SkinVideo / SkinVideo.com

Around for some time as a video-for-sale site like clips4sale.com SkinVideo has recently started to have live cams as well.  As they already had a great number of adult models on their site selling videos it has given them a good start with live chat as they are not starting entirely from scratch.  Despite the cams section being new they have many models registered, enough for there to be 5 to 10 online at time.

Not I'll admit a large number, but the quality is way above average in terms of being good looking native English speakers who have real experience as adult entertainers.

The web site is on the plain looking side, which means it loads fast and is easy to navigate.  No funky scrolilng in frames like MFC or loud reds you see over at Livejasmin, just simple thumbnails on a white background with a simple header.

Clicking a thumbnail, which has no description apart from the name, takes me straight into a typical basic Flash video and text chat window, a bit like the F4F one.  No membership required to just be a guest in free chat, and as the who-is-online screen doesn't show who is in free and who is in private you have to just click and see.  At the time I was checking there were 6 chatrooms running and of that 3 where in a private or group chat, which means guests see nothing.

Of the free rooms It's quite notable to me that the first few rooms I click into are more MILF than the typical teen hosts seen some places.  Maybe that was just an accident of the moment but perhaps this type of site attracts more independent long term entertainers, who would then be older?  Something to consider if you like a more mature conversation with your camlady.

For a chatroom with unregistered guests it is pretty civilized both in terms of pleasant and positive comments from those guests, and not one single system generated message bugging me to signup which are so common at most sites.  At the sometime not a lot is happening,  in the room I can only see a couple of other guests chatting along with me - some of them in Romanian.  But from the way the hosts are distracted they are presumably doing something else as well which you can't blame them for on a small site, two are on the phone as well.

Given that there isn't any reason to register when you are only watching free chat it might be a while before you bother to make an account as a viewer, but when you do it turns out you can't have one for free. 

Take care where you click.  If you hit the "Join" link in the top right this is actually joining SkinVideo.com - the video site.  And for that the most basic is $15/month which seem a lot for a membership alone, and it does not include any chat credits.

What that membership gets you see the right to download their recorded videos, remembers this site is called skinvideo, which are video clips made by lots of girls, not your typical webcam private recordings but proper video clips as you would find on an amateur or even pro porn pay site.  Whether that is a good deal depends a lot on whether you are interested in vids from any of the models working there; if you are a fan then it is probably a no-brainer, but if not then it seems a strange option when porn videos are basically free today.

And if you are only interested because of the Cams section, which is what I am looking at here, then it may seem an unattractive option.

So for a cam viewer what you should be doing is going into any room in the Cams section and clicking "Purchase tokens".  That gets you to a different membership window where again you have a pay, but this time for tokens.  It is 10 cents a token, less if you buy in bulk, and a minimum of $20 worth.   Credit card processing is via Vendo and takes all the major cards; Visa, MC, JCB, Discover and Diners.  Not seeing any other options so if you want to use online checks or wire or some type of electronic payment system  then you can't do that here.

This cams-only account can of course be upgraded later to watch recorded videos, but that's optional .  Stick with just the cam account and now you have a name  in the chat and with tokens of course you will get more attention from the hosts.

As well as attention in free you can use tokens to enter private or group chats, or to send tips.  Although this is more a traditional for-privates type of site many of the hosts do mention in their bio that they will do things for tips.

Group shows are 10 tokens, that's $1, a minute while private works out at $6/minute - less if you are buying tokens in bulk.  Charging is actually by the six second period rather than full minutes.

If you run out of tokens during a show it will end and you have to go and buy more, there is no continuous charging like at camcontacts. 

A minor grumble is that clicking on a thumbnail in who's online doesn't take you to a new web page, it's still the same url, so if you hit the "back" button in your browser hoping to go back to the thumbnails it doesn't do what you expect.  Instead it takes you to the actual previous page.  Similarly if you bookmark while you are watching a chathost you are not really bookmarking that particular room, but just the skinvideo cams section in general.

It is possible to bookmark a particular host's bio page, but you have to explicitly go through to that by clicking their name, though that doesn't always work, sometimes I get a "404 not found" error.  Right clicking on a thumbnail and opening in a new window or tab does always work though and gives you a url for that host which you can save, but it has no navigation to reach the rest of the site.  Given that the system doesn't have any built in "favorite host" system that's probably something they should take a look at fixing.

If you want to be a chathost on the skinvideo cam system then signup here.  That creates a cam system account, though you can still use it to sell videos that you have uploaded. e.g. not recorded webcam privates but actual videos you have shot with a proper camera.  Upload any video file and the skinvideo.com system will generate the thumbnails, make a flash version, and let you price and schedule it for publication. 

Signup for the cam system requires you to give an email first and confirm it, then you get to a page to uploaded your scanned ID and take a live webcam pic to show who you are.  There is a boilerplate modeling agreement, and then a performance rules agreement both to be agreed to.  Payments to hosts is by Check or by Payoneer and is processed very Monday.  The models get 8 cents for each token they have received.

Hosts signup here.

If you'd like to comment more on SkinVideo please drop me a line in the forum.  Thanks.