By Peter Berton

IRVINE, Calif. – Right now, as you read this, females, males, couples and transgendered amateur webcam models are strutting their stuff online in a live-chat forum where end-users pay no up-front charges to participate for as long as they like.

More surprisingly, the broadcasters — as the performers are known — are showing everything they’ve got, not just teasing. Yet, according to the honchos at Chaturbate, many of the broadcasters earn a significant income from their shows.

How can this be? YNOT.com spoke with Chief Operating Officer Shirley Lara to find out.

YNOT: The site is entirely free for consumers?

Shirley Lara: Chaturbate is a free live webcam site. [Consumers] don’t need a credit card, and providing an e-mail address is optional.

There are no limitations to a free account holder. They can chat and watch for as long as they please. Men, women, couples and transgenders can broadcast and compete in the hourly contest and earn tips in the form of tokens.

And some of these people actually make a living? How does that work?

We wanted to create a genuinely free website for consumers, but at the same time make it beneficial for broadcasters. Broadcasters can earn close to 60 percent, making Chaturbate one of the highest-paying webcam sites. The reason: Even though our site is 100-percent free to consumers, we rely on the broadcasters to sell the product — token packages — to viewers.

Each token to them is worth five cents. To the consumer it varies, depending on how many tokens are purchased. Basically, the bigger the purchase the less per token it will cost.

So, the broadcasters sell tokens, not their shows, which they are free to conduct in any way they wish. How else does Chaturbate differ from other webcam sites?

The biggest things that set Chaturbate apart are our community-made apps and bots. They are open-source modules that power chat rooms.

Apps control chat and the panels but are primarily used to play games like hangman, keno and King of Tips within a chat room.

Bots control only the chat and can be enabled to say “thank you” automatically after every tip, not to allow graphics to be posted if you don’t have tokens, and automatically convert all-caps to lowercase letters. A broadcaster may have multiple bots running at once along with one chosen app.

In addition to apps and bots, every month we give away more than $11,000 in prize money for the hourly contest. The most-viewed chat room of the hour receives $10; second place gets $5. Every day there are 48 cash winners.

The platform offers multiple potential revenue streams, then.

There are multiple ways of earning besides from tips and prize money — like selling video or picture sets, creating a fan club and charging X amount every month for access to uploaded content. Broadcasters also may charge by the minute for private, group and spy shows using the “Share and Earn” links. They also receive credit for every referred user.

What do you offer affiliates?

Chaturbate offers three programs to affiliates.

First, there is our pay-per-lead program. It pays on unverified free registrations. The user simply creates a username and password. No credit card info is asked and providing an e-mail address is optional, and the affiliate still gets paid for the free registration. The highest paying level is Tier 1 at $1 per free registration, and it includes over 31 countries.

The second program pays affiliate 10 tokens for every free registration. Tokens may be used on Chaturbate.com.

Lastly, our recurring revenue share program pays 20 percent of lifetime purchases.

We also allow affiliates to link directly to models and offer co-branded white-labels. White-labels can be made two ways. The first is by using our WL maker, which takes less than five minutes from start to finish. The second is using our API and gives the affiliate more customizable options.

What lessons that might benefit other adult website owners have you learned from this business?

The webcam world has taught me that chivalry is not dead. It’s amazing to see the gifts of generosity given to our broadcasters. We have seen everything from plastic surgery and enormous tips for birthdays to a new washer and dryer. The money to purchase these things was given in the form of tokens, which means some affiliates got big paydays.

The beauty of the webcams business is the broadcaster is live, and the consumer can essentially be his own porn director. No porn movie can provide the magnitude of personalization in picking a girl and directing what she does, or the high level of intimacy that webcamming can.