(only addressing a tiny portion of points you brought up and I know it’s stuff you already know from experience)

A couple of things I try to keep in mind about the way sex workers market themselves: a lot of us type out a bunch of shit without really thinking – the text is one TASK in a long list of things that need to be done in order to make money. Even if we’d like to be more creative or represent ourselves in more nuanced and whole ways, sometimes we just don’t have time or are just starting out and mimicking other people thinking it’s Standard Operating Procedure therefore it must work. A lot of girls see other people’s sites and think, “I could do that too” and one generic stereotype of what’s desirable becomes a template for the horde. On top of that a lot of us can ENVISION awesome websites, etc. but we don’t have the start-up money or skills or time to make that happen, we just need something that works NOW.

Also, kind of like what part of what River said, sometimes recognizable language (and/or design when it comes to web stuff) really DOES work, or works BETTER than being creative/different. I am constantly learning that the hard way (example: my new blog layout not converting as well as a generic and familiar porno-site tour) and bouncing back and forth between “I should do it the way everyone else does it so people know that I’m selling something and how to buy it” and “why am I doing this like everyone else when I could be highlighting what makes me ‘special’”?

As the years have gone by with my site I’ve dropped or de-emphasized some of the classist bullshit (college-educated, not-your-average webwhore language, etc.). Not to focus on being more unique or creative (and not because I originally said them falsely or with conscious pretension), but because I recognize there are hundreds of girls with sites who can say all those things too. I am not “special”. On the other hand, I think it worked better to highlight those attributes regardless of whether they were real (college-educated) or total nonsense (not average). The truth is that my site (used to, at least) attract and retain a demographic (older men with more than average amounts of money) that made me more money than if my stats looked the way other porn sites (poor 18-25 year olds) look but without the benefit of all of their traffic.

It can be a huge conflict trying to decide between being creative/honest/personally/politically provocative and trying to make money NOW. I think a lot of us get into this line of work, especially with the webwhoring, thinking it’s going to be a vehicle for expressing ourselves and provoking change but discovering we can’t afford to do it that way most of the time.

I know I’m ignoring a lot of good points you brought up and maybe getting off topic. Anyhoo . . .

I’ve never yet paid for a professionals service, emphasis on the ‘yet’ as it is something I look forward to doing one day… So I can’t talk from experience. In the times in the past (20 years ago when I was 20ish) when I’d been unable to pick up in a bar / beach / dance club / party etc for a few weeks and frustration was building I’d check out some of the working girls on the street and on several occasions I’d visited some of the local brothels but the girls I cold afford didn’t turn me on and the ones that I lusted for due to some combination of the things I looked for in any casual encounter – tall, athletic, small breasted, lighter colored hair / skin, attractive happy face, my age or a bit younger, university educated and great to talk to – were all way way out of my price range. I didn’t want to go through the net (not so big back then) or an advert in the paper because I wanted to see what she would look like. I wanted to feel the stirrings of lust before I spent my coin.

So what I was looking for was something not too much different from the reqular chicks I used to casually hookup with. Most of them I met through surfing, rock climbing or at uni. I was a uni student back then, raging hormones but no money. There was just no way that I could afford anything much more expensive than what regular sex costs – a few beers and a decent Chinese meal.

I was fairly good friends with a sometimes escort and club dancer. Had a hard hard crush on her. Took her out to dinner a few times too. No joy tho’. She never took her knickers off for me.

No, everyone’s opinion is welcome, I was just hoping some clients might be reading this and be willing to ad their 2 cents.

I see what you mean about normalizing, I was more or less talking about legalizing, or at least decriminalizing or some type of legal status that means when we decide to do this work we don’t have to worry about getting arrested, raped by the cops or being ostracized on national television.

Its cool that you did that experiment, how lame of the clients though. I get that they don’t want to support someone’s drug addiction or whatever, but how does consigning to the masses generalized idea of “classy” help out either? Cocaine is a yuppy drug afterall

In a lot of ways I get why people change their marketing strategies to something that has been proven to work, I just wish it made more sense or something and wasn’t so lame.

How did you pull off being a doctorate student? hehe

About normalizing the sex industry – I think it’s important to note that normalizing is the opposite of valuing. When every woman is a whore, our value is significantly decreased. Same with everyone knowing a whore, reading a whore blog, having whores in pop culture, etc. This happened in stripping a few years ago, suddenly booty shaking and casual sexuality became normal and there were a zillion more strippers. At the same time, guys valued strippers less because they could get the same things and more at parties, when before they couldn’t. Veronica Franco was respected for being something that most woman wouldn’t dare to become, yanno?

About the classy thing. My experience has been that my best escorting clients (the ones I had the most personal connection with but also the ones that spent the most) were worried in seeking out an escort that they would be supporting someones drug habit or pimp, or worse becoming a part of their self destructive behavior. I’ve always tried to put something in my ads to indicate that I’m basically sane and healthy and coming at this from a place of being in my own power.

But it’s also true that when you appear to have more money, people perceive your time as being worth more money. When I was in SF I put up two ads, one saying I was some kind of classy travelling doctorate student looking for a guy to show me the city in style and then go back to his room for 1k, and one saying I was a hippie girl on the road looking to finance my travels to alaska for 200/hr. The first ad got a much better response. When changing how you market yourself can get you so much more money, it’s hard not to do it even if it is stupidly pretentious.

haha, I would love to talk about this kind of thing for hours.