I thought so too - in which case I should have done well on tour when I was the fresh face in those areas yet in 14 months I've done Leeds twice (10 months apart) and Birmingham 4 times (inc 3 and 8 months apart).


Thanks for the offer a profile review. I'm tempted.

Birmingham Leeds’s Leicester often come up on the worse places to tour regardless if your  new fresh meat  or not
If you aren’t doing Local Escort Search then you will get less work as lots of guys search under local
Escort
If your niche is domination fetish stuff you need to do alternative section on AW  as well
So if I was touring birmingham I would do
Local Escort search for Birmingham
Alternative
Available today
Phone number showing
That cost approximently 10 a day
Then in the drop down box where you can write the areas I would put
Birmingham Hagley Rd ( if your out that way)

But I would be trying to work out why I have very few returning clients
I’ve worked in my hone town for 15 years plus and 80 percent of my clients I’ve seen before
Probably the same when I tour as well

Cities
I didn't know those cities were poor places to tour, I assumed all major cities would be good, especially Birmingham which is similar in size and national importance to Manchester. That still leaves Nottingham and Edinburgh and though they may be just as poor (especially
Nottingham as it's small and a dump) my touring experience has put me off going further afield. After all, if Birmingham and Leeds are poor then what hope for the other, smaller cities? London is the only placed bigger than Manchester and Birmingham and should be a great place to tour but expensive accommodation coupled with so many areas to choose from (and thus more likelihood to pick the wrong one) means I am very reluctant to try - especially having lost £500 on my tours last month.


Local Search
So how does Local Search differ from standard AW listing? For comparison, my main site ranks escorts based on how recently they updated their ad. As there's 18 photo ads per page (6 rows of 3) I renew mine on the morning of my tour and that pretty much ensures I'm still in top position until mid-afternoon and still in the top half at the end of the tour.


Push Back
I'm truly not trying to feel sorry for myself, nor am I looking for you all to cheer me up by telling me it's not my fault, I am genuinely perplexed and the only reason I seem to have an answer to every suggestion is because things just don't add up.

If we accept that all the punters in Manchester have visited and I'm just too medicore to entice them back, that still doesn't explain why everywhere else is dead. if I just picked poor places to tour then why were my first trip to Birmingham very good and my second one pretty good? If being a fresh face explains my successful initial 3 months in Manchester then why did Birmingham die after a total of just 6 days and the other places never got started? (Leicester gets an honourable mention as the phone never stopped ringing, so there was interest, just a shame they were all time wasters). And if marketing is so vital then how come I did so well for 15 weeks in Manchester and 2 tours of Birmingham without marketing?


Marketing
Twitter, website, blogs - where do I advertise these? If I place them within the body of my adverts then how do they convert into more punters because punters have to be already viewing my advert in order to see the links I'm posting and if my pics and text aren't enticing them to visit then how is my pontificating on social media going to help?


Escort Sites
When all was going great I used just two: my main site and AW, with only 20% of business coming through AW. During the drought of last summer I tried VivaStreet (too many time wasters) and a couple of unheard of and/or poorly-created sites like Skokka that did absolutely nothing so is there anywhere else that's really good?

I think most of us would agree that AW and other advertising sites will only help in your marketing for a limited period of time - there are always more ladies to look for on these sites.  That is probably why you were successful for a time and then it dropped off.

Having your own website only promoting yourself is a must for longevity in this business. It’s not instant, you have to put time and effort into it, but it is worth it. As to Twitter - same, it’s not instant, you have to put the effort in.

As to how you promote your website/Twitter -  on AW there is a links option, where you can display your Twitter and so on, ONLY however if you are using at least one paid for option.  Depending what other advertising you use you can promote them there too.

I don't use any paid AW features bar the phone number display unless I'm somewhete huge like London, but then more of my work comes from my site and blog. There is a fuckton of information on these features in the specific Adultwork section, and a massive thread listing advertising/directory sites at the top of this one.

I think most of us would agree that AW and other advertising sites will only help in your marketing for a limited period of time - there are always more girls to look for on these sites.  That is probably why you were successful for a time and then it dropped off.

Having your own website only promoting yourself is a must for longevity in this business. It’s not instant, you have to put time and effort into it, but it is worth it. As to Twitter - same, it’s not instant, you have to put the effort in.

As to how you promote - on AW there is a links option, where you can display your Twitter and so on, ONLY however if you are using at least one paid for option. 

I don't use Twitter (or similar), but apart from that I agree with SS. The idea (and it certainly isn't just you - we see it time and time again) that you can just throw a free AW page together and you'll be made for life is just weird; nobody expects success in any other highly paid work to require virtually no time, effort or money and our is no different.

What everyone else said!

Marketing is crucial, paying for ads is crucial, endless effort is crucial - if you want to be super busy!

Here's an example:

+ AW - gets updated every day with any changes to my availability, I add my blog posts to it, update photos, and continually try to improve the information and layout (I pay for local escort search and phone number display every day so that I am included in the maximum search results, I only pay for profile featuring if I am going on tour and I haven't had to use available today in my base city for quite a while as I have been booked up fully in advance)

+ Website - as above plus weekly SEO improvements

+ Twitter - multiple times per day of updates, commenting and sharing other peoples' posts, uploading photos

+ Curious Cat - anonymous Q&A app that links to my website and twitter, clients get to ask me questions and I answer them: it's a good marketing tool and adds to my twitter as content

+ Blogs - I aim to write one per week, which gets uploaded to my website, AW and linked on Twitter

+ Mailing list - formed from subscribers of my website, I send out a monthly newsletter which includes links back to my site to increase the footfall on my site, which then improves my ranking on Google

+ Directories - I am currently listed on 14 directories, each requiring a written listing that gets updated once per week if required

+ Additional ads - I pay for 3 ads separate to anything else, which requires me to update to keep them near the top of the search
results

+ Clip sale sites - I sell clips on some sites, which again, links back to my website

+ Link backs - all ads and directories link back to my website to increase the footfall, and therefore, the ranking on Google

+ Professional photos - I have had 2 shoots in the last year



I am practically glues to my laptop in the evenings ensuring I do all of this. Since making this tremendous effort starting in January, I have never had a quiet day. My calendar is booked out and clients are now booking weeks and weeks in advance. This is not due to a change in my service, my service is the same; but it's a change in my marketing and the effort I apply. It takes solid hard work to get to the point I am at, but so worth it to see a nice full diary with regulars knowning that it;s unlikely they will cancel.

Maybe it's time to stop over analysing where the problem can be and start changing the variable to determine what WAS the problem. If you change your marketing and you start getting busy in your own city, then you know it was the marketing that was the problem. If you try another city but don't change your advertising, then you know it was location that was the problem. If you improve your service but none of the other variables change and you start getting repeat clients, then it was your service that was the problem. Only way to sort this is to try different things but maybe only one at a time so you can pinpoint the problem area.

Cities
I didn't know those cities were poor places to tour, I assumed all major cities would be good, especially Birmingham which is similar in size and national importance to Manchester. That still leaves Nottingham and Edinburgh and though they may be just as poor (especially
Nottingham as it's small and a dump) my touring experience has put me off going further afield. After all, if Birmingham and Leeds are poor then what hope for the other, smaller cities? London is the only placed bigger than Manchester and Birmingham and should be a great place to tour but expensive accommodation coupled with so many areas to choose from (and thus more likelihood to pick the wrong one) means I am very reluctant to try - especially having lost £500 on my tours last month.

Try touring small towns/cities that are close to major transport links. The [removed - please don't name hotels here] was banging until it got keycarded due to indiscreet girls.

Any hotel that you can say is "10 mins J22 M1" or whatever is going to get you lots of passing trade.

No idea why you don't want to say what your niche is (and your stated reasons don't make sense given the admin strives to make this a safe place for ALL sex workers) but you would get better advice if you did. Or, if you're doing hardsports or bareback or something, asking for advice on the forums that pertain to those interests.

-- Sorry Amy, I thought this was in the Touring section. My fault for clicking on "All unread topics".

Marketing is crucial, paying for ads is crucial, endless effort is crucial - if you want to be super busy!
(...)

Very motivating post, thanks Veggie!