Yep, you read that right.
Me. Porn. Nakedness galore.
Here goes nothing…
I’ve always been a very sexual person, but growing up, I thought sex was bad because no one ever talked about it. But of course, being HUMAN, I wanted to learn about it somehow, so I turned to porn.
First the freebie stuff on late-night TV (totally softcore) and then the free stuff online (totally NOT softcore). It showed me a completely different side to sex than I had ever thought about. And it intrigued me.
When I was 18 or 19, I started selling nude and half-nude photos of myself on a “camgirl” website, sometimes raking in thousands each month. The more I shared, the more comfortable I got with my body and with sexuality as a whole.
After about a year or so of working as a camgirl, a photographer reached out and asked me if I would do a photoshoot for his website. He offered to pay me thousands of dollars.
As creepy and sketchy as that sounds, something made me say yes. So, I met with him, brought my boyfriend will me (just in case) and surprisingly felt really comfortable getting naked in front of a stranger that was taking my pictures.
I did this a few more times before I decided to start my own website. I bought my domain, had a designer whip up a design for me, and started taking photos and shooting videos like crazy (my boyfriend/now husband was actually my photographer and videographer).
I created a membership site. For a monthly fee, members got a weekly set of photos, a video and a live chat (with me on webcam). I had a lot of people sign up (including women!) and made a few thousand dollars each month.
I loved it. I loved the attention from people online (although when people started noticing me offline, it was strange as hell and made me feel weird), I loved the money, I loved feeling comfortable with my body and with sex.
After awhile, my husband and I did start shooting our own “porn” videos and photos, as well. Can’t say I hated this, either.
I went to industry conventions every 6 months or so, where I would hang out, half naked (sometimes fully naked) around the hotel with other adult film stars (we’d reserved the entire hotel - so everyone there knew there would be nudity!), shooting videos, taking pictures and making connections, so we could help each other promote our websites.
This was one of my favourite things about being in this industry - the ability to hang out with others who did the same thing and not feel weird about it.
After a little while, I started my own modeling “agency”, where I was actually the photographer and shot photos and videos of other women.
I would then sell that content to others in the industry to use on their websites. This added another few thousand dollars to my pocket every month.
So - why did I quit? Why did I leave a “job” that I loved and made a lot of money from?
Two reasons:
#1, I got pregnant.
#2, it was starting to feel less fun and more like work.
And once something isn’t 100% fun to me, I move on.
Being in the adult industry is not something I’m ashamed of (in fact, I’m damn proud of it). I’m glad I was able to experience what I did, for the 3 years or so that I was involved. Somedays I wish I was still doing it, because it was totally a lot of fun.
I learned a lot about business from this time in my life. I learned how to manage money. I learned how to charge what I was worth. I learned how to build connections. I learned how to market myself.
And of course, I learned how to make a lot of money quickly. All things I use in my business today.
So yes. I was in porn. And I loved every minute of it because it made me who I am today.
That’s my story. What’s yours?