There are a million ways to make a million these days, and the internet has become the ultimate hosting ground for those looking to get rich in weird and wonderful ways.

We know that sex sells, especially online, but what about those making money without having to get down and dirty? A website called Bobo is providing the platform through which more than 10 000 women make a living, playing the role of ‘hostess’ and entertaining a rapidly growing fanbase. The New York Post reports:

[Bobo is] a live broadcasting web platform where anyone can record themselves singing, playing piano, dancing or just chatting.

The hostesses are predominantly singers, playing to an audience that is 90 percent male, and mostly between the ages of 20 and 35. Acting cute is okay. Anything explicitly sexual is not.

Of course this doesn’t stop many individuals from pandering to the wants of their largely male viewers. One such hostess, 21-year-old Xiao Yue, specialises in sajiao:

…a very Chinese type of flirting characterized (sic) by the woman acting in a cutesy childlike manner and speaking in a whiny voice. She puts on little dance mime routines one minute, seductively eats strawberries the next.

So if the (mostly) men watching aren’t in it for sexual gratification what benefit do they derive from forking over money to watch the hostesses in action? Zhu Peihua, a regular user of the site, quoted here in the New York Post:

After finishing work, except for watching TV, films or just lying in bed, playing computer games and so on, there isn’t a real person talking to you. But with this… this is a real person. You can interact with them. I have some one who will talk to me.

The current record for earnings through the site stands at over a million yuang (R1.94 million). For that amount of money you can dress me up as a cute Chinese schoolgirl any day of the week, although I doubt the viewers would be as enamoured.

[sources:reuters&nypost]