Ran across this thread because I'm living in Medellin and working but figured I'd use my extra rooms to setup a studio and maybe grow it into something larger. I figured I'd throw in some things I learned in my research so far and maybe get some collaboration on some questions, I'm hoping to get this thing going in the next week or two.
I have a few amigas here who I've known for a couple years who work as models. I interviewed them this week to figure out some the details. I also signed up for LJ and got my girlfriend to do some modeling to check out the interface. I've applied for a MFC twice now with no response, I'm going to keep trying every 2 days. I've already got a Camera de Comercio and a RUT.
Everyone I've talked to says the big issue is flaky girls who who don't show up, or quit after they get enough to buy whatever it was they were working towards. Recruitment / training seems to be a big time sink. All the girls I've talked to found work in this industry through either: someone handing out fliers near their university / around clubs / on the street, from an ad in the newspaper classifieds, or through a friend. Some studios give the girls a bonus 100k if they bring in a girl and she lasts more than 30 days. I'm hoping to find talk with some people handing out fliers (for other companies in other industries) and see if I can get them to also do so for me, and institute the same bonus.
Most studios seem to give ~ 55% to the models, some have scales which pay out more if the model makes more. With LJ, the payout depends on what the rate is set to. With MFC, the payout is 3 bucks / minute in private. I'm shooting for 55% and will have some projections of "if you have this many minutes of private time per day, you would take home x.." to help convince potential hires to take the job.
I'm in need of furniture. It seems that often studios don't buy an entire bed (it's big) for workstations but sometimes use something called a "Poof". It's basically a very small reclining mattress bed thing which has back support. If you google "Poof sillon" or something, you'll find it. I'm hoping this is a cheaper option and allows me to put a curtain in each room, dividing it into two work areas instead of one.
Studios often have an administrator on full time or at a minimum during the day. The administrator performs scheduling, makes sure the girls get docked if they are late (10k-20k), and sometimes performs training. The biggest responsibility and time sink of the administrator seems to be dealing with technical issues on the PCs. I'm a tech guy, and am hoping to get around that by using group policies and limiting the trouble the models can get into and the applications they can open. I'm also thinking of some way to completely wipe the machines on boot to eliminate any potential virus' and will be disabling the USB ports. I only want them to be able to load the webcam site applications, a split cam application, and possibly skype. I've found some free internet cafe software that might do the trick (and be less work than using a GPO without a Domain Controller) and solve a lot of these issues at once if I can disable some of the features that I don't want.
Bandwidth is a big concern for me at the moment. I don't care about download speeds too much, I'm concerned with upload. Among the Une offerings for residential service, all of the plans, even up to 100Mb/s download, have only 1Mb/s upload. MFC recommends 2Mb/s up for each working model. I launched the LiveJasmin interface and watched my bandwidth, I saw it taking around 0.5Mb/s of upload. I can't tell from the Une business internet options what the available upload speeds are, but I'm sure there's some other options there.
I've got an account with Bancolombia here and I'll be sending funds directly to that account. I *think* that Bancolombia has a feature where I can take out credit cards which I deposit money on. I'm going to try to figure out how to never pay anyone in cash if possible, I know some of the larger studios somehow do this with a card that the girl uses to withdraw at an ATM. At larger scale, the exchange rate may end up killing me. Unless I call Bancolombia first and negotiate a rate on a wire, I noticed the completely rape me.
That was a bit of a rant, but I'm hoping some of that info is useful to someone. I'm still in the process of seeing how this goes and I'm sure there are 100's of ways to sort out these details.
One thing I thought of today... Other than my Camera de Comercio and RUT, do I need anything else? I need to ask my accountant here that question, but if someone knows... I'm wondering what if anything I need the model to sign when they come to work the first day. I don't really know if there are any litigious issues that could come up or any way to protect myself or if there's anything I'm obligated to provide them as an employer.