Oh and one last thing. Your post codes!! I'm in a particular location yet you have me up in another.

When putting up your postcode could we have the option of seeing what area it is listed in. Eg seeing if it's oxford circus, Tottenham court rd or soho. If I could see what it would be listed as when giving my postcode that would be great. My postcode might say one but viva street says another and having to wait till it's been moderated to change it is effort.


We also have the option to deactivate our profile but if we do this then all of our featuring costs still keep rolling. Why not suspending option with the ability to keep our featured days option intact?

I feel I already pay a LOT to be on Viva Street - considering the calibre of punters it sends my way, I don't think it's particularly good value for money. AW can cost ?7.50 per day (front page of local area + phone number + "available today"). All of these are things we can pick and choose day-by-day.

If Viva Street had a "Available Today" feature, that would mean not opting to use it will give the message that I am not available - this is an issue that some have experienced on AW.

I'm giving Viva Street another try for another month but I'm not impressed by what I've gotten the first few days and an "Available Today" feature would likely be the nail in the coffin for me.

Don't get me wrong: my phone DOES ring from my VS advert... but the sorts of calls I am getting rarely translate into actual bookings. Clients are unable to search by services, etc., so we're all forced to have that "what do I get for my money" conversation that doesn't really get things off on the right foot.

I am eager to expand my marketing beyond AW, as I resent their monopoly on sex work in the UK. I also know that I need to get out of my comfort zone. That's the only reason I have spent the money to try Viva Street once again.  I think PTMU has potential, although it still isn't on par with AW. I think it's a more attractive site and I hope it catches on, but the search capabilities are not quite up to the same level.

I don't know if the rep from Viva Street is still reading this thread or not, but if so, here is what I would say:

If you want to do well long-term, then stop gouging us girls. As I said, Adultwork practically has a MONOPOLY on sexwork in the UK. There are a lot of features that benefit the punters (searchability, verification, etc.) But if you don't attract quality sexworkers, you won't get a reputation as a good place to find a girl and then it will never come close to AW. If you make it easy and affordable for us to advertise, then the clients will find a good choice of girls and it could take off.

I think PTMU is also owned by Vivastreet so maybe that's the angle you're working there. Unfortunately, my phone rings very little from PTMU. If you were to get a good share of that market I would be happy to pay a similar amount of money that I do already to AW.

I just got this email from Vivastreet: "We've noticed you're not getting as much response to your ad 'Hot Busty Blonde in XYZ City Centre' as possible. But don't worry, we can fix that for you. The easiest way to increase the calls and emails you get is to take one of our upgrade options. "

I'm not with my Vivastreet phone right now because I'm on tour but I'm just laughing at this. "Oh, dear - your ad isn't working... you should spend more money!"

Like I said - my phone rings just fine. It's just the guys who calls are clueless idiots who make the guys on AW look like sophisticated ladies men.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your comments and suggestions, as part of our new roadmap we now ask both users and posters for opinion and to vote on new features we are adding. Of course not anyone is going to agree 100%, but when we see a big % for a feature such as the available today 80% of posters and 85% for users said it would be useful we will look to build this in our future roadmap. Over the past 2 years we have really tried to develop our site and build the community around our adult sections, we are also investing in marketing and growing the site - all these items cost money to build, develop and run so as unfortunate as it is we do have to charge for these features. Vivastreet is a business at the end of the day and like any business we charge for our service.

Vivastreet works very well some people and doesn't for others, which is completely understandable - one of the reasons we offer free trials for new users is so they can try us out and if we deliver a good return on investment they will continue to use us. We believe in the market place we offer a good ROI, which is why the number of ads has grown significantly year on year and also the number of user to our escort site is now at over 5 Million visits a month.

To address some of the other points:-

Picture moderation - Topless pictures are allowed and should not be deleted, as we have said before if you ever have any doubts about a picture I am happy for you to contact us and we can let you know. The rules are just no nudity below the waist and obviously nothing illegal.

Punters - Unfortunately we cant control what the people do when they come to the website and cant really impact on the time waster situation, perhaps we do have a high proportion of these vs other sites? This could be down to the fact that we rank very well in Google. We write many blog posts and articles on best etiquette for punters, but if you have any ideas how we can help on this further happy to listen.

Prices - Actually we have found the opposite, when we have moved some of our sections to free to post the amount of fake profiles, duplicates, profiles with no information and scammers vastly goes up and this in turn causes problems for the users and leads to a decrease in returning users. Since we have made most sections pay to post the quality has vastly improved and punters that use our site know every poster is working, rather than thousands of old profiles. Again for the number of contacts we send, we dont feel prices starting around ?19.99 for an ad is excessive, yes features do cost more but they send more contacts - its a pricing model many sites use.

Pausing ad - This is a good point thanks, if you want to pause your ad currently the features still continue - I will add this to our next meeting and we can discuss if this is technically possible on our site. We are looking into a credit system this year, so this could potentially be part of this project.

Postcodes - Yes do know about this problem and again this is on our tech roadmap for this year. We do always try and find a solution by fixing the issue or using another postcode and I can only apologies for the inconvenience for this.

Private galleries - This project will be started in March and tied in with the credit project, to allow you to also (if you choose) earn money from your private galleries. As they are behind a paywall / sign up verification you will be allowed to post any photos (nothing legal).

Services - we have allowed for a while now people to add services in the acronym format eg OWO, we are hoping from next month to have a services list that you can tick what you offer to try and reduce callers asking if you do certain services.

Pricing - Again we do allow you to put an hourly rate in your ad description, also from next month there will be a pricing matrix that you will be able to put in rates for in and out calls.

Payment on mobile / tablet - this is the big project started last year and should be live for the end of March.

Hopefully caught all your questions / points, we really appreciate the time you all put into writing your frustrations, needs and wants - hopefully by being a site that listens and egnages, we can really help each other develop the site.

I am also only an email away if you need any further help.

Thank you,

The Vivastreet Team - Finny

Hiya

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not surprised 80% said yes to an available today feature as the first time it asked me I clciked yes. Then sat and thought about it and wishes I hadn't as its a buzz word in this industry and its how you proposed the question that was also biased in your favour. If you asked 'would you like the option to PAY for an available today feature?' Then in my opinion I feel the percentage would have had a more honest and representative response. Currently the only advertisers I feel that would benifit would be the agencies.

I just feel like the question was misleading. Although the question was black and white, the possibility for cost wasn't and that's deceptive, kind of like lying by omission.

Will you consider adding the element of cost to the question? Will there be a cost for this future amendment?

I tottaly understand the concept of charging for your sevices, its what I spout most days on the phone to clients from your site who want a freebie so no qualms there. It's just if your approach is to appear transparent then can the questions asked take into account the fact that their will be a cost for proposed features.

Also there is no option to choose between independents and agencies as a client, could this be a possibility?

Thanks

Morning A R,

Thanks for the extra feedback, we will have a talk about adding cost to the question (its a small space with limited characters, but we can try) and perhaps re-running the survey. We certainly didn't want to weight unfairly the results, although it seems to be a feature people want so if it was offered to pay I am not sure the feature becomes less useful its more do posters wish to pay and see enough value.

Yes I forgot to mention this feature, as we seem to be attracting more and more agencies to the site on top of independents we are looking to implement independent / agency filter for the browsers - similar to how in works in out other categories. It should also be live in a few weeks and will communicate all the changes out to users once live.

We are really excited about the new features and hope all posters in the adult categories will be too.

Thank you,

The Vivastreet Team - Finny

It would really benefit the clients if indies and agencies were separate - many clients want nothing to do with agencies. An agency should state their status.

I understand that you are in it to make money and I respect that. But you do have to compete with AW if you want this to work long-term. AW does it by charging for various little things and then facilitating the sale of other erotic content like webcam, private gallery, and movies. I know you're not willing to do that so you have to find another way to raise revenue.

?7.50 a day over a month would be more expensive than Vivastreet for sure. However, on AW I can pick and chose which days I want to feature my profile, put my profile at the top of my local area, display my phone number, or say "Available Today." Considering the majority of clients will call within a few hours of wanting to see an escort, this is a very effective way of budgeting my advertising. Even before I added a private gallery (which now more than covers all my costs), I was willing to pay ?7.50 per day.

I'm happy to hear that we can use common acronyms in our description of services. While I can't assume that the majority of Vivastreet browsers know what "CIM" and "OWO" mean, that is a start. I also like that I can now put something about my rates in it.

Hi Fabulassie,

Thanks for the feedback, yes hopefully the new agency / inde will really help on the site and agree with your logic for the reasons. Its interesting you mention webcams, we have also been building this product last year and hopefully will be launching next month - it wont be all signing all dancing from the get go but we hope we can leverage the adult traffic from VS to drive this product.

Private galleries on a rev share basis is the next big project we want to look at, but probably wont be ready to launch for at least 6 months. Videos we have looked at but want to do galleries first and then see if we can progress to videos.

Understood on the day charging rates, we will discuss to see if this is possible on the site, everything is of course possible but some things may need us to completely rewrite the site which is a very big job we would not look to take on.

Thank you,

The Vivastreet Team - Finny