Why I make live web cam shows (& not the sexy kind!)

Every Sunday evening at 8pm PST / 10pm EST I host a live show. I’m not talking on a stage in a theatre production or in a bar doing standup.  I’m talking in front of my laptop on a web cam.

If you’re like me, you probably used to think of web cams as either ways to communicate online with friends & loved ones or as something you pay to watch because there was nudity (and who knows what else) being shown on the other end.

But now sites like BlogTV are making it possible for people like me to have another powerful way to entertain and get exposure online, and most importantly connect with my viewers.

See, one of the things that I love about YouTube is the commenting.  People who watch my videos can essentially “talk” to me one comment at a time and I can reply to their comments and they can reply to each other’s comments.  It’s interactive and one of the things that in my opinion make it way better than a TV show.  But my BlogTV show takes it even further. A chat room full of people can write all the comments they like talking to each other and to me, and I can of course respond and engage with them speaking to them live as it happens.  Real conversations and continuous communication that’s not broken down by hours or days of waiting for a response like it is with YouTube video comments.

Nothing that I’ve done online helps to create connections and foster relationships like my BlogTV show. I only started doing them a couple months ago, but I already have some of my strongest supporters ever come out of it.  People who come every single week to “hang out” with me, chat and be goofy, and just have a good time for an hour (or hour and a half if I really get into it).    Those people have turned out to be my biggest cheering squad who tell their friends to come check out my show each week as well and help spread the word about what I’m doing.

Luckily for me, Michael Buckley from the super popular What Buck Show on YouTube co-hosted my first BlogTV show with me which really gave me a great start into it with a lot of new viewers.  Yesterday’s show gave me another big boost when the site featured me on their homepage and tweeted about my show in their Twitter feed.  We got up to 150 people watching at one point and a bunch of new people got to see and interact with me live who had never even heard of me before.

Do you have a BlogTV show or a live web cam show with another web site?  Do you have a regular show or just go on whenever the mood strikes you?  Do you like watching other people’s live shows?  Or is this all completely new to you?