I know someone who moved from the Northeast to London and it's been tough. I mean, it's a REALLY long distance to be from friends and family, and train tickets are expensive.
London is fun but it's hard to settle in - making friends requires a ton of effort, let alone establishing yourself work-wise and all that! Everything is just quite busy and manic and tiring. It's exciting and interesting, too, but I really enjoy my weekends visiting family in the countryside these days! But then I feel guilty from having time away and for not spending the weekend working furiously on all the stuff I need to get done, and blah blah - London is rather stressful, basically!
I think it's important to seriously think about the fact that, to pay for a flat in London - just a dinky one-bed with noisy neighbours and a kitchen that's so small it only fits a mini-fridge - to take incalls in, plus the basic bills, you will have to shag at
least twelve clients, more if your hourly rate is under ?130. That's
twelve men *just* to pay for the basics. No food, clothing, drinks, cinema tickets, Oyster (travel) card, none of that; JUST the basics. If you're used to seeing that many in a week, never get burnout and can find a place that's discreet enough to have that much foot traffic then that's lucky and you'll have nothing to worry about here! But it's really something to think about because London's a bit relentless. You can't go taking a week off here or a fortnight's holiday there unless you've literally worked your bum off the previous month. I dunno; maybe that's not much different from anywhere else? I do take a bit of time off here and there (and I'm only part-time in the first place, but I set high rates to compensate for that) but generally I have to sacrifice any contribution to my savings for that month if I do.
It's definitely anonymous - I moved here for uni five years ago and have never bumped into anyone randomly anywhere! That's a lie; I bumped into someone I recognised the other week for the first time ever, ha. The whole rest of the time you're completely surrounded by strangers. I like that about London and find it soothing, but I know it drives some people mad!
Competition is insane in a way but my friend who moved here brought the most ridiculous work ethic with her and she's not had a problem except being inundated with bookings! Maybe not ten a day or anything mad like that, but her rates aren't low and she gets tons of calls and has a whole bunch of regulars after only four or five months. Honestly, I feel completely lazy in comparison so I think if you come to London with a mindset to work hard (like those who tour here successfully do, for example) then you can reap the rewards. As long as 'time off' isn't one of the rewards you're hoping for!
Oh, and definitely think hard about your web presence, advertising, website, marketing, images, escort persona, all that stuff. You're probably completely used to it from working in the Northeast (isn't competition there far worse?! Competing agencies driving rates down and not giving a damn about the standard of service lowering due to overworked, exhausted escorts who resent earning peanuts after paying the agency share?) but of course every town/area has slightly different ways when it comes to making your ads prominent. There are one or two quite expensive listings sites that are worth trying but they unfortunately don't work for everyone, so be prepared to literally gamble with ?90-200 depending - see the main site article called "Where to Advertise", written by ParisB, for a good starting point. And whatever you do, don't get on Adultwork and start trying to compete with the pimps who are running all the profiles for bunches of women in flats who get all the bad reviews on Pnet etc because the woman on the phone says "Yes, darling" to all services but the real sex worker says "Please don't touch me with your stinky willy, not for ?69 an hour, and there's no shower in this crappy flat!" - it may be intimidating to look at all those profiles on AW advertising all services for peanuts, but so many of them are fake or worse (pimps etc). Focus on building up a unique identity that will make you stand out in a far better way. Again, sorry as you probably already know all this back to front, but I don't know anything personally about working in the Northeast so just sharing my experience with working here!