Hi there everybody,

I'm filling out a couple of forms to create as many (free!) advertisements as I can online, and on one website (Absolute Male Escorts) they are requesting that I send them a photocopy of my driver's licence to verify my age (I'm 19, which is fair). However, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with them holding such personal information such as my real name and am afraid this is an unsafe move. Is this normal?

Furthermore, if anyone could point me in the direction of any active websites that are willing to put up an advertisement for free, that would be a fantastic help to get me on my feet with this sort of thing. I've tried Gay Escort Club (said they would ring me to verify my number but never did), Agency Escort Guys (filled out the application form three times but never got a confirmation page; just refreshed the form page) and finally Absolute Male Escorts & Sleepyboys both require photo ID to check with "government records". Hm.

So yes, if anyone could point me in the direction of any free ad space would be great, thanks in advance!

Andro

Andro, If you do a google search on "gay escorts UK" you'll find tons of agencies, webs, listings and classifieds. I'm pretty sure half of them are dodgy and useless but a lot of them might be useful and for real. There are quite a lot of gay male escorts in this country and I'm sure they must be advertising somewhere! 

I would never ever let any escort agency know my real indentity as you'll be left vulnerable for blackmailing of all sorts. There's absolutely No reason why an agency would need your real name (any of the experienced ladies in this board can confirm this). Remember: you're entering the sex industry, full of shady and dodgy characters (specially when it comes to "agencies"). You need to be careful and protect yourself.

Ah, looking at AME, it looks like the friendly pair of chancers who set it up have sold up to a US site. They want the details to comply with one of the sillier bits of US law - Eros do the same. It's up to you whether or not you accept this and advertise with them.

Yes, have an AW profile and you might as well have a Gayswap one too (but it's easy to see from the number of profile views that there are graveyards with more action).

Roughly whereabouts are you? In London, the two magazines to consider were Boyz and QX. The former got all sniffy about the rude pictures and now has less than a page of ads (check an ad for rentboy.com on the inside back cover for a code for a free month on that site). Although it's down on what it was, QX still has several pages, and is as explicit as ever - you can see if they are offering any deals for new advertisers (i.e. are they prepared to give you a discount).

The big site to consider is Gaydar. You'll need to pay to use the escorts space and as with AW, they put the money first, but they have an awful lot of active users.

It might have a Pride, but Exeter is going to be a much smaller marketplace than anywhere with a more significant scene. On the plus side, you may be one of very few options for people who are looking for someone there rather than one of many hundreds in London.

It's a long journey there, especially if you go the cheaper ways. Realistically, a big chunk of the gay market in places like London is 'I want sex and I want sex now' rather than advanced bookings, so even Herts is going to be out of the way. Plus before making any long journey, I'd suggest you have a search here for ways to ensure that it's not a fruitless one.

Yes, see what the magazines you can pick up in Exeter allow in terms of advertising. The national ones can tend to be too expensive on the grounds that they have a large readership, but you don't care how many readers they have across the country - you're only interested in the ones in the South West.

Who doesn't have a profile there? Alas, yes, if they find you hustling in the escort area without paying, they will ban you. You'd need to check some other profiles to see if you can get away with mentioning it in your regular page, or if you need to do it more discreetly.

Oh, I'm not saying AME is a waste - only you can decide that. What used to happen is that they used to yoyo from top of the Google listings to nowhere as their latest dodgy bit of search engine fooling was discovered. If that's ended, they may well be more consistently listed, but geography will remain a problem.

I'd be surprised if there were nothing on the tables in whatever scene there is in Exeter.

That's very odd about AW. There are thousands of men offering services there, even if the vast majority are hoping to be lucky enough to win the female client lottery... Any idea why?

Gaydar does tend to charge on the basis that you'll be making London money. You will probably be better off going 'I'd love to meet you, dear username, just as soon as I can find someone who will pay my electricity bill..' or similar via your profile.

From what I can gather from the mystic runes, otherwise known as their terms & conditions:

Email addresses may not be entered in your Profile Details, email auto-response, email signature, blogs and/or within the titles of images and movies nor may they be mentioned in your voicemail greeting. Please use the 'Show Email Address' tick box next to your email address within your Edit Profile Page.

.. so if that is it, it depends on how you did it.

Don't worry about it. The list of things that make more sense than the AW terms and conditions is very long indeed!

Sorry back again - quick question - do you know of a website that lists blacklisted customers? Want to check and double check again when booking with customers.

There was a male escort site called Timewasterz which was for male sex workers to share this sort of information, but I've just had a look and it seems to have disappeared.

It's not legal to post people's personal information in the public domain in any way which could identify them (which is why we have to censor it here in the warnings section) and such sites are so open to abuse that there hasn't been a successful one although Nationwide Ugly Mugs (see thread at top) will hopefully do a lot to redress this once it's up and running.

We don't check people's backgrounds here like they do in the states because we're not in danger of getting arrested, but you learn to spot the numpties after a while - things like phone manner can give a lot away and there are some tips on the main site for spotting timewasters. I know it doesn't sound very useful, but you'll find that once you get started and have a few of these calls the non-genuine ones start to stick out like a sore thumb .