Sex Worker Search

The ability to get content removed from the internet is a handy skill to have as sex worker.

I often see people requesting help and advice on Reddit and on sex worker group chats on WhatsApp when their images and or contact details are appearing somewhere and they want them taken down.

Scraper Sites

This can happen when scraper sites use a bot to extract details from other websites. Scraper sites are escort directories with a business model of scraping other directories ads to make their own site look popular in the hopes of generating traffic and getting people to pay to register.

Outdated Ads

It can also happen with old, outdated ads. eg when someone has registered, created an ad and then lost, or forgotten, their login details and lost access to the email they registered with so they can't reset their password.

Stolen Content

In some cases our images and ad copy can be outright stolen by other sex workers, or scammers pretending to be sex workers.

Copyright of Images

The owner of the copyright of your images is probably the photographer under UK law. Check what the applicable law is in your location. If you're getting new pictures taken, you might want to ask the photographer to assign you as the sole owner of the copyright. Here's the form you can ask them to sign in order to do this.

Takedown Requests

Whatever the reason, if our images and personal details are appearing somewhere we don't want them to appear, there are some useful techniques that can assist in getting them taken down.

Google

To remove a website from Google search results, you can use the Google Search Console. First, verify ownership of the website through the console. Then, go to the "Removals" tool within the console to request the temporary removal of specific URLs. You can also add a "noindex" meta tag to the pages you want to exclude from search results, which instructs Google not to index those pages. Additionally, you can block Google’s web crawler (Googlebot) using the "robots.txt" file. For immediate issues, use the "Remove Outdated Content" tool in Google's support to request removal of cached versions of pages.

Google Images

To remove an image of yourself from Google Images, you need to first identify the source of the image and contact the website owner to request its removal, as Google cannot remove images directly from third-party sites. Once the image is removed from the source, it will eventually disappear from Google Images. If you are unable to contact the site owner or the content is inappropriate, you can use the Google "Remove Outdated Content" tool to expedite the removal of the image from search results, or submit a legal removal request if it violates privacy or other policies. For specific cases like sensitive personal information or copyright violations, Google has dedicated forms to address these concerns.

Google also has processes for the following =

• Remove explicit or intimate personal images from Google Search results
• Remove explicit non-consensual fake imagery from Google Search results
• Remove association with irrelevant sexual content from Google search results for my name
• Remove personally identifiable information (PII) or doxxing content from Google Search results
• Remove content about me on sites with exploitative removal practices from Google Search results

Yahoo

To remove an image of yourself or other content from Yahoo, you'll need to first get the image or content taken down from the source website hosting it, as Yahoo cannot remove anything directly from third-party sites. Contact the webmaster or site owner and request the image be removed. If you are unable to contact the website owner or need to expedite the process, Yahoo offers a Yahoo Search Content Removal Tool to report outdated or inappropriate content and request its removal from the search results.

Bing

As per google and Yahoo, contact the webmaster of the site where your image or content appears first. Failing that, they have a removal tool.

Duckduckgo

Unlike other search engines, because of the way their results are sourced (mainly from Bing), DuckDuckGo does not have a specific removal tool, so the only way to get the image removed from search results is to ensure it's taken down from the hosting site. I highly recommend Duckduckgo since, unlike google and co, it doesn't track you and it is designed to protect our privacy.

Reverse Image Search Engines and Facial Recognition Like Pimeyes

Pimeyes and other reverse image search and facial recognition tools hold databases of millions of images which are then "fingerprinted" by their algorithm. The exact measurements and proportions of faces are encoded in such a way that you can upload a picture of someone's face, and it will return results showing the closest matches. These can be scarily accurate. A client could take your face picture from an ad and it will show him pics of you at your tenth birthday party from your mum's Facebook or from the background of some tourists' pictures where you were walking past with your head half turned 200 metres away in the background.

You can get yourself removed case by case via their manual exclusion process or opt-out altogether.

They require a current selfie and identity document (with sensitive information hidden).

WHOIS

If you can't find an email address on the site you want to contact, or by simply googling the name of the site and the words "contact email", about a takedown request, try doing a WHOIS Search. Just copy and paste the domain name into the search field and in some cases it will give you a contact email.

Cloudflare

A lot of sites use Cloudflare which will obsure their contact details from Whois searches. In this case, if you do a Whois search and you see that they're using Cloudflare, you can submit an abuse report to Cloudflare.

WHOIS Hosting

It's a good idea to CC in the contact email of the hosting provider of the website your issuing a takedown request to. You can often find out who their hosting is with using a WHOIS Hosting lookup tool. eg Hosting Checker. Publishing non consensual intimate media and then ignoring takedown requests is a big no no and puts their site in breach of all sorts of national and international regulations. Some sites just don't care but if they think their hosting provider might terminate their agreement and force them to rebuild their site somewhere else, that's an excellent additional incentive to get off their arses and action your takedown request.

GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a comprehensive data privacy law in the European Union that aims to protect individuals' personal data and privacy. In the context of websites hosting non-consensual intimate media (NCIM), GDPR plays a significant role because such media often contains personal data, like images or videos revealing someone's identity without their consent. GDPR requires websites to have a lawful basis for processing personal data, which is not present in cases of NCIM since it violates privacy and consent. Affected individuals have rights under GDPR to demand the removal of their data (including intimate media), report violations, and pursue legal action against websites that fail to comply, potentially resulting in significant fines and penalties for the violators.

DMCA

In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is often used in situations involving non-consensual intimate media (NCIM), although its primary purpose is to address copyright infringement. The DMCA allows individuals to request the removal of content from websites if they own the copyright to the material, which can sometimes apply to NCIM cases if the person depicted took the photos or videos themselves. However, the DMCA does not specifically address privacy or consent issues, so its application to NCIM is limited to cases where copyright ownership is clear. For broader protections, U.S. states have enacted "revenge porn" laws that specifically criminalize the distribution of intimate media without consent, and these laws provide a more direct legal remedy for victims by allowing them to pursue criminal charges or civil claims against individuals or platforms hosting such content.

Revenge Porn Laws

It's worth mentioning the words "Revenge Porn" somewhere in your takedown request as an email with these words included may put the fear of litigation into their legal department more so than without. Revenge porn laws are designed to criminalize the sharing of non-consensual intimate media, typically distributed to harm or embarrass someone. In the U.S., these laws vary significantly by state, with most making it a criminal offense to distribute explicit images or videos without consent, allowing victims to pursue both criminal charges and civil damages. However, the absence of a comprehensive federal law creates inconsistencies across states. In the UK, the distribution of revenge porn is a criminal offense under the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, which specifically targets the sharing of private, sexual photos or films without consent. Similarly, in the EU, various countries have implemented national laws to address revenge porn specifically and mentioning whichever law is relevant to your location and/or the location where the website is based could help to light a fire under them.

Watermarks

Watermarking your images is a good way to prevent people from stealing them and using them for nefarious purposes eg deposit scammers.

If you have your own personal website, I highly recommend putting your logo, including your website URL on as a large, semi transparent watermark on all your images.

GIMP is excellent, free software that can be used to easily achieve this.

Standard Email Formats

If you can't find the contact email for a website, here are some common email formats you can try based on the domain name (replace "websitename.com" with the actual domain):

1. [email protected]
2. [email protected]
3. [email protected]
4. [email protected]
5. [email protected]
6. [email protected]
7. [email protected]
8. [email protected]
9. [email protected]
10. [email protected] (or "inquiries" for US spelling)
11. [email protected]
12. [email protected]
13. [email protected]
14. [email protected]
15. [email protected]

These are standard formats. CC them all in and at least one of them might connect you with the correct person or department on the site.

Sex Worker Search is a Search Engine, Not a Scraper Site, But Please Contact Me Anytime to Remove Your Site from Search Results

A scraper site, extracts ads and images to create their own directory listings by re-using other sites' ad copy and images.

Sex Worker Search doesn't have any directory listings, doesn't contain any ad copy and doesn't display images.

Sex Worker search only displays site titles and taglines with the URLs of independent sex worker websites.

In the same way that Google, Bing, Yahoo and Duckduckgo index websites in their search results, that's what Sex Worker Search does.

ie SWS is a search engine. Not a directory.

Removing Your Site From Sex Worker Search Index

If you've retired, or you're on hiatus, or if for any reason you decide you don't want your site to be indexed in search results on Sex Worker Search any more, please send me an email anytime and I'll happily remove your website from search results. It will only ever take me up to one day to do this. Usually I'll get it done almost instantly.

Takedown Request Template

Subject: Takedown Request: Unauthorized Use of My Personal Information and Images

Dear [Website/Platform Name] Abuse Team,

I am writing to formally request the immediate removal of a profile on your website (link: [Insert URL of the profile here]) which contains my personal information and images, uploaded and published without my consent. This action violates multiple legal standards, including but not limited to the GDPR, DMCA, and laws surrounding non-consensual pornography (commonly known as "revenge porn").

Grounds for Takedown:

1. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
   As a resident of the [insert your country/region], I am protected by the GDPR, which mandates that my personal data, including any information and images that identify me, may not be published or distributed without my explicit consent. The profile on your site breaches GDPR Articles 6 and 9, which outline conditions for lawful data processing, as no consent was provided for the use of my personal data.
2. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
   The images included in the profile are my intellectual property and are used without my permission. Under the DMCA, I request that you remove all unauthorized copies of these images immediately. Please consider this letter as a formal DMCA takedown notice.

• Description of copyrighted work: The unauthorized images are identifiable as photographs of me, depicted in a manner that infringes upon my copyright.
• Location of infringing material: [Insert URL of the profile/page where the images appear]

3. Non-Consensual Pornography / Revenge Porn Laws
   The images and information being shared without my consent are of a sensitive and explicit nature. In accordance with [insert relevant revenge porn or non-consensual pornography laws in your country/region], sharing these materials without my explicit consent is illegal. The unauthorized distribution of this content constitutes a violation of my privacy and is a form of harassment.

Request for Immediate Action

I request that you:

• Remove all images, content, and any personal information related to me from your website immediately.
• Confirm in writing that this has been done and that no further distribution of the content will occur.
• Provide information about the uploader of the content and any actions taken against their account, if applicable.

I trust that you will take immediate action to comply with this request. Failure to act promptly may result in me pursuing further legal action.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this serious matter.

Sincerely,

Someone on reddit asked me how to build a website so that they can then get their own site indexed here on Sex Worker Search.

I'm no expert on web design but I know someone who is.

Josey from Lovesudo is a web design genius. Highly recommended. Josey is honest, reliable, hard working and committed to helping sex workers to own personal websites.

She's obsessed with security and privacy and genuinely extremely invested in working to achieve goals that will benefit sex workers.

My thoughts on the subject, which I shared when asked in reddit =

Buying a domain name is easy enough. eg on namecheap.

Then you'll need hosting eg Digital Ocean and then you need a website eg by spinning up WordPress using Spinupwp.

Then choose a theme.

Then look at other people's sites and figure out what menu items, text and images you want eg by searching here on Sex Worker Search.

Do not let any webmaster or Web designer own your domain name or pay for your hosting on your behalf.

Buy the domain and hosting yourself and anonymise your details for domain ownership so people can't look you up with whois.

You don't want anyone else to own your site. You want to be able to easily fire and re-hire. Not have your site hijacked by someone who overcharges and or under delivers.

Make sure your website says at least which country you're in and preferably a state and city. Weirdly a lot of people forget to say where in the world they are on their websites. I recommend having your location in your site title and or tagline and meta description so it's top and centre of every page. Otherwise some clients will land, spend literally 2 seconds looking for your location, not find it and bounce to look at someone else's site instead.

Same for gallery, rates and contact details. If clients can't find these in 2 seconds, you're losing business from people who lose patience and bounce. So you don't want your rates to be called considerations or remuneration or anything other than "rates" and you don't want rates hidden halfway down some other page, you want a menu item clearly labelled "rates" which goes to a page which clearly states your rates.

If you have a blog page and you post unique content on there using the kind of words you want to rank for on Google and that content is appealing enough that people will read it from start to finish, then the more you post, the higher you will rank on Google and when you're page 1 for a term like "cuckolding male escort London" or whatever term describes you and or your niche services and your location, then you won't need directory ads any more and you can probably afford to set your rates way higher than someone who relies on directory ads alone.

Good luck! Let me know if/when you have your site if you want it indexed on Sex Worker Search.

Cover image thanks to Midjourney AI. 

This is a work in progress based on the How-to Get Started as a Sexworker FAQ I wrote for the /r/sexworkers subreddit. I'll continue to add more subheadings here and hopefully build this into a useful resource.

Agencies

When someone contacts you saying they represent an agency, assume that they are lying. Don't proceed until you've verified that they do in fact represent that agency. eg Ask for the website and then contact the agency on the number listed on the site and ask them to confirm that the person who contacted you is genuine. If they make some excuse why they don't have a website, it's a scam.

If you find an agency and you're thinking of applying, search for the name of the agency on reddit. Failing that, contact an established independent sexworker from that location. Eg someone who has their own website and social media with a lot of followers who's been around for many years. Ask them if they have heard of the agency and would they recommend it.

A legit agency makes their money from commissions. Usually 30% of the fee. So they would arrange the date, you meet the client, the client pays you cash. Then you pay the agency their commission afterwards.

If they try to get you to agree to anything that doesn't resemble the above. Eg they expect you to pay them their commission before the date occurs. Or they tell you the client pays the agency and then the agency pays you after the session, it's a scam.

The lower the average rates on an agency site compared to the average rate for that location for an independent the more likely it is that some kind of coercion or exploitation is involved if not outright trafficking.

If they want you to pay any registration fee or a monthly fee or any kind of payment at all, including payment for their photographer, it's a scam.

They might want you to use a photo set on your listing that you don't use elsewhere. But there should be the option to choose your own photographer.

In the UK, and as far as I know everywhere else, agencies wanting you to be exclusive to them would be the exception. Most agencies are happy for you to also advertise independently and with other agencies but will obviously not want you to give your direct number to clients they send you.

If they want to interview you, meet them somewhere public like a bar or café. Don't go anywhere in private. A legit agency won't ask you to get naked or do any kind of "audition" before they'll list you.

Camming and Selling Content

Thanks to /u/HereFortheFood954 for the following =

check out r/sellercirclestage, r/onlyfansadvice, and r/camgirlproblems. They are more specialized in their respective areas of sex work and offer "how to get started" guides which are linked below:

Getting started selling content on Reddit guide:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SellerCircleStage/comments/g9nc8x/feeling_overwhelmed_and_looking_for_help_read_here/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Getting started camming guide:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CamGirlProblems/comments/f8ai7l/a_beginners_guide_to_camming/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Getting started selling on Onlyfans guide - here are a few guides specifically for Onlyfans as that area of sex work seems to be one of the most popular asked about on this sub:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SexWorkers/comments/ikboug/i_wrote_a_how_to_guide_for_onlyfans_and_online/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

https://www.reddit.com/r/SexWorkers/comments/gxao1k/found_this_very_detailed_onlyfans_guide_for_those/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

https://www.reddit.com/r/SexWorkers/comments/keghnl/i_made_a_new_little_guide_for_current_and/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

A master list of all the NSFW subreddits: https://reddit.com/r/ListOfSubreddits/w/nsfw?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app

For those wanting more information on stripping, check out r/stripper. Again, please read their sub rules before interacting, you must be a current dancer to post but you can read through the feed.

Last, for those that don't know what to charge for an online service, check out r/sexsells to see what the average price is for what you want to offer. No one can tell you what to charge for your services, that's up to you and the market.

Thanks also to /u/MissFaithRae for sharing her Wiki.

My understanding of the most popular content selling site, Onlyfans, is that they do nothing to promote sellers so if you don't already have a large social media following of people who might want to pay for your content, then it's going to be very difficult to make any money on onlyfans. Also if they find out you are an escort, they'll ban you and steal any credits they owe you. I will never register there for this reason. If a company that profits from sexwork is openly and hypocritically anti sexwork, they're not getting a share of my income.

Cash Up Front

Always get cash up front.

Never provide services first and ask for cash later.

You can make a note of this requirement on your website or ad.

In USA it's common to require that clients put the cash in an envelope and have the envelope somewhere pre-arranged or placed in plain sight rather than handing over the cash.

Some providers count the cash in front of the client. Others send their client to the bathroom or excuse themselves to the bathroom and count the cash out of sight.

After you've confirmed the amount and checked for fake bills, put the money away out of the way. Preferably don't let the client see where you put it.

If you leave cash out, there's the risk they could take it back when they leave.

Watch out for the possibility of a client switching the envelope. ie Paying with an envelope of genuine cash and then later swapping the envelope for another full of cash sized paper.

Contact Details 

It's up to you which contact methods you prefer.

Some providers are happy to communicate via phonecall, txt/sms message, social media messages, whatsapp, telegram, signal, email and contact forms.

Other providers feel that one or more of these contact methods attracts too many timewasters and choose to limit their contact options.

The more contact options you offer, the more potential clients can reach you.

Fewer options, means fewer clients.

So if you are already reaching your financial targets, maybe remove a few of your least favourite contact methods.

Otherwise, I suggest, list them all. Then if someone contacts you and doesn't immediately get to the point about where and when they want to meet, send them a copy and paste message you have saved in your autoreplies or in your notes app telling them to go look at your website and come back when they're ready to book an appointment. Use the copy and paste to tell them exactly what info they need to send to book an appointment. How to screen. How to pay a deposit. And/or give them the option to pay you for a chat session and give them options how to pay you for chat.

eg. this is my copy and paste message =

"Hi,

Thanks for your message.

Please read my about page, rates etc and see my gallery on XXXX.XXX (my website).

When you're ready to book an appointment, please let me know which day and what time suits you and whether you would like an incall or outcall.

Then I'll ask you to send a £50 deposit.

Via UK bank transfer to my business account.

Sort code: XXXXXX Account number: XXXXXXX

Or, If you just want to chat, please send me £50 by bank transfer or cashapp or email me a £50 gift voucher for Selfridges or John Lewis and I'll chat to you for 20 minutes."

If you list a contact number, remember to include the country code. eg +1 for USA or +44 for UK. Not everyone who contacts you will be using a phone with the same country code as you.

If you only accept calls and sms and have no other contact options, you're losing a lot of business. Whatsapp is especially popular. Depending on which country you're in the majority of clients will want to use it and will not call or txt if you don't have it. Message apps like whatsapp do attract a lot of time wasters. I recommend using them but be quick to send a copy and paste, as I mentioned earlier.

The internal messaging forms on directories are often broken and if contact details are hidden behind buttons that need a captcha, sometimes these are either broken or require more effort than some clients can be bothered expending to reach you. I highly recommend not relying solely on these. If the directory lets you list your contact details in plain text, do it.

If you have a contact form on your website, make sure it works. And be aware that if that is the only contact option you offer, the majority of clients who click through to your contact page and see the contact form will immediately close the page and go look for someone else who is easier to get in contact with. A contact form is the best form of contact for deterring timewasters but it will also deter a lot of genuine clients.

Counterfeit Money

Watch out for fake bills. Especially if you're in  country that uses paper money.

Here's a guide to detecting fake money in USA.

Here's the Bank of England guide to detecting fake notes in the UK.

Deposits

Some do, some don't. A deposit could be anything up to about 50% of your rate. The advantage of asking for a deposit is that guys who have paid a deposit are much more likely to actually show up to their appointment. If they've paid a deposit and don't show up, at least you have some compensation for time you wasted getting ready and for holding that timeslot which another genuine client might have wanted. The disadvantage is that you might be perceived as a scammer. Especially if you've just started out and have only one or a few directory ads and no personal website or history of social media posts and reviews. Then it might look like you're catfishing using a fake ad just to pocket the deposits. An alternative to a deposit for an outcall is to make the client book and pay for a taxi to pick you up from your address and take you to theirs. And for incalls if they've booked a day or more in advance, if you message them on the morning of the day they're due to see you and ask "are you definitely coming to see me today?" the timewasters usually won't reply.

Directories

Which directories to use depends on your location. Searching the web for the words "escort directory" plus the name of your location will return a list of hundreds of directories but the top results are not necessarily the ones that will get you clients. Just because a directory appears to have a lot of escorts listed for your location, doesn't mean it's any good. It is common for new directories to scrape other directories and harvest pictures and bios of escorts to list on their directory long before any real escorts or clients start using their site.

I recommend you search the web for "independent escort" plus the name of your location and scroll down past all the directories until you find an independent escort who has their own website. Chances are, if that escort has managed to get their own site that high up in search results, they are well established and successful and have ads on the best directories for your location. Go to their site and copy and paste their mobile number into a new search. The directories that appear in that search are more likely to be the ones where you want to advertise. Especially if that escort has a paid ad on there. Copy and paste the names of those directories into a search of this subreddit and check what other sexworkers have said about it. If the directory seems to be well regarded, then post an ad there.

Face in, or face out

Some percentage of clients will only see escorts who show their faces in ads so blurring or cropping or altering your pics in some way to conceal your face will mean that you don't get those clients but it is absolutely possible to make a lot of money as an escort without showing your face in your ads. Whether you do or don't is your decision to make. Argument for = you'll get more clients. Argument against = once your face pics are on the internet, they could stay there forever and prove impossible to remove. Facial recognition and reverse image search technology is already highly advanced and in future who knows what this technology will be like.

Filming Without Consent/ Hidden Cameras

Watch out for devices pointing toward the bed. It could be a phone propped up and recording or it could be something less obvious like a clock radio, key fob or phone charger with a camera lens built in.

If it's designed to work in low light, the camera will emit infra red which you can usually detect easily in a dimly lit room just be switching on your phone camera and scanning around the room. You can test this yourself on your TV remote. You probably won't be able to see the IR from your remote by eye but you'll be able to see it with your phone camera. See this article for details.

If you do find a camera pointing at you, I recommend you pick up your phone and talk to your security buddy. Or pretend to if you don't have one. Say "this guy is filming me without consent, you know where I am and you know what to do." Then get dressed, take the camera and leave. If the client attempts to stop you, say "my security will be here in a minute. If you try to stop me leaving, this is going to go badly for you."

Kissing

If kissing or any other service makes you uncomfortable, you'll be better off in the long term not offering it. Forcing yourself to do something you hate isn't sustainable.

Male escorts

There is a market for male escorts, if you're ok with male clients. If you're straight and not ok with male clients, then no. Women clients do exist but they'll tend to choose the most professional looking male escort they can find. Someone with his own website, paid ads on plenty of reputable directories, frequently updated social media with a lot of followers, professionally taken and retouched pics, a long history of good reviews and a friends page with duo partners who also list him on their friends pages. If you don't see male clients, you'll never fit the description above so it's unlikely you'll ever get a woman client. Even after you've been seeing male clients for years and you establish a web presence like the one I described above, you'll still only see a few women clients per year. Nowhere near enough to earn a living. There just aren't that many women clients out there. Anywhere you can make an escort ad cheap or for free, you'll find thousands of "straight male escort" ads with a mirror selfie and/or a close-up shot of their cock, and a few lines of crude often misspelled and grammatically incorrect Borat style lines of text where that one ad is that guys entire web presence. I'd estimate that approximately none of those guys ever get one single paying client. But if you are gay, or bi or gay for pay and willing to work very hard all day every day on promoting yourself, then it's entirely possible to be successful as a male escort.

You don't need to be gay. Many male escorts consider themselves gay for pay rather than bi in that they're happy to have sex with men for money but wouldn't do so for free. Whether that's something you want to do or not is up to you.

In order to top you'll need to be able to get hard, stay hard and ideally cum when a client wants you to cum. I find a quarter, or even one eighth of a viagra an hour or half an hour before a job makes all of the above happen easily. The more pressure you're under, the less likely you are to be able to stay hard. So if you are not in a desperate situation financially, you have no addictions, debts, needy relatives etc and so you can either accept any given job, or not, then you'll probably find you can top. If you're addicted to drugs and desperate for the money, you probably won't be able to top.

Bottoming isn't for everyone but if you are going to bottom, I highly recommend douching before. Let me know if you'd like a guide to anal douching, I can send details but basically just water in via an anal douche or shower hose and push the water out into the toilet or down the shower drain, rinse and repeat as necessary until the water comes out clean. Water will open you up enough and you'll be more relaxed knowing you're not going to shit all over your client. Just use plenty of lube and start slow.

If you advertise as a male escort you're going to get a lot of requests for bareback. Always use condoms. Never bareback. Even if you're on PREP and/or the client says they're on PREP, there are plenty of STIs other than HIV that you don't want. Even if they offer a copy of a clear STI test. These infections all have window periods. Please don't take my word for this. I'm not a medical professional. Research via a reliable online source (eg in UK I use NHS website) talk to your GP or visit a sexual health clinic.

More info for getting started as a male escort = https://ozinlondon.co.uk/how-to-get-started-as-a-male-sexworker/

Money up front

Always get cash up front. You might also want to ask for a deposit prior to meeting.

Payments other than cash

I'm no expert on the ones USA sexworkers use but from other people's recommendations it looks like cashapp is popular. Also venmo. Some say PayPal but only if its sent as a gift with nothing sex work related in the comment and clients will see your real name. Beware of the possibility that clients could dispute a paypal payment and get their payment reversed. In UK I get regulars to pay me by bank transfer for fly me to you deposits. I take payments for video chat on WhatsApp and for custom made videos via Fortnum and Mason or John Lewis vouchers. I used to accept Amazon UK vouchers but they're not ideal as there's usually a delay of up to one day before I receive them and if its for an amazon voucher worth more than £50 their bank often blocks the transaction. Bitcoin or other crypto currency would seem like an ideal way to accept payments but in my experience, clients perceive this as too complicated. I'm in the process of figuring out how to set up woocommerce on my site so I can accept payments directly and a digitalocean space CDN to store my media and amazon cloud front for delivery.

Photoshoots

There's a huge price range of professional photoshoots out there. You can get quite a cheap shoot eg from one of the coupon sites or apps and get them retouched via a crowdsourcing site like fiverr. Or pay thousands for a top photographer and rent a 5 star hotel suite for the shoot location. And everything in between.

Ring lights are also popular and not expensive. It's a tripod with a clip that will hold any phone and comes with a ring shaped light that can cast an adjustable light on you and they usually come with a Bluetooth remote that you can pair with your phone so you can take multiple pics in different poses without running backwards and forwards to press the camera button on a timer. If you look at other people's pics for ideas for poses and get some good poses and angles with good lighting and the camera held steady on the tripod you can get some decent pics that way especially with the top of the range new phones.

There are a lot of "photographers" who will contact you offering cheap, or free, photoshoots. Especially if they can see that you're new. I don't know anyone who's accepted one of these offers but I'm guessing if you did accept a free shoot from some guy with a camera calling himself a photographer, you'd most likely get a few poor shots taken from someone who has no idea what they're doing and something other than photography on their mind.

Rates

Nobody can tell you how much you should charge. You might want to charge ten times higher than the average rate for your area and only see one client per month. Or you might want to charge one tenth of the average rate and see a dozen guys per day. But step one is to at least figure out what the average rate for your area is. I recommend you start by finding popular directories as per the first faq above, then try to refine a search of that directory so you see results matching other escorts who appear similar to how you plan to promote yourself. Look at as many ads as possible, from a number of different directories, that are as similar as possible to your own intended escort persona, and figure out what the average rate is from there. One thing I would recommend is that you decide on rates you are happy with, list those rates on your ad and don't allow anyone to haggle. There is an alternate approach which is to not list rates and then negotiate with each guy who contacts you to try and set an appointment at a rate they are willing to pay. Even if this does generate more business, I think this is a good way to quickly burn out. Having people haggle with you is very unpleasant and the kind of guys who want to haggle are likely to be disrespectful in other ways. I would never operate my business this way and highly recommend listing your rates and sticking to them.

Regulars

Ask them during a session if it's ok to contact them sometimes. If they say yes, save something in their contact name to remind you eg "Dave incall tie and tease ok to contact".

If they haven't agreed to receive messages from you, I recommend you don't message them. It's not discreet. Their wife or child or their boss could be looking over their shoulder.

** What Can I do to Keep My Regulars Coming Back More Often**

Save every client you meet as a contact on your phone. Install whatsapp, telegram and signal. Post a whatsapp status every day that a client would enjoy seeing. If they're a saved contact and they've saved you as a contact they can see your whatsapp statuses. This keeps regulars coming back more often.

If you think it's a worthwhile use of your time and they've agreed to receive messages from you, message them sometimes with something you saw or heard or did that reminds you of something they said or a pic or a link or a joke or whatever that you think they'd like. When they respond, steer the conversation toward getting them to set a day and time to see you again.

Screening

/u/PhoenixxVIP kindly agreed to have the r/heauxs Safety and Screening wiki posts linked here. If you'd like to know more about blacklists and databases, please message a moderator or someone with an escort flair and ask them via private message. If we can see from your post history that you are a sexworker most of us will happily share details of these screening resources. Otherwise we might ask you for some proof that you're a sexworker eg an email sent from your work mail so we can search to see if your ads come up. What we want to avoid is publicly sharing resources that could be used by those seeking to circumvent our security.

Securing your identity

My number one recommendation here is don't use the same device for work and personal. Buy a second mobile phone as a work phone and never use your work phone for anything personal / never use your personal phone for anything work related. If you add your clients to a contact list on your personal phone where you also have your friends and family listed as contacts then use that phone to register for work related site like directories, make work related social media accounts etc and then use that same phone to log in to personal sites and apps eg your personal facebook, it's just a matter of time before you get outed as an escort to your personal contacts. Social media apps like facebook especially like to access your contacts list and spy on what you're doing in other apps and on other sites. If you mix work and personal on one device, facebook, twitter, instagram etc will happily recommend your escort page as a friend for your family members.

Make a work email. I recommend protonmail. Never use your personal number or personal email to register for anything work related. You probably don't want your clients to be able to search the web for your number and find your real name, personal social media etc. You probably also don't want your friends and family to search the web for your number and find all your escort ads. If you use the same laptop for work and personal, at least use two browsers. I use chrome incognito plus ublock origin, privacy badger, decentraleyes and https everywhere plugins for work with proton vpn. And I use vivaldi for personal.

Beware of exif data and geotagging of photos. You should be able to switch off geotagging in your phone settings to avoid accidentally sharing the gps coordinates of your exact location and there are plenty of online, desktop and app tools for removing exif data from pics.

Consider using a VPN. I use proton VPN. Especially when using public unsecured WiFi eg in hotels. Also handy when on tour in places that block access to websites you need for work eg UAE and China.

Shadowbans on Social Media

It's best not to put a direct link to your website in your twitter or instagram bio or you're likely to get banned or shadowbanned. Safer to set up a link aggregator like linktree, put your website link and other links there and then add that link to your bios. Also best not to put any links in the text of tweets or instagram posts. As per https://twitter.com/sexworkceo/status/1644054625337724929 twitter treats all links it doesn't recognise as reputable news sources as spam and suppresses those tweets. I've been adding text overlay to my images using the image editor built into the gallery app on my phone to display links instead of sharing actual links in tweets. I'm still shadowbanned on twitter and instagram anyway.

Technical and Cyber Security resources for Sex Workers

This list https://heystacks.com/doc/718/technical-resources-for-sex-workers has some excellent resources. Do your own research before adopting any of the recommendations as some may be out of date eg they still have switter on there which unfortunately doesn't exist any more.

Timewasters

A timewaster is someone who contacts escorts pretending they're interested in booking an appointment who in fact has no intention of ever showing up to said appointment. They want you to entertain them for free on the phone or by exchanging messages or pictures. If someone contacts you and they get straight to the point about where and when they want to meet and they don't try to chat or ask for pictures, they're more likely to be genuine. If they don't mention a day, time or location and seem reluctant to discuss these details but excited about asking you for explicit details about yourself or your services, they're probably just wanking. In which case I recommend offering the option to pay for a chat session. eg "which day and what time would you like to see me? Do you want an incall or an outcall?" "or if you just want to chat please send $x and I'll chat to you for x minutes."

Virginity

Sites claiming to facilitate sales of virginity are all scams as far as I know. Search the sexworkers subreddit for the word "virginity" to see other threads on the subject. If you mention any kind of youth or inexperience in an escort ad, especially virginity, you'll attract a variety of scumbags who do not have your best interests at heart. All manner of timewasters, hagglers, boundary pushers and much worse will see you as a vulnerable target.

Website

Having your own personal website is the best way to promote yourself. It shows you're established, genuine and professional. It's cheap and easy to buy a domain name and hosting and build a site on a site builder eg wordpress. If you need help, there are plenty of skilled professionals you can pay to help you. I recommend you pay directly for your own domain name and hosting. Don't let a webmaster register your domain and hosting in their own name. Your website is going to be very precious to you and you'll want to own it and have freedom to edit it yourself, move the hosting, and do whatever you like without a webmaster holding your site to ransom. If you pay someone to help with your site and they prove to be unreliable or incompetent, you'll want to be able to discontinue paying them and find someone else to do the work instead. Much easier to do this if you own your domain and hosting. The best SEO to get your site to rise up in the search results is to post unique, quality content that people enjoy reading regularly on a blog page on your site using the kinds of keywords in the posts that people will search for when they want an escort like you.

Buy a domain name and hosting, install WordPress on your hosting and DIY Web design from templates or get help from web designers if necessary.

Your landing page needs to be appealing enough to capture the attention of a client instantly or the majority will bounce within a few seconds. Big sexy picture background and enticing tag line that makes it clear where you're located and how to contact you.

Your contact details need to be top and centre on your website where anyone can find them within one second of opening your page. Less contact details means less clients. eg if you only have a contact form and no number or email, that means fewer clients.

Call your rates page "rates", your contact page "contact", gallery, blog, reviews etc. If you call your rates "consideration" or some other code word, some percentage of clients will think hmm I'd like to meet her but I can't find her rates, and they'll bounce. Don't underestimate how short their attention span is or how obvious everything needs to be for them to find it.

Add a blog page to your site and post on it at least once a week writing unique content that your target audience will enjoy reading using keywords they'll use to find your site. Your location is your most important keyword. Use it in your site title, tag line, meta description, on every page of your site and in every blog post. And the word escort. Not courtesan or provider or muse or geisha or anything like that. Escort. That's what clients will search for in a search engine. Other key words will relate to whatever services you specialise in, anything defining about your look or style or personality that can be described in one word that a client might key into a search engine.

/u/madametoska has built a free website template on WordPress that’s prebuilt, as well as an SEO guide. https://ruby-moss-d82.notion.site/The-SWer-digital-kit-f8e9e29cf6dd49a0aefca106ee7d49ec

Cover image courtesy of Digital Meddle.

 

As the Sex Worker Search library of indexed websites has grown, some interesting patterns have begun to emerge in the data.

We sex workers who own our own websites are a relatively small and close knit community so it is inevitable that trends occur. Words and phrases that commonly appear on our websites come into, and go out of, fashion.

I have noticed certain recurring words and phrases and I thought it would be interesting to quantify these similarities.

So I used this word frequency analysis tool that allows you to detect the frequency of occurrence of individual words, and also phrases, and sort them in order of most commonly used.

By inputting all 450,850 words of text from all of the descriptions from all 5000 sex worker websites that Sex Worker Search has indexed so far, I discovered that the most commonly used noun on our websites is... "Love!"

Awww. That's really sweet. (sweet is about the 20th most popular word overall and the 6th most popular adjective after sensual, fun, good, sexy and soft.

I noticed the word "muse" is hugely popular. I don't remember this being the case 10 years ago when I was reading a lot of other people's sites seeking inspiration to write my own about page. I guess "muse" is a recent phenomenon. I like it. I'm incredible at what I do as a sex worker. I'm not sure I've ever inspired anyone to create a work of art in my honour, but if I did, that would be awesome 🙂

As an experiment, I asked Chat GPT to create an introductory description for someone working as an entertainer and companion (if I'd said "sex worker" I would have had my request rejected) outlining their skills, attributes, admirable qualities and what they have to offer clients using the top 100 most popular words and the top 100 three word phrases.

This is what Chat GPT came up with =

"Hello there! I'm your sweet and sexy muse. I am a down-to-earth companion and entertainer, and my name is Chloe. My friends describe me as "fun" and "bubbly". I love to make people feel relaxed, so our time together will be an enjoyable escape from the hustle and bustle of life.

I am the "girl next door" you've been looking for, with a warm and open-minded personality that you will find inviting. If you are looking for someone to share some of life's finer things with, I am here to help you indulge in the experiences you desire.

I take pride in getting to know each other, creating a genuine connection, and making you feel comfortable and at ease in all the right places. My sense of humor will keep you smiling, and my sensual touch will leave you wanting more.

I specialize in providing companionship and entertainment, and I love what I do. Whether you want to explore the art of conversation, share some laughter, or enjoy the pleasures of life, I am here to make it happen.

If you're ready to experience the unique and unforgettable time that I offer, please visit my website for more information about what I do. I can't wait to hear from you and look forward to meeting you soon. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or would like to know more about me. Your satisfaction is my goal, and I am always here to make your desires a reality."

That's actually not bad. As far as the Turing test goes, if I read that description on a sex worker's website, it would never occur to me that it looked like it was written by AI. It is a bit bland and some of the phrases do fit together somewhat awkwardly. There's no mention of where in the world Chloe is. It only hints at the fact that she's a sex worker with no mention of any specific services. I can't really fault this introduction for the latter as the majority of sex worker sites are in USA where sex work is still illegal so people there do tend to be extremely circumspect about disclosing the actual nature of their work. With good reason. To avoid self incrimination. So, vague and euphemistic introductions are not that unusual. If it had "based in x city, x country" in the first sentence, I'd rate this a 6 out of 10.

Some of the text I've read on people's websites is a work of art. We have some real wordsmiths in our midst. The trend is definitely toward the baroque. I think somewhat florid prose is expected as the norm in a sex worker site description. I've seen this approach used to great effect on some sites and on others the words seem to have taken over the entire site and it's just difficult or impossible to determine where in the world that sex worker is, what their rates are, or how to contact them. The best sites really convey the heartfelt passion and enthusiasm many of us feel for our work and the great pride we take in being outstanding in the fields of our expertise.

Chat GPT's effort falls somewhere in the middle in my opinion. If that description was accompanied by a tagline above it saying a location (at least a city and country) and a menu linking to clearly marked rates page and contact page, then it's actually more than adequate but not in the same league (yet) as some of the best writing I've seen on sex worker websites.

Displaying snippets such as a meta description from a website in search results on a search engine has always been considered fair use. Without search engines there would be no internet as we know it. The source of the titles and descriptions displayed in search results is clear so the owner of the written content is always credited via their name or business name appearing in the title and there is always a link to their website.

Sex Worker Search now has around 5,000 websites indexed all belonging to independent sex workers.

Each site indexed is displayed in search results as a URL, name, title, tagline and brief description.

Every website has meta data which tells search engines how the owner of the site wants search results to display their URL, name, title and so on.

Sex Worker Search doesn't list anything more than other search engines like Google, Bing and Duckduckgo. There are no profiles and no pictures. Clicking on any website indexed in SWS search results takes you directly to that website. This is how SWS differs from an escort directory. When you click on an escort on a directory, it takes you to their profile page with their description, pictures, rates and contact details. You stay on the directory. When you click on  search result on a search engine, you leave the search engine and go to the website owned by the person described in that search result.

Each website is unique and each sex worker has communicated via their own website in their own way their skills, attributes, qualities, personality, physical traits, speciality services and what they have to offer to clients.

Sex Worker Search will never display search results against the wishes of the owner of a website. If anyone contacts me asking me to change how their website appears, eg change the title, tagline or description, or asks me to remove their website from search results entirely, I will do so immediately. I will be checking for dead links and manually removing websites that no longer exist from search results. In future I'm planning to find a solution that allows me to synchronise how the search results appear with edits to the actual websites on request. So if someone wanted to make use of this feature, they'd be able to change their title on their own website, eg from "Your Sweet And Sexy Muse in Miami, Florida" to "Your Sweet And Sexy Muse Now on Tour in London, UK" and that change on their website would automatically propagate onto their search listing. It's still early days but this feature and more are in development.

It's very important to me that Sex Worker Search be a force for good within the sex worker community. I want to operate this search engine legally, ethically and in a way that benefits all sex workers.

I would like to credit all 5,000 websites since I think crediting the authors where possible is the right thing to do when ethically using content to train a large language model. Currently the best way to see all 5,000 is via searches for Escort, Mistress, Sensual Masseuse, Tantric Masseuse and Professional Submissive.

This experiment, using AI to create an introduction using frequently used words and phrases from sex worker websites, has highlighted for me how sensitive the use of other people's content is. Some words and phrases are very popular. I don't think there's a lot of plagiarism happening and I don't think our introductions are cliched. I do think it's normal when starting out to read the websites of our more experienced and successful peers and get a feel for how a good introduction looks and to understand the conventions of the genre and I think that's fine too.

I do think my experiment constitutes fair use in that the owners of the original content are credited, nothing fake or misleading is being presented and the intention is to use the text in a way that benefits all sex workers by providing a template showing what the most popular words and phrases look like when they're all used in one imaginary introduction.

Please send me an email if you have any questions or comments. I would love to hear your feedback.