth of the live webcam sector, platform operators, affiliates and performers alike — not to mention consumers — now find themselves with so many choices, decision-making becomes a matter of throwing a dart at a list.

One particularly active niche market for live webcams of late is the T-girl sector. Standing out in the crowded space requires dedication to innovation and flexibility. PussyCash’s ImLive division saw an underserved market and set out to rectify the problem.

ImLive was excruciatingly aware of the challenges inherent in operating a successful shemale webcam platform, which is why the company created an interactive destination that goes beyond mere live performances. In addition to live webcams broadcasting from all over the world, Shemale.com also offers lifestyle information, education and TS community news aimed at both consumers and models.

YNOT.com contacted Shemale.com spokesperson Carole and Vice President of Marketing Shay to learn more about market potential for the T-girl sector.

YNOT: Before getting into Shemale.com, let’s put PussyCash.com and ImLive.com into context.

Carole: PussyCash.com is an industry-leading affiliate program network that has paid millions of dollars to its affiliate webmasters over the years. We monetize traffic from web, mobile and tablets, and our affiliates get generous payouts for promoting an ever-expanding choice of high-conversion premium sites that attract a wide range of users.

Shay: Among the sites that PussyCash promotes are ImLive.com, its flagship webcam phenomenon, and Sexier.com, a highly popular webcam favorite. In addition, we maintain three successful lifestyle sites: Shemale.com, Supermen.com and FetishGalaxy.com. These one-stop-solution sites include exclusive articles, video training centers, guides to local spots and extensive [video-on-demand] sections.

Why add T-girls to the lineup? Was there significant demand?

Carole: ImLive.com, our flagship webcam brand, has always had many T-girl models and hosts. I guess there is more than one explanation for it, but the main ones are most probably the fact that we have always had a lot of traffic and also highly targeted shemale traffic from our more than 50,000 PussyCash affiliates.

T-girl models and hosts were always part of our platform’s DNA, and we have always given them the feeling they are as welcome as any of our other live-chat models. We pay on time and help them to promote themselves on our platform, so they are able to maximize their profits with us when online.

Shay: A few years ago we purchased the mega-domain Shemale.com and decided to build a unique lifestyle site on that domain. It took us a few years to gather the concept and decide exactly what we wanted it to include, but about a year ago, we launched Shemale.com as the first adult lifestyle site designed specifically for the T-girl community.

Why do you call Shemale.com a “lifestyle site?”

Shay: We call Shemale.com a “lifestyle site” because it offers much more than live webcam chats to its guests. The site also has a magazine section and a high-quality VOD section.

As well, Shemale.com offers guests the ability to read blogs and articles written by our models and also by top industry TS porn stars, including multiple-award-winning transsexual performer Eva Lin, and the chance to chat privately with her and other stars online.

Carole: We also offer the option to get information about the best bars and clubs around the globe where admirers can meet T-girls. We intend to keep on developing the site and to continue improving it, to make Shemale.com the best go-to lifestyle site for T-girls and their fans.

How many T-girl chat hosts participate on the site?

Shay: ImLive.com, which is the hub for all our webcam and lifestyle platforms, works with more than 80,000 models. Many of them are fully independent. Among them, thousands are T-girl.

Carole: Many new models apply every day, hoping to be approved as ImLive hosts. Due to the success of our shemale models, many T-girls are looking to work with us.

Why do T-girls find ImLive and Shemale.com so attractive?

Shay: We have a good reputation in the industry for treating all our host models well — always paying on time, giving them professional support and strongly promoting the sites. By improving our products all the time and by having sites that are dedicated to niche traffic, we get the models to come to us. That’s especially true for T-girl models.

Besides Shemale.com, we offer hundreds of white-label sites dedicated to shemale fans, with only T-girl models to offer services guests. Also, the ImLive shemale section is very powerful, especially under the new design of ImLive.com – so the T-girl models on our platforms are getting traffic from all of these sites.

Carole: In addition, we have always supported the industry. As the back-to-back sponsors of the AVN Awards show in Las Vegas every year, we insist on giving prizes not only to the best male and female performers but also to the best transsexual performer of the year. For a long time, the T-girl sector was completely overlooked by industry award shows. I think the whole T-girl community gives us a lot of respect because of that.

This year, ImLive also sponsored the Tranny Awards in Los Angeles, so our involvement in the T-girl market is getting larger and will just continue to grow from now on.

What is the source of Shemale.com’s traffic?

Shay: We have always had an enormous amount of shemale traffic, and we converted a lot of this traffic with the help of our T-girl models. By launching Shemale.com, we didn’t really open a “new niche” on our side. It’s more accurate to say we took a very strong niche on ImLive and across our other brands and platforms, and took it to the next level. By offering only comprehensive lifestyle site devoted to shemales, we provide much more than the usual to shemale fans and admirers.

Carole: Adding all the extra material and opportunities to interact outside the chat areas improved the service our TS models and hosts can give our guests. That made Shemale.com extremely attractive to consumers and models, but we didn’t overlook webmasters. The site is highly appealing to them because it converts better than other shemale destinations in the industry and also gives affiliates the ability to choose between per-sale payouts of a fixed $150 or a 35-percent lifetime revenue-share for their traffic. Both of those programs pay higher than the norm for the industry.

Based on the success of Shemale.com, does ImLive plan to add more niche-specific live-chat sites?

Carole: Yes. Recently, we soft-launched Supermen.com — a lifestyle site for gay traffic — and FetishGalaxy.com, a community lifestyle site for fetish traffic.

When these two sites are fully launched, and that will happen very soon, we will complete the first bunch of sites we’re planning to fully to PussyCash for our thousands of affiliates to promote. However, this won’t be the “last word” out of PussyCash this year, either.